After a moment he repeated, politely, “Trees?” And by that he meantyou have got to be bloody joking.
They nodded cheerfully in tandem.
He inspected them for signs of mischief, but both ladies were admirably inscrutable.
“Discussions can get a bit, well,heatedat times, which is always exciting,” Mrs. Hardy added.
“We’ve several avid chess players under our roof, too, if you play. But if you’re feeling a bit shy about socializing, you can bring down a book or some correspondence and just quietly sit with us.”
Shy?He narrowed his eyes. He had the sense that he was being lured into some sort of trap, the nature of which he could not quite identify. He tried to picture Bolt, who had once raced his high-flyer down Bond Street and often had to be extricated from fistfights, sitting about and comparing himself to a tree.
Though when he looked into Mrs. Durand’s lovely hazel eyes it was a little easier to imagine how that had come to pass.
Domesticity was a religion to which Marchand did not subscribe. He did not aspire to a wife. And he was almost never at leisure. He worked; he went to operas and musicales and horse races and boxing matches; he took fencing lessons and fired guns at Manton’s; he enjoyed short-lived but satisfying carnal liaisons that often ended tempestuously, because he was “not an easy man,” or so he was frequently told, and which was certainly putting it lightly. He didn’t suppose any of this would be changing anytime soon.
Though he’d gotten considerably more cautious about entanglements as he’d grown older. He’d learned the cost.
“Certainly I’m happy to comply with your rules for theduration of my stay. I, in fact, also have a similar list of rules for conduct for my gentleman’s club. Men in particular need to be told how to behave, don’t you think?”
They all laughed together knowingly.
Lucifer’s Fall’s list of rules was shorter: Discretion, of course, as he’d told Miss Woodville, was one of them. Repeated violence—a man would be forgiven one or two thrown punches—would get a member suspended. Cheating was the cardinal sin. A man would be expelled from the club and the proverbial social earth salted of his name if he cheated. Marchand would personally see to it. He’d needed to do this only once before, to a nefarious viscount, and witnessing the results had apparently put the fear of God—or rather, Marchand—into the other members. The man had ultimately left the country.
“We’ve set aside a smoking room for men to temporarily escape the shackles of etiquette, should you find them too suffocating.” Mrs. Hardy apparently sensed the run of his thoughts.
“Oh, thank God.”
Thankfully they laughed at that, too.
“Have you ever evicted anyone?” He pointed to that particular rule on the card.
“Yes,” Mrs. Hardy said simply.
His curiosity burned.
He thought better of asking them to expound. A warm room and drinking chocolate awaited him.
Surely he could follow a few rules in order to advance his agenda. Which was, of course, getting them to sell the building to him.
“Certainly I’m happy to comply with your rules.” His staff was smart and well-trained. They could do without him for a few nights per week. “And drinking chocolate would be a very civilized way to end my day, thank you.”
“We’resopleased you want to stay,” Mrs. Hardy told him, sounding sincere. “Dot will bring up your chocolate.” She produced a room key from a jingling set at her waist. “It’s the third floor, last on the left. Mr. Pike will help you with your valise, if you like.”
He thanked them, and politely declined Mr. Pike’s assistance.
He wondered if they would have indeed thrown him out tonight if he didn’t agree to the rules. He rather thought they would have, just as warmly as they’d welcomed him. Perversely, he approved. It hadn’t before occurred to him that implacability could also be kind.
Chapter Four
Ginny’s room at the Grand Palace on the Thames was soothing as a lullaby and snug as a burrow. But her view out the window was of an alley between buildings, and twice she’d seen the same two cats, one ginger (she’d named him Pumpkinhead), one black and white (she’d named him Inkblot), meeting apparently specifically to fight. They began by staring and yelling at each other, backs arched, ears flattened, before exploding into a brief, snarly cyclonic tangle, complete with great drifts of fur. Then they parted again.
It was like her own personal Punch and Judy show, and a perfect metaphorical representation of the inside of her head at the moment.
As the Grand Palace on the Thames rules allowed a few times per week, she’d decided to take her dinner in her room, and she’d sent her regrets regarding the sitting room gathering as well, though she genuinely rued not being present for the next chapter ofThe Arabian Nights Entertainments. She was simply not prepared to blithely socialize so shortly after she’d been emotionlessly sexually propositioned.
Every glancing thought of Gabriel Marchand sent heatroaring over her skin as though she’d hurled another log on a fire.
Her emotions were ricocheting like a moth trapped in a jar between absolute fury at the coldnerveof the man, to a sick fear that she had failed to accomplish a single thing by her visit to him, to a dark fascination that regrettably refused to ebb.
