He’d been on their trail even before then, however. She supposed it wasn’t so much arrogance as accurate reporting when he’d said he was indomitable.
She and Angelique had handed over to Captain Hardy for inspection the token left with them by Mr. X. But as it was the very thing that prevented the smugglers from getting into the room, it was deemed irrelevant to the investigation at hand, until they learned otherwise. Angelique kept it in her night table drawer.
One day all of this would probably seem blackly funny. Probably. After a fashion.
Apart from where Tristan had essentially used her to get the information he needed.
“It seems we’re going to need to refine our interview process,” Angelique said. “Perhaps include a discussion of current sleeve designs.”
She was surprisingly sanguine about it all. Then again, Angelique’s life had already been quite eventful.
The admiring eyes of the soldiers had mellowed her mood somewhat, too. One’s heart might rattle about like broken china, but Delilah’s hope was like that one ember remaining in a fireplace . . .
The one that could fly up the chimney and set the roof on fire and burn the whole thing down.
Hope, like love, like romance, was a lie, Delilah had decided.
While his men ferried out cigars and searched the Gardner sisters’ room, Tristan dashed off a message to the king, sealed it, and carried it downstairs. He would have one of his men deliver it straight there.
He paused a moment in the foyer and remembered the moment he’d first stood there, looking up at a singing woman. The day was stubbornly gray, but the light through the windows managed to pick out a rainbow or two from the crystals.
“Thank you, Captain Hardy.”
He gave a start.
Delilah was alone in the little reception room. He understood clearly now that he’d always been able to feel her when she was in a room. That something in him had lightened when she was near.
But now she seemed nearly crumpled in on herself. She was so still, so lightless, she might as well have been a puppet tossed there.
Her eyes were bitter. Two dark bruises in her face.
And any illusions he might have had about it all being all right in the end dissolved.
He drew in a breath that burned, and a chill raced down his arms. This, then, was what doom felt like. He realized all at once that he was, in truth, frightened, in a way he hadn’t been since he was perhaps ten years old. It was an entirely new sensation. Here, at the end of his career, at the moment of one of his greatest triumphs, he sensed he was losing something.
How had he, in the process of being who he was, of doing his duty, never anticipated he might murder himself somehow?
It seemed he did not, in fact, know everything.
He walked toward her slowly.
He sat down across from her on the settee.
Neither said a word for a moment.
“Congratulations, Captain Hardy,” she said finally.
“Thank you.”
That made her quirk her mouth bitterly.
Neither spoke for a moment.
“I imagine you think I’m ridiculous. Two men in dresses. Smugglers. And I didn’t . . . even . . . suspect. You must think I’m the veriest fool.”
“Never.” His voice was quiet. Hoarse. “You’re just naturally kind, Delilah. You want to see the best in people. It’s . . . one of the loveliest things about you. You couldn’t have predicted potentially murderous smugglers wearing dresses would move in. Nobody could.”
He could not now see how it might have been different, unless he’d never touched her at all. That would have been the honorable thing. And yet even now it seemed as though it would be easier to lasso the moon and pull it down from the sky than to do that.
But if she wanted the moon, he would certainly try to get it for her.
“Well.” She stirred herself and sat bolt upright and with a sort of macabre, artificial brightness, and brought her hands together in a little clasp. “Even so, I feel a right fool. I thought I was doing so well, you see, here at The Grand Palace on the Thames. That our guests might become a little family. That they were precisely what they said they were despite appearances. I see now that it’s a ridiculous dream.”
“It’s not ridiculous,” he said shortly.
“But you knew what they were? The Gardners?”
“I knew fairly quickly something was a bit off. But I could not say precisely what.”
She gave a soft laugh again. “Imagine me not knowing what you were after this entire time, Captain Hardy. I suppose it was always right there for me to see. But I was blinded by the glory of you”—she waved a hand—“and flattered, and then of course, seduced. How fortunate that you should find a naive fool like me here at The Grand Palace on the Thames, because you were able to use it to your advantage.”
Bloody hell.
“I see now, when I think about it, how cleverly you asked your questions. Well done. Did you laugh at me?”
He was suffering. “Delilah . . . no. I would nev—”
“You thought perhaps I might be a smuggler, didn’t you?”
He was silent. There was no safety here. Not in the truth, and not in attempting to skirt the truth. She would know.
“Delilah. I could not be sure,” he said as evenly as he could. “Surely you can see that. I cannot afford to make assumptions in the work that I do. If I do, people could die. An entire family died because of the Blue Rock gang. And if they continued to fail to get into that room, I’m fairly certain they would have, of desperation, resorted to violence. They didn’t count on how dedicated you were to your guests, whether or not they were actually present. Or the captain of the blockade moving into the boardinghouse and staying.”
He could not apologize, and he would not apologize, for doing what he’d needed to do. He should not feel shame. But he did; there it was. He couldn’t order it away. He could not have known that here, in this boardinghouse near the docks, that the best things about him—his strength and sense of duty and his courage and his belief in justice, the only things he’d known to be true in life, the very things that had given his life meaning—could be the things that broke his own heart.
