Which meant he had taken a side. And he made an internal adjustment to remind himself that he was here to try to track down the source of those cigars. Not prove Delilah and Mrs. Breedlove’s innocence.
“Very well. We’ll verify it, sir. But why did they open a boardinghouse, of all things?”
“Because . . . their options for survival and thriving were limited. Most of their options involved relying on men, which they preferred not to do. Apparently men aren’t as wonderful as we think we are, or so they believe.”
Massey pressed his lips together, considering this.
He knew about Brinker. About how he’d been taken to the opposite side of London by Tristan’s men and grilled the entire way about his presence at The Grand Palace on the Thames.
That was how they’d ascertained that Brinker was a brute, not a smuggler. He’d in fact, when he was more lucid, conveyed his thanks to the famous Captain Hardy for stopping the smuggling in Kent, which was cutting into his own family’s business.
He was assured his horse would be returned to him in Kent. Which it would be. They were efficient, the blockade men. They also threatened to hand him his bollocks on a plate if Brinker ever returned to The Grand Palace on the Thames.
“Is Lady Derring right about men, guv?” Massey had clearly never considered this before. He looked troubled.
Tristan was mordantly amused.
“You’re a good man, Massey. Rest yourself.”
Massey looked relieved. Captain Hardy wasn’t one to fling compliments about lightly.
Tristan was less certain about his own relative goodness, however. He’d gotten information he needed from Lady Derring—about her jewelry—when she was most vulnerable and trusting. She’d become vulnerable and trusting in part because they had been building a certain intimacy for days. He hadn’t exactly set out to do it this way but now it all seemed knotted together—the desire and the investigation—and there was no way to undo it.
He’d always thought of himself as a man of decency and rectitude, upstanding in the pursuit of justice. He adhered to a personal code. But would a good man do that to a woman?
He now more fully understood the nature of the peril of this attraction. Inherent in it, from the beginning, was betrayal.
He knew it wouldn’t stop him from making love to her again.
Because men were just that wonderful.
And rejecting a pleasure like that—a once-in-a-lifetime gift—somehow seemed the greater sin.
“Are we on the right track, sir?” Massey asked, into the silence. “The investigation?”
Massey was tentative. As though he hardly dared ask the question.
They were both men of action. All of his men were. And the action here—the interviews, the following of guests—was beginning to feel both painstaking and aimless.
“Yes, I think so. I think we have a few pieces of the puzzle, but we cannot yet see how they fit. We just need to be thorough.”
This was enough for Massey, because there had not yet been a time when Tristan was on the wrong track. He looked somewhat relieved.
But there also had not been a time when he’d been requested to send a letter to the king to let him know of his progress, such as it was. He was due to write that letter.
“Well, if the Widow Derring is pretty, sir, perhaps to speed things up you ought to seduce her to make her tell you . . .”
Tristan’s cold stare shocked Massey speechless.
He supposed it was his own guilt that made the idea of hearing that entire sentence unbearable.
“What if someone wanted to seduce Emily to those ends?” Tristan said finally. Quietly.
Massey remained silent and still, studying Tristan. And suddenly he thought he understood.
“You remembered her name, sir,” he said gently.
Delilah spent the day sailing the choppy seas of her emotions, euphoric one moment (she’d had extraordinary sex on a settee with a gorgeous captain she scarcely knew!), appalled the next (she’d had extraordinary sex on a settee with a gorgeous captain she barely knew). She could not and did not regret it. But was this the sort of person she wanted to be? She had been gently bred, whatever that, in fact, meant, and though she’d been triumphantly shedding shoulds and oughts for some time now, shedding her night rail in the middle of the drawing room was something else altogether. Try as she might, she could not get her thoughts to congregate and mull the problem of it. Her body was still echoing from the pleasure visited upon it. It drowned out reason.
She kept hearing his voice: I need you.
She had done her chores in a feverish, abstracted state and joined Angelique for tea in the upstairs drawing room.
