Later that night Tristan lay on his blue counterpane listening to Delacorte snoring on the floor below.
For some reason he was almost glad to hear it.
Gordon was running up and down the hallway.
He suspected Gordon of playing as much as he was hunting.
He was glad to hear that, too.
And as he listened to a veritable roll call of creaks and sighs as the house settled down for the night, he realized he hadn’t heard that strange, loud thunk again. The one that made it seem as though the house was struggling to digest something.
Not since the night he’d seen Miss Margaret Gardner on the stairs.
When he’d insisted upon the Gardner sisters joining the dancing this evening, it was not for the charitable reasons Delilah likely suspected. It was because a suspicion, begun as unease the first time he’d laid eyes on them, was now germinating. He would tell Massey about it tomorrow.
Massey was probably lying awake dreaming about his sweetheart.
Suddenly Tristan realized he’d closed his hand around a fistful of his counterpane, as if it were Delilah’s hand and they were waltzing again. He released it at once. Abashed.
“Sweetheart,” he said aloud. Sardonically.
How on earth did Massey say that word so easily? It was such a gentle word, one that evoked blue skies and lambs and meadows filled with flowers.
Like daisies, perhaps.
None of Tristan’s feelings—not the desire that kept him rigidly staring at his ceiling right now; not his ever-deepening admiration for her, or his yearning toward her kindness; not the desperate tenderness he’d felt when she sat there, trembling, his coat over her shoulders; not even the weakness that overcame him when he touched her, or even so much as looked into her eyes—were soft or gentle. They were deep as an ocean trench. They were spiky and stormy and unmanageable. Perhaps from disuse. He apparently possessed them, but they’d been left to run amuck, grow wild and leggy.
He’d once courted a superior officer’s daughter, a pretty, fluttery flirt of a girl who had sought and lapped up his attentions like a kitten, and he’d been flattered and smitten. But she’d been genuinely astonished to learn he might have matrimony in mind.
“But . . . you’re not a gentleman! I mean . . . I couldn’t possibly!”
It was all for the best. They would have made each other miserable, and he’d only courted her because it was the done thing for a man his age. Still, his pride had taken a glancing blow, and it had left him wiser and warier.
He frankly could not imagine being anyone’s “sweetheart.”
“Spikeheart,” perhaps.
This was simply who he was, perhaps in part due to the forces that shaped him.
He had, in fact, made a career and a life out of not being helpless, out of always knowing what to do. Which was why it was so unsettling to know that he couldn’t glare emotions into silence with a look, the way he could an insubordinate soldier.
But he didn’t shake his fist at the sun because he couldn’t control it, did he? He lived with the fact of it.
Still. He needed to let this thing be, for her sake and for his. He needed to leave these emotions untended and unacknowledged and he needed to avoid courting temptation. There: now that he knew what he needed to do, he felt some small measure of control returning. There was some small comfort in knowing that once she learned who he was and what he was doing here—which was inevitable, if his mission was a success—he’d sail away in his ship, and he wouldn’t have to witness her shattered betrayal for long.
But suddenly, as if she was already a memory, he found himself mining the moments he’d spent with her for new dimensions of pleasure. The satin of her throat. The beat of her heart against his. The glow of her skin in the dark. The rhythm of her breath against his throat as he moved in her. And her laugh.
Bloody hell. It was like hurling bits of straw onto a bonfire.
He rolled over and sat up on the edge of the bed and tipped his face into his hands. He breathed like that, motionless. As though he were in pain.
He was in pain.
Just not the sort he’d ever experienced before. No tourniquet, no amount of whiskey, nothing in Delacorte’s upsettingly exotic collection of herbs and medicines, could ease it.
He perhaps had one recourse.
He stood and staggered wearily over to the little writing desk and yanked out the chair.
He lit the candle and pulled a sheet of foolscap toward him.
Stared at it, as if willing it to yield its secrets, the way he’d stared at the ocean the other night.
Dipped the quill in ink.
But it was torture.
He managed eleven words. Every word was like a drop of blood squeezed from a wound.
And though he tried very, very hard, not one of them rhymed.
“Lover,” Delilah said aloud. The word felt odd, very louche, and cosmopolitan in her mouth. “I have taken a lover. He was born in St. Giles.”
She imagined saying it to the Duchess of Brexford just for the pleasure of seeing her collapse in a rustle of bombazine and a crunch of stays.
That delightful fantasy notwithstanding, she still wasn’t entirely comfortable with the word.
