“I understand.” He made a note to tell Massey to pay a visit to that apothecary.
“So what else have you smoked, Delacorte?”
“Oh, opium, just the once, just to see. I like my head clear, you see. All manner of herbs. As one does in my line of business. Testing the wares. I smoke nothing with any regularity, mind you, and thank goodness for that. Weakens the mind. And other things, too, if you take my meaning!” He winked heartily.
“I take it.” At no point in the history of the world would someone be unable to take Delacorte’s meaning.
“What manner of businessareyou in, Delacorte?”
“I sell bits and medicinal bobs of herbs and treatments imported from all over the world to apothecaries and surgeons. Crushed test—er, parts of various exotic animals, some very potent herbs. Was me own idea, you see. Took a treatment in China once, worked a charm!”
It was just inside of legal, barely, Delacorte’s profession, but doctors and surgeons, as far as Tristan was concerned, often operated on a wing and a prayer half the time, anyhow, and he knew from experience that some Chinese herbs and the like were quite effective in healing or easing pain.
“Make a good living?”
Men could ask this sort of thing of other men, casually, over cigars.
“Oh, fair bit. Fair bit. I can afford the rates here at The Grand Palace on the Thames, and so far I believe I’ve made a good choice. The company is fine,” he said gallantly.
“I suppose it’s fortunate there’s no cursing jar in this particular room.”
“Ha ha oh ho, thejar!” He gave Tristan a friendly whump on the back and Tristan clamped his top and bottom molars together to keep from reflexively clipping Delacorte about the ears. “You see, Hardy, I don’t mind a rule or two. Keeps a man civilized, wouldn’t you say? They know we’re all heathens at heart, even Brummell, I’d warrant. I’d love a woman of my own to bellow at me ‘Stanton, knock the mud off your boots before you come in the house or I’ll take a rolling pin to ye!’ Wouldn’t you?”
“I can’t say that I’ve ever yearned for a woman to bellow at me, no.”
“Used to being the one giving the orders, eh?” Delacorte winked.
After a moment he said, “Yes.”
The tone and nature of thisyescaused a little stutter in Delacorte’s determined bonhomie.
He smiled at him a little uncertainly.
Tristan stifled a sigh. Part of the difficulty, Tristan realized, was that he for the most part was exposed to one kind of man, who treated him one kind of way: as though he were the ultimate authority. All he did was give orders.
He didn’t need anything from Delacorte, unless it was information. And what did that say about him as a person if he couldn’t speak to someone unless they were of use to him?
“May I keep this?” he said, more pleasantly. Gesturing with the cigar.
“Certainly, certainly. Enjoy it later when the mood for vice is upon you.” Another wink.
Ten pounds, this foul, exotic cigar. Tristan contemplated again the value people placed on things. That smugglers would be willing to risk their lives and the lives of others to avoid paying taxes on something like a cigar, or silk, or tea. That such things acquired arbitrary value. That someone’s entire family had died, perhaps accidentally, but nevertheless, an ugly death, so that some aristocrat or adventure seeker somewhere could say he spent ten pounds on a disgusting cigar.
“So what brings you to The Palace of... The Grand Palace on the Thames, Mr. Delacorte?”
“I found an advertisement at the apothecary. It sounded like a lovely, orderly feminine sort of place.”
“And yet you came here anyway.”
“Ha ha!” Delacorte was surprised and delighted by the joke.
“Do you like your room? I asked for the largest suite, and was told it was taken.”
“I was told it was taken, too. I believe the Gardner sisters have the second largest.”
“I gather we haven’t yet met the person fortunate enough to have let the largest suite.”
“I suppose not,” Delacorte said with equanimity, entirely untroubled by this.
