Massey sounded equal parts inquisitor and child who wishes to hear a bedtime story.
“It is filled with comfortable, slightly mismatched furniture. It is warm and well lit from well-placed lamps and candles. Somewhat ominously, there is a pianoforte in it.”And if you sit close to a certain woman, it smells like lavender.
“And guests are required to make appearances in the drawing room?”
“It’s one of the rules, in fact. And if I wish to stay, I abide by the rules. Rather like the navy.”
Massey had a faraway look in his eyes again. “Are they very strict, these rules?”
“No, rather practical. And... kind. It’s meant to foster camaraderie.”
“Camaraderie?” Massey was as bemused as Tristan about that. “Has it worked?”
Tristan hesitated, and absently flexed his hand, and remembered threading those fingers up through Lady Derring’s soft hair to tug it back, and how her lips had felt beneath his, and the bands of muscle across his stomach tightened.
He looked up. “After a fashion,” he said finally.
He told Massey to keep watching the boardinghouse and following the guests, and to keep up the questioning.
That evening, as usual, he settled in at a little round table with a brandy andRobinson Crusoein the drawing room, gallantly at a distance from the fire. He thought of poor Massey at the Stevens Hotel, surrounded by men instead, with no jar to keep their heathen impulses in check.
As irrational a thought as he’d ever had. Whowouldn’tprefer the company of soldiers?
Delacorte and Dot were chuckling aloud over something Mrs. Breedlove was reading, and the Gardner sisters were huddled in the corner, as if this drawing room was instead a dungeon. And there was Lady Derring, swathed in a shawl, working some more soothing words into a sampler, no doubt.
All theories about enforced proximity banking lust rather vaporized in her presence. No: he would want her no matter where, or when.
She stood. He watched as she moved across the room to him, quite casually, pulled out the chair across from him, and sat down.
He gazed at her steadily.
It occurred to him that he’d love to see her in a color, any color, other than half mourning. Red, or gold, or green. The mourning reminded him that she had once been Derring’s. It was yet another irrational thought in an increasingly troubling series of them.
“I’ve been looking for my belongings next to the door every day this week, Lady Derring. Are you going to ask me to leave The Grand Palace on the Thames?”
“No. Nor have I told Mrs. Breedlove or any other members of the staff about it, and I won’t. But... you shouldn’t take this decision as encouragement to take liberties again.”
He studied her.
“Take,” he repeated slowly, musingly, “liberties.” As though she’d introduced a sophisticated philosophical concept requiring some rumination.
“What would you call it?”
“If I instigated a liberty seizure, I daresay you voluntarily gave one up.”
She mulled this. She gave a short nod. “Fair enough.”
He smiled faintly. It occurred to him that he had not expected to like her as much as he did.
“But that... sort of thing... should not happen again,” she added hurriedly, firmly. “The Grand Palace on the Thames is a fine establishment and its reputation means everything to me. I can’t behave heedlessly, and I fully don’t intend to.”
He thought of a dozen things to say. He wondered if she knew that “word” on the street had it that one ought not go into The Grand Palace on the Thames. He decided not to tell her, because he didn’t want to see the hurt flash across her features.
He’d heard the wordsshould not. There was a world of difference betweenshouldandwill, and they both knew it.
What he said was, “Fair enough.”
He didn’t mourn. In negotiations—and this was a negotiation, he was certain—as in investigations and campaigns, patience was the greatest weapon.
