the Gardner sisters as they attended to their mending, and Delilah had taken two sips when she said, offhandedly, softly, “I wonder if it’s just that Captain Hardy is a bit shy?”
Angelique turned her head slowly and regarded Delilah with incredulity.
“Words like shy do not apply to men like Captain Hardy any more than they apply to a rock or a trebuchet.”
“I see. And you know this because you’ve cataloged all the varieties of men, then?” Angelique’s tendency to adopt sagacity—about, well, nearly everything—was lately shaving curls off Delilah’s nerves. “Or have you been privy to a menu?”
Angelique was not rattleable. “I’m not saying that I have. I’m also not saying that I haven’t.”
“A field guide would be useful. Perhaps a set of books like those Mr. Miles Redmond wrote. If one showed up at the door, we could identify him straight away. I suppose we’d call him the Silent Bronze-Visaged Taciturnicus.”
Angelique’s face lit up with wicked amusement and a little surprise.
Why were people always surprised to find Delilah was amusing? Why did people persist in thinking she was sweetness and light?
“I think we ought to bring him out of his shell,” Delilah mused. “Perhaps with a little more encouragement he would be more charming.”
“He’s all shell, Delilah. As in musket shell. If you bring him out of his shell, you’ll get naught for your trouble but a little smoke and a powder burn.”
And yet Captain Hardy looked benign enough at the moment, legs outstretched at the little table, book propped in his hand, a scarcely touched glass of brandy next to it. The firelight was burnishing his already golden skin, and the tips of his eyelashes had gone a sort of apricot shade. They were thick, and she wondered, absurdly, what he’d looked like as a boy. They seemed a vulnerability in a man who was elegantly spare and whose presence was weighty.
“His thighs are very good,” Angelique allowed, as though assessing the lamb chops.
“I don’t suppose I’ve ever thought about a man solely in terms of body parts before.”
“Don’t start, darling. You haven’t the constitution.”
Delilah clamped down on her back teeth. The success or failure of The Grand Palace on the Thames hinged on its proprietresses maintaining a congenial relationship, but it seemed increasingly unfair that she was the one who so often had to bite her tongue.
“Mrs. Breedlove, would you care to be our third in Whist?” Mrs. Jane Gardner said very shyly.
“I’d love nothing more,” Angelique lied prettily and went to join them.
But once Angelique got started in Whist, Delilah had learned, she was a ruthless, gleeful player. And this was why, Delilah was certain, Angelique would never have truly filled her pockets with rocks and waded into the Thames even if Delilah hadn’t come along, and this was why, no matter what, their endeavor would be a success. Neither one of them liked to lose.
The room, if not precisely unified in social activities, was pleasant and easy and she exhaled a little. Surely they could make this a success.
Perhaps it was the sherry.
Or Angelique’s condescension. She laid her knitting aside and picked up her glass of sherry and made her way across the carpet to the captain, feeling like a sailor navigating to the Rock of Gibraltar.
Chapter Thirteen
“Please don’t get up, Captain. I’ve just come to see if everything is to your liking.”
“ ‘Everything’ seldom is. But this evening and my accommodations are tolerable. Won’t you please sit down?”
Delilah pulled out a chair and settled in across from him.
“Tolerable,” she repeated thoughtfully, as if rolling a fine cognac about in her mouth. “I don’t suppose you’re familiar with the word hyperbole, Captain? It doesn’t always go amiss.”
He smiled faintly. “The very fact that a word like hyperbole is even necessary is what is wrong with the world.”
She smiled. “What an unusual mind you have, Captain Hardy.”
“I expect it’s quite an ordinary mind, perhaps extraordinarily focused.”
“On things like war, rather than, for instance, musicales.”
“I do not focus on war when I’m not fighting a battle,” he explained with a certain maddening condescending patience.
And then he was silent.
And waited for her to say something.
“What do you focus on?” she tried.
“At present, I am struggling to focus on page six of Robinson Crusoe.”
“I’ve always wondered what it would be like.”
“Women wouldn’t understand or be able to endure the physical rigors of combat, Lady Derring. I see no point in describing them to you.”
“Yes. While having a baby is as easy as a game of Whist.”
This made him go