Fuming, dazed, a trifle surprised by the turn of events, Lorcan stalked through the passage that connected the annex to the rest of The Grand Palace on the Thames.
What the bloody hell had just happened?
He was all the way in the foyer when he realized he hadn’t a key to the suite.
He swore softly.
Returning now would ruin his dramatic exit.
He would also be damned if he would go and knock on that door and beg her to let him in.
And damned if he would return with her scornful words still echoing in his ears. He simply couldn’t imagine doing it. And while it wasn’t as though she’d experience his absence as some terrible punishment, it would still make a point of sorts.
Although . . . he was beginning to think he deserved to be locked out.
He sighed, heavily. Swiped his hands down his face.
Why? Why couldn’t he have just let it be?
He was contemplating how he was going to manage to pass the night when he noticed a shadow that resembled an egg on legs moving with impressive stealth and grace up the stairs.
“Ho, there, Delacorte,” Lorcan stage-whispered.
Mr. Delacorte froze midstep. “Ho, St. Leger,” he replied on a whisper, sounding pleased, and thereby revealing that Lorcan’s silhouette was easily recognizable, too. “What are you doing wandering the halls? Can’t sleep?”
Lorcan quietly moved over to the stairs. “A bit of to-do with me wife. I can’t go back tonight. So I’m roaming like a ghost.”
Delacorte made a sympathetic clucking sound.
“I expect she needs a little time without me,” Lorcan said. “And I without her. What’s your excuse?”
“You’ll not tell Brownie or Goldie.”
“I’m nay a snitch, Delacorte.” He surmised Brownie and Goldie were Delilah and Angelique.
“Couldn’t sleep. Went down to the kitchen. Thought a wee piece of cheese might help.” He uncurled his fingers and Lorcan peered: the candle he held in the other illuminated a little wedge in Delacorte’s palm.
“Often does,” Lorcan said amiably.
“I usually keep a slice or two in my room, but with the roads flooded, I can’t get to my favorite cheese shop. Why don’t you come in and bunk with me? You can make it up to the missus in the morning.”
Lorcan mulled. He was not interested in the martyrdom of huddling on a settee in a cold room or endlessly drifting through the halls like a ghost seeking vengeance in an attempt to stay warm.
And he was damned if he was going to give Daphne the satisfaction of begging at the door. His temper and his pride—and guilt—were still simmering.
“Kind of you, Delacorte,” he said. “I believe I will.”
He’d piled into beds with men before out of necessity when he’d lived in shabby rooms shared by multiple families. Delacorte was at least clean and there was no question that, between the two of them crammed in the bed, they would be nice and warm.
“Mind the third step. It creaks,” Delacorte whispered.
Delacorte’s room smelled of the herbs and powders from his case of remedies, bay rum, linseed oil, tallow, sweat, feet, tobacco, and something a little musty that Lorcan suspected was the ghost of cheeses past. All in all, a friendly, male smell.
“Make yourself at home,” Delacorte said cheerfully. “Would you like a bite?” He gestured with his wedge of cheese.
“No, thank you,” Lorcan said.
Delacorte ate his cheese, yanked off his boots and snatched his nightshirt off a hook. Lorcan perused the room while Delacorte got dressed for bed.
Scattered about—on the desk and a little bookshelf and in corners—were a stuffed owl on a perch, a cigar cutter, a cricket bat, a telescope, an astrolabe, a compass, a scale, a mortar and pestle, and jars of various sizes and shapes apparently filled with unguents. He’d pinned a map of the world on the wall; beside it he’d hung a poem featuring the words “jingle bang,” which he’d underlined. Next to them he’d written “ha ha!” A little cluster of miniatures were arranged on the desk. A swift glance revealed all of them bore a passing resemblance to Delacorte. He noted several pairs of big blue eyes and imposing eyebrows.
Lorcan pulled off his boots and hung his coat on a hook. He dropped his trousers, folded them up, and placed them on the chair. He’d sleep in his shirt.
Thusly the two of them piled into bed and pulled up the blankets.