They both gave a start when they heard Dot dashing up the stairs. She tripped on the last one, nearly arriving on her hands and knees in the little drawing room.
“Lady Derring, Mrs. Breedlove, we’ve a very young lady what wants a place to stay. She is rather, er, fancy and frantic and demanding.” She crawled a few paces then righted herself.
It was apparent Dot’s nerves had been a bit worked by this young lady, who had probably been under their roof for a few minutes.
“By all means let’s rush to see her then,” Angelique said, her eyes cast heavenward.
Delilah shot Angelique a wry look and laid her mending aside. “Of course we’ll see a frantic young lady. Will you bring in the tea, Dot?”
On the reception room settee sat a girl who, they could see in an instant, came from a family of some means. Her turkey-red wool dress and matching pelisse were enviably smart and current, and a darling felt bonnet trimmed in darling cherries and leaves sat next to her on the settee.
She’d made herself quite at home, so it seemed.
“I can’t go through with it. I can’t! I can’t, I tell you. I’d rather die,” was how she greeted the two of them when they appeared.
Delilah suspected she’d been saying this to herself since Dot left the room.
“Of course you wouldn’t rather die, darling,” Angelique said firmly. “Whatever the ‘it’ in question is. You could always open a boardinghouse instead.”
Delilah shot her a dry look.
“You don’t know!” the girl wailed.
“I expect a man is involved,” Delilah said.
This brought the girl up short.
“How did you know that?” she asked suspiciously. “Is it true what my mother says, with age comes wisdom?”
She was wide-eyed and disingenuous.
There was a little silence.
“I say we throw her outside to the wolves,” Angelique said.
The girl flicked her uncertain blue gaze between Angelique and Delilah. She was pleasingly round, with charming little pale freckles across her nose that she probably hated, and her honey-colored hair, neatly curled and pinned, was surprisingly unmussed for one so frantic.
Delilah sat down next to her and touched her arm gently.
“Why don’t you take a breath and tell us how you’ve come to grace our establishment, Miss . . .”
“Bevan-Clark. Lucinda Bevan-Clark.”
“Miss Bevan-Clark, I am Lady Derring and this is Mrs. Angelique Breedlove.” Angelique sat down opposite them. “We are the proprietors here at The Grand Palace on the Thames. Why don’t you tell us what brings you here and what has you so upset?”
Miss Bevan-Clark took a breath. “Are either of you married?”
After a little hesitation, Delilah answered for both of them. “We are widows.”
“It’s the most awkward thing,” Miss Bevan-Clark said fervently. “He’s been my friend my entire life. But I am not in love with him. The very notion of marrying him!” She gave a shudder. “But my parents got it into their minds that we should make a match because our families are rich, you see, and well, our families would only get richer should we marry, and wouldn’t that be lovely for everyone.” She said this with great snideness. “I’m terribly afraid he’ll be so awfully disappointed beca
use I think he’s in love with me, otherwise why would he propose? I got word from a mutual friend of ours that he intended to propose at a house party we were both meant to attend and I took it upon myself to run away from the coaching inn. I asked to be brought to the nearest boardinghouse and this is where the driver took me.”
She looked proud of this, and she really ought not be.
“Rich, you say?” Angelique said just as Delilah said, “Are you in love with someone else?”
“Well, I’d certainly like the opportunity to find out if I’m in love with someone else!” she said indignantly. “Wouldn’t you? I know you’re both a bit on in years but I daresay even now you wouldn’t turn away from the possibility of a grand romance.”
Delilah and Angelique very, very carefully did not look at each other. Neither of them was yet thirty.
They were both tempted to give her ears a slight boxing.
They could tell her a lot about the myth of romance. Delilah, in particular, could now tell her that a disappointing marriage could be stifling but magnificent sex on a boardinghouse settee with a man she hardly knew and who was not a gentleman could be in her distant future by way of compensation. The delicious soreness between her legs and a hint of whisker burn against her cheek conspired to remind her of that all day.
