It was very nearly everything she’d ever wanted.
She clasped her hands beneath her chin in something like entreaty.
Dot was lit up with reflected zeal and hope.
Angelique had gone very still. Her hazel eyes were abstracted as if she were calculating something on an internal abacus.
And hope was a bit like that pallid light forcing its way through the chinks in the shutters. It would find a way, given the slightest bit of an opening.
“But you own the building, Delilah. Which puts me in a position I never want to be in again—beholden to someone. How would we make my participation official?”
It was the perfect sort of shrewd question that convinced Delilah she was absolutely right to put this proposition to her.
“Presumably you know where to sell the jewels we own outright. We’ll pool our funds and draw up papers.”
And after a moment, during which Delilah held her breath, Angelique gave a slow nod, as if Delilah the pupil had just given a correct answer.
“Idoknow where to sell them, as it so happens. And to find people willing to do the dirtiest of the heavy work for reasonable pay.”
“Splendid! And as for the location, well, we will make this place so appealing that people will go well out of their way to stay here, and won’t want to leave. And we’ll call it something very enigmatic and exclusive, like... like...” Delilah waved one hand like a sorceress with a wand. “The Grand Palace on the Thames!”
“Ohhhhhhhhh, Lady Derring...” Dot breathed. “That’s tray magnefeek.”
Angelique gave a little snort. But her posture suggested that some sort of internal knot had finally loosened.
“Can you picture it?” Delilah demanded on nearly a whisper.
“Icanpicture it,” Angelique conceded. “And it’s not onlynotmad, we might never have to be at the mercy of another man again.”
“Preciselymy thought.” Delilah took a breath. “Shall we shake hands on it?” Her voice was shaking.
Angelique drew in a long, long breath.
And then with a certain ironic flair, extended the hand Delilah had lately stopped from taking that last sip of sherry.
They shook briskly.
“To The Grand Palace on the Thames!”
“To The Grand Palace on the Thames!” Dot and Angelique echoed.
And they all raised their lanterns and toasted each other with light.
Chapter Six
Six weeks later...
The facade of Number 11 Lovell Street had been washed, and recently. This was either optimism or folly; Tristan knew it would be coated in a fine layer of coal smut apace, like everything and everyone else in London, particularly here by the docks.
Still, this clean white box of a building seemed to him as improbable as Avalon emerging from the mists. Seldom did dens of iniquity call attention to themselves thusly, but iniquity came in many disguises, he knew.
Ironically, it was a fifteen-minute brisk walk from where theZephyrwas docked.
He was here because bloody Tavistock had finally returned from his holiday and had revealed—after skillful, charming yet vaguely threatening, coercion—four fascinating things: Derring had indeed died in great mounds of debt; he’d kept a mistress; he’d owned one building outright; and Tavistock had given the Countess of Derring keys to it. Weeks ago.
Just when Tristan had begun to believe she’d vanished into thin air.
In the intervening weeks, he’d learned the St. James townhouse they’d lately occupied had been vacated and emptied of belongings. Neither Derring’s acquaintances nor his heir—they had traveled to the countryside to meet the supercilious new earl, who didn’t even pretend to be grieving—had an inkling about where she’d gotten to. Or they were unwilling to tell him. As for her character, words likesweet, anddevoted, andpretty thingwere employed.