She watched her ceiling during that hazy, lovely netherworld between wakefulness and dreaming, and reviewed the unqualified triumph of the evening. Everyone had taken a turn at singing. They were dangerously close to having a genuine musicale! Could all of her dreams be coming true in such an unlikely fashion?
Even dusty old dreams of romance she’d locked away in a keepsake box so many years ago?
She thought about Mr. Farraday and Miss Bevan-Clark, who by the end of the evening were sitting quietly together on the settee murmuring and smiling as if they’d only just met and were shyly getting to know one another. They’d certainly found the romance and adventure they’d been seeking, rather indirectly.
No. What Delilah had was a lover, not a romance. A lover who had said to her, I was born in St. Giles, in a quiet, diffident baritone, which seemed infinitely more thrilling and more dangerous than anything Farraday and Miss Bevan-Clark could get up to. Because she was beginning to suspect that taking a lover was not like taking a meal or taking the air—it was more like taking a beautiful drug, the sort people in opium dens apparently found surcease in. The appetite only grew with the taking of it.
And one knew what happened to people who indulged too much in opium.
I was born in St. Giles was like a thread thrown over a loom. For these kinds of revelations were the things that bound people together. She cherished the words, yearned toward them, and wanted to hear more and still more. All of this frightened her.
Because she truly did never again want to be at another man’s mercy.
When jealousy had jabbed briefly and sickeningly tonight, it was alarming—and edifying—to realize how easily a man could tweak her emotional weather. It called to mind the silent, inner contortions she’d performed to ensure Derring remained happy. She’d regained so much of her self since he’d left her penniless.
Then again, she’d only shown her true self to Captain Hardy. Which made it even more perilous.
There was the other thing about the word take: it often implied that whatever was taken didn’t actually belong to the taker. That the day would come when they would be made to give it up.
And he would be leaving soon enough, after all.
Here was where she could put Angelique’s experience to use: now that she was enlightened as to the extraordinary physical pleasures, she could and should make a truly sensible decision, and not partake of Tristan Hardy again.
Surely she could manage this? It wasn’t as though a stiff wind would howl down the chimney, blow her clothes off, and push her into his arms. It was simply a matter of not doing it. She’d managed to help create this boardinghouse, currently feeding and sheltering the most disparate people imaginable, and it seemed as though their little enterprise was well on the road to thriving. If that didn’t make her a miracle worker she didn’t know what did.
She sighed heavily, surrendering a little more to the beckoning arms of sleep. Relieved to have removed the serrated anticipation of sex by simply deciding not to do it. She was pleased and proud of herself in a faintly martyred way. She said a little prayer of thanks for having known the pleasure.
Nevertheless, all in all, it was probably a very good thing that Captain Hardy would be sailing away for good very soon.
Tristan was shaving himself ruthlessly, as if scraping off barnacles of a hull. Making himself shiny and sleek to face a new day of learning probably absolutely nothing useful about those damned cigars.
“I am shaving my face, la la la la,” he tried, in the mirror.
It didn’t make it any more pleasurable, really.
“I am catching a smuggler, la la la la,” he tried instead. Mordantly.
He splashed water from the pretty blue-flowered basin on his face, patted himself with a towel.
He turned and looked at his comfortable room. The wilting flower in his vase had been replaced sometime yesterday, he realized. He was suddenly, unaccountably moved. And appalled to realize that he quite liked having a fresh flower in a vase in his room.
Then he remembered the sheet of foolscap on the writing desk. He lunged for his shameful travesty and stashed it away in his satchel, lest it ever see the light of day.
Satisfied with what he saw in the mirror—resolute, hard, handsome, a little weary from staying up all night and writing a terrible poem—he shoved his arms into his coat and left the room.
He had just turned the key in the lock when he froze.
His heart gave a nearly painful bounce.
Delilah was poised to enter the room next to his, wielding a duster and looking, much like he did, cheerfully resolute.
She froze when she saw him.
She had faintly purple shadows beneath her eyes, too. Perhaps she’d spent the entire night watching her ceiling, debating with herself the wisdom of undressing and wrapping her legs around his waist again, and concluding it would be very unwise, indeed. Which was all to the best.
The trouble was, he understood at once as he stood there, eyes fixed on the soft swoop of her lower lip, that wildfires left unattended overnight tend to grow bigger and hotter.
They regarded each other somberly, making internal adjustments to accommodate the mere glorious fact of each other.