But it seemed impossible to say that to such an open, indignant, hopeful face.
And something about that open, hopeful face made Delilah feel just a little bit sordid. A little bit nostalgic for a time when she didn’t know all the things she knew. A little wistful that Miss Bevan-Clark could marry a friend, who knew her so well.
It wouldn’t matter, regardless. Miss Bevan-Clark would never believe them if they told her there was no such thing as romance.
“To marry a friend! I ask you. I daresay we crawled about in nappies together! Not romantic at all!”
“There are worse things than marrying a friend, Miss Bevan-Clark.”
“Is that what we should aspire to? Seizing upon something because it isn’t the ‘worst thing’?”
“Absolutely,” Angelique said as Delilah was saying, “It’s a bit more complicated than that.”
But it wasn’t as though Miss Bevan-Clark didn’t have a point.
“I have money with me! A lot of it. I can pay you whatever you like. If you let me stay for a time.”
Oh, the idiot child.
Delilah sighed. She and Angelique didn’t even have a decade on Miss Bevan-Clark, she suspected, but she suddenly felt as old as Westminster Abbey.
“Miss Bevan-Clark, how old are you?” Angelique asked.
“I shall be eighteen next April.”
“Very well,” Angelique said. “First of all, do not ever tell strangers in London that you have a lot of money. You’re fortunate that you’ve stumbled into The Grand Palace on the Thames, where we will charge you dearly but not more than what our accommodations are worth. We are quite respectable and you are safe and welcome here.” She paused. “At the moment.”
The faintest hint of a threat of eviction was a good way to keep unruly guests in line.
“All right,” Miss Bevan-Clark begrudgingly allowed. “Thank you,” she added, though the last two words sounded like a question.
“Second of all, you’re the veriest twit.”
Miss Bevan-Clark’s mouth dropped open. “Well, I never!”
“What she means is . . .” Delilah leaned forward soothingly, placatingly. Then she sat back again. “No, Mrs. Breedlove had it right the first time,” she said cheerfully. “You are indeed the veriest twit.”
Miss Bevan-Clark clapped her jaw shut. Her eyes were enormous with amazement.
“You shall be respectful if we allow you to stay with us,” Delilah said firmly. “You will speak to us with the respect in which you hold your mother, though we’re scarcely much older than you.” The word scarcely was all a matter of interpretation, of course. “We’ve experience of the world and you would do well to listen. I suspect you’ve been rather indulged until now, and now this—your parents’ insistence on marrying your friend—is the first time you’ve been challenged. And so you’ve gone to pieces like a little baby.”
There was a stunned silence.
“Well, that’s very unkind.” Miss Bevan-Clark seemed more surprised than incensed. Doubtless people had never been unkind to her before. She seemed a little pleased at the novelty of it.
“It is true, however. Buck up. Learning how to accept criticism without throwing a tantrum is how you become an adult. I don’t suppose you’re stupid. You don’t seem so, anyhow.”
Miss Bevan-Clark was clearly torn between pitching a dramatic little fit or basking a little in the compliment.
“I’m not stupid.”
Her choice of words suggested she might be speaking truth.
“I thought not.” Delilah beamed at her encouragingly, and Miss Bevan-Clark beamed in return, like a prized pupil.
“Are you here alone?” Angelique said suddenly. “This area by the docks is quite dang—” Delilah shot her a warning glare. “—erously appealing.”
“My maid, Miss Wright, is waiting outside in the hack. She thinks I’ve gone quite mad. She refused to come in.”
“Well, at least one of you is sensible,” Angelique said.
“Thank you.” Miss Bevan-Clark had Mr. Farraday’s willingness to assume that all compliments were meant for them.
“Dot, go and bring her maid in. Miss Bevan-Clark, give Dot some money to pay the hack.”
She looked startled, but she dipped into her reticule without question and pressed a handful of coins into Dot’s hand.
