“How the bloody hell did you get a warrant? The king never signed that,” Captain Hardy snapped.
“No, sir, but the magis...”
He mutely handed the warrant to Captain Hardy to read.
Captain Hardy then handed it to Lucien, and Lucien read it and handed it to Angelique and Delilah. They owned the building, after all. It wastheirbusiness the soldiers wanted to search.
Captain Hardy fixed Delilah with a rueful stare.
There wasn’t much they could do about a warrant.
But they could certainly make Brundage look like a bloody fool.
“It’s all right,” Delilah said serenely, to the sergeant. “Why, you might want to stay here one day, after you see how lovely it is.”
Captain Hardy stepped aside. “If you so much as damage a dust particle there will be hell to pay.”
And thusly, red-coated soldiers filed into The Grand Palace on the Thames for the second time in its short history. And Delilah and Angelique experienced the dubious pleasure of realizing that their premonition about Mrs. Gallagher, aka Lady Aurelie Capet, was manifesting before their eyes.
They were dutiful. They were good men. They did their jobs, very thoroughly and respectfully. They searched the kitchen and the scullery. Then Delilah, keys jingling as her hands, which trembled only a little, led them upstairs and into every room. She knocked to roust a still-a-little-drunk and bleary-eyed Mr. Bellingham, who would go right back to sleep and wake up thinking he’d dreamed the whole thing.
Mrs. Pariseau was fortunately already dressed when they knocked on her door. She listened, one eyebrow arched, to Mrs. Hardy’s explanation. And then, not the least bit nonplussed, she coolly watched the soldiers work.
“Do your mothers know you spend your days rifling through the stockings and undergarments of a woman old enough to be your mother?” she wondered pleasantly, as they peered into her closet and trunk.
They departed her room wearing scarlet blushes.
When Delilah opened the door to Mr. Hawkes’s room, the soldiers found it empty of all traces of habitation, and the bed neatly made.
In every room, occupied and unoccupied, soldiers looked in the wardrobes and under the beds and peered in the chimneys and behind doors. They climbed into the spidery attic. They fanned out through the annex, and into the ballroom where latelythe Duke of Valkirk’s new wife had stolen the hearts of a crowd of people with her voice.
They filed out of the place inside of forty-five minutes.
It was clear from their expressions that there was not one minute bit of evidence suggesting Mr. Christian Hawkes, or Lady Aurelie Capet, or an emerald necklace, had ever visited The Grand Palace on the Thames.
“Our deepest apologies, Captain Hardy, Mrs. Hardy, Lord Bolt. Clearly there has been some miscommunication,” Sergeant Pangborne said soberly.
“Duty is duty, Sergeant Pangborne, even when it’s stupid,” Captain Hardy said pleasantly. “Condolences to the Earl of Brundage on his dementia.”
“Come again if you need a place to stay,” Angelique called sweetly, as Captain Hardy shut the door in their faces.
In absolute silence and stillness all waited, and listened until even the echo of the soldiers’s hoofbeats had faded.
And then:
“He went out the tunnel?” Mr. Delacorte guessed quietly.
“He went out the tunnel,” Captain Hardy confirmed, just as quietly.
There was a little silence.
“And Lady Aurelie would be...” Delacorte prompted.
“Mrs. Gallagher,” Captain Hardy confirmed shortly.
“Lady Aurelie fits her better,” Delacorte said cheerily, and with some relief. As if something secretly troubling him had been resolved. “And let me guess. There’s no husband Thomas?”
Captain Hardy shook his head slowly.
