Lady Derring Takes a Lover - Julie Anne Long Page 0,32
to ascertain the quality of our clientele?”
And damned if Tristan didn’t admire her response.
“It’s just that to get to all the other things that London has to offer, your guests must navigate a gauntlet of what Lovell Street near the docks has to offer, including robbery, pub brawls, and the occasional murder. It’s an unusual location for an exclusive boardinghouse with rules regarding propriety.”
She didn’t even blink. Up close, Lady Derring’s eyes were as velvety and alluring as a settee in an opium den. Yet he would warrant she’d just inventoried his eyelashes.
“Isn’t it lovely that The Grand Palace on the Thames is an oasis of comfort and safety in the midst of a chaotic world?”
That was deft, he’d hand that much to her.
“By the way, how did you come to open a boardinghouse?”
She cleared her throat. “Well, I am lately a widow, Captain Hardy—”
“My condolences.”
She acknowledged this with the rote nod it deserved. “—and it seemed to my business partner, Mrs. Angelique Breedlove, and me the perfect opportunity to meet people from all walks of life.” She sounded proud.
“Ah.” He took pains to sound faintly puzzled. “I was curious. I’ve heard your establishment referred to as The Palace of Rogues. A place for rogues, one would assume.”
She went still. Then a hurt that seemed genuine flickered across her features.
He knew a startling—a rogue, even—and tearing sense of regret that he may have been the source of it.
“Scurrilous,” she maintained stoutly. “That’s what that assertion is, if that’s what you heard. If you hear it again, I should be obliged if you’d correct them and tell them it’s a fine establishment, as you can see for yourself. I’m sorry if this disappoints you.”
“I’ll do that,” he said gently. “And it hardly smells of mildew at all, which is a remarkable feat for a building so close to the docks.”
She narrowed her eyes ever so slightly.
“Are you attempting to negotiate the price of your room, sir?”
“That depends. To my original question: Have you a room to let, Lady Derring?”
Intriguingly, she paused.
“Based on our discussion, I do wonder if this is the sort of place you’d feel at ease, Captain. And our prices are not negotiable. We feel our guests are given great value for their money.”
“Ease,” he repeated thoughtfully, after a moment. As if it were a word only plebeians found use for.
She seemed to take this as an invitation to tip her head and study him critically with those soft eyes.
He could feel the jagged old glacier of his heart creak as if exposed to a violent sunbeam.
He thought perhaps he should look away.
And then he thought: what a waste of a moment it would be, if I should look away when I could be looking at her.
A pretty woman can get a man to do anything, Massey had said to him.
But he was a man willing to do just about anything to get his man.
Easier still if the man he needed to get was instead a woman.
He lowered his voice to one of confiding sympathy. “Would you like to inspect beneath my chin, Lady Derring? I might have missed a hair or two whilst shaving, though I’m not inclined to miss any detail at all. About anything. Ever.”
A little silence.
“It’s difficult to shave the day after a liquor-soaked evening, I should imagine,” she said smoothly.
She was very, very good.
“While I’ll allow that this is true, that wasn’t the circumstance this morning, nor will it be during my stay here at the Ro—”
“Grand Palace on the Thames.”
“Ah, yes, of course. Very well, then. Now that I know a bit more about what sort of establishment this is—and it does sounds like a fine establishment—would you mind telling me a bit more about the rules?”
She looked relieved. “They’re very simple, really. We expect our male guests to behave like gentlemen in the presence of ladies. Rough language, drinking, spitting, or smoking will not be tolerated in the drawing room when ladies are present, and will be fined one pence per word. We’ve a jar, you see.”
“A jar.” He said this with every evidence of fascination.
“But we also have a withdrawing room for gentlemen, in which they can unleash their baser impulses in case the effort of restraint becomes too much to bear.”
Lady Derring was very dry.
“What a relief to hear. Tethering instincts wears a devil out.”
He was rewarded with a smile, one of delightful, slow, crooked affairs, as if she just couldn’t help herself, and he, for a moment, could not