It was a snug fit, of a certainty, with the two of them wedged in. Not too objectionable, however. Neither of them complained.
“Thanks for the hospitality, Delacorte.”
“Think nothing of it.” Delacorte had taken a book to bed with him. “I like to read a bit before I sleep. Will I disturb you?”
“Not at all. I’ll just be staring at the ceiling.” Lorcan folded his arms behind his head and did just that.
But maybe he ought to read. He could use a distraction.
From out of nowhere he wondered if Daphne would weep tonight. Would she take advantage of his absence and sob out her grief and frustration or whatever ailed her and rail to the heavens? Or would she still ration her tears, quietly? As if she hadn’t the right to do it at all?
His stomach went tight.
He felt like a damned scoundrel to add to the reasons she might be weeping.
Suddenly Delacorte went so abruptly still Lorcan turned to look worriedly at him.
A faraway look had come into Delacorte’s eye.
He slowly lowered his book.
“I think it only fair to warn you, my friend, that you’ll want to batten down the hatches at once,” he said matter-of-factly.
Lorcan turned to him, puzzled. “Beg pardon, Delacorte?”
“Now. It’s a matter of some urgency, St. Leger. Do not lift the blankets. Seal them tightly. Batten them down. I cannot put it any more plainly.”
“Delacorte, what the devil are you . . .”
Lorcan became aware of a squeaking sound, rapidly escalating in volume. It evolved into a sort of fluttering, then terminated abruptly in what sounded like the honk of an angry mallard.
His mind blanked with astonishment.
“Delacorte . . . did you just . . . was that . . .”
Decades from now, tearing back the corner of the blanket so he could bolt out of bed would still rank as one of his worst decisions.
Because there was no escaping what he’d just set free.
He’d been warned.
He crashed back against the pillow as if felled at the knees by an ax and flung an arm over his face. “Oh. Oh no. Oh, dear God.”
The arm was insufficient. He retrieved the pillow from beneath his head and covered his face with that instead.
He lay in stunned silence a moment, struggling not to inhale.
“Delacorte,” he said hoarsely, finally. “My eyes are watering. I’m literally weeping, you bastard. I haven’t wept since I was a boy.”
“I did try to tell you,” Delacorte said, with some regret, but no real shame. “I honestly thought you of all people would understand ‘batten the hatches.’” He paused. “I had hoped to be more discreet about it.”
“Fair play,” Lorcan admitted through the pillow after a moment. “You did warn me.”
“And the window frame is a bit stuck from all the rain, so I can’t open it to get any air in. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait it out. Which is why I insisted upon a seal.”
“You thought of everything,” Lorcan said bitterly.
He would survive this. God knows, the thing he did best was endure.
Aa Lorcan lay quietly recovering beneath the pillow, he listened to Delacorte turn a few pages of his book.
They lay like this in more or less companionable silence.
“I bet that will teach you to argue with your wife,” Delacorte finally said.
Lorcan gave a shout of laughter.
Which set Delacorte off.
Soon the two of them were roaring with laughter, thumping the bed with their fists. Lorcan coughed and wiped his eyes, happily disgusted.
They jumped when the ceiling thundered as if someone was taking a hammer to it.
“Haud yer wheesht ye grrrrrreat FARRRTINNNNG wrrrrretch!” Angus McDonald howled through the floorboards.
“His ‘r’s go on forever,” Delacorte said admiringly.
They took pity on Mr. McDonald and settled down.
Lorcan tentatively lifted the pillow from his face. He found the air tolerable enough to restore it to its rightful place beneath his head.
“Would you like a book?” Delacorte gestured to his little shelf.
“No, thank you. I think I shall lay here and brood until sleep takes me under.”
“What was your fight with your wife about?”
“I accidentally caused her to drop her best stockings into the fire and up they went.”
“Oh, you can’t go and burn a woman’s stockings,” Delacorte said with great conviction. “But most rows are seldom about one thing, are they?”
“Not with women, apparently,” Lorcan said dourly.
This was a novel experience. All of this. Discussing woman problems while in bed with a man.
