Delilah gave a start when she heard the knock on her door and her heart leaped both in hope and dread.
“It’s me,” Angelique said.
Her heart didn’t precisely sink. At least now she had a sense of where her husband was going to spend the night. Which was all to the good.
“Come in,” Delilah called to her.
Angelique came in and shut the door quietly behind her. “I saw Tristan in the hall. Are you all right?”
“No,” Delilah said. Miserably.
Angelique sat down on the bed and pulled Delilah into a hug.
Delilah sighed. “Remind me why we thought we wanted to marry these men?”
Angelique gave a short, pained laugh. “Lust clouded our brains.”
Delilah laughed shortly. “Tristan is usually so reasonable. You would think bullets would glance right off of his hide. Well, you know. He’s usually an island of calm and certainty. We can talk about things rationally, even when we disagree. And we do talk, about everything. We seemed to have reached some sort of philosophical impasse and I can’t seem to untangle it. There’s something troubling him that he won’t tell me. My stomach hurts.”
“For better or for worse,” Angelique mused. “It’s almost as though whoever wrote those vows was married. They must have known it could get bad.”
“I hate it so much, Angelique,” Delilah said bleakly. “I wish he would talk to me. And I can’t help but feel guilty because we’ve accidentally managed to cram the house with, er, challenging guests, during the worst possible time.”
“We’ll call it a lesson learned,” Angelique said.
Delilah twisted her mouth wryly. “Why are you here?”
Angelique hesitated. “I’m not entirely certain, only it ended up being incredibly stupid, but I’m angry and Lucien is angry.”
“Something to do with St. Leger?”
“A little. How did you know?”
Delilah just sighed.
“I know Lucien has a jealous streak,” Angelique said. “I think a lot of it has to do with his father, who never properly loved him. But this is . . .” She bit her lip.
Delilah lowered her voice. “Do you think he’s attractive, Angelique? St. Leger.”
“Oh, yes. I mean, wish to God I hadn’t blurted that. And God only knows I’d hate it if Lucien ever blurted something similar. And it’s not like there’s anything I’d ever want to do about it, but . . . don’t you think he is? Attractive?”
“Yes.” Delilah whispered it. “We’re allowed to think that, aren’t we? It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Certainly. It’s probably best to keep those thoughts in our heads, though,” Angelique said dryly.
“What is it that we like?”
“Competence. Confidence. He’s enormous, as Dot says. He’s a little scary, which is rather exciting, but with Daphne he seems so . . .”
Delilah said softly, “I have to say . . . I love the way he looked at her.”
“Like she’s this wondrous thing and he’s still struggling to decipher her.”
“Like a bear with a butterfly on its nose.”
Angelique laughed. “Didn’t a bear almost eat Mr. Hugh Cassidy and his dog?”
“Imagine all the stories we’ll hear from guests over the years,” Delilah yawned.
Angelique shrugged off her pelisse, draped it over the chair, and crawled into bed next to Delilah.
“I sleep on my side,” she said.
“I once peered in on Dot and she was all the way under her covers, somewhere in the middle of the bed, in a little hump,” Delilah said.
Angelique sighed. “She’s so odd, our Dot.”
“I sleep on my back. And in the morning usually find Tristan’s head right about here.” Delilah pointed to a place on her pillow, near her shoulder. Her throat had gone thick.
After a moment, Angelique gently, sympathetically patted Delilah’s shoulder where her husband’s head usually rested.
They turned down the lamps.
Daphne felt incandescent with rage. She hadn’t known she was capable of it; she hadn’t realized such exhilaration could be had in such an indulgence in temper.
She relived—she savored!—the sound of Lorcan nearly slamming the door behind him.
He’d realize soon enough he hadn’t the key. Ha! She wasn’t going to open the door if he returned and begged. The cheek of him. I know when I’ve been swindled indeed. What was he implying? That she’d been swindled? She, the daughter of an earl?
What could he possibly know, a man who didn’t have anyone at all? A man who had been raised without obligations or ties or . . . the Gordian knot of familial love?
