It was a hilarious summary and indictment of his gender.
“I suppose that’s true. One would think you’d get customers from the boardinghouse next door, however.”
She hesitated.
“One would think,” she said.
Cagily, he thought. And, oddly, a little wistfully.
“Itisa boardinghouse, isn’t it?” He furrowed his brow innocently. “It isn’t immediately apparent from its name.”
One of the men at the table looked over at him alertly. “Oh, ye dinna want to go in there, guv.”
“Oh. Why is that?”
“It’s just the word out on the street, like. To keep clear of The Palace of Rogues.” He waved an arm, indicating the street, apparently. “Not a place you want to go into.”
“It’s called The Grand Palace on the Thames,” the barmaid said stoutly, and Captain Hardy said somewhat reflexively. After all, he’d been told the name three times, and he was not a slow learner.
One of the men at the tables snorted. “A sheep doesna change its spots.”
So: drunk, then, judging by that scrambled metaphor.
“Any particular reason I ought to avoid it?” he asked them. “How long has it been open?”
“Just heard it said, is all. You can ask nearly anyone.” He swept an arm vaguely to indicate everyone, Tristan supposed. “Was a brothel nigh on a few decades ago, or so I’ve heard. Could be anything now, could it not? They hung that sign a fortnight ago, is all I know.”
“But it seems... benign.”
Tristan thought about the leaping fire, the lemon and linseed oil, a face illuminated with a pure and unguarded pleasure. All at once he found he didn’t want to drink his ale. He felt oddly as though he’d already drunk something pleasant and a little intoxicating, and he wanted the feeling to linger.
“It’s alovelyplace,” Fran the barmaid insisted. “Was a right disaster before. Boarded up for years. Hasn’t been anything at all for over a decade, and I ought to know.”
“Looks deceive, guv,” the man who’d mixed his metaphors about sheep and spots said morosely.
“I suppose they sometimes do.”
Tristan knew better than to instigate a frivolous debate here at the docks.
But when he thought of the maid singing about her duties, he thought there was a person who was exactly who she was. He could not imagine her deceiving anyone. He slapped that thought dead as if it was a mosquito out for blood. He moved through life in a constant state of objective suspicion, of necessity.
“A friend of mine mentioned this pub, Frances,” he called to her. “Said it had a certain quiet charm.”
Her face lit up and he was glad he’d embellished his lie a little. “A friend of yours, guv?”
“Happened into it by accident. Derring.”
“The... Earl of Derring?”
He would have called her expressionstudied neutrality.He had the sense that she was judging him ever so slightly for calling the earl his friend.
“Rest his soul,” he said somberly.
“Rest his soul,” she echoed rotely.
“Did he introduce himself to you?”
She looked caught.
