The centerpiece of the kitchen was an enormous heavy work table, furred with dust. She stopped short, so vividly could she imagine Helga cheerfully shouting orders to the kitchen staff while they sat here and chopped and stirred. She could almost smell simmering onions and fresh bread and—had she just caught a whiff of one of Derring’s cigars? Perhaps she’d dredged it from her imagination? Or had he stood in this dusty kitchen, for some reason?
It was empty of everything apart from the table and dust, and it could easily become the bustling heart of a house again.
The light in here was gray now, squeezing in through the chinks in the shutters.
All at once Delilah’s heart was pounding. Hope was painful, but it was also like exposing a wound to the light it needed to heal. She hadn’t realized how little hope her comfortable, stultifying life had contained. She’d been sealed and locked up, in some ways the same as this house.
“I think this building has potential,” she began idly, offhandedly. She traced a D in the dust on the table.
“The potential to be a whorehouse, which I suspect it was some time ago. Or a truly fine and dangerous gaming hell, given its location,” Angelique agreed, on a yawn.
Delilah cleared her throat.
“Actually . . . I think it has the potential to be a very fine boardinghouse.”
She’d said it.
“Do you think you may still be a little drunk?” Angelique tipped her head, suggesting gently.
“On hope,” Delilah said, beatifically. Though she was, in fact, still a little drunk. “But think about it. The rooms could be made very comfortable and charming. The whole house can be made very comfortable and charming. It’s filthy, not decrepit. Look around you at this kitchen . . . imagine it filled with cheerful staff, making apple tarts . . .”
“Ohhhh, apple tarts,” Dot breathed, caught up in the vision. “I do like apple tarts!”
“And if the roof leaked, it would smell like mildew, and it doesn’t, does it?” Delilah demanded.
“It doesn’t,” Dot agreed.
Angelique was staring at her oddly.
“And we’ll get a cat or two for rats and mice,” Delilah said firmly.
“Oh, I do like cats!” Dot enthused.
There was a little silence as her words, her idea, her vision, hung and sparkled in the air like that listing chandelier.
“We’ll get a cat?” Angelique said quietly.
It was a fair question. Delilah hardly knew this woman. Their only bond was that a certain feckless earl had kept both of them alive, bored them silly, rolled on top of them and rolled off, and then left them terrified and flailing and penniless. At this moment they might be cleaving to each other the way shipwreck victims will cleave to the first available flotsam. Her judgment might be colored by terror, sherry, hope, hunger, and fury. But her instincts about people—save, perhaps, Derring—had always been good.
“Why not?” she said on a sort of bemused, gleeful hush. She hiked and dropped her shoulders.
Something like hope flickered in Angelique’s expression, as fleeting as one of those rainbow colors winking in the chandelier. Her mouth twitched, and she almost smiled.
She visibly, ruthlessly tamped it down again.
“But Delilah . . . here near the docks . . . the people who want to stay in an inn might be a little . . . well, they might not be the sort a countess is accustomed—”
Delilah waved a breezy hand. “Oh, we’ll have mixed company, of a certainty. But it could be so lively! I would love it. Just imagine! You might be able to use all of your languages.”
Angelique began to laugh, then she bit her lip to stop it.
But now Delilah was slowly rotating, as if filling all the shelves with food and imagining a cook before the stove.
She pressed on, her words rushing together now. “At first I thought I might be mad, too. But the more I think about it, the less outlandish it seems. Between us we’ve enough experience to run a large home. We need only allow people we like to stay, and we’ll charge them handsomely for excellent service. And—” She allowed the fantasy to bloom fully, drumming her fingers on her chin. “And we’ll require guests to eat dinner together at least four nights per week and sit in the drawing room with other guests most nights out of the week. So we’ll all come to know one another and feel like family. Oh, we can even have musicales.”
It was very nearly everything she’d ever wanted.
She clasped her hands beneath her chin in something like entreaty.
Dot was lit up with reflected zeal and hope.
Angelique had gone very still. Her hazel eyes were abstracted as if she were calculating something on an internal abacus.
And hope was a bit like that pallid light forcing its way through the chinks in the shutters. It would find a way, given the slightest bit of an opening.
“But you own the building, Delilah. Which puts me in a position I never want to be in again—beholden to someone. How would we make my participation official?”
It was the perfect sort of shrewd question that convinced Delilah she was absolutely right to put this proposition to her.
“Presumably you know where to sell the jewels we own outright. We’ll pool our funds and draw up papers.”
And after a moment, during which Delilah held her breath, Angelique gave a slow nod, as if Delilah the pupil had just given a correct answer.
“I do know where to sell them, as it so happens. And to find people willing to do the dirtiest of the heavy work for reasonable pay.”
“Splendid! And as for the location, well, we will make this place so appealing that people will go well out of their way to stay here, and won’t want to leave. And we’ll call it something very enigmatic and exclusive, like . . . like . . .” Delilah waved one hand like a sorceress with a wand. “The Grand Palace on the Thames!”
“Ohhhhhhhhh, Lady Derring . . .” Dot breathed. “That’s tray magnefeek.”
