The “straight away” part. He wasn’t certain whether he was relieved or more unnerved than before.
Delilah had spent the morning in a fever of sensual indecision. She’d finished chores and gone over the books with Angelique and was grateful for the ceaseless activity.
Given that they now had six (six!) guests to feed, as well as themselves, all hands were needed in the kitchen. Delilah reported to the kitchen late in the afternoon to do her share of potato peeling. Helga had gotten some good fresh fish and some shaffling and she was planning to make a hearty chowder, with bread and cheese and a tart for dessert. Delilah’s stomach quite rumbled thinking of it.
She took up a potato and was just about to shave a curl off it when a scullery maid crashed into her with a bucket, running toward Dot, who appeared to be directing this enterprise. She tipped boiling water into it.
“Begging your pardon, Lady Derring! So sorry!” the maid yelped.
“No worries, my dear. Dot, what’s going on? Why all the scurrying about?”
“We’re preparing a bath, Lady Derring!” Dot made it sound like a gleeful celebration, not the hard work it indeed was. They were fortunate enough to have their own well, a miracle indeed, but heating enough water for even a hip bath was no small undertaking.
But this was the first time any guest had called for such a thing. Oddly, it felt a bit like a baptism for The Grand Palace on the Thames.
“How lovely! Who rang for the bath?”
“Captain Hardy. Paid us in good coin for it, too.”
Delilah hoped no one noticed when she abruptly stopped peeling her potato.
And then merely stared at it, dreamily, for a few moments.
Then, much more slowly, a little languidly, resumed peeling it, as though the air had become softly molten, a little thicker, like a blancmange, perhaps.
She got that potato done.
And then the next.
And then she chopped them. Slowly. Very carefully.
And then the next.
And when she was certain the bath had gotten up the stairs to Captain Hardy, she laid down the knife and breathed a moment.
The words were out of her mouth before she knew she’d made the decision.
“I’ll just be a few minutes,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Her heart was pounding so fiercely the blood was ringing in her ears by the time she reached his room. She tapped, just twice, with her fingertip. “Captain Hardy,” she said, mouth nearly pressed to the door.
She nearly toppled in when he opened it. He tugged her gently inside, closed the door and locked it.
An enormous towel was knotted about his waist. Water sheened his thighs and chest. It clung in beads to the slopes and angles and gullies of him, the smooth mountains of his shoulders, the ditch created by muscles along his spine.
The blood left her head and headed straight for her groin.
“I only have a few minutes.” Her voice was a shred.
Doubtless he noted that her expression was probably somewhere between Mr. Delacorte’s at the dinner table and an appraiser of antiquities who’d been handed the Grail.
He unfastened the towel and dropped it.
She’d unlaced her dress on the way there and now pulled it over her head and dropped it. Then divested herself of the rest of her clothes.
His expression in response to her sudden swift nudity suggested he’d taken a mallet to the head, and she exulted while she feasted unabashedly with her eyes. He was like a slightly nicked and dented idol unearthed from a chamber of a pharaoh’s tomb, perhaps, beautiful, carved from good sturdy metal rather than precious: from the cut of his calves, the hard curve of his thighs, the pale taut buttocks with convenient little scoops where her hands fit when she was gripping them. The flare of his torso from them.