Page 61 of What a Difference a Duke Makes

“Ain’t you a little young, Lalla?” a blowsy woman in shortened skirts called.

Adele fixed the woman with a piercing stare exactly like the duke’s. “You, madam. You think me too young, but the arts of divination know no age. Hold out your palm. I delight in proving skeptics wrong.”

When the woman kept her hand close to her side, Adele shrugged. “Free of charge. Just this once.”

Adele lifted the woman’s right hand, spreading her fingers out and bending over her palm.

Michel began playing a low, mysterious melody on his pipe, setting the scene for his sister’s act.

Their gestures were freer and they looked older. More confident and self-assured.

Mari realized that this must be what they had been like in France.

Adele ran her finger over the woman’s palm. “Your name is something that begins with the letterb...no, I’m receiving another letter.D. Your name is Deborah. But your friends call you Deb.”

The woman’s face drained of color. “’Ow did you know that?”

Howhadshe known that, Mari wondered?

“Lalla knows all,” Adele intoned in a low, eerie voice.

The spectators hushed.

“This line here.” She traced a line on the woman’s palm. “Your heart line. It tells me that you fall in love easily. It ends here, at this fork. Oh...” Adele closed her eyes. “How very sad.”

“What?” Deborah asked in an urgent voice. “What do you see?”

Adele dropped the woman’s hand and held out her own. “If you want to know more, you must cross my palm with silver.”

Deb narrowed her eyes. “Where’s your mum, eh? Who are you?” She peered at Adele.

Mari stepped closer, to keep the woman from complaining. “Miss Lalla,” she said. “I’m prepared to pay the price.”

She dropped a coin into the cap.

The pace of Michel’s reedy tune increased as Adele made an ostentatious show of tracing the lines on Mari’s palm. “You have a fiery temper and you’ve been unlucky in love. This line shows that you were jilted at the altar, were you not?”

“How could you know that? Bert.” She rolled her eyes. “Left me standing at the altar, the blighter. Is there hope for me?”

Adele nodded. “I see a tall, broad-shouldered man in your future. Is he an earl?”

Deb snorted from the sidelines. “Not bloody likely.”

The small crowd laughed.

“No,” Adele shook her head. “No, he’s not an earl.” She paused, closing her eyes tightly.

Her eyes flew open. “He’s not an earl. He’s a duke.”

Mari snatched her hand away, shaken. “You must be mistaken.”

“Only in our dreams, eh?” said Deb. “’Ere now the sign says snakes charmed. Where’s the snake then?”

Michel lifted the lid of Trix’s basket and resumed playing his pipe.

Trix’s black head peeked out of the basket, and the onlookers gasped, but then he ducked back into his hiding place.

Apparently, English snakes weren’t meant to be charmed.

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