Dot supposed she had only herself to blame. She had advocated for reading The Ghost in the Scullery, and now here she was on the way to the scullery, which at this time of night would be quiet, dark, and empty. Surely ghosts lay in wait for such opportunities to steal the souls of the unwary.
As she descended the stairs, she contemplated whether ghosts could also sense fear. Particularly her fear—she was, after all the heroine of her own story. On the off chance that this was true, she decided to distract herself from her nerves by silently singing the cheerful song that opera singer Miss Mariana Wylde had made up on the spot in their sitting room some months ago. I’ve a stick up me bum and gray in me hair! So the chorus went. So infectious! So witty!
Down the stairs she went, singing it over and over, silently, the way one might whisper prayers. Slowly, at first. But her shadow was thrown ominously large against the wall by the candle she held, and the sound of her own feet began to unnerve her, so she decided to tiptoe, and to do it quickly.
It was right about then she realized she’d left her shawl in the sitting room and she really wished for it. She felt chilled clear through.
She at last reached the bottom step. The kitchen was empty. Helga and the maids had finished their work there for the evening.
She was almost there!
Suddenly, from everywhere and nowhere, it seemed, a soft, low, keening sound froze her in her tracks.
Terror erased her thoughts for an instant.
She stopped breathing.
She was certain all of the hair on her arms and her neck stood on end, though she of course couldn’t see the hair on the back of her neck.
She stifled a whimper.
“It’s just the wind it’s just the wind it’s just the wind it’s just the wind,” she whispered. Mrs. Durand had said so, and she’d been a governess, and knew so many things. And surely she wouldn’t send Dot into danger? Both Mrs. Durand and Mrs. Hardy cared about her, she knew. They cared about everyone.
This made her feel a little better, and she proceeded more confidently, even as her heart was pounding so hard she thought it might crack her ribs. She could hear it in her ears, mingling with the lyrics of the song. Whoosh Whoosh Whoosh. I’ve a stick up me bum . . .
Thusly she crept across the kitchen, one foot in front of the other, as if on a narrow fence rail, either side of which was water filled with crocodiles, heart pounding.
She exhaled in relief when she saw the book, The Ghost in the Scullery, sitting neatly right next to the pump, precisely where she’d left it. Snatch it and run like the devil back up the stairs—that’s what she would do.
She stretched out an arm to seize it.
Just as the tip of an icy finger pressed the back of her bare arm.
“BOLLOCKS!” she roared, and shot straight up in the air, spun around, and hurled her fist like a shot put.
It connected with the granite jaw of Mr. Pike.
His arms swung in wide loops as he staggered backward, fighting for balance. He careened into the wall, slid down it.
And lay still.
Dot stared down at him. Mouth agape.
Riveted in absolute horror.
Then dropped to her knees.
“Mr. Pike!” she moaned. “I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I’m so sorry. Speak to me, Mr. Pike. Please.” She clapped her hands to her face and moaned. “Ohhhh, I killed him. I’m going to Newgate. I’m going to the gallows! I’m going to hell! I’m going to cast my accounts!”
The prospect of being vomited upon after being nearly knocked out cold reanimated Mr. Pike, who groaned in abject horror and rolled to his side.
“Oh, thank God! Mr. Pike, you’re alive.” She sat back and clasped her hands over her heart.
He sat up with some effort, and gave his head a shake. He gingerly touched his jaw where she’d connected. “I’m fine, Dot. Don’t you dare cast your accounts.”
“I’ll try not to. But I feel ill over hurting you! I’m so terribly sorry. I didn’t mean to hit you, let alone knock you down.”
“It’s my fault,” he said grimly. “I tried to scare you and obviously I failed. I’m sorry.”
“You did scare me! I thought you were a ghost touching me and I’m ever so afraid of ghosts!”
“Afraid? You thought I was a ghost and you nearly knocked me out cold! Frightened people run and scream like banshees. They don’t attack like Gentleman Jackson.” His face was scarlet with equal parts outrage and approbation.