And in this heightened state of righteous indignation, she seized up the fireplace poker and prodded at the remnants of her best stockings and it stirred up her anger even more.
Then she sat down on the settee with a great sigh to mourn them and wallow in the intoxication of fury.
And it was very good.
For a while.
But anger receded, bit by bit. And bit by bit she was left feeling muzzy and deflated and abashed, the way one felt the morning after too much ratafia at a ball. She was unused to indulging challenging emotions. They were so unseemly. There simply wasn’t time for them in her home.
Or at least, she’d learned early on that no one had any use for hers.
Steady, steady Daphne.
When she was anything other than steady and kind, her father was cold and her brothers confused and Daphne was distressed. She had learned how to be. They had taught her to be.
She was coming to realize how they’d taught her to be bore only a passing resemblance to who she in fact truly was.
This little fissure that allowed in reason also allowed in a little voice. It said: Lorcan probably understands families the way a man missing an arm understands the point of arms.
She sighed and dropped her face into her hands.
Damn Lorcan.
Because when her anger receded, what was left behind was a terrible, seething grief.
For herself, or for her mother, she did not know. Perhaps both. She felt that, along with a sort of hollow panic. Her birthday was the day after tomorrow. She wondered if her father or her brothers would even remember.
She allowed her mind to flow to where it wished.
Doing only this was a luxury and a little unnerving. She was not accustomed to facing swaths of time uninterrupted by responsibility. And because guilt was also second nature to her, her thoughts almost immediately lit upon the expression on Lorcan’s face when she’d called him a heathen. She had perpetuated a cruelty, with relish, to defend herself, and it shocked her. She could not recall ever before doing such a thing.
She sucked in a breath, leaped up, and restlessly poked at the fire again, feeling strangely now as if the crime of burning the stockings had been hers, not his.
When she paused this pointless task, the room seemed to echo with emptiness.
Lorcan’s life force was immense. His presence hummed the way a ceaselessly flowing river did.
How could she miss someone she’d scarcely known a day?
More specifically, how could she miss a man like that?
She returned to curl up on the settee with her feet beneath her. Where had he gone in the dark, cold house? Was he angry? Was he grieving, as she was, some old wound? Was he tired and uncomfortable?
She gave a start when she heard a little scratching sound at the door. She leaped up and cautiously creaked open the peep hatch.
She saw no one.
The hair prickled at the back of her neck.
She opened the door a crack. She peered down the hall. She saw, and heard, no one. No Lorcan.
But then the sconces had been doused for the night.
And then:
“Prrrp!” Gordon the cat said cheerily.
She nearly leaped clean out of her dress, so startled was she.
“You gave me a fright.” She knelt and offered her hand to him to sniff. “Well, good evening. So kind of you to knock. Would you like to come in? I’d be grateful for your company.”
He rubbed his cheek once on her hand and sauntered in as if he owned the suite, which, after a fashion, he did. She supposed it was his job to patrol the entirety of The Grand Palace on the Thames, the way the watch and the Charlies roamed the streets of London.
Except they weren’t tonight, of course. No one was going anywhere tonight.
Because outside, the rain fell and fell.
The next morning . . .
The rain and wind had eased a bit, but no one was fooled. The storm was clearly pacing itself for the marathon it intended. The clouds were fat, low, lead-gray and juicy, and in the distance, thunder grumbled. The Thames was the same gray as the sky; wind chopped it into restless swells and foam.
Together St. Leger, Bolt, Hardy, and Delacorte walked in near silence to the docks. Their moods were the collective equivalent of the weather.
True to his word, Delacorte had intermittently snored like someone sawing away at a rusty anchor. And Lorcan dreamed of Daphne’s stricken face when she’d seen the ashes of her stockings. As if she’d seen the remains of her hope go up in flames.
Bloody hell. The guilt. Over stockings.
He wondered if she’d slept. Or if she was spending the morning hurriedly dashing off an acceptance to her marriage proposal, begging her swain to come and fetch her at once lest she endure one more moment with a heathen.