“Have you any lady friends, Delacorte? A frisky widow, perhaps?”
“Oh, I’ve a few lady friends up and down the coast who are game for a tumble now and again.” He brightened. “There’s one in Devon who always gives me dinner and she knows a few saucy tricks.”
“Tricks, eh?” Lorcan was instantly intrigued.
“She takes two fingers . . .” Delacorte illustrated by holding up two of his.
“Aye?”
“. . . and she shoves them up my—”
Lorcan dragged the pillow over his ears just in time. There were limits to what a man could bear in one evening.
He returned the pillow to beneath his head just as Delacorte was saying, “She seems a lovely girl, your wife. A bit sad, maybe.”
“Sad?” For some reason this observation bothered him a good deal.
“It’s probably the weather,” Delacorte said. “We’re all a bit brought down by it. Even me, a bit.”
“Caged in by it,” Lorcan said. “That’s the feeling, after a while. One gets to know how to endure it over the years.”
“That, too. And true enough.”
“She’s worried about her father and her brothers.”
“There, now, you see. Every little thing looks a bit bleaker when you’re worried about one thing. I find lots of happy shouting takes my mind off things. Donkey races, a lively pub. Or beating Bolt in chess.”
“They are good-for-nothings. Her fathers and brothers.”
He was assuming a lot. But if there were three men in a family and the only daughter was exiting from a window in the middle of the night at the London docks because the father had gambled away their fortune, then as far as he was concerned no other conclusion could be drawn.
“Then it’s a very good thing she has you,” Delacorte said.
Damn.
Lorcan went still.
How had this happened? How did he come to feel responsible for this woman?
Because he bloody well did.
He had only himself to blame.
He closed his eyes briefly, and unbidden images flitted in. Daphne sitting in the window with the sun on her hair. Her hand resting on his arm as he led her into the sitting room. Her slim shoulder blades moving when she hung up her stockings with deft grace. There was a fragility to her at odds with her lacerating wit and crackling eyes and ramrod pride. She would fight like the devil not to break. But she was breakable. He was certain of it. No one who felt things as strongly as she did was unbreakable.
It infuriated him that the men in her life did not seem to care. Caring seemed the very least a man could do.
What a fortunate thing it was she had a marriage offer.
But then he wondered if the husband would be any better.
A bleakness that had nothing to do with the weather settled into his bones.
“She would prefer me to be different,” he said quietly. He was certain this was true in about a thousand ways.
“Hmmm. Well, I shouldn’t mind changing a bit for the right someone,” Delacorte mused. “A cozy sort of woman, with a big laugh, who’ll say, ‘oh, Stanton,’ very fondly quite a lot. Perhaps with a little sigh. Brownie and Goldie are angels on earth and thanks to them, I feel I’m becoming more refined by the minute. Hard not to say ‘bloody’ when I’m excited about something, which is most of the time, but I like a challenge. It’s lovely, don’t you think, finding the ways you are the same and the ways you are different. Like fitting a puzzle together.”
He thought, but wisely did not say, that Brownie would have to be an angel to put up with Captain Hardy. How had a woman who seemed so gentle and kind wound up with a man that hard?
But then he was coming to realize why a man like Hardy could crave something gentle, and kind, and soft. How it could feel like respite.
He thought about what Delacorte had said about puzzles.
And how anyone looking at Lorcan St. Leger would never dream anything at all about him was soft. Would assume that not one vulnerable place on him existed.
“She called me a heathen.” In truth, it was the rest of what she’d said which had landed on the raw. You have no one. As if it was the worst indictment she could conjure.
Delacorte hissed in a sympathetic breath. “That’s a hard one, especially when it’s true.”
“Ho there, now!”
“It’s true. We’re all of us men bloody heathens under the skin. If it weren’t for women’s efforts we’d run amuck, scratching, swearing, farting, fucking, chewing with our mouths open, and throwing our bones down on the floor. Even St. John. And there’s something about the fussing of a womanly woman that makes me feel more like a man and I quite like it, bless ’em. It makes me feel cared for.”
