alone, sitting on the settee, fetching in a gray morning gown with the light behind her.
“Good day, Mrs. Breedlove. Tolerable weather we’re having.”
She was as different from Lady Derring as diamonds from daisies. They were both beautiful women in their ways, shaped, he suspected, by entirely different circumstances.
“I’ve a little tea left in the pot, Captain Hardy, if you’d like it before you leave. I thought I’d drink it quietly before we feed the family, as it were.”
All at once he was certain Mrs. Breedlove had something she wished to speak to him about. It was also an opportunity to ask a few pressing questions of his own.
“That’s a kind offer. Thank you.”
He sat in the chair opposite her. “You and Lady Derring have created such a comfortable, welcoming place here. How did the two of you come to meet?”
“I was her husband’s mistress.”
Whatever he’d been expecting—circumspection? A delicate use of euphemism?—it wasn’t that. He had the sense that she’d intended to shock him. Or to discover whether he was, in fact, shocked.
“You don’t say,” he said neutrally.
Which made her smile. “We discovered, awkwardly and quite accidentally, that Derring had left the two of us penniless. We found we had a good deal in common in addition to the feckless Earl of Derring. The only thing Delilah had left was this building, and she was kind enough to include me in her mad scheme. We rub along together quite well.”
“Lady Derring is kind. As are you,” he added, gallantly. Though he was less certain such a gentle word applied to Angelique.
She didn’t thank him. Angelique merely tipped her head. “You and I are very alike, I think, Captain Hardy.”
“Ah. Does your beard begin to darken at about five o’clock, too?”
She smiled politely. “Nothing makes a dent. Not anymore. But that’s all to the good, isn’t it?”
Tristan stared at her, instantly cautious.
“I find it so,” he said shortly.
“I’ve concluded people are more or less the same beneath the surface. Saints, sinners, the differences are a matter of semantics and rather superficial.”
“Then we are agreed. I can’t help but suspect, Mrs. Breedlove, that you are taking the long way round to make a point. And in this approach, we differ. Hence the following direct question: What are you getting at?”
“When you are done with her, whatever your reasons, she will be in smithereens. And you won’t even sport a nick.”
For a moment he didn’t breathe.
Tristan betrayed nothing of what he was thinking, which was, in fact, that she may be right.
And yet.
Mrs. Breedlove’s eyes were hazel, which seemed a much too-soft, nearly dreamy color for a woman like her to have. There wasn’t a thing soft or dreamy about Mrs. Breedlove, at least not anymore.
Yes, they were alike.
He wondered about the first man to compliment her eyes, for surely someone had been the first. He was sincerely sorry if life had been unkind to her; doubtless, to wind up as Derring’s mistress, things had not gone the way she would have preferred. He had the sense that one took refuge from life in The Grand Palace on the Thames.
“Mrs. Breedlove, do you think I’m a man of whim?”
“No. Hence my concern. I suspect you are quite purposeful. But I’m not quite certain of your purpose here, at The Grand Palace on the Thames.”
“Why, for the accommodations, of course. And for the pleasure of being required to sit reading comfortably in your sitting room while the Gardner sisters stare at me.”
“Then I shall be clear. On the off chance a scrap of heart remains in the iron confines of your chest, perhaps you ought to leave her alone.”
He took a sip of his tea, now cold, and a little too strong.
Had he been obvious? This seemed inconceivable.
Or had Delilah—?
“No, she hasn’t said a word,” Mrs. Breedlove said, in answer to his unspoken question.
He wasn’t going to obfuscate. He would not admit a thing. Nor would he deny.
He merely studied her.
“I think the very fact of your advice suggests you’ve not only been dented, Mrs. Breedlove. I believe you actually care very much about her.”
For a fleeting instant her cool features registered surprise and vulnerability. She did not like being sassed out.
He thought perhaps she was reassessing him.
He almost smiled. Clearly she thought astute men were anomalies.
Perhaps they were.
“Or I’m looking out for the best interests of all of us, and I’ve grown weary of cleaning this drafty box and the nature of smithereens is that one must pick them out of the carpet