“Captain Hardy... while I am far from unmoved...”
He waited. No prompts, no interruptions, no changes in topic. He waited. As he always did.
And despite the demands of his presence and personality, this waiting felt luxurious. He allowed her space in which to be herself. He did not assume that what she had to say could possibly have no merit, because she was a woman.
He did glance down at her hands. Which were knitted together.
He noticed things, Captain Hardy did.
She put a stop to the knitting.
“I have never before taken a lover,” she said in a low voice. “And in your presence... reservations about that begin to seem frivolous.”
“Excellent.”
The little smile and the timbre of his voice and the way his skin took the firelight made it seem absurd that his long-fingered hands were resting against his ritualistic brandy instead of, perhaps, her breasts.
“But away from you... when I watch my ceiling at night... and perhaps it’s the way I was raised, which seems to have more of a hold over me than I anticipated... I begin to wonder at the difference between a woman who takes a lover she knows scarcely a thing about... and a woman who works in a brothel earning her living from men she knows nothing about.”
He went utterly still, his face stunned blank.
She saw the words sink in as he slowly leaned back in his chair.
His expression settled in and became troubled.
He, who so excelled at inscrutability.
Well. It seemed she possessed the power to shock, too.
“And while I understand I currently have a choice about such... such things... whereas other women may not... and I will never judge such a thing again... I confess it troubles me a little.”
He rubbed his brow. It occurred to her that she’d never seen him indulge in a fidget. Unlike Delacorte, who probably didn’t realize it, but fingered one of the silver buttons on his waistcoat when he had a good hand in Whist, or Mr. Farraday, who wasallfidgets. Women could not be said to be fidgeting when their hands were nearly always busy with work.
“Clearly the solution lies in not watching your ceiling at night.”
She smiled. “And they say you’re not amusing.”
“They say so many things about me.”
His expression remained abstracted, however.
Odd to think that he might not have the answers to everything.
And then he took a sip of brandy.
“Goodevening, friends.” Farraday strode into the drawing room, bringing the scent of rain and tar and cigar smoke with him. He’d already whipped off his gloves and was making straight for the fire as though he’d lived there all his life and was perfectly at home. Then again, in all likelihood, he felt at home in the world, at home anywhere, really, because the world had been kind to him.
“Devil of an evening!” he declared. “Delacorte, break out the chessboard, I know precisely how to beat—AHHHHHHHH!”
It was a cry of horror worthy of any musicale. And it was quite genuine.
He’d fixed his eyes upon Lucinda Bevan-Clark.
“Andrew!” she gasped with a hand clapped to her clavicle.
She leaped to her feet and her head pivoted wildly to and fro. She darted a few feet to the left and a few feet to the right and then came to a stop right where she’d begun, in front of the settee.
Her maid, Miss Wright, sighed and rolled her eyes.