It was quite a vivid point of view. Lorcan wasn’t sure he concurred entirely.
He hated to admit to himself that some tiny part of him, in fact, yearned toward Daphne’s refinement, her delicacy, and her otherness. It was the same small part of him he’d hoped was dead forever. If he was Achilles, it was the part of him that hadn’t been dipped.
He sighed. “So, you want to be a husband, eh, Delacorte?”
“Oh, yes, indeed. I expect I shall be soon enough. I’m in the prime of my life. I’ve time,” Delacorte said comfortably. “And people always seem to leave The Grand Palace on the Thames with a wife. Although maybe she’d like to live here, too,” he added hopefully.
They lay quietly for a moment, listening to the rain.
“Do you worry about the ship not coming in?” Lorcan asked.
Delacorte pondered this. “Oh, aye, I do. A bit. But worrying won’t make it get here any faster. I worry more about Hardy and Bolt taking it to heart. They’ll feel guilty about me but I went into the endeavor with my eyes open and I’m proud to be a part of the Triton Group. Those blokes are the best friends I’ve ever had. As long as we have The Grand Palace on the Thames, we’ll all be fine, no matter what.”
“Well, I’m glad you have it, then, Delacorte.”
He thought of Daphne, who had her father and her brothers, fat lot of good it did her.
“Shall we go to sleep now?”
“Why not? Good night, Delacorte.”
“Good night, St. Leger.”
They each settled into their pillows.
“Fair warning, I snore a bit,” Delacorte told him, as he turned down the lamp.
Like most nights during the previous few busy weeks, Angelique’s beloved husband crawled into bed smelling of cheroots and brandy a good half hour after he normally did.
She reflexively scooted over to touch her bottom to him, her typical way of helping to warm him whenever business kept him up late. He draped his hand absently, affectionately, over her hip. Lucien usually liked to sleep naked, which she usually counted as just one of the delicious bonuses of being married to him. They kept the fire burning high and hot in the room and indulged in lots of blankets.
They lay for a moment in familiar and contented silence.
“Lucien . . . do you ever think you married beneath you?”
He gracefully rolled over, propping himself on his arms over her, and gazed smolderingly down. “What’s that you said about wanting to be beneath me?”
Normally, she might have laughed.
But without warning, her temper ignited. She went rigid instead.
“Lucien, you’ve hardly spoken to me for days.” She gave his chest a little shove.
He was surprised. “You know we’ve been busy. Sandbags at the warehouses in preparation for the storm. Meetings with Lloyd’s. With investors. With merchants.”
“I understand. But I’m not like Mr. Delacorte’s midnight cheese. You might have to talk to me a little before you . . . partake.”
“Partake?” he quoted incredulously.
“Hike my night rail, then.”
He rolled over again and lay flat on his back. He looked stunned. He lay there, clearly speechless.
“You’re the son of a duke,” she continued.
“Oh, we’re still on the ‘beneath you’ question. This is what you want to talk about before we sleep, Angelique? Yes. I’m the bastard son of the worst possible duke who is wholly disinterested in me. No, I don’t feel as though I married beneath me. What does that even mean?”
She could not quite articulate what she meant. Or rather, she felt a little too unsettled and raw to explain it to Lucien, and a little too tired to find the proper words.
Before Angelique had met Delilah, and well before she’d met Lucien, she’d been a governess. But she’d left in disgrace after the gentleman of the house had taken advantage of her. Thus had begun a terrifying descent from decent society until she found herself the mistress of an earl who’d left her—and his wife, Delilah—destitute. She and Delilah had seized upon The Grand Palace on the Thames as a lifeline.
Until Lucien, every man she’d ever known had preyed upon her beauty, used her, and discarded her. She’d endured it, in order to survive.
“You’re thinking about the governess that Havelstock married,” he hazarded, slowly. “And the fact that Lady Worth married a privateer.”
“I was. A little.”
“Is it because you were once a governess?”
She was silent. In truth, though Lucien knew the entire truth of her past, and was fiercely protective of her and had never once judged her, she had never fully explained to him some of the things she’d felt or experienced.
