Lady Derring Takes a Lover - Julie Anne Long Page 0,38

one for himself at a gentlemanly distance from the fire, along with a wooden-backed chair—were studded with little lamps. The leaping fire threw a flattering light upon all the ladies present except for the Gardner sisters, because they had chosen the corner farthest from the fire, apparently seeking the quiet and the dark. Lady Derring and Mrs. Breedlove were glowing like lovely candles in their chairs. Lady Derring’s head was bent over an embroidery hoop.

Perhaps the embroidery was destined for a pillow. Perhaps it was an image of a man putting a gun to his head because he was forced to sit quietly in a drawing room.

He supposed it was “cozy.”

Dot the maid was mending something. “Ouch,” she said softly.

A second later: “Ouch,” she muttered again.

He’d noted the pianoforte against the wall and amused himself by imagining what it would be like to glue it shut, and to watch them struggle to get it up to no avail.

He had no objections to music. It was just that he had a weakness for music played well, and it so seldom was in drawing rooms such as these.

“I count only two guests, Lady Derring. Where is your third? Did this person pay an additional fee to escape the drawing room? If so, I must shake his hand to congratulate him on his bargaining skills.”

She regarded him coolly a moment. Then her head swiveled.

“Ah, here’s Mr. Delacorte! Why don’t you go and have a smoke and a chat with him in the gentleman’s room, Captain Hardy?”

It sounded like an order. So he went.

Chapter Ten

The room set aside for gentlemen to smoke and curse in was set off the drawing room. Some pains had been taken to make it pleasant. Three large brown upholstered chairs with winged backs were arranged about a low table upon which a man could heave his booted feet, if he so chose. The carpet featured a black-and-brown scrolled pattern. Presumably the sorts of colors that could disguise smoke and any other unspeakable thing a man might take it into his head to do.

He and Delacorte stood about for a wordless moment, like two dogs tied up outside while their owners have tea in a shop.

“You missed a truly splendid dinner,” Delacorte began. “It was remarkable, in fact. The things the cook can do with a sauce. Was all I could do not to lick my plate. Even I know enough not to do that! Ha ha ha!”

Tristan smiled tensely.

Mr. Delacorte was hearty. He didn’t speak so much as boom, like a man shouting over a crowd at a race track, cheering on a horse.

“But I’ve nothing on Miss Margaret Gardner’s enthusiasm. Shoveled it in with both hands as though she thought it might be snatched away any moment! Never saw a woman with an appetite like that.”

Tristan stifled a sigh. Now he had something to look forward to at dinner the next day.

“So you’re a captain, eh? Career naval officer?”

“Aye.”

“Did you know Admiral Nelson?”

“Served under him.”

Nelson, like God, needed no further exposition.

“WELL.” Delacorte stood back and planted his hands on his hips. “I’d warrant that makes you a hero, too, you old sea dog!”

“No,” Tristan said.

That wasn’t entirely true—a street rat from St. Giles doesn’t rise to be an infamously effective, ruthless naval captain without someone bandying about the word hero. The king himself had used it. Once. In a private conversation, granted.

It was just that the heartier Delacorte became, the more air he expended, the less air Tristan felt inclined to expend in the form of words, as if to maintain the balance of air in the universe.

Delacorte was silently contributing other things to the atmosphere, too. His enthusiasm for the food at dinner had begun expressing itself in other ways.

Tristan was hardly delicate. He’d spent a few years crammed on ships with hundreds of men and was well aware of how cheerfully disgusting they could be. It was just that he hadn’t had to do it in recent years. One of the privileges of being a captain was having his own quarters, in which he didn’t have to listen to snoring, gastric eruptions, weeping, night terrors, or surreptitious masturbation.

“Oh, I suspect you’re being modest, Hardy.”

“No one who knows me would ever suggest that.”

While this was true, Delacorte laughed heartily at this for no reason Tristan could surmise.

There was a lull, during which Tristan thought he could begin making inquiries, though it was difficult to imagine Delacorte as a smuggler, roaring away about cigars in a black boat