“Good morning, Lady Derring,” he said finally. “Are you going to narrate the dusting of the room today?”
“Good morning, Captain Hardy. Why? Did you find my singing tolerable last night?”
“Survivable,” he said pleasantly, as though correcting her with a more precise word.
She smiled at that and it really just undid him.
“You ought to hurry down, Captain Hardy. There are still some eggs left and Helga says you’re a very good eater.”
“While that’s very flattering indeed, alas, I promised to have breakfast with a colleague.”
Neither one of them moved.
So how had the space between them disappeared, and how was it that his arms were going around her waist as her face tilted up to meet his coming down?
He staggered forward with her in his arms until she was pressed hard against the alcove wall.
“Delilah.” He delivered her name in a desperate whisper in her ear. It was a sigh, nearly an accusation. As though she’d enchanted him against his will.
She filled her hands with fistfuls of his shirt and pulled him up against her. Then slid them up to loop around his neck.
The kisses were frantic, savagely deep. Their lips met and parted, caressed, feasted, dueled. They drugged him. He slid his hands down and filled them with her breasts; he slipped his fingers inside her bodice and dragged the tips of them across her ruched nipples.
She arched with a cry that he covered with the next kiss.
When her head went back in pleasure, he kissed her throat.
Her lips found his ear, and her tongue traced it. He turned his head into it. It maddened him, deliciously. She moved her hips against his hard cock. Vixen. Anyone could come upon them any minute.
“Come to me.” His voice was a rasp, a whisper, a command, a plea, against her lips, her throat, her ear. “Come to my room. Please. When you can. Today. I need you.”
This was madness. Surely he was possessed. The sound of his own voice, hoarse and urgent, half command, half beseeching, all raw hunger—he didn’t recognize it. He had never asked for a thing in life, let alone begged. He had fought for everything. He was ashamed of how all the tortured conviction of the previous night had gone right out the window at the first glimpse of her. But not too ashamed to get down on his knees if he had to.
“I will. I promise. I will. I need you, too. Oh God help me, I want you, too,” she moaned against his mouth, his ear, his throat.
He let her go abruptly then, as though he’d extracted a blood vow from her.
Readjusted his hat.
Shifted his trousers. A few thoughts about the Gardner sisters and missing smugglers ought to make short work of his erection.
He stared at her, her hair mussed, her breathing like a bellows. As though she was a siren in an apron who had lured him into the alcove.
She smiled at him, and it was like the heavens had broken open.
He smiled at her and bolted down the stairs.
“You danced?” Massey was almost incensed when Tristan told him about the previous evening, he was so envious.
“A sort of waltz.”
Massey stared at him, in resentful wonder.
Then he sighed. “Well, you’re the captain.”
“That I am. We also sang.”
Massey sighed, then he resettled his shoulders resignedly, manfully absorbing his wistful envy. “Well, the jewelry sales are confirmed, sir. A Mrs. Angelique Breedlove did indeed sell some nice pieces to a broker named Reeves on Bond Street. Here are the figures.”
He slid a little sheet of paper over to Tristan.
“We’ve also spoken to some workmen who helped clean and repair the place. Weren’t paid unduly, saw nothing untoward, said nothing but nice things about Lady Derring and Mrs. Breedlove. ‘Right bossy,’ I think one of them called Lady Derring, but he made it sound like a virtue. Here is a list of the work they did and what they claimed they were paid.” He slid over another sheet.
“Good work, Massey,” Tristan said absently, relieved. Here was a record of Delilah and Angelique trading one sort of life for another. Two ropes of pearls. A necklace of rubies. Diamond earbobs. And more. Not a king’s ransom, but certainly enough to get The Grand Palace on the Thames off the ground.
Had Delilah any jewelry left now? Then again, pearls against her skin would be redundant.
“I actually had a reason for instigating the waltz, Massey.”
“You . . . instigated it?” His jaw dropped.
“Yes. And I plan to go with you today to ask a very specific question of a few vendors. A new approach.”
“No one around here wants to tell us from whom they purchased the cigars, sir. They’re getting used to our faces and they’re bound to get suspicious.”
“They will talk to me,” he said simply.
This was likely true. He had his ways.
“What is this question?”
“I would like to ask them . . .” Tristan paused. He almost didn’t dare say it aloud. “. . . if they’ve purchased cigars from a large man, built like a bear. Scar beneath his ear. Or a small man, with a pointed face.”
“Sounds like the Miss Gardners’ brothers, sir.”