The streets were surprisingly milling with people, all of whom had bolted from their hidey-holes to run an errand or stretch their legs before the next battering onslaught.
He’d been away from this area for some years. There had been a time when he’d been quite familiar with it. The docks, after all, were a prime place to move smuggled goods.
And yet quite a few hats were surreptitiously tipped as he passed; heads nodded; eyes flared in surprised recognition.
Lorcan nodded in return.
And one or two men immediately crossed to the far side of the road. Far, far away from him.
Finally, the four men reached the harbor and stared out at the vast collection of ships, none of which were charred ruins. It was a relief to discover that lightning had spared them.
“Your Lordship.”
The woman’s quiet voice came from the right of Lorcan. On her hip rested a child with bright blond hair whose entire fist was shoved into his mouth and whose other arm was around his mother’s neck. He regarded Lorcan solemnly.
“I’m Mrs. Brown. Perhaps you’ll remember. I cannot thank you enough for what you did for me Davey.”
“I remember, Mrs. Brown. Twas naught,” he said shortly. Very aware that three other men were listening.
“It wasn’t,” she insisted softly. “It was a miracle for us. Kept us alive, dint it? He’s on a ship now, Davey. ’as a good job. ’e keeps us well.”
“I am very glad to hear it.”
“I’d ’oped to ’ave a chance to one day thank you,” she said shyly.
Lorcan merely nodded.
“This is wee Michael,” she told him.
“Fine little chap,” he said.
Michael pulled his fist from his mouth with a wet suctiony sound and beamed at him.
“We be waitin’ for ’is da,” the woman told him. “He’s to meet us here.” And then she curtsied and backed away, as if she knew her audience with him was concluded.
Michael craned his head over his shoulder to stare unabashedly at Lorcan. When he beamed, his entire little face seemed to fold in two.
Lorcan found children that age hilarious, on the whole.
“What did you do for Davey?”
Of course it was Delacorte who asked.
“I gave him a job, and paid him well, when his family was hungry.”
He said this evenly, for the benefit of Hardy.
Upon whom he knew it would grate.
Hardy would never know the specifics, but the job he’d given Davey had to do with moving contraband silks into London. Davey had been one of many decoys Lorcan had used to confuse and diffuse the blockade runners.
“You seem to know everybody, St. Leger.” Delacorte was pleased with this. A salesman at heart, more friends meant more people to spread the word of his wares, and possibly more people he could talk into going to donkey races with him.
“Aye, well, who can forget me pretty face?”
He’d rather hoped a few would, in fact. A slight beard only partially obscured his scar. It was more difficult to begin a new life when his old life was so vividly carved into him.
When his old life was everywhere underfoot in London.
When his old life was striding next to him, looking every bit of what he was, which was a former blockade captain who regretted not catching him.
“Reminds me a bit of Hawkes,” Delacorte said. “He seemed to have friends of all sorts, too. Dukes, hack drivers, chaps on the street.”
“Hawkes.” Lorcan was surprised. “You can’t mean Christian Hawkes?”
“You know Hawkes?” Delacorte was thrilled. “He stayed with us at The Grand Palace on the Thames. I miss him.”
“Of course I know Hawkes,” Lorcan said, as if it went without saying. “Hawkes is how I got a charter from the king to be a privateer.”
Hardy shot him a searching, penetrating sidelong look.
Hardy could well imagine how Lorcan had come to know a legendary British spymaster.
But he didn’t know the whole truth, and probably never would.
Lorcan would have been a spectacularly well-placed informant. Hawkes would have sussed that out straightaway. And Hawkes was the sort of negotiator who would be willing to overlook a good deal if the information at stake was critical enough.
“Very good man, Hawkes,” Lorcan said. He was. He’d been damned sorry he’d been caught by the French.
“He’s out of prison and a viscount now,” Lucien said. “Lord Redvers.”
“I’ll be damned. Everybody’s a bloody viscount now, aren’t they,” Lorcan muttered.
Lucien looked at him askance.
