“I do have some things at the Stevens I rather urgently need, and for certain reasons I don’t think it will be safe for me to fetch them.”
Eyebrows went up again.
Hardy said, after a moment, “We’ll get them for you. They know me there.”
“Again, my sincerest thanks.”
Bolt gestured with his chin toward the bed. “Rest, Hawkes. No need to be a hero for either of us. Come down this evening if you feel ready to be social.”
Mr. Hawkes caused another astonished little silence when he appeared in the sitting room that night. It was like they’d gotten yet another new guest.
He’d shaved. He’d had a proper wash, in water heated and brought up in a basin by a maid.
He was as hard and polished and gleaming as a guinea. He looked both a little bit dangerous and refined, like a ceremonial knife.
His smile, self-deprecating, a little wry, as if he knew precisely what everyone was thinking, made all the feminine hearts skip.
Angelique and Delilah had spoken to him a little more at length that afternoon, gently admonished him about smoking in the rooms, and departed pleased with their new guest.
Aurelie had spent part of the afternoon sleeping to recover from her night with Mr. Hawkes, but she was at once certain there could, in fact, never be a recovery from Mr. Hawkes.
It was odd to know that she was, after a fashion, a keeper of this polished man’s secrets. None of these people knew he had a tattoo of a dagger beneath his arm. Or had thrashed invisible enemies, or called for his mama. Admittedly a few of the people here had the extreme good fortune to know what his torso looked like beneath his clothes.
And she knew other secrets, too: something or someone had once cornered Mr. Hawkes and he’d been unable to fight back. She wasn’t certain it was just because he’d been stabbed. She’d seen at once his tension and stillness and shortness of breath.
She supposed he was, whether he realized it or not, a keeper of her secrets as well.
They were bound, in a sense. And she felt it. Because at once the room seemed better for his presence in it, as though all it had been missing was him.
“I took the rules of your establishment to heart, you see, and I am here for the familial environment and spirited discourse,” he told them, solemnly.
“And we aregrateful, Mr. Hawkes,” Mrs. Pariseau breathed. She was eyeing Mr. Hawkes as if he were indeed a lost guinea she was prepared to brawl over should another person attempt to grab him first.
Angelique and Delilah shot her startled glances.
Mrs. Pariseau could perhaps be forgiven. Everyone had been given a little sherry by way of celebrating Mr. Bellingham’s arrival and Mr. Hawkes’s survival, and nearly everyone in the room was some small degree of tipsy.
Mrs. Hardy poured a sherry for Mr. Hawkes and handed it to him, and said, “Mr. Hawkes, I should like to introduce you to one of our cherished guests, Mrs. Pariseau.”
Mrs. Pariseau leaped to her feet to curtsy.
“Indeed, it is a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Pariseau,” Hawkes said. “I would bow, but the part of me that bends has been sewn nearly motionless.”
“Oh, stay as you are, Mr. Hawkes, right where we can admire you from top to toe. I can curtsy twice to make up for it,” Mrs. Pariseau said. She did just that.
They both laughed, merrily.
Aurelie was shocked when a veritable lightning bolt of jealousy pierced her.
Mr. Hawkes seemed not at all nonplussed. He must be very used to the Mrs. Pariseaus of the world.
For heaven’s sake. She had no claim on this man and Mrs. Pariseau was certainly not about to do anything untoward.
Was she?
He hadn’t even looked her way yet.
But then she realized that he had been drifting ever closer to her from the moment he’d entered the room. Her heart gave a little jolt of anticipation.
