It dropped abruptly.
It was followed by a lengthy, mighty snort, like some creature inhaling the contents of a room.
Dear God above.
It was Delacorte.
Snoring.
Right below his room.
Well, at least he’d have the cover of noise when he did what he was about to do.
At half past midnight he pulled on his black coat, pocketed a flint and a candle, and slipped out of his room.
He knew where and how to place his feet on the stairs to keep them from creaking to get from one landing to the next.
All the sconces had been snuffed and curtains drawn in the halls. There was a half-moon behind clouds out there, shining through an exposed alcove window, but it did little more than turn the shadows a slightly lighter shade of black. He felt his way along the wall toward the mysterious room number three.
He froze.
Something disturbed the dark. At first he could feel it more than hear it.
But then he did hear it: breathing. Audible, but only just.
Accompanied by footsteps. Slow, deliberate. Someone was attempting to be stealthy. They were only partly succeeding.
It was Miss Margaret Gardner, who hadn’t a prayer of being unobtrusive, even under cover of shadow.
Had she been inDelacorte’sroom?
But Delacorte was already snoring.
And then Miss Margaret scaled the stairs, doing a fairly decent job of avoiding squeaks.
If she was on an innocent journey through the house, she would have brought a candle with her, he thought. As it was, she was just a bulky shadow disappearing around the corner.
He paused and waited. What on earth was she doing?
And what if she chose to return to this floor?
He didn’t want to be caught on his knees peering through a keyhole in the dark. So a few moments later, he returned to his room up the stairs as stealthily as he’d gone down them.
Chapter Eleven
The following evening at The Grand Palace on the Thames was quiet. Delacorte had gone happily to a boxing match, the notion of which made the ladies wince; Captain Hardy had offered no explanation about where he was heading in the rain when he bid them good evening after dinner, crammed on his hat, and departed on a swift, long-legged stride. “A bit of business to take care of,” he’d told them.
Dinner was delicious, of course—a lovely stew of beef and vegetables, some potatoes, good bread, a tart—but the scattered attempts at niceties dwindled as one by one, everyone paused to watch, riveted, Margaret Gardner’s evident enjoyment of her food. She plunged in like a retriever offered a bowl of meat. Her fork and knife a blur as she used them more like spades than utensils.
Her sister seemed better able to calibrate her eating. She calmly, and with evident pleasure, ate her stew, mopped it with bread, dabbed her lips with a napkin. And appeared not to notice anything amiss.
Delilah stifled a sigh. The Gardner sisters were not everything she’d dreamed when she envisioned a houseful of guests, gathered in warm camaraderie around the dinner table. Then again, they were only at the beginning of things here. Perhaps they needed to be nurtured, guided a little, like Delacorte. Certainly between her and Angelique they could refine the devil out of them, if given an opportunity.
But she remained wistful when she retreated to the upstairs drawing room with Angelique, leaving the cleaning up to the maids and to Dot. She listened to the rain fall hard as she knitted another row of what would be a nice warm blanket that she hoped, one day, would wrap a guest.
They went still when they heard Dot’s light footsteps coming toward them at a trot.
“We’ve anew arrival!”
