Lady Derring Takes a Lover - Julie Anne Long Page 0,34
I was just admiring it. Rules. Regimentation. Perhaps you ought to have considered the military, Lady Derring.”
“I assume you mean to flatter me, Captain Hardy, given that was the choice you made for yourself. If only my options had been quite so diverse. Would you like to take a moment to reassure yourself that you can abide by the rules?”
“If there’s anything at all I’ve learned in the navy, it’s to abide by rules . . . and to enforce them. My nature isn’t anarchic. It is, however, indomitable.”
She regarded him with a certain quizzical sympathy. “We might be able to pay for an additional maid with the contents of your braggart jar.”
He gave her a little smile. And then he reached into his coat, and from his wallet and laid down twelve one-pound notes. One at a time. As if placing a wager.
She eyed them, a flare of undeniable hunger in her eye, quickly disguised.
It wasn’t greed, he’d warrant. It was need.
Interesting.
“I should like your largest, most comfortable, suite of rooms, please.”
“I fear we’ve already let Suite Three, which is our largest. We’ve also let the next largest, Captain Hardy. But all of our rooms are comfortable and I’m sure you’ll not want for a thing.”
“I shall be content in whatever room you choose.”
“We shall make certain you are. And you’ll have a chance to meet your fellow guests this evening.”
To Tristan, it sounded like both a promise and a warning.
“Insufferable,” was how she described him to Angelique when they were in the kitchen discussing the menu for the week with Helga, who had triumphantly returned with a cut of beef that pleased her. “Naval captain. Well-spoken. Thinks very highly of himself. I could see myself in his buttons and boot toes. Not a speck of lint on his coat. Also, this man is very tall.”
They were all wistful about the word tall. All the window cleaning and trimming the candles in sconces made them covetous of long legs and arms.
A few hours later, Angelique met Captain Hardy in the reception room just before he left for a previous dinner engagement. He was charming and brief and then was out of the door in a flash.
She stared at the door after he departed.
Then turned toward Delilah abruptly.
Delilah was studying the urn full of flowers as if it had suddenly become fascinating, and pretended not to notice that Angelique was staring at her.
“Funny,” Angelique said finally. “I pictured a bluff, red-faced, gray-haired sea dog. Find it very interesting that you didn’t mention that Captain Hardy is, shall we say . . . compelling.”
There it was. It was absolutely the perfect word for him. Equal parts enigmatic and magnetic. But it didn’t encompass the temperature changes she experienced in his company.
“Did you find him so?” she said idly.
But Angelique’s incredulous stare threatened to singe a hole in her forehead.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Delilah. He is gorgeous.” It didn’t sound like a compliment. It sounded like a warning.
She looked up at Angelique finally and bit her lip, almost apologetically. “If you like that sort of thing.”
Angelique sighed. “There’s something about him,” she said thoughtfully, after a moment. “I cannot shake the sense that we’ve let a room in the henhouse to the fox, though I can’t for certain say why. I don’t think Captain Hardy is the sort who does anything without a reason. Which makes me wonder why he’s here, at The Grand Palace on the Thames.”
A tiny part of Delilah, where her vanity lived, longed to believe that Captain Hardy had returned to The Grand Palace on the Thames because he’d hoped to see her again. Beyond this sop to her vanity she didn’t want to think. The male of the species was not to be trusted in the way wild animals quite simply could not be trusted, even years after they’d been domesticated. One just didn’t know what they would get up to.
“Do you think his presence has to do with Mr., er, X and his employer?”
They both still felt ridiculous saying “Mr. X.”
“Well . . . I have no idea. But we are blameless, in that regard.”