Hawkes toasted the room at large and sipped at his sherry. He did not yet sit.
Aurelie imagined the getting up and getting down was painful and she felt her stomach muscles contract a little in involuntary sympathy.
And finally, he looked directly at her, as though he’d been mustering nerve to do it, or saving a pleasure for last.
“Mrs. Gallagher.” He nodded to Aurelie. He’d lowered his voice just for her. “A pleasure to see you once again. Why, I was just reminiscing about our first meeting.”
She perversely wished it was impossible to smile, because she did not want to seem so easily charmed. She mistrusted a man who had such power; she didn’t want to be at a man’s mercy ever again.
When she smiled, something solemn and intent briefly flickered across his face, as though she’d just handed a delicate gift to him. Something he wasn’t certain he deserved.
And that was how he took her breath away, yet again.
There was an unvarnished honesty to the way he regarded her. He could not help the intensity of his gaze, she supposed, any more than the sun could calibrate its own heat. She knew he very much admired her womanly charms, and the way in which he made this apparent did not make her feel cornered. There remained a sort of bemused tenderness in the way he addressed her.
It seemed clear that he was, to some degree, at her mercy, too. He either wanted her to know it, or he did not know how to disguise it. And oddly, she felt protective of this.
In a few days’ worth of time, she had come to understand too clearly the difference between what she thought she should feel and what she did indeed feel. She hadn’t suspected that her body would tell her the truth about everything,everything, until she’d encountered Mr. Hawkes.
“Rest suits you, Mr. Hawkes,” she said softly. She could not flirt with the trumpet-blast confidence of Mrs. Pariseau, but she did know how to do it. “But ought you to be downstairs so soon?”
“Perhaps not. But I know you’d miss me if I left now, Mrs. Gallagher,” he said pleasantly. “And I couldn’t countenance visiting that sort of suffering upon you, after all you’ve done for me.”
She pressed her lips together but it was futile, and she smiled again and she gave her head a little shake.
“Mr. Hawkes, you have not yet met our latest cherished guest, Mr. Bellingham,” Mrs. Hardy said.
“Mr. Bellingham.” Mr. Hawkes turned to face him. “It is indeed a pleasure to meet you. I have heard so much about you.”
Mr. Bellingham seemed shyly dazzled by Mr. Hawkes, too.
“A pleasure to meet you, too, sir.” Mr. Bellingham shot to his feet and bowed. “And I’m so terribly sorry to hear of your troubles. But if one must be assaulted, you couldn’t have chosen a finer establishment in which to convalesce. Why, just look about you!” he said expansively, gesturing.
Mr. Hawkes did, as though taking Mr. Bellingham’s suggestion to heart, and with evident pleasure. “You’re so right. I’ve seldom seen a lovelier room.”
His impulse, Aurelie had noticed today, was to make people like him by finding the things they liked about themselves and celebrating them. He’d sensed at once the ladies were so proud of the home they’d made for everyone. It was a lovely quality.
Or perhaps, viewed more cynically, it was a skill.
Nonetheless, it was difficult not to like it. And she, like everyone in the room at that moment, had turned her face up to him to smile.
Suddenly she was assailed with a disorienting, peculiar déjà vu. Of watching that other Mr. Hawkes from her vantage point at the top of the stairs so many years ago, and those smiling faces aimed up at him.
But surely he could not be the same man?
“What brings you to London, Mr. Bellingham, if I am not being tedious in asking a question everyone already knows the answer to?” Hawkes asked.
“No trouble at all to tell you, Mr. Hawkes. It seems I’ve inherited a property from a great-aunt—a charming little place in Sussex called Starling Cottage. I’ve just been to see it and to have it tidied a bit and prepared forguests, but it still needs a few repairs and the like—I’ve a back door all but hanging from the hinges, you see—a good tug would take it right off. Some thatch missing from the roof. A stuck window or two. And I’m here in London to see to a few lingering details about the inheritance and to see old friends. I’ve left my parishioners in my curate’s good hands. I know he’ll shine in my absence.”
“Lord Bolt has a little property in Derbyshire, and it needs a little attention of that sort, too,” Mrs. Durand said. “One day we’ll spend some time there.”
“Oh, imagine a little country inn, like this one!” Mrs. Pariseau said, happily. “Perhaps we can all go and stay with you there one day!”
Lord Bolt shot Angelique an eloquent, darkly amused, hunted look.
“There can only ever be one inn like this one,” Delilah said at once, both mistily and diplomatically.
“I never thought I’d own a place and the vicarage suits me down to my toes, but it is a blessing I never anticipated.” Mr. Bellingham beamed at this. “Oh, you ought to see it. The cottage is tucked in a little bend right where a stream widens, and it’s lined with hawthorns so it’s easy to miss as you drive right by, and there are big old apple trees dropping apples all about in a great meadow. But it’s near the town of Baggleston and the mail coach goes right through midday Wednesdays and Fridays, so it’s civilized, too. There’s a pub, and a little bookshop, even a fine little notions shop where one can buy or sell anything you can imagine.”
