There was a little silence.
“...for an earl?” the duke suggested mildly.
This was, in fact, true. But Mr. Delacorte, who at the best of times was often a bit like an exuberant pet struggling to remain on its best behavior, was nobody’s fool. His smile was tentative. He was not willing to believe the duke was funny yet, lest his hopes be crushed.
“Put your trousers on one leg at a time, though, Your Grace, like the rest of us blokes, I imagine. Ha.”
The duke exhaled smoke. “I’ve a staff of a dozen who gently lift me with a series of pulleys and then lower me into them, lest I’m abraded unduly.”
“HA!” Delacorte bellowed happily and slapped his own thigh.
The duke gave a start.
From within their individual veils of smoke, Hardy and Bolt suppressed smiles.
“Some mornings I need to do a little dance to get into mine,” Delacorte said.
“I’ve gathered we’re fed well here. As dancing is not one of my talents, I shall have to exercise restraint at the dinner table,” the duke said.
Delacorte smiled broadly, as if the duke just kept exceeding his expectations. “They mend us well, here, too.” Delacorte gave a pat to the egg-like curve of his belly. “Shirts, waistcoats. Should you find things need letting out or fastening back on.”
“Very good to know.” He had an expensive tailor now and a fastidious, underutilized valet. He knew how to sew his own buttons, mend his clothes, black his boots, and knit, thanks to the army. He didn’t particularly want to do any of that anymore, but at forty-three years old, there was almost nothing he could not only survive, but shape into a triumph.
Except for his bloody book.
He looked across at Lucien Durand, Viscount Bolt, another former denizen of the gossip columns. No youth had been wilder or angrier. He’d been assumed drowned after a night at gaming hells a decade ago. Precisely the sort of man the duke had raised his own son not to be. Bolt had allegedly returned from the dead harder, wiser, and much reformed, so reformed that Hardy had gone into business with him.
Much more like the man Valkirk wished his son would become.
Sometimes Valkirk thought it was the only way anyonecouldtransform: a death, metaphorical or otherwise.
“I’m acquainted with your father, Bolt.”
“I imagine your paths would have crossed,” Bolt said idly. “Given that there are only a handful of dukes in the world, the temptation to congregate must stir now and again.”
“Brexford,” the duke mused. “He’s a bit...”
There was a small, fraught silence.
“...of a bastard?” Lucien supplied. Ironically, given thathewas a literal bastard.
The duke blew a languid smoke ring. “I was going to say he’s not very interesting, is he?”
It was such a scathingly perfect indictment of the man who had cut Lucien so callously out of his life that everyone else in the room went motionless with awe.
Brexford was dull, wealthy, shallow, smug, and content. He possessed no qualities a man like Valkirk could catch hold of or relate to.
“I suppose he isn’t.” Lucien was both amused and somewhat touched. “Faultless, though, one might say.”
It was a little dig, his own way of exercising Valkirk’s sense of humor.
Valkirk rewarded him with a small, patient smile.
There was his reputation as a sort of national saint. And then there was the man he truly was, which was a good deal more complicated. No one got through war with an unstained soul, especially not a brilliant, effective general. And everyone in this room, save Delacorte, had served in some way.
“I’m not related toanydukes,” Delacorte volunteered. “I’ve a brother, mind, and relatives scattered about Scotland and Ireland. But I’ve sold remedies to apothecaries in London who’ve sold them to dukes.”
Both Lucien and Captain Hardy had privately discussed how they both longed to meet and dreaded one day meeting Mr. Delacorte’s brother, not to mention his other relatives.