“Don’t say banshee!” she begged.
“Oh, for God’s sake . . .” He groaned in frustration. He rubbed his jaw delicately.
“And please, please don’t tell Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand I said ‘bollocks.’” She sucked in a breath. “Oh, I said it again! What if I can’t stop saying bollocks?” she said wildly. “Help! See what you’ve done!”
“Dot, shhh, or we’ll have an audience for this debacle. Take a breath, and then take another. Let’s both.”
They both took long breaths.
Silently she reminded herself to ask Angelique what “debacle” meant.
“Better?” he asked.
She nodded.
They were quiet a moment.
“It’s your fault I said ‘bollocks,’” she accused.
“As if you’ve never heard that word from Mr. Delacorte in the sitting room. And by the way, you said ‘hell,’ too,” Mr. Pike said wickedly.
Dot’s eyes bulged in alarm again. “So did you!” she accused. “Just now!”
Mr. Pike sighed heavily. “It’s something of a curse, knowing epithets and managing not to use them,” he explained more gently. “It’s a test of character, I think.”
“And I failed,” she breathed. “I am so very disappointed in myself I might swoon.”
“Considering recent events, I doubt sincerely you’re a swooner,” he said flatly and frankly, thereby breaking Dot’s Gothically romantic heart.
Although it was probably true.
She sobered.
“And besides, we can’t both of us lay about on the floor. We’ll get fired of a certainty.” He paused. “Though I must say this might be the cleanest floor I’ve ever seen in a scullery.” He sounded bemused.
“Everything is very clean and in good repair here. We take our jobs seriously here at The Grand Palace on the Thames. All of our jobs,” she said meaningfully.
He sighed.
“Dot, I do, too. I love my job here. And I should like it if we could be friends.”
Dot considered this.
“Why did you try to scare me?”
“I . . . because you stepped on me twice and it was an impulse, born of frustration. Which I confess is childish. The opportunity seemed too good to miss. I am not proud of it and I expect I only got what I deserved.”
Dot considered this answer, which she rather liked for its directness and honesty. “Very well,” she conceded. “I expect I deserved it, too,” she admitted bravely.
Mr. Pike exhaled in relief. He had taken a bit of a risk in being honest.
“May I ask . . . don’t you think it’s more appropriate for me to answer the door at night?” he asked.
“Appropriate how?” she demanded.
“Because most fine establishments have a footman to greet the guests,” he explained, a trifle loftily.
“We’re a fine house, and we have me,” she said firmly. “Are you saying we weren’t a fine establishment before you appeared?”
To her satisfaction, this brought him up short.
He sat all the way up and leaned against the wall, while she leaned against the opposite wall. She wrapped her arms around her torso. She really missed her shawl.
“Why does it mean so much to you?”
“Because I think opening the peep hatch is like getting a gift every time. Who will it be? It’s ever so thrilling to be the first person to see someone who might fall in love with a duke, or be a fine lady in disguise, or discover a tunnel.”
He stared at her. “What on earth are you . . . Dot, I was the one who got hit in the head.”
“All of those things really did happen! This is a very special place, mind you. I opened the door to Captain Hardy, and now look, he’s married to Mrs. Hardy. I opened the door to Lord Bolt! I was one of the first people to see him in years. Everyone in all of England thought he was dead! And now Mrs. Durand is his wife. I opened the door to the King. Of. England,” she added on a marveling hush. “Me. Dot. I like to feel a part of things and this is my favorite place in the world.”
Mr. Pike’s fine eyes had lit with a certain appreciation throughout this.
“But what if you open the door to thugs, bent on mayhem?”
“But what if it’s a lady, who is running away from harm and feels more comfortable and welcome speaking with another lady?” she countered.
He pressed his lips together as he considered this. “Your point is taken.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Forgive me,” he said humbly. “I did not realize there was a particular art to answering the door at a boardinghouse. And clearly there is.”
