“Shot?”
Captain Hardy slowly, slowly lifted his head.
“Yes.” He leveled upon young Farraday a lengthy, quelling look. “You?”
Delilah raised her knuckles to her lips to stifle shocked, completely inappropriate laughter.
“No,” Farraday said faintly after a moment. Crestfallen.
It was a little like watching an affectionate, panting spaniel given a rude nudge by a booted foot.
“Perhaps something about hunting,” she suggested, just shy of desperately. “Or... dogs. Or horses? Perhaps Captain Hardy would prefer not to relive the glories of battle in our sitting room.”
There was a little silence.
“Glories,” Captain Hardy muttered, sounding mordantly amused.
He ducked his head to his book, looking like a turtle stubbornly ducking its head into its shell.
The man was insufferable.
And yet whenever she looked at him something happened to her breathing. As if she’d been snatched up and transported to the top of a mountain.
“Who wants to play chess?” Mr. Delacorte boomed, and everyone jumped a bit. He swept into the room like a refreshing storm system.
“Mr. Farraday does,” Angelique said instantly.
“Who is... where is... ah! I’m Mr. Stanton Delacorte.” He planted himself before Mr. Farraday. “