Lady Derring Takes a Lover - Julie Anne Long Page 0,51

I’m intrigued and impressed by how you’ve managed to engage such a fine cook and such committed servants and keep the rooms so comfortable if you’ve experienced an adjustment, shall we say, in means. Wax instead of tallow candles in the sconces, crystal at the table. It must be some manner of sorcery.”

She went still. Their eyes met across the little lamp.

Then she leaned forward confidingly. “Captain Hardy . . .” She’d lowered her voice to a hush. With her came the faint scent of flowers, no doubt released by the warmth of her body, perhaps thanks to his presence. Lady Derring, he imagined saying for the pleasure of seeing her blush, I have admired your lovely body since you were on the ladder, reaching up to places that were too difficult for you to reach.

“Yes?” He matched her confiding tone.

And thought: perhaps he would know for certain in moments whether she was a smuggler. But some errant impulse in him wanted this moment to last forever, this moment where he could see and feel and be near her and not know such a thing.

“Perhaps because you are not, strictly speaking, a gentleman, Captain Hardy, you’re unaware that it’s a bit gauche to ask your hostess questions about such matters.”

He sat back again a little too abruptly.

She continued gazing at him. He could have sworn he’d seen a glint of triumph? Challenge? Maybe even a little sympathy in her eyes. Or was that pity? For what? he wondered. Not his station. For some reason he was certain that was not the case.

In all likelihood it was pity for the male arrogance that made him assume she was just that simple.

“Ah. I see. Well, thank you for the enlightenment, Lady Derring.”

“My pleasure. I believe Mr. Delacorte and perhaps Mr. Farraday would be pleased to have your company in the smoking parlor. Mrs. Breedlove is prepared to offer you a cigar. She’s presiding over the humidor at present.”

“As Mr. Delacorte silently expresses himself gastrointestinally after the rich meals prepared by your clearly excellent cook, I am disinclined to be enclosed with him in a small room ever again.”

She took this in with the slightest of brow furrow and a little head tilt. As if he were a peculiar phenomenon, rather than a boor.

“Well, cigar smoke ought to disguise that nicely, Captain Hardy. Something tells me hot air is a familiar environment for you.”

She rose, graceful as a flower blooming, and took herself off, having just given him a lesson in what it was to be a lady.

He watched her walk all the way across the room because, for some reason, it was difficult not to and he could see no reason to deprive himself of that pleasure.

“Gauche?” he repeated softly to himself. After a moment. Still watching her.

He realized he was smiling.

He put a stop to that right away.

She sat down next to Angelique, who had returned to her sewing when the Gardner sisters had retired for the evening, having completed their stint in the parlor.

“Well, did it work? Did Captain Hardy emerge from his shell like a vulnerable, fluffy baby chicken?”

Delilah was reeling as if she’d run headlong into a wall.

“I mentioned childbirth,” she said dazedly. “Quite irritably. And I don’t quite remember why.”

Angelique’s mouth dropped open. Then closed. “Well, that ought to get him to erect a stone fortification around his shell. Not to mention a moat.”

“And then he mentioned flatulence.”

This stunned Angelique into silence.

“Not his own,” Delilah added.

As if this was somehow better.

“. . . yours?” Angelique ventured, in hushed horror.

“No. Delacorte’s.”

“Oh. Yes. Well. I can see that.”

Delilah looked over at Captain Hardy now with a sort of shaken, awestruck resentment, as if he were an unseen rock her ship had foundered on.

He sipped his brandy.

He turned a page of his book.

He wasn’t looking her way.

“Perhaps we shouldn’t let you drink more than a sip or two of sherry in the evening,” Angelique said finally.

“I think that would be wisest,” Delilah agreed, somewhat glumly.

She reached for her embroidery.

She held it in her lap for a moment, staring at it as if it were a crystal ball.

“It just that he’s so very irritating,” she said rather vehemently, in a low voice. “One wants to combat his certainty.”

“You do. I don’t. I know better. And by irritating I think you mean ‘desirable in a frightening way.’ ”

“Nonsense.”

It was exactly what she meant.

She rather resented that Angelique knew what she meant better than she did.

But then Angelique apparently knew the costs, too,