Angelique gave a little snort. But her posture suggested that some sort of internal knot had finally loosened.
“Can you picture it?” Delilah demanded on nearly a whisper.
“I can picture it,” Angelique conceded. “And it’s not only not mad, we might never have to be at the mercy of another man again.”
“Precisely my thought.” Delilah took a breath. “Shall we shake hands on it?” Her voice was shaking.
Angelique drew in a long, long breath.
And then with a certain ironic flair, extended the hand Delilah had lately stopped from taking that last sip of sherry.
They shook briskly.
“To The Grand Palace on the Thames!”
“To The Grand Palace on the Thames!” Dot and Angelique echoed.
And they all raised their lanterns and toasted each other with light.
Chapter Six
Six weeks later . . .
The facade of Number 11 Lovell Street had been washed, and recently. This was either optimism or folly; Tristan knew it would be coated in a fine layer of coal smut apace, like everything and everyone else in London, particularly here by the docks.
Still, this clean white box of a building seemed to him as improbable as Avalon emerging from the mists. Seldom did dens of iniquity call attention to themselves thusly, but iniquity came in many disguises, he knew.
Ironically, it was a fifteen-minute brisk walk from where the Zephyr was docked.
He was here because bloody Tavistock had finally returned from his holiday and had revealed—after skillful, charming yet vaguely threatening, coercion—four fascinating things: Derring had indeed died in great mounds of debt; he’d kept a mistress; he’d owned one building outright; and Tavistock had given the Countess of Derring keys to it. Weeks ago.
Just when Tristan had begun to believe she’d vanished into thin air.
In the intervening weeks, he’d learned the St. James townhouse they’d lately occupied had been vacated and emptied of belongings. Neither Derring’s acquaintances nor his heir—they had
traveled to the countryside to meet the supercilious new earl, who didn’t even pretend to be grieving—had an inkling about where she’d gotten to. Or they were unwilling to tell him. As for her character, words like sweet, and devoted, and pretty thing were employed.
Which rather contrasted with Tavistock’s description of her, which was, “More sting than fuzz, if she were a bee. If you take my meaning.”
Doubtless, like Lord Kinbrook, Tavistock preferred his women frightened.
The Derring servants had apparently scattered to the four winds. They could not be found for even the mildest of queries.
While it was possible that she’d been kidnapped or had hurled herself into the Thames out of an excess of grief and devotion, it was tempting to conclude that Lady Derring did not want to be found. Possibly for cigar-related reasons.
And a building by the docks was the ideal place from which to distribute contraband.
No informants had come forward in the maddening interval of Tavistock’s absence; clearly they were all terrified of seeing their own homes and families go up in flames, and not even the promise of reward and protection could sway them.
No smugglers had dared try to get anything out of Sussex; Tristan’s men would have stomped them.
Tristan stood back and peered up.
Small, irritable-looking gargoyles crouched above the dormer windows at the roofline. A row of corniced windows faced the street.
The sign swinging on shining chains across the facade read The Grand Palace on the Thames.
He wondered if the object was to startle a laugh from anyone looking up at it.
He peered at it closely. He could just about make out the letters RO and possibly a G etched faintly behind the newly painted letters. They had made use of what was already there. Something about Rogues?
He advanced to the door, which had recently been painted red and was flush with the street.
A sign hung from it, too. Welcome! it said. Complete with exclamation point.
He studied this bit of exuberance skeptically.
“They dinna mean it, guv,” said a voice from down around his feet.
He glanced down. A man was sitting on the ground, torso up against the wall. “They willna let ye in, if you’ve no the blunt or if ye dinna look like bloody prinny.”
“Is that so?” Tristan said sympathetically. “And how does bloody prinny look?”
“Fat rich bloke.”
“Ah. Who is this ‘they’ you reference, if you wouldn’t mind telling me, sir?”
“Women. Women are cruel, guv. Cruel.”
“Aye, don’t I know it. Do you see many people going in or coming out of The Grand Palace on the Thames?”
“Nay, sir.”
This meant very little, given the man’s condition.
“Not since the last fat rich bloke, that is, nigh on some months ago. Gold tip on his walking stick. Gold watch. I’ve a view from down here, I see. I can see shiny things when I look up. Like stars in the sky, so they are.”
“I can imagine.” Tristan was alert now.
“Brought ’is friends, now and again so ’e did, in a cart. They was half-naked and couldna walk on their own, I s’pose, and he had to drag them in.”
This was colorful, indeed. Then again, rumor had it this place had been a brothel some decades earlier.
“Half-naked, you say? Did you ever speak with this man?”
“Nay. His lordship poked me with his walking stick and asked me to do the impossible.”
“And what would that be?”
“Stand up.”
Tristan sighed. Well, he’d asked. “Have you seen the Earl of Derring or the Countess of Derring enter this building?”
The man gave a shocked guffaw. “Do I look like I consort with the likes of them, guv?”
Tristan laid his ear against the door. It smelled of new paint and was so thick it would probably muffle cannon fire.
“One never knows. I’ve learned to never leap to conclusions, sir.” Tristan took the brass knocker between his fingers. Above it was a tiny shuttered window that could be opened so that the people inside could inspect the people outside.
