Chapter Eleven
Daphne pensively took apart her scone and ate it with sips of black coffee while Lorcan’s uneaten scone rested accusingly on the plate across from her.
Eventually she covered it gently and carefully with a napkin.
She thought about him as a boy, grateful for any scrap he could get, and her stomach tensed miserably.
She hoped he’d gone down to breakfast.
She hadn’t. And she’d slept poorly. Last night’s argument and the ensuing cascade of realizations went round and round in her head all night until it ached dully, and it still did. She wasn’t in the mood yet to eat competitively with the German boys.
By eleven o’clock in the morning, Lorcan still hadn’t returned to the suite.
She sighed, then curled up on the settee with a book, Gordon the cat purring against her thigh, and drank tea and desultorily read a few pages.
BAMBAMBAM.
She shot to her feet, sending Gordon flying through the air in shock. He landed neatly on all four feet, cat-fashion, by the hearth, and raced to the door.
She peered through the little peep window.
“It’s Mr. Delacorte. I’ve got your husband. Hurry! It’s a matter of utmost urgency!”
Daphne’s heart at once was an icy block. She clawed the bolt and swung open the door to find Mr. Delacorte and Mr. St. Leger.
She gasped.
The latter was soaked to the skin. His shirt and trousers were glued to him, his hair was flattened against his skull, his skin was stark white and his lips were blueish, and his boots and coat were missing.
Lorcan’s shivering, stoic abjectness flipped her stomach in upon itself.
She whirled about, snatched the coverlet from the settee and flung it over him, as if he were a fire needing putting out.
“Oh my goodness. Come,” she said gently. She got him by the arm and steered him gently toward the hearth. He objected to none of this. She could feel him shivering violently beneath her hand.
“We got his boots off downstairs, but he’s frozen near stiff. You’ll need to get him out of those clothes straightaway,” Mr. Delacorte said matter-of-factly.
Oh, God.
This was merely true.
And naturally it was a thing a wife would have done many times before.
“Aye, you’ll want to get me out of me c-clothes, missus.” Lorcan’s joke was punctuated by the chatter of his teeth.
“Whathappened?” she demanded.
“You ought to know he’s a right blood... he’s a right hero!” Delacorte said fervently. “He jumped right in and plucked that child from under the water like he was a wee cork and handed him out to Hardy. Like it was nothing at all. Nothing! Cor, never seen such a thing in my life and I have seen alotof things.”
“Achild?” She turned to Lorcan, stunned. “You saved... you jumped... what on...” She re-collected her wits. “Mr. Delacorte, will you kindly ask the maids to fetch us some coffee and a tisane for fever, if Helga has one.” She issued those orders crisply. “Some brandy, too.”
Taking grown men in hand was her bailiwick, after all. For better or worse.
“It would be my honor. I would have done that right off but I thought you’d want him brought straight to you. You could have lost him for good,” he added with something that sounded ever-so-slightly like gentle reproach. Delacorte shut the door.
She and Lorcan regarded each other.
He looked no more pleased about these developments than she felt.