In part because she could still feel the shame of it when she was tired or vulnerable. And in part because he would suffer enormously on her behalf.
“I never thought of marrying anyone at all until I laid eyes on you, Angelique,” he said quietly. But she could hear a bit of impatience in his voice. It was something he felt she should understand implicitly.
“And I married you, didn’t I?” she asked. “What do you suppose that says about my judgment?”
“What the devil?” Lucien was bewildered now.
“Both you and Captain Hardy saw fit to not only question our judgment with regards to Daphne and Mr. St. Leger. Does that apply to my judgment in general, or with regards only to that St. Leger?”
Lucien had gone rigid now. “Is that what this is about? St. Leger? Suddenly I’m too busy to give you the kind of attention you want so your thoughts have wandered off to a behemoth with an earring?”
“What on earth?” She was aghast. “My thoughts are not wandering. Is that what you think of me? That I’m just that bloody fickle? That I’ll dream about any man in your absence?”
She’d propped herself on her elbow to stare down at him in outrage.
“No. But how about this?” Lucien said brightly. “We make love tonight and you pretend I’m St. Leger.”
“ARRRRRRRGH!” She flounced herself out of bed, seized her pelisse from the wardrobe, threw it on, and stalked out the door.
Usually, they performed their little bedtime rituals together. Tristan would sit on the bed to pull off his boots while she brushed and plaited her hair at her dressing table, because he found it soothing to watch her tame all that silky darkness. And they would have a cozy, meandering chat. Nonsense and seriousness all entwined with the coded language of marriage and love—little jokes, endearments, the details of the world they’d created between them when they’d wed.
Then they would tumble into bed and into each other’s arms.
The bliss of it all.
But tonight he was late again to bed. For a fortnight now he’d been lingering of nights in the smoking room with Lucien and Delacorte, when business didn’t keep him out late.
And Delilah was beginning to realize that it was because he was, in fact, avoiding her specifically.
And her heart squeezed like an icy fist.
Delilah was already in her night rail, her hair brushed one hundred times and plaited, before the doorknob turned and he quietly entered the room.
He shook himself out of his coat.
He hadn’t yet bothered to look at her.
When he sat down to remove his boots and still hadn’t said anything or looked at her, her heart lurched portentously.
She’d had enough.
“So. We married for better or for worse, Tristan. I believe that’s what the vicar said when we were wed.” She said it conversationally.
He went still. He’d already gotten his shirt off.
He turned slowly to her, shirt in hand. “And?”
And?
Oh God.
That tone.
Just like that—Foosh. The flame of her temper leaped up like a bonfire.
Oh, she was ready to throw her hairbrush at her gorgeous, beloved husband.
“And the trouble is, I married a man who spoke in complete sentences and respectful tones and who actually enjoyed speaking with me. Not one who communicates in monosyllables and grunts. ‘And.’ What ruddy nonsense is ‘and’?”
With satisfaction, she saw his whole body tense and his eyes go narrow and flinty.
Good, be angry, Tristan, she thought. She was ready for an argument. They clearly needed to have one.
“All right, Delilah,” he said evenly, slowly. “Speaking of words unspoken. Here are a few you never said to me: ‘I believe you, Tristan.’”
She went still, confused.
“Bolt said it. About St. Leger. But you never did, Delilah.”
She was stunned. “Is that what is bothering you?”
She immediately realized her terrible mistake in emphasis. She’d trivialized it.
“Tristan—”
“My entire career was made upon identifying, tracking, and putting a stop to smugglers terrorizing towns across England, because smuggling is both treason and criminal. I was so bloody good at it the king agreed to make an appearance here. He skillfully managed a smuggling organization that stretched along the coast of England for nearly two years. My word on that should be good enough for you.”
“And my word about who should stay here at The Grand Palace on the Thames should be good enough for you.”
“And yet there you were, cozily having tea with a former criminal out of a sentiment for your old friend. So tell me again why I should blindly trust your judgment.”