Pike had kind eyes, Dot thought, but they were also very intense eyes, not dissimilar to Captain Hardy’s. He was not, on the whole, a soft or very easy person, she would warrant. But he had said “forgive me,” and she knew enough about men to know the ones who conceded anything at all to a woman were rare as hen’s teeth.
“I do think about things, you know,” she said. Quietly.
“It sounds rather nice, the way you put it. Answering the door. Opening the peep hatch,” he said wistfully. “Being excited about the new people.”
“Oh, it is,” Dot agreed.
Mr. Pike seemed thoughtful. He sighed. “How is your hand?” he asked. “Does it hurt?”
“It does, a little,” she said shyly.
“May I see?”
Dot had a powerful sense of propriety. One did not go about casually surrendering their hands to men, and touching the very handsome ones was particularly inadvisable.
But his eyes were wry and reassuring, so finally she gingerly laid her wounded hand in his outstretched palm.
He inspected her knuckles. “You ought to put cool water on it as soon as you can. The water in the basin in your room should be nice and cold now.”
“All right,” she said. Blushing. “How is your face?”
His face was handsome, that’s how it was. This fresh realization made her own face even hotter.
“Never mind my face. I’ve stood up to worse than you. But don’t take that as a dare!” he added, hurriedly, with a laugh. And then a wince.
He was going to be sporting a bruise.
“What if . . . we answer the door together when someone knocks after dark,” he suggested, tentatively.
“Perhaps . . . every Wednesday, when there is a full moon, you can have your turn,” she said magnanimously.
Mr. Pike could tell that it cost her. “Are you jesting?”
“A little,” she admitted. “Or we can flip a coin.”
“That is very generous of you, indeed,” he said humbly. “You’ve a kind heart, Dot. Perhaps now that I’m working here you’ll even find you have more free time to do other things you want to do.”
“Like write my memoirs?” she said brightly.
He blinked.
“Perhaps you can include a chapter about the time you knocked a six-foot-tall footman to the ground.”
“Maybe I will include a sentence or two about that in one of the chapters,” she humored, kindly.
He stared at her. Pike had never, in all of his born days, met a more confounding female. And he’d worked with many different sorts of women, housemaids and the like, and he had a sister. And it was increasingly clear to him that while Dot wasn’t featherbrained or witless or silly, her mind operated in unfathomable-to-him ways. Ben Pike was a serious person, dutiful and intelligent and straightforward. Following the run of Dot’s thoughts, or predicting what she might say next, felt to him as futile as trying to catch hold of a sunbeam. Wherever had Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand found her? he wondered.
He stood, and like a gentleman, reached down and hauled her up by the elbow, as her hand was sore.
They smoothed out their clothing and gathered their composure.
“Your cap, Dot.”
He reached over and nudged it back into place with one finger.
They were on their feet just in time. They whirled at the brisk sound of feet on the clean, clean floor. Dot knew the light, swift treads of Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Durand well.
They came into view wearing worried expressions.
How lovely to be someone they worry about, Dot thought, touched and pleased.
“Is everything all right here?” Mrs. Hardy said. “We thought we heard a terrible shriek.”
“It was probably just the wind,” Mr. Pike told them gravely.
Dot nodded soberly. “Definitely not a ghost.”
“You’re going to love the smoking room, St. Leger,” Delacorte had confided with confident relish.
Lorcan, leaning against the wall, lit cheroot in hand, was forced to concede that, given time, he might indeed develop great affection for it, for a certain genius was evident in its design. The proprietresses had clearly understood men could scarcely be trusted to be civilized once out of sight of women, so they had decorated it with a thick rug, perfect should a ridiculous wager or a drunken insult result in an impromptu wrestling match, for instance. Not unheard-of in his experience. Long velvet curtains hung from the windows, the chairs were well worn and comfortable and the little table in front of the settee was handsome but battered, and everything was in attractive shades of dirt-and-blood-hiding brown.