And the heart of a woman he loved.
A woman who had been a means to an end for people her entire life.
“My work . . . is necessary and difficult and dangerous. It saves lives and I’ll get justice for the ones lost.”
Surely she was intelligent enough to realize this.
She gave a short, bitter, wondering laugh. Then covered her mouth with her hand. And shook her head dazedly.
“By any means necessary, right, Captain Hardy?”
She continued the inspection of his face, as though she ought to have seen him as not a hero, but an agent of hurt and destruction, just as she ought to have seen the Gardner sisters for what they were.
He could very nearly taste her pain. It was in the air, metallic, like a storm. Or like blood in his mouth.
And now he had gone and done away with the last of her innocence and trust.
“I cannot adequately convey how sorry I am that you are hurt,” he said carefully, his voice low, hoarse now. “It was never my intent, and if I could have saved you from that, I would have.”
This just won him a look of scorn.
He felt he earned the right not to be afraid. Nothing had prepared him for the fact that love could be stealthier, and more treacherous, than a smuggler.
“I did enjoy our moments together, Captain Hardy, and for that I thank you. And you are indeed a hero, for which I also thank you. I suppose you rather saved me and Angelique from ourselves. I consider this a valuable lesson learned. But . . .”
She stood abruptly. She looked down into his eyes.
“. . . it’s just as well that I don’t love you.”
His lungs stopped. As surely as if she’d driven a knife in.
His heart ceased to beat.
&nb
sp; She watched him for one second longer, perhaps to make certain that blow had indeed killed, for she would read it in his eyes.
She walked past him and made her way up the stairs.
Tristan was motionless. He wasn’t certain he was yet breathing. But his eyes never left her, as if he could will her back with the sheer force of his personality.
She didn’t return, of course. Her will was as strong as his.
After some time—he was uncertain how much—he stood, slowly. Disoriented, as if he’d awakened from a dream to find himself alone in a room that now was precisely the same and yet entirely different. He’d forgotten he was holding, in his hand, a letter to the king.
Finally he moved, slowly, out of the reception room, and paused to stand in the middle of that black-and-white-checked foyer.
Which was when he saw that his belongings were neatly packed and sitting next to the door.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Delilah made it all the way to the top of the stairs, to their little drawing room, where Angelique was mending a pillow that Mr. Delacorte had somehow managed to tear.
If snores could rend fabric, then Mr. Delacorte’s room would soon be in tatters.
Delilah paused in the doorway.
Angelique looked up into her face, then laid her mending aside immediately.
Delilah took two steps, sank to the floor, and laid her head against Angelique’s knees.
She didn’t think she could cry. There was a huge hot, raw place in the center of her being that hurt savagely each time she took a breath. As though Tristan had been crudely excised from her soul. All of her tears had been scorched away.
Angelique, to her credit, did not say I told you so. Everything she knew about Delilah and Captain Hardy was only surmise, anyway. But Delilah was hardly an enigma, bless her heart, and unfortunately, to Angelique, men weren’t enigmas, either.
But Angelique had seen Captain Hardy’s face as he went downstairs.
It wasn’t the face of a man whose heart was filled only with triumph and pride and plans to set sail. He’d understood what he’d done to Delilah. Even if he would not have done anything differently.
And he’d known the cost.
And Angelique’s heart ached for the fools who break their own hearts because they simply can’t help themselves.
And for herself, who still had a heart to break, apparently, because it ached right now for Delilah, who had learned a terrible lesson. It was so very difficult to save people from themselves. Delilah might not have tears at the moment, but Angelique did. Her eyes burned with them now.
She said not a word.
She hesitated.
Then she stroked Delilah’s hair, awkwardly, gently, as though Delilah were Gordon, the cat.
“I ought to have listened to you,” Delilah said after a moment. Her voice muffled, as though speaking through layers and layers of misery.
“Oh, now. How dull would things be if you ever listened to me?”
But Delilah felt too stunned and scoured to smile. She understood now that the numbness she’d felt in the wake of Derring’s death was merely shock.
This felt more like a death.
And she had just lied to Captain Hardy because she’d wanted to hurt him, and oh, she knew she had. In the heart or the pride, she would never be certain. But she had.
That delicious moment of anesthetizing revenge was fleeting, however.
And now she loathed herself for hurting him as much as she had fiercely loved him.
Loved. She would need to get accustomed to speaking of him in the past tense.
And then she thought of Angelique, who’d had her heart broken and abused more than once. She understood now and ached terribly for her.
“How could you bear it?” she asked Angelique.
Angelique thought about this. “I think there is a difference between a good man who has inadvertently done harm, and a man who seems good, but who takes what he wants because he can, and cares not for the consequences.”
But Delilah wasn’t ready to hear this, either.
And so Delilah and Angelique and Dot and Helga and Gordon and the maids were left alone with a disconsolate Mr. Delacorte, who saw no reason to ever leave such a comforting, welcoming place as The Grand Palace on the Thames. He missed Captain Hardy. He’d grown quite fond of him, perhaps the way one does of a grumpy old pet.