Delilah nearly soared up out of her body with fury. “That’s what you think of my judgment? Tristan . . . what if for some reason you weren’t meant to catch him? Do you think people can never change? You yourself said he did no terrorizing. When you were a little boy, would you steal to eat or starve? Two different roads were offered to the two of you. He’s been working on behalf of the crown for a few years now. Does that count for nothing? Are people not allowed redemption?”
He stared at her.
“Sometimes I feel as though you don’t understand me at all,” he said finally.
Delilah was speechless.
“I—need to sleep somewhere else tonight.”
And to her absolute astonishment, he dragged his shirt back on and flung open the door.
She flinched when it slammed behind him.
Captain Hardy could hear his own furious breath as he stalked down the hall.
He stopped abruptly in surprise when he encountered a stalking Angelique, who was wearing a pelisse over her night rail and much the same expression he expected he sported.
“There’s a vacancy with Lucien if you need a place to sleep, Captain Hardy,” she told him coolly.
“Likewise with Delilah,” he said bluntly.
They passed each other in righteous huffs.
Hardy paused outside the room Angelique and Lucien shared. Their door was wide open. Quite as though it had been flung dramatically so.
He found Bolt was sitting upright in bed, wearing a stunned expression. The lamps were still lit.
Lucien took one look at Captain Hardy. Read his face correctly.
And then wordlessly, shifted over and patted the pillow next to his.
Captain Hardy shut the door, rapidly shucked his trousers, then plucked them up off the floor. He stood motionless for a moment clutching them in his fist.
And then he whirled and hurled them in a very uncharacteristic fit of pique across the room.
Lucien snorted.
Hardy got into bed in just his shirt and pulled the covers up.
They lay there in absolute silence for quite some time.
And then Captain Hardy sighed, got out of bed, fetched his trousers, folded them neatly, laid them on the desk, and got back into bed.
Military training really never released its hold.
“Are you ever going to share with anyone the nature of the particular stick you’ve got lodged in your arse lately, Hardy?”
It was Captain Hardy’s turn to snort.
“I know how you feel about St. Leger is complicated,” Lucien continued. “But it’s more than that, I would warrant. And whatever it is, if you won’t tell me, you have to tell her.”
Captain Hardy lay still, eyes on the ceiling, arms crossed behind his head. He took a few deep breaths to settle his temper.
“I know. I don’t know why it’s so bloody hard to do that,” he said finally. Softly. Genuinely pained.
“Because something in you believes she’ll find some fatal flaw in you and just stop loving you. But she won’t.”
Captain Hardy turned to Lucien in amazement.
And then after a moment he said, “Are you naked, Bolt?”
Lucien sighed, got out of bed, snatched his nightshirt from the back of his chair and threw it on over his head.
“I’ll sleep imprisoned in this thing for your sake.” He climbed back into bed.
“What did you and Angelique argue about?” Hardy asked.
“Something very stupid. And the fault belongs to us both. But mostly to me, I think. I think I know where I went awry and now I want to kick myself. But it’s not as though I do not have a point.”
“I’m beginning to think there are no stupid arguments in a marriage,” Hardy said dryly. After a moment he asked, “Would you like me to kick you?”
“Kind of you to offer, but I think I’ll save that pleasure for Angelique,” Lucien said.
Captain Hardy smiled.
Lucien blew out a long breath. “Bloody hell, it’s been a very trying few weeks.”
“We’ll get through it,” Captain Hardy said shortly. After a moment.
The two of them had already talked so much about potentialities there was no point in going over them again.
“I do have something to confess,” Hardy said so somberly that Lucien turned to him in concern.
“I’ve fantasized about throttling the German trio.”
“They’re really inordinately merry,” Lucien said darkly.
“Too bloody merry,” Hardy agreed. “I’m so close to batting Hans gently on the snout like a hound to keep him from flirting with the maids.”
“They’re just boys.”
“I’m sure some woman will bat him on the snout sooner or later, metaphorically or not,” Captain Hardy said, somewhat morosely.
“No doubt. Good night, Hardy. Try to sleep.”
Lucien doused the lamp.
