“I feel like a castaway in my own bed lately,” Delilah mourned. “It feels so vast.”
Angelique Durand and Delilah Hardy liked to end their days in the sitting room at the top of the stairs, where they would review the events of the day, plan the next, and do a little mending. They were reminiscing about their husbands. Which, granted, seemed silly to both of them, since Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt had only been away for a little more than a week and were due home in a day or so.
“I know what you mean.” Angelique sighed. “I have to sleep with twice as many blankets without Lucien.” Lucien liked to sleep naked and he was like her own personal furnace.
“I do wish Mr. Delacorte wasn’t so very attached to that song,” Angelique added dryly. “I’d ratherlike to contain it, like the plague, if we can, before we hear it sung all over London.”
“If only it wasn’t so insidiously catchy,” Delilah agreed. It had been composed on the spot by their former guest, Miss Mariana Wylde, as a not-so-subtle dig at another of their guests, the Duke of Valkirk.
“We’ll just have to somehow write another one to supplant it in his affections. Perhaps something cheerful about donkey racing.”
They both laughed.
“This is Lucien’s favorite waistcoat,” Angelique said wistfully, extracting it from the mending pile and smoothing it as if her husband was inside of it at the moment. It was a dark plum color, and one of the silver buttons was loose.
Captain Tristan Hardy, Delilah’s husband, a legendary former blockade captain, and Lucien, Lord Bolt, formerly-infamous-now-somewhat-respectable bastard son of a duke, were partners in the Triton Group, an import and export endeavor. They had gone up the coast to a shipyard to see about repairs to their beloved shipThe Zephyr, which, after weeks of harrowing uncertainty, had limped into port well after she was expected, late, storm damaged, and dismasted. She was still seaworthy, but only just. They were also seeing to outfitting a new ship in what they hoped would one day be a fleet of ships—The Rogue, it was called, after the man who owned it, who was now also their partner. They were on the brink of a thrilling, and risky, but potentially immensely enriching new chapter in all of their lives.
Meanwhile, finances remained a trifle snug. And though the suites at The Grand Palace on theThames had been taken for the last half of the season, they were currently experiencing a bit of a lull in guests. Ebb and flow was ever thus at the boardinghouse. They had learned to love the unpredictability the way they had learned to appreciate the changes in weather.
So they both looked up alertly at the unmistakable sound of Dot bounding up the stairs. And winced when she tripped on the second to last one.
“A gentleman has arrived and he would like a room,” she announced in a rush.
It was just a few minutes before curfew, the time at which all guests must be safely inside. The arrival of potential guests at this hour often heralded dramatic episodes at The Grand Palace on the Thames.
“Take a breath, Dot, and tell us what he’s like.” Angelique stood and reached over and righted Dot’s askew cap with a finger.
“His shoulders are at least as wide as Mr. Pike’s.”
The moment the words were out of her mouth, a scarlet blush scrolled from her collarbone to the ruffle of her bright white cap. Taken with her blue eyes, the effect was unexpectedly patriotic, like a Union Jack.
They stared at her, nonplussed.
Dot looked stricken and a little amazed that the words had escaped her.
Granted, the three of them had created the small wonder that was The Grand Palace on the Thames from the tumbledown building Delilah inherited from her perfidious first husband, and the habit of assessing every man they met based on whether they were tall enough to reach the sconces in order to light the candles died hard.
The use of Pike as a standard against which to compare broad shoulders was new, however.
“I can almost picture him, Dot,” Delilah replied gravely. Angelique bit her lip against a laugh. “Did you happen to observe anything else about him?”
“The silver cup with the words engraved on it—the one that the king sent to you and Captain Hardy as a wedding present?”
Delilah and Angelique waited with somewhat martyred patience. Sometimes—it helped to have had a sherry—one could almost follow Dot’s cognitive leaps, which often resembled the floppy meanderings of a butterfly. Her mind was an enigmatic place, and surely she found much within it absorbing, as she often bumped into, tripped over, or dropped things as a result of roaming around up in its rafters rather than paying attention to what she was doing—for example, in several memorable instances, carrying a tea tray. But she had proved to be a savant when it came to describing their guests.
“Yes?” Delilah prompted.
“His voice is like that. Very deep and elegant and precise and perhaps a bit chilly.”
“Mmm. Intriguing,” Angelique approved.
“His boots are Hoby, I’d warrant, and the buttons on his waistcoat are silver, and his greatcoat had three capes.” She might have once been the world’s worst lady’s maid, but she did know clothes, and her gentlemen from the not-gentlemen, and she could detect it in a heartbeat. Both gentlemen and not-gentlemen were welcome at The Grand Palace on the Thames, as long as they passed the interview and Delilah and Angelique agreed he would likely get on nicely with the rest of their guests. They had vowed to admit only people they liked.
They had realized this was a bitaspirationalwhen the rooms were empty. They were pragmatic, too.
“Mmm. So an actual gentleman, then.” Delilah began untying her apron in preparation for meeting him.
“But here and here”—Dot gestured to the little hollows beneath her eyes—“it’s dark. Like he hasn’t slept.”
