There had been no pleasure in disconcerting her into scarlet blushes, but it had been revealing, which had been the point. There had, however, been great pleasure in experiencing how she’d refused to let him get away with it. For all she looked like the very personification of a blossom, she struck him as bracingly pragmatic. He hadn’t detected a single flighty or capricious thing about her. But a single encounter couldn’t possibly be conclusive.
Many, many others seemed required.
Madame Aubert, she of the rouged cheeks that failed to disguise that dark mark—he suspected she had the right of it. Mrs. Gallagher was kind. It seemed a kindness without motive, something innate, and Hawkes was unused to this, too. And this realization made him feel old and jaded.
If this did indeed prove to be an accurate depiction of her character, it meant something serious indeed had made her run away.
And if Lady Aurelie Capet was indeed this same girl who had rested her cool, gentle hand on his forehead last night, then her soft, soothing words, the ones that had sounded to his feverish mind like fragments of dreams, could possibly be the kinds of confidences one might share with a vicar. The sort of person accustomed to hearing such things.
Because she’d said,I would not look him in the eye.
He tensed. What the bloody hell did that mean?
Was he even remembering the words correctly?
He flung his arm across his eyes and took a deep breath to steady his mind so he could coolly contemplate his circumstances.
But whatever they’d given him for pain had begun to wear off, and no clear thoughts could get past the poisonous fury that uncoiled in him like a snake at the very notion of Brundage ever touching that woman. Whether it was to kiss her or otherwise. Whether he was engaged to her or not.
Had she... cared for him? This, too, seemed intolerable.
If she had, why would she run?
If she wasn’t the flighty and foolish sort, she must have had nowhere to turn for help.
And this, too, made him feel a little desperate.
None of this speculation had anything to do with the agreement he’d made to find a girl who’d fled with a necklace. He was blackly amused that he’d walked out of prison and right into a different kind of crucible.
Although it was now clear that prison had only delayed a reckoning a long time coming with Brundage.
And while there remained a slim possibility that his had been a whimsical stabbing, he would be his usual vigilant self when he left the premises. Brundage might be a diplomat and as such accustomed to schooling his features, but Hawkes suspected he might twitch a brow if a man he believed to be dead came calling. Hawkes intended to keep his appointment. Well armed, of course.
Mrs. Gallagher—who he was nearly one hundred percent certain was, in fact, Lady Aurelie Capet—had the right of it: he ought to be in bed. He ought to lie still. He knew now that the only thing that would restore him to rights was rest. And a lot of food. And probably a few more salves and potions.
But for fuck’s sake.
He generally found self-pity defeating and draining. But weakness made him furious and enforced stillness made him irritable and he suspected he was going to be a perfectly horrible patient if compelled to be one for long. He was restless for his guns to be returned. He lay back for a moment, and the cool, comfortable bed was too blissful. He mistrusted bliss. He knew irritability, too, that he could not swiftly surrender to trusting the things he had once trusted and taken for granted. Comfort and shelter and quiet.
He felt not so much winded so much as worn, like a boot. Feeling his age, which was not yet forty, and the passage of time. And oddly, a new disorienting emptiness that could only be wrought by a sudden profound absence.
He realized that this was merely the contrast between how he’d felt when Mrs. Gallagher was in the room.
And how the room felt when she wasn’t in it.
It was just a few hours past dawn at The Grand Palace on the Thames, and Mrs. Gallagher had not yet appeared downstairs to report on the state of Mr. Bellingham.
The possibility of the day beginning with more bad news was a miasma over the breakfast table at The Grand Palace on the Thames. It curbed conversation but not appetites. The stack of fried bread disappeared as rapidly as if locusts had been set loose upon it. The coffee was poured and poured again. Everyone, even those who occasionally liked a good lie-in, like Mrs. Pariseau, was up early and seemed to feel morecomfortable together, just like last night in the sitting room. As though they were each a plank in a life raft and stronger together.
One by one they pushed away from the table and dispersed, Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt and Mr. Delacorte off to a meeting with a potential investor that could not be postponed, Mrs. Pariseau out to see a friend. Delilah and Angelique and Dot waved all of them off.
“I think we ought to go up and see how Mr. Bellingham and Mrs. Gallagher fared during the night,” Delilah said. Angelique concurred.
They were just moving across the foyer to the stairs—Angelique and Delilah to go up to the rooms, Dot to go down to the kitchen, when a very benign, ordinary rap sounded at the door.
They all froze like deer before wolves.
It had once been such a sound of rejoicing, or at least delicious anticipation.