All of the gentlemen—save Mr. McDonald, who neither smoked nor imbibed in spirits, though Delacorte secretly thought he could benefit a lot from both—of the house had repaired there upon listening to Mrs. Pariseau read The Ghost in the Scullery for a half hour or so. A cracking story, Lorcan thought. They’d left the women behind to get on with knitting or whatever it was they wished to do.
Lorcan’s imagination had not extended to coming home every day to a place where the comfortable settees matched the carpet and the curtains. Or to the same woman, for that matter. He’d never even had a permanent home of his own. He’d been grateful for safe shelter wherever he’d found it.
Hardy and Bolt and Lorcan and Delacorte, like pillars, occupied the wall in corners of the room, whilst the German musicians had flopped at once onto the settee, slouched, and spread wide their legs or flung their boots up on the table, all the things they wouldn’t dream of doing in front of the ladies. Before the weather eye of the older men, they were always more subdued, and nightly they quickly and quietly enjoyed the kind of good tobacco and brandy they couldn’t otherwise afford before excusing themselves again.
St. John claimed a chair as though it was a throne.
Cheroots were passed around and lit and sucked into life, brandy was gurgled into snifters, and the air filled agreeably with smoke.
It would take a lot of brandy, however, to ease the tension in a room which contained both Lorcan and Captain Hardy in close quarters. Which mordantly amused Lorcan, and was the reason he’d decided to join everyone.
Lorcan gazed through the haze of smoke at young Lord Vaughn, who looked too comfortable for Lorcan’s satisfaction. The young lord was studying him somewhat sullenly.
For a moment they regarded each other as though each were exhibits in a menagerie.
“Mr. St. Leger, why do you wear an earring?” Lord Vaughn asked finally.
“Because I feel it enhances my delicate beauty.” Lorcan exhaled a plume of cheroot smoke.
“Did it hurt to be pierced?”
“No more than getting shot or stabbed,” Lorcan said agreeably.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he detected smiles twitching on Hardy’s and Bolt’s faces.
“You aren’t worried you’ll be robbed for it?” St. John pressed.
He smiled faintly. “Anyone is welcome to try, certainly.”
St. John sank back against his chair and gloomily sucked on his cheroot.
Lorcan decided that disconcerting young Lord Vaughn would be his new favorite pastime. It was both entertaining and an act of charity. He could perhaps save him from getting killed in a duel one day for aiming sultry smiles at other men’s wives.
His visceral response to that had surprised him. Because of course Daphne wasn’t really his wife. “Wife” was a word he shied away from the way Mr. McDonald shied away from spirits.
It was the principle of the thing, surely.
And something to do with the way her hand had felt resting on his arm when he walked her into the sitting room. It was the oddest thing. But it was as if suddenly everything in him was marshaled in preparation to catch her should she need it.
Why hadn’t a daughter of an earl married yet? At her age?
This puzzled him.
The young lord sitting across from him was the sort of man the daughter of an earl ought to marry. Titled, privileged, boring, safe, and rich.
“Will your parents be worried about you, St. John?” Bolt asked.
This made Lord Vaughn, who was just past twenty if Lorcan had to guess, sound like the veriest little boy. Lorcan shot Bolt an amused look. He wondered if Lord Vaughn had smoldered at Angelique or Delilah.
“No doubt,” St. John admitted after a moment. “But they knew I was out with Delacorte. They like him.”
“They were bound to, eventually,” Delacorte said complacently, pleased.
“Still live with your parents, eh?” Lorcan asked dryly.
St. John shifted in his chair. “I like my parents,” St. John said. “It’s a big house. Barely see them some days.”
“My friend Mr. Hugh Cassidy is an American who stayed here, and married St. John’s sister,” Delacorte told Lorcan. “He met her right here at The Grand Palace on the Thames when her family came to stay. Mr. Cassidy took her off to live in New York.”
“You don’t say,” Lorcan reflected.
“St. Leger and I in fact met when a pirate was attempting to kill me,” Bolt volunteered, apparently inspired by the talk of piercings. “It was after the war, in the sea outside of Spain. Pirates boarded our ship, and his ship came along and noticed our signals and . . . let’s just say we were triumphant. And there were quite a number of piercings that day.”