But he still sat in the drawing room at night, because those indeed were the rules. He’d begun to teach Dot how to play chess, which was perhaps the challenge of a lifetime, for anyone.
Mr. Farraday and Miss Bevan-Clark, having had the adventure of a lifetime and having seen themselves and each other in an entirely different light, left a letter saying they’d eloped to Gretna Green and had taken Miss Wright with them. But that they would be back to visit soon.
Delilah had been badly knocked off her bearings. It was as though she needed to relearn how to do ordinary things, like walking and breathing and speaking. She hadn’t known how much joy and hope had altered gravity, the texture of the air, the flavor of foods, her very skin, the things she craved—like his touch. She half wished she could grow a cocoon and retire in there for a bit, not feel her feelings at all while she was transformed into something new and beautiful with no memory of the earlier pain. Everyone understood she was walking wounded, and were very solicitous. But they needed her, too. They counted on her.
And in the wake of scandal, no one knocked at the door of The Grand Palace on the Thames. Certainly no one with roguish tendencies would be tempted to show up at a boardinghouse which had recently, publicly, disgorged a dozen some odd, grim-faced, triumphant soldiers hauling two struggling men wearing dresses.
Nor would any law-abiding citizens knock on the door, for that matter, knowing that smugglers had just been extricated from such a place. If a place was comfortable for smugglers, who else might it be harboring, no matter how shiny the new sign, or how kind the proprietresses?
They’d turned away a few hopefuls looking for the Vicar’s Hobby, however.
And not even the mysterious tenant of the room on the first floor with the tunnel appeared. Delilah couldn’t decide if he was a hero or villain. If not for him, the Gardner sisters (a John Garr and a Lee Rufkin, they were told) might have gotten away so easily. Then again, perhaps she would have let Captain Hardy into the room sooner, and perhaps he would have found that tunnel, and . . . perhaps they would never have made love at all.
Perhaps perhaps perhaps.
They could survive such a lull in business for a fortnight or so. They could make their usual adjustments: No fires in the downstairs rooms. No beef for dinner. Tallow candles in the sconces.
Perhaps they could survive it even a bit longer than a fortnight.
But when she was out doing the marketing with Helga, Delilah could have sworn she’d seen the Duchess of Brexford’s crest on a carriage, out of the corner of her eye.
Here at the docks.
Three different times.
Like a vulture circling, she wanted to steal Helga away again from The Grand Palace on the Thames.
And vultures only circle things that are dead or about to die.
“Well, that was work well done, sir. It’s right proud I am to be part of it, and to serve under you.”
They sat across from each other at the Stevens Hotel, breakfast devoured in front of Massey, untouched in front of Tristan.
Massey had found it futile, over the past week, to talk to Captain Hardy.
It was as though the captain couldn’t hear a thing.
Massey was worried. They were due to go in person to speak to the king very shortly, something he couldn’t wait to tell his grandchildren about, once he and Emily had a slew of children who then had a slew of children. And the king had asked what sort of award Captain Hardy wanted.
All Massey really wanted to do was go home and marry Emily.
“Will you come to our wedding, sir?”
“Yes, Massey.
I would be honored.” Captain Hardy pushed at the eggs with his fork.
“Will you stand up with me?”
“Certainly. Of course. I would be honored.”
Massey, who’d actually been nervous about asking that question, quietly exulted and forgave himself for taking advantage of the captain’s obvious distraction, or, more specifically, misery.
Another silence fell.
“Do you regret the end of the excitement, sir?”
“No.”
They’d rooted out the entire Blue Rock gang. It was the triumph of his career. Of a lifetime, really.
And yet Tristan felt as hollow as a bell.
“After this, no one is going to want to let a room in the Palace of Rog—”
“It’s called The Grand Palace on the Thames, Massey.”
“Yes, sir.”
But this was what ate at Tristan the most. He was going to leave soon, set sail across the world in his lovely new ship. After Massey’s wedding, of course. But how would Delilah survive if no one came to stay at her boardinghouse? She didn’t love him. He knew her to be truthful, and surely she’d meant it.
On the way to being a hero, he’d inadvertently crushed her dream.
“Sir . . .”
Tristan looked up at Massey.
“Sir, you ought to go and tell her how you feel.”
A long, long silence while Tristan glared at Massey.
Then he released a sigh. He swiped his hands down his face.
“She hates me, Massey. She’s stubborn. It wouldn’t matter a damn what I said, even if I could get in the door.”
“Then maybe you ought to show her instead.”
Tristan went still.
And then he stared at his lieutenant, a fierce hope and inspiration dawning. “Thank you, Massey.”
It was so heartfelt Massey blushed.
“No need to thank me, sir. Just go get your sweetheart.”
“Lady Derring. Mrs. Breedlove.”
Delilah and Angelique were in the drawing room at the top of the house, and Dot’s constrained delivery made them both look up sharply.
“Dot . . . what’s the matter? Dot, my dear, are you ill? Sit down at once.”
Lady Derring Takes a Lover Page 27
