this.
“They hadn’t a notion about what to do. They retired for the evening the moment the music stopped. I wonder if they know who I am.”
“They must be getting desperate about now, if so, Captain Hardy.”
“That’s my concern as well. And furthermore . . . think about it, Massey. People come and go from the stables all the time with carts and carriages. Perfect way to distribute contraband. No one would give it a thought. Do you remember the gang in Kent?”
“Tunnels?” Massey said, after a moment of mulling.
“Tunnels,” Tristan confirmed.
Massey gave a low whistle. “You don’t think . . .”
“I don’t know. But I want every man to ask around, save the ones watching The Grand Palace. Visit again the merchants we spoke to. Any locals you see smoking.”
“Done, sir,” Massey said.
“Something still troubles me about that room on the low floor, however. I think Margaret Gardner was trying to get into it the night I saw her in the hallway. But she—or he—has failed all this time, too.”
They sat in silence apart from chewing and the noise of the pub around them, men, smoking and spilling and sweating. Tristan yearned for a bath. He felt like the detritus of this hunt for smugglers—the smoking, the spilling, the sweating of all the men in pubs like this one—was beginning to settle on his skin.
Come to me, he’d begged. Would she? The very thought of his hands against her skin made his entire being contract with a barbed longing.
A few moments later, he said, “Massey?”
“Yes, sir?”
“How did you, er, know?”
Massey’s brow furrowed. “Know, sir?”
Tristan considered saying “never mind,” but it would be unlike him to back down from something he’d started. “About . . . Emily.”
Massey stared at him, wonderingly, eyebrows diving.
And then something in Tristan’s expression, in his demeanor, made it clear.
“Ah! Know. Well. That I loved her?”
Tristan held very still. Didn’t Massey know the word love belonged in a class with words like grenade or typhoon? It was not to be bandied about lightly.
“I knew straight away, somehow,” he said. “She was always on my mind, like. At first. And then one day we were at a house party and after dinner she had a little sauce on her cheek and she didn’t know it and . . . I just knew that I loved her. Takes you that way sometimes, doesn’t it?” Massey said mistily.
Tristan didn’t know.
The “straight away” part. He wasn’t certain whether he was relieved or more unnerved than before.
Delilah had spent the morning in a fever of sensual indecision. She’d finished chores and gone over the books with Angelique and was grateful for the ceaseless activity.
Given that they now had six (six!) guests to feed, as well as themselves, all hands were needed in the kitchen. Delilah reported to the kitchen late in the afternoon to do her share of potato peeling. Helga had gotten some good fresh fish and some shaffling and she was planning to make a hearty chowder, with bread and cheese and a tart for dessert. Delilah’s stomach quite rumbled thinking of it.
She took up a potato and was just about to shave a curl off it when a scullery maid crashed into her with a bucket, running toward Dot, who appeared to be directing this enterprise. She tipped boiling water into it.
“Begging your pardon, Lady Derring! So sorry!” the maid yelped.
“No worries, my dear. Dot, what’s going on? Why all the scurrying about?”
“We’re preparing a bath, Lady Derring!” Dot made it sound like a gleeful celebration, not the hard work it indeed was. They were fortunate enough to have their own well, a miracle indeed, but heating enough water for even a hip bath was no small undertaking.
But this was the first time any guest had called for such a thing. Oddly, it felt a bit like a baptism for The Grand Palace on the Thames.
“How lovely! Who rang for the bath?”
“Captain Hardy. Paid us in good coin for it, too.”
Delilah hoped no one noticed when she abruptly stopped peeling her potato.
And then merely stared at it, dreamily, for a few moments.
Then, much more slowly, a little languidly, resumed peeling it, as though the air had become softly molten, a little thicker, like a blancmange, perhaps.
She got that potato done.
And then the next.
And then she chopped them. Slowly. Very carefully.
And then the next.
And when she was certain the bath had gotten up the stairs to Captain Hardy, she laid down the knife and breathed a moment.
The words were out