St. John looked both pale and enthralled.
“One evening we even all playacted pirates in the sitting room,” Delacorte told Lorcan and St. John.
“Did you now?” Lorcan was wildly amused. “Even the ladies? Even Hardy?”
“All of us.”
Unsmilingly, Lorcan and Hardy exchanged a glance. Hardy as a boy had been as full of willing wildness as Lorcan had been. As quick to laugh or fight. Smart. Just as frightened and feral as he was.
Lorcan hesitated.
Then said, “Do you remember, Hardy . . . what that bloke what sold apples used to say every time we tried to nick one?”
For a moment it seemed as though Hardy intended to coldly refuse to respond. And then, seemingly almost against his will, the corner of his mouth tipped up. “‘I’ll purple yer backsides, ye mongrels!’”
“Backside.” Lorcan shook his head. “When the word ‘arse’ was right there and ready to be used.”
Hardy clearly fought it, but he gave a short laugh.
“Funnier if you were there,” Lorcan explained to the others in the room, who were listening and smiling, clearly willing to be amused but a bit confused.
But Lorcan knew the words would viscerally conjure for Hardy the world they’d once shared: the terrors of St. Giles, the anarchic pleasures of boyhood. The proving ground for both of them until Hardy had understandably seized a way out that was serendipitously presented to him when a naval officer had taken him under his wing.
“So. How did all of you come to live in a palace by the docks with such a quality smoking room?” Lorcan mused.
“I came here because I tracked smugglers here,” Hardy said. “But stayed for the beautiful woman.”
“Indeed. Such noble pursuits, smuggler tracking.” Lorcan exhaled smoke. “And beautiful women.”
Bolt surreptitiously shot Hardy an unreadable look.
Which meant that Hardy had told Bolt exactly what he’d thought. Lorcan wasn’t certain he cared. He trusted Bolt to draw his own conclusions.
“The Blue Rock Gang,” Hardy said offhandedly.
“The Blue Rock Gang were nasty thugs,” Lorcan said with idle contempt. “That kind of violence is for amateurs. And for men who flirt with other men’s wives.”
St. John choked on the lungful of smoke he was inhaling and coughed.
“Yes. They were thugs,” Hardy agreed politely. “The rest of everything else they did was still, of course, a hanging offense.”
“Smuggled cigars, is what they did,” Delacorte, who had been present for all the drama, explained. He added more quietly, with a degree of wistfulness, “The most remarkable cigars.”
Captain Hardy looked at him askance.
“Thank goodness that military took you in hand, Hardy, to teach you right from wrong,” Lorcan said pleasantly. “Otherwise, how would a bastard child from St. Giles ever know?”
“Laws are laws,” Hardy said evenly. “Smuggling during wartime, with or without violence, is treason.”
Lorcan gave a soft laugh. “Ah, of course. Treason. One of the few things the very poor and the very rich have in common. Because they don’t care about it. The poor don’t care about treason because they’re desperate, and the rich don’t care because they don’t need to care. Just ask an earl whose mistress is pouting because she can’t find French silk. The duke will always be able to get French silk, war or no war.”
The very smoke in the air suddenly seemed to stop circulating, held fast by tension.
“The Earl of Brundage was recently arrested on suspicion of high treason. And he might just hang for it,” Hardy remarked.
“Mmm. I’m going to guess it’s not because he purchased some contraband tea,” Lorcan said, pleasantly.
Both had stopped blinking and were regarding each other, expressions entirely inscrutable.
Lorcan was too aware of his own less than noble motivations for taunting Hardy. And that every other man in the room was on guard now, too.
He surreptitiously drew a breath to steady his temper.
Even when Hardy and Lorcan had met again for the first time in over a decade in a pub in Cornwall years ago and had reestablished how much they liked each other, and even when it became clear that Hardy suspected, but could not prove, that Lorcan was indeed the head of a smuggling ring he’d been tracking, Lorcan had admired him. Hardy wouldn’t relish arresting him if given the chance, but damned if he wouldn’t have done it anyway. Both in order to prove something to himself, and because he’d made a commitment to his men and to the crown. He was not a man who ever went back on his word or veered from duty. He would genuinely suffer if he failed.