“Miss Bevan-Clark, have some bracing tea. Why don’t you take a moment to look over our rules and conditions?” Delilah leaned over and handed the rules to the girl. “We are not at all unsympathetic to your position, but we do not allow just anyone to stay at length at The Grand Palace on the Thames. We prefer our guests to behave like adults.”
Now Miss Bevan-Clark looked worried.
“If we do admit you as a guest, we shall make you as comfortable as you would be in your own home and treat you as family,” Angelique added.
The word family caused something like guilt and the faintest hint of yearning to flicker across Miss Bevan-Clark’s features.
Delilah and Angelique stepped outside of the room and into the opposite drawing room, and spoke in whispers.
“I don’t think we ought to mention Mr. Farraday, though the coincidence is delicious,” Delilah said. “Could there be two such twits in the world?”
“I’ve come to believe nearly anything is possible. I suppose we shall find out later this evening—I’m given to understand Mr. Farraday will be out all day, and will miss dinner, but not chess with Delacorte. But what shall we do? We could have angry parents and Bow Street Runners convene upon us if someone sensible, like Miss Wright, sends a message to them from here.”
“How much do Bow Street Runners make? Do you think they would like to stay here?” Delilah said.
Angelique stifled a laugh.
“And if we allow her to stay here and her parents discover that young Farraday is in the same place, they’ll assume they ran off together,” Delilah mused. “She’ll be ruined, while he’ll go on to make another match unscathed. Or he’ll marry her out of honor and they shall both be miserable.”
“Perhaps. But the odds of having a miserable life are about the same for nearly everyone. One just never knows. They like each other, or so she says, and many marriages begin under worse circumstances. We can address complications as they arise. We cannot pitch her out onto the street tonight. More to the point, we will make ten pounds if she stays.”
“You make an excellent point, Angelique.”
“We must compel her to send a message to her parents informing them of her safety.”
“Perhaps they’re meant for each other,” Delilah surmised. “And they don’t realize it.”
“Is anyone meant for each other? Or are
we all just rationalizing accidents of fate?”
It was a very good question, and one she ought to keep in mind should she be tempted to fall again into Captain Hardy’s arms.
Chapter Twenty
Captain Hardy was, as usual, an island of calm in the little sea of gaiety in the drawing room after dinner, which had been a splendid lamb with mint that had the guests rhapsodizing and Helga blushing and curtsying.
Delilah noticed he’d reached page ten of Robinson Crusoe when she pulled out the chair to sit opposite him at the table.
“Good evening again, Captain Hardy.”
“Good evening, Lady Derring.”
The mere act of meeting his eyes had become an act of sensual daring. She was rewarded with a jolt of heat between her legs.
“Could we perhaps interest you in joining a game of Faro?” She gestured behind her to Angelique and Miss Bevan-Clark, and Dot and Mr. Delacorte.
“Faro,” Tristan repeated thoughtfully. “Next you’ll tell me you’re opening a gaming hell.”
She smiled at him.
He smiled, too.
“I grant you it’s a bit daring for our cozy parlor, but given that we have younger guests at The Grand Palace on the Thames Angelique and I thought it might be invigorating for them.”
“I am content listening to the ambient sounds of other guests as they go about their mandatory enjoyment. A bit like listening to birds in the cages in the Gallerie.”
But she merely smiled at that, more broadly. It was clear the guests were enjoying themselves and each other. Captain Hardy included.
She’d done that. She’d helped create a place where disparate people could feel cared for, comfortable, safe, and amused.
“Speaking of the sounds of the other guests, I’m given to understand that our new guest, Miss Bevan-Clark, plays the pianoforte rather well.”
He heaved a great sigh.
Miss Bevan-Clark had been gazing at Tristan with fascination, silently, since their introduction at the evening meal. Occasionally dropping her eyelashes to shield her admittedly pretty eyes. Then raising them up again. Obviously this had worked to bewitch men in some fashion previously.
Lady Derring Takes a Lover Page 21