Tristan regarded him grimly.
Realization dawned on Massey’s face. “You don’t mean . . .”
“A suspicion. It’s been growing for some time. The larger one doesn’t speak in company. Perhaps because it’s a struggle to disguise his voice. Always looking down, ostensibly shyly but likely because they don’t want anyone to look very closely at their faces. And they both tried to lead a waltz last night. It was disastrous.”
Massey’s face twitched, picturing this.
“They hadn’t a notion about what to do. They retired for the evening the moment the music stopped. I wonder if they know who I am.”
“They must be getting desperate about now, if so, Captain Hardy.”
“That’s my concern as well. And furthermore . . . think about it, Massey. People come and go from the stables all the time with carts and carriages. Perfect way to distribute contraband. No one would give it a thought. Do you remember the gang in Kent?”
“Tunnels?” Massey said, after a moment of mulling.
“Tunnels,” Tristan confirmed.
Massey gave a low whistle. “You don’t think . . .”
“I don’t know. But I want every man to ask around, save the ones watching The Grand Palace. Visit again the merchants we spoke to. Any locals you see smoking.”
“Done, sir,” Massey said.
“Something still troubles me about that room on the low floor, however. I think Margaret Gardner was trying to get into it the night I saw her in the hallway. But she—or he—has failed all this time, too.”
They sat in silence apart from chewing and the noise of the pub around them, men, smoking and spilling and sweating. Tristan yearned for a bath. He felt like the detritus of this hunt for smugglers—the smoking, the spilling, the sweating of all the men in pubs like this one—was beginning to settle on his skin.
Come to me, he’d begged. Would she? The very thought of his hands against her skin made his entire being contract with a barbed longing.
A few moments later, he said, “Massey?”
“Yes, sir?”
“How did you, er, know?”
Massey’s brow furrowed. “Know, sir?”
Tristan considered saying “never mind,” but it would be unlike him to back down from something he’d started. “About . . . Emily.”
Massey stared at him, wonderingly, eyebrows diving.
And then something in Tristan’s expression, in his demeanor, made it clear.
“Ah! Know. Well. That I loved her?”
Tristan held very still. Didn’t Massey know the word love belonged in a class with words like grenade or typhoon? It was not to be bandied about lightly.
“I knew straight away, somehow,” he said. “She was always on my mind, like. At first. And then one day we were at a house party and after dinner she had a little sauce on her cheek and she didn’t know it and . . . I just knew that I loved her. Takes you that way sometimes, doesn’t it?” Massey said mistily.
Tristan didn’t know.
The “straight away” part. He wasn’t certain whether he was relieved or more unnerved than before.
Delilah had spent the morning in a fever of sensual indecision. She’d finished chores and gone over the books with Angelique and was grateful for the ceaseless activity.
Given that they now had six (six!) guests to feed, as well as themselves, all hands were needed in the kitchen. Delilah reported to the kitchen late in the afternoon to do her share of potato peeling. Helga had gotten some good fresh fish and some shaffling and she was planning to make a hearty chowder, with bread and cheese and a tart for dessert. Delilah’s stomach quite rumbled thinking of it.
She took up a potato and was just about to shave a curl off it when a scullery maid crashed into her with a bucket, running toward Dot, who appeared to be directing this enterprise. She tipped boiling water into it.
“Begging your pardon, Lady Derring! So sorry!” the maid yelped.
“No worries, my dear. Dot, what’s going on? Why all the scurrying about?”
“We’re preparing a bath, Lady Derring!” Dot made it sound like a gleeful celebration, not the hard work it indeed was. They were fortunate enough to have their own well, a miracle indeed, but heating enough water for even a hip bath was no small undertaking.
But this was the first time any guest had called for such a thing. Oddly, it felt a bit like a baptism for The Grand Palace on the Thames.
“How lovely! Who rang for the bath?”
“Captain Hardy. Paid us in good coin for it, too.”
Delilah hoped no one noticed when she abruptly stopped peeling her potato.
And then merely stared at it, dreamily, for a few moments.
Then, much more slowly, a little languidly, resumed peeling it, as though the air had become softly molten, a little thicker, like a blancmange, perhaps.
She got that potato done.
And then the next.
And then she chopped them. Slowly. Very carefully.
And then the next.
And when she was certain the bath had gotten up the stairs to Captain Hardy, she laid down the knife and breathed a moment.
The words were out of her mouth before she knew she’d made the decision.
“I’ll just be a few minutes,” she said.