Lorcan respected the devil out of all of that. He would never have gotten a chance to arrest Lorcan, of course. But he still, perversely, could not and would not have faulted Hardy for trying.
Still, it didn’t prevent him from savoring what felt like a victory over the man who thought he had a moral high ground.
“England is safer because of you and your men, Hardy,” Lorcan said shortly.
This was only true. The Blue Rock Gang and their ilk were menaces. Entire towns were grateful to Captain Hardy and his men for ending their reign.
Just as so many others had been grateful to Lorcan and his crew for keeping them alive. And for helping them prosper.
“It’s amusing to debate moral shades of gray forever, but laws exist for a reason.” Hardy casually exhaled smoke.
“Thank you. I’m quite aware of the point of laws,” Lorcan said, with a certain scathing tenderness. “And I expect you feel the same beholden loyalty to the military as young Lord Vaughn feels about his parents.”
This was perhaps an unwise little jab. But Lorcan could feel his temper begin to simmer.
Hardy fixed him with a cold stare.
“A man ought to be able to adhere to a principle,” he said flatly. “Otherwise why should any other man trust him for any reason?”
Lorcan recalled Daphne’s faintly hunted expression when, a few minutes ago, she’d thought she might have to outright lie. How had she put it this morning? She’d said her code was “something that sort of defines your truest self.” He’d been surprised by his instinct to throw himself in front of anything that might cause her to violate it.
He’d glibly told her that “take what he could get when he could get it” was his, and it had indeed proved a serviceable code. But he was beginning to understand that this didn’t define him.
Lorcan tossed back the rest of his brandy. “Can’t agree more, Hardy. Mine is, ‘I take care of my own.’”
St. John and the German boys took this opportunity to excuse themselves.
Eventually Hardy’s stare evolved into something more abstracted. He turned slightly away, and drank his own brandy.
“Isn’t it remarkable how two boys from St. Giles have since prospered. I own my ship outright now. I’ve been fortunate in my investments.”
“Investments, eh?” Bolt interjected hurriedly. “What do you like these days?”
“Did well with canal shares, in particular, but I do think railroads are going to become important. And gaslight.”
Bolt and Delacorte nodded. Hardy likely took little pleasure in imagining Lorcan prospering thanks to a noxious mingling of ill-gotten gains and privateer plunder.
“It’s amazing to think there’s probably not a thing in the world I truly want that I can’t somehow get now. And I’m grateful.” Lorcan said this almost piously.
It was true. Inwardly, he was just a little sardonically amused.
And he was suddenly glad for an opportunity to say it aloud in a room that contained Tristan Hardy, lest the captain think his beautiful wife and cozy home with the fine smoking room were merely the rewards of virtue.
Lorcan returned to their suite from the smoking room to discover Daphne standing by the hearth, one of her embroidered stockings dangling from her hand.
She spun about and held it sheepishly behind her back.
He paused in the doorway, bemused and diverted by her flushed cheeks.
He contemplated saying, “I saw your stockings before I ever saw your face, when the wind whipped up your skirts. You’ve some of the finest calves I’ve ever seen,” just to watch her blush deepen, or see her expression change. Or to hear what acerbic, precise thing she’d say in her elegant voice.
He respected her dismay and kept his eyebrows in check, though they wanted to suggestively launch by way of teasing her.
“I wasn’t expecting you just yet,” she said finally. “I hope you don’t mind. I rinsed my stockings and I thought I’d hang them to dry out here in the main room, since the fire is larger and hotter. I thought they would dry more quickly.”
“Not at all,” he said. “If you can survive the intimacy of my forearms, surely, I can endure your drying stockings. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to rest here on the settee a bit.”
“Of course not,” she said, magnanimously, while also managing to intimate, “I can hardly stop you.”
