of current sleeve designs.”
She was surprisingly sanguine about it all. Then again, Angelique’s life had already been quite eventful.
The admiring eyes of the soldiers had mellowed her mood somewhat, too. One’s heart might rattle about like broken china, but Delilah’s hope was like that one ember remaining in a fireplace . . .
The one that could fly up the chimney and set the roof on fire and burn the whole thing down.
Hope, like love, like romance, was a lie, Delilah had decided.
While his men ferried out cigars and searched the Gardner sisters’ room, Tristan dashed off a message to the king, sealed it, and carried it downstairs. He would have one of his men take it straight there.
He paused a moment in the foyer and remembered the moment he’d first stood there, looking up at a singing woman. The day was stubbornly gray, but the light through the windows managed to pick out a rainbow or two from the crystals.
“Thank you, Captain Hardy.”
He gave a start.
Delilah was alone in the little reception room. He understood clearly now that he’d always been able to feel her when she was in a room. That something in him had lightened when she was near.
But now she seemed nearly crumpled in on herself. She was so still, so lightless, she might as well have been a puppet tossed there.
Her eyes were bitter. Two dark bruises in her face.
And any illusions he might have had about it all being all right in the end dissolved.
He drew in a breath that burned, and a chill raced down his arms. This, then, was what doom felt like. He realized all at once that he was, in truth, frightened, in a way he hadn’t been since he was perhaps ten years old. It was an entirely new sensation. Here, at the end of his career, at the moment of one of his greatest triumphs, he sensed he was losing something.
How had he never in the process of being who he was, of doing his duty, never anticipated he might murder himself somehow?
It seemed he did not, in fact, know everything.
He walked toward her slowly.
He sat down across from her on the settee.
Neither said a word for a moment.
“Congratulations, Captain Hardy,” she said finally.
“Thank you.”
That made her quirk her mouth bitterly.
Neither spoke for a moment.
“I imagine you think I’m ridiculous. Two men in dresses. Smugglers. And I didn’t . . . even . . . suspect. You must think I’m the veriest fool.”
“Never.” His voice was quiet. Hoarse. “You’re just naturally kind, Delilah. You want to see the best in people. It’s . . . one of the loveliest things about you. You couldn’t have predicted murderous smugglers wearing dresses would move in. Nobody could.”
He could not now see how it might have been different, unless he’d never touched her at all. That would have been the honorable thing. And yet even now it seemed as though it would be easier to lasso the moon and pull it down from the sky than to do that.
But if she wanted the moon, he would certainly try to get it for her.
“Well.” She stirred herself and sat bolt upright and with a sort of macabre, artificial brightness, and brought her hands together in a little clasp. “Even so, I feel a right fool. I thought I was doing so well, you see, here at The Grand Palace on the Thames. That our guests might become a little family. That they were precisely what they said they were despite appearances. I see now that it’s a ridiculous dream.”
“It’s not ridiculous,” he said shortly.
“But you knew what they were? The Gardners?”
“I knew fairly quickly something was a bit off. But I could not say precisely what.”
She gave a soft laugh again. “Imagine me not knowing what you were after this entire time, Captain Hardy. I suppose it was always right there for me to see. But I was blinded by the glory of you”—she waved a hand—“and flattered, and then of course, seduced. How fortunate that you should find a naive fool like me here at The Grand Palace on the Thames, because you were able to use it to your advantage.”
Bloody hell.
“I see now, when I think about it, how cleverly you asked your questions. Well done. Did you laugh at me?”
He was suffering. “Delilah . . . No. I would nev—”
“You thought perhaps I might be a smuggler, didn’t you?”
He was silent. There was no safety here. Not in the truth,