was simply too comfortable.
He’d punished himself by walking past the breakfast aroma of eggs and sausages gloriously wafting from the kitchen and met Massey to visit Mr. Wilkie, the apothecary. He’d sent a half dozen other men to question other merchants.
“That’s a shame about the cigars, Mr. Wilkie. A friend of mine said he bought his here some time ago. Perhaps you remember him? A Mr. Delacorte—”
“Ah, Delacorte!” The apothecary brightened. “Good fellow, that one. Sold me an impotency cure quite popular with my customers. I don’t suppose either of you need—”
“No,” Tristan and Massey said simultaneously.
“Oh, well, of course not,” Mr. Wilkie soothed. “But should there come a day . . .”
He trailed off at Tristan’s blackly incredulous expression.
“Mr. Wilkie, do you know if or when you’ll get more of these marvelous cigars in?”
“Well, I expected a few going on a month ago, in fact, but haven’t yet seen them. Good job I didn’t pay in advance, like I do with some of my orders. I would not be pleased.”
Interesting timing. A tiny pinprick of hope.
“I’ve an acquaintance, the Earl of Derring, who was able to get some, but I don’t know where.”
Wilkie’s expression showed nary a flicker of recognition. “He’s lucky then,” said Mr. Wilkie earnestly. “Perhaps he’d be inclined to share them with you.”
Massey pushed a pound note toward him.
“Would you be willing to tell me where you got them?”
Wilkie eyed it speculatively, then sighed, and pushed the pound note back. “Oh, now, gentlemen, what manner of businessman would I be if I revealed my supplier? I don’t know his name. Just a bloke, you see.”
He gazed evenly up at Tristan and Massey. His shop might be stocked with expensive ointments and unguents whose ingredients were murky and mysterious things in jars, but his conscience was apparently clear. After a fashion.
Hell’s teeth.
Massey waited for a cue from Tristan.
Tristan weighed barking something about being on the king’s business, because frankly this painstaking business was maddening. But that might sound an alarm among area merchants. Which might get back to the smugglers.
They would have to maintain their painstaking approach.
“Thank you, Mr. Wilkie. If you could recommend a local merchant who might have a few—”
“Oh, any of them might.” He waved an airy hand. “I don’t rightly know.”
The bell jangled on the door as a customer entered, as he and Massey took their leave.
He imagined tonight he would dream of needles and haystacks.
His mood was dark indeed by the time he made an appearance in the drawing room of The Grand Palace on the Thames that evening, and wasn’t improved when he saw, sitting on one of the settees, a strapping young man whose blond hair swooped over his brow à la Byron, posture alertly erect, arms crossed tightly across his chest and hands tucked into his armpits, as though he feared someone would reach in and pluck out his heart. He was jouncing one knee. His expression was decidedly bemused, uncertain, a trifle mutinous. The face of one who wasn’t certain whether or not he was dreaming and rather hoped he was.
The Misses Gardner were in the corner settee, naturally, taking to the shadows. They did not look up when he entered. They apparently found their laps endlessly fascinating. He stared at them, troubled by something he couldn’t quite articulate. Mrs. Breedlove was examining something Dot the maid appeared to be embroidering. She was wearing a puzzled frown.
His restless eye finally found Delilah sitting in a chair near a lamp, something soft, blue, and woolly unfurling from her knitting needles.
He went still. That image bypassed a place in his mind where cynicism lived. In fact, it thrust a soft pillow under the cynicism and bade it take its shoes off and have a nap.
“Captain Hardy! Good evening.” Delilah looked up, and in that unguarded instant he thought perhaps the expression on her face alone was worth the twelve pounds he’d paid to stay here.
Even if she was a nefarious smuggler, or aiding and abetting one.
It was such an inconvenient and yet quite educational realization that he, somehow resistantly, refused to cross the threshold into the room just yet.
“We’ve a new guest, as you can see.” She said this somewhat triumphantly. See, we have guests, Captain Hardy!
He glanced at the big young blond man. “Do you mean guest or captive?”
“Ha!” The young man brightened and his arms loosened a bit. He flicked a gaze over at Tristan, taking in the Hoby boots, the well-cut coat, the demeanor, making the kinds