Amused, he sighed and sank down onto the comfortable settee. Every bloody thing in The Grand Palace on the Thames was comfortable.
It was like a great trap for domesticity.
A woman ought to be exempt from ogling when she was merely trying to hang up stockings, Lorcan thought. But his mind was restless and his mood remained on edge, and he rested his eyes on her the way he would watch a bird flit from tree to tree, lulled by the way her shoulder blades shifted beneath her dress as she reached toward the mantel, the sway of her skirts about her ankles, the skim and cling of the fabric over the full apple curve of her arse when she bent a little. She made performing a homely chore seem as graceful as a dance. He didn’t know why he felt blessed to be in the presence of it, but he did, as though he’d suddenly walked in on a snatch of pretty music.
And he imagined her as a girl who had lost her mother, suddenly in charge of a vast house and three men. Just a wee thing, engulfed by duty in the midst of grief.
And it wasn’t as though he hadn’t witnessed girls scrape and struggle before.
That a man such as Daphne’s father should have so many blessings, including a daughter who worshipped him, and had been so cavalier about that she’d nearly been robbed at knifepoint near the docks, struck him as somewhat despicable. It was the carelessness of it. The waste of it all. The indolence of a sort exhibited by Lord Vaughn, who could not help what he was.
“It’s a shame about your father’s lumbago,” he said idly.
“I beg your pardon? He hasn’t lumbago!” She gave a little laugh.
“His game leg, I meant. The wooden one.”
“You’re thinking of someone else, surely. Some pirate friend of yours.”
“Oh, right, right. His rheumatism is the trouble.”
“He hasn’t that, either, Lorcan,” she said crisply.
“His wasting lungs. A pity about those. Can hardly get a breath.”
“Lorcan, my father might be healthier than you or I. He walks several miles every day. He used to ride but . . .”
“Then he must be getting senile.”
She recoiled. “My father is a genius,” she said with the conviction of someone who had been told this her entire life. “His mind is sharp and nimble. He reads more and faster than anyone I know. He can do calculations in his mind in an eyeblink.”
“Ah! So he’s mute then.”
She paused to stare at him, her straight dark brows nearly meeting in a V. “What on earth are you running on about?” she said evenly. And with great, great patience.
“I’m just sorting through all the reasons a titled gentleman would allow his daughter to not only go out to work, but to do the sort of work that exposes her to danger and ruin and leads to her living in near sin with a fake husband. Have I missed one?”
She froze as if he was holding her at knifepoint.
Her mouth dropped in shock.
He saw her realize that she was rather cornered.
Lorcan wasn’t new to getting information he wanted. And strategy was his gift.
Her eyes were enormous.
“An . . . earl can hardly take a job,” she said faintly. She tried to give the words a frisson of disdain. Perhaps to imply that someone like him surely couldn’t possibly know.
“Heaven forfend. People would talk. How embarrassing that would be. What sort of man would lose face in order to support his family?”
Her face went closed and she spun around and showed her back to him again. “You don’t understand.”
“That’s likely true. I’m too thick to understand the curious customs of the aristocracy. It wasn’t embarrassing at all for you to be chased about the place by the old dear’s husband. Or frightening.”
“It was my idea to take the job. I’ve never done such a thing before.”
“It seems as though you’ve been taking jobs for your family since you were eleven years old. Your family was a job.”
She slowed and then stopped. “That was different.”
“And you helped to run your household from that point on.”
“You don’t understand . . . our house . . . all the things my mother used to do . . . organizing the servants . . . it was coming quite apart. I did the budget and managed the servants and arranged the shopping and cooking and entertaining for my father. I was the one who was best at it,” she said, a little proudly.
“What about your brothers? Couldn’t they have helped?”
She hesitated. “They were accustomed to a woman managing the house. It wasn’t the sort of work for a man. They had no acumen for it.”
Lorcan snorted. “You weren’t a woman at all, then. You were a girl.”
She turned slowly around. “My father grieved terribly. My brothers, too.”