Something made him stealthily try the doorknob instead.
To his surprise, it turned easily in his hand. Ah, instincts.
The door hinges didn’t creak and the door glided nicely open. He found himself approving. Combatting rust near the ocean was a Herculean task requiring vigilance, and it had been one of his jobs as he rose steadily through the ranks.
He took one step gingerly inside.
He closed the door very, very gently behind him.
It might be a den of iniquity, but it smelled a bit like a church: of dust aggressively vanquished by lemon and linseed oil rubbed into good old wood. Under it all was the faint—surprisingly faint, given that this was a building near the docks after all—hint of mildew. It did tend to creep into all old buildings. He didn’t mind it; it was a bit like seasoning, and reminded him of the sea.
He dragged his toe experimentally across one of the checkerboard marble tiles beneath his feet; every square had been cleaned to a gloss. In the black ones he could see his reflection, dark and distorted. He imagined, mordantly, he might just appear to his enemies like that.
The banister of the rather handsome staircase before him was carved in mysterious bulbous fruit and leaves, through which peered the occasional cherub or nymph. A window on the first landing aimed a rectangle of light down at his feet. Something overhead flicked little bits of light off the toes of his boots; he tipped his head back to study a surprisingly fine chandelier. One would have to look very closely to notice the two or three gaps where crystals were missing from its tiers, rather like some of the denizens of the docks who had more gaps than teeth. Tristan always looked very closely at everything and everyone.
Nary a cobweb trailed from its branches, and the candles in its sconces appeared to be wax, rather than tallow. Not an insignificant expense, and a building of this size would require a ceaseless supply.
How would a boardinghouse that allegedly had no customers afford such an extravagance? Not to mention the sort of staff that apparently cleaned to his own standards, rigorously honed from years of swabbing decks and the like.
A loud pop alerted him to the fire leaping cheerfully in the room to the right of him. Two rose brocade settees sat opposite each other before it, and a bouquet of flowers was stuffed into an urn on the mantel. He didn’t see any stacked boxes of contraband cigars. Nor did he smell cigar smoke.
He was about to venture deeper in when he heard, of all things, someone merrily singing.
He halted and craned his head to peer up the stairs.
A maid was standing on a ladder on the second landing in front of a window, her body stretched as high as she could reach. One half of the window glittered; pallid London light peeked through. The top half was dusty.
She was singing a song in waltz time.
The windows are dusty la la la la la
The door hinge is rusty! Ta ra ta ra ra!
The hallway is musty la la la la
But my rag is trusty
Let’s give them a polish let’s give them a shine
We’ll make the old place look just divine
It was perversely the most entertained he’d been in some time. It would simply never occur to him to narrate his own duties in song.
Later Delilah could not have said what made her turn so suddenly. It was as though the air in the room had shifted to accommodate something significant. She could feel it as surely as if a finger had touched the back of her neck.
She pivoted on the ladder swiftly and looked down.
Right into a pair of eyes as hard and bright as polished shillings.
She at once understood how a target must feel when an arrow pierces its red center. The jolt thrummed her from her scalp down to her ankles.
Her hand flew to her heart in a protective, slightly admonishing, gesture: the damned thing
had skipped. It wasn’t entirely due to fright.
The man below was tall enough to reach the sconces without scaling a ladder, and after weeks here at The Grand Palace on the Thames, this was likely going to be the first thing she noted about anyone for the rest of her life. The light flattered yet exposed him: he wasn’t precisely young. The ruthlessly cropped hair and severe, elegant planes of his face implied he was humorless and unyielding.
The sensual swoop of his lower lip and the lines raying from the corners of his eyes tempted one to believe he occasionally laughed. Maybe even occasionally yielded.
His posture, however, was a warning against getting comfortable with that particular notion. Vast of shoulder, erect, he seemed singular of purpose and sleekly constructed for maximum devastation, just like an arrow.
Odd. She had not once in her life thought of a pair of lips as “sensual.”
He was holding a beaver hat between two hands, his coat was black and crisply tailored, and his buttons and boots were tended and glowing. He was every inch respectable.
And yet there was nothing about him suggesting the indolence of most of the gentlemen she’d met.
She’d warrant this man had needed to try in life.
And that he had quite conquered it.
“My apologies for startling you. I would have announced myself, but I was captivated by your song.”
His voice was grave and low, his delivery courtly. As if he was accustomed to soothing plebeians he’d frightened with his stern majesty.
She was both charmed and irritated.
“Oh, surely you jest, sir. I can hardly carry a tune. It’s one of my failings.”
“Is it? Have you many?” He sounded genuinely curious.
“I count them at night, instead of sheep.”
“I should think that would keep you awake. Perhaps you ought to have a brandy, instead.”
She wasn’t certain he’d meant it to be funny, but she fought and lost the battle to not smile.
For Tristan, what followed was like the moment of blindness that comes after inadvertently looking into the sun. It dazzled him mute.
He frowned, as if she’d been insubordinate.
Lady Derring Takes a Lover Page 6