Delacorte had wandered away a moment to speak to someone he knew. He returned to them.
“The end of the Barking Road is flooded,” he told them. “Seems no one can get in or out. Well, not with anything like ease or safety. No hacks are on the roads, of a certainty.”
The Barking Road is what linked this part of the docks with the rest of London.
“Bloody fucking hell,” Lucien said on behalf of all of them.
More grim news.
“We’ll be fine,” Hardy said calmly. “We’re prepared to feed our guests for a couple of weeks if it comes to that. But it won’t. St. John will likely be climbing the walls, however.”
“Whereas you’ll be a bastion of tranquility,” Bolt said to him.
Hardy shot him a wry, weary look.
“Your ship should have been in a fortnight ago?” Lorcan asked Hardy.
“It’s been nigh on three weeks now,” he said grimly.
Lorcan said nothing. They all knew what that meant.
“There’s my ship,” he said absently. “See her, way out next to the clipper? A converted merchant.”
Bolt whistled in approval.
“She’s bonnie,” Hardy said shortly.
“Aye,” Lorcan agreed.
So odd, the outsized affection one felt for those crafts. They were enormous when viewed moored next to humans. Tiny as corks when seen at a distance bobbing on the indifferent ocean. Mankind was purely mad to attempt it at all. Though of course, this had never stopped a man from doing anything. Madness, arguably, perpetuated the species.
Far off in the distance lightning slashed the sky. A reminder that they were at the mercy of the elements.
For a moment they all stood and stared, as if that way they could will the ship into appearing in port.
Later, he remembered what came next as a sequence of sounds:
The slaps of little running feet on the damp dock.
A splash, as though someone had tossed something small, perhaps a brick, into the water.
Then a scream that split the heavens like the end of time.
Lorcan saw Michael’s bright blond head bobbing in the slate water, his little arms thrashing it into foam.
The sea was already coming for him, ready to do what it did so well, bear him under and away.
Lorcan ripped off his coats and plunged in.
The icy water nearly punched his breath from him. The weight of it shocked him as it shoved him sideways. He was purely mad, but in madness was strength.
In two strokes he was near the bright hair just as it was about to bob beneath a swell.
He lunged and caught hold of a fistful of his little shirt, then a soft, plump little arm, and he managed to hoist the boy, who weighed no more than Lorcan’s boots, it seemed, over his head. He took a face full of water and nearly went under. He threw his head back and saw the gray sky, and he turned it toward the sound of screaming and shouting.
He saw that Hardy was stretched out over the water like a ladder, Delacorte and Bolt holding on to his legs. With an awkward one-armed stroke and treading kicks, he managed to get close enough to lever the boy up and into Hardy’s reaching hands. Hardy caught the sobbing child by the trousers and pulled him into his body.
Relief nearly sank Lorcan. His boots felt like anchors as heavy gray curls of water assaulted him and pulled him backward again. He struggled to get closer to the dock using overarm strokes. The cold and the weight of the water and his clothes wanted to take him under. How odd would it be to die so close to land, after all this time.
And he thought, of all the ways he could have died over the years, perhaps he’d merely been waiting for the one most worthy. The one which, like the other chances he’d been given, would get him at least a shot at the pearly gates.
And then a rope slapped him in the face.
Delacorte had found it and hurled it with admirable aim. Lorcan caught hold of it and gripped it hand over fist. The three men towed him in until he was level with the pier. Then a half-dozen hands were hard in his armpits, arms, legs, as they hoisted his sopping bulk out of the sea and onto the dock.
He crouched on his hands and knees as those hands came down hard on his back. He hacked and vomited a stream of water.
Then turned over and collapsed on his back.
Sobbing for breath he managed, “Is . . . he . . .”
“The boy’s fine, he’s alive.” He wasn’t certain who said it.
He collapsed, heaving, on his back, and looked up to see the boy’s mother’s face, radiating light like an angel, her son sobbing in her arms. You have no one, Daphne had said. And then he closed his eyes and wondered what it would be like to have anyone scream for him.