“What a fortunate thing it was, then, that you had no feelings about your mother’s death at all.”
She froze. And the blood drained from her face.
Something flickered in her eyes.
Perhaps a comprehension she fought against.
“It made me feel better about things, you see,” she said slowly. “They were so grateful and so lost. And . . . it made me feel less lost, too, to have something to do. My father was . . . well, you know how geniuses can be.”
He gave a short laugh. “Surely you’re not suggesting I consort with them.”
“Practical things often elude or bore my father,” she clarified stiffly.
“Just the quality we like in people who father children. Funnily enough, the same might have been said for my father.”
Her eyes sparked with temper. “My father is nothing like yours was.”
Lorcan doubted this, somehow. He’d learned over the years that all deeply selfish men were fundamentally similar.
“And rather than botch things he allows me to do them. He can be rather hapless.”
“‘Allows,’” Lorcan repeated neutrally.
Personally, Lorcan thought the Earl of Worth was a con man par excellence who had bartered his daughter’s affection for a life of comfort and leisure, like a bloody pasha. Hats off to the gentleman.
“Are your brothers aware of your sudden change of fortune? Are they gallivanting about Paris on credit?”
“My brothers do not know the full extent of it. They cannot be blamed. And yes, I expect they are. Staying with friends and the like. But I believe they both have some money of their own.”
“Mmm. Well. What a fortunate man your father is to have someone to look after his well-being,” he said gently.
She exhaled, with some apparent relief.
And then he added, idly. “Who looked after yours?”
She went still again.
“I did. I looked after mine by looking after them because they’re what mattered to me. I had a governess . . . for a time.”
Her voice trembled now.
“All I am saying, Daphne . . . if I had a fortune . . . and a title . . . and every advantage, and if I had a wife or a daughter such as you . . . I would be damned if I allowed her to carry my burdens. What is a man for if not to protect those that are his?”
She spun again, and his view once again was her back. She fumbled her stocking and nearly dropped it.
“What is it? Is your father mad?” he said gently. “Truly mad, the sort where he can make no decisions and must be watched at all times?”
“I’m beginning to think you’re truly mad,” she said tersely.
He was, a little. It suddenly seemed important to root out a truth to show to her. It seemed imperative to seek out understanding for himself. He suspected he was taking out a little bit of his mood on her, unfairly. And yet he could not seem to stop.
“Is it melancholia?”
Her words were clipped and brittle now. “He’s cheerful and witty and marvelous company. Which is more than I can say for . . .” She paused meaningfully.
“Is it drink? Did he drink his fortune away? Is that how you came to have a job?”
“Never imbibes,” she bit off, angrily.
“It’s gaming.”
Ah, poor lass. She was a novice at this. She could not control the way her head jerked toward him or the way her eyes flared in shock and fear.
“That’s it. He’s gambled away his fortune and your dowry.”
She took a stunned step backward into the fire screen, which rocked perilously, then dumped her stockings into the fire. She half gasped, half shrieked.
But in moments they were devoured in flames.
She stared, stunned. Then her face dropped into her hands.
He watched as her back swelled like a bellows with her breathing.
She whirled on him, face white with fury.
“How would you have any idea what it’s like to sacrifice for a family? You, who have no family and can’t be bothered to marry!”
Oh, well done, lass, he could have said. Such lashing scorn.
But for a second or two he could not speak or breathe.
“Maybe I don’t,” he managed quietly. “But believe it or not, I have a code, too, Daphne. I treat people accordingly. And no one recognizes a swindle better than I do.”
Her face spasmed with pain for an instant.
“Oh, what can you possibly know about any of this? How could you possibly know what you would do? You’re not even a gentleman. You’re a . . . you’re just a heathen from St. Giles. You have no one.”
They stared at each other in shock.
She covered her mouth with her hand.
For a few moments the only sound was the fire, cracking and popping as it consumed the stockings.
He didn’t quite slam it. But the door shook in its frame when Lorcan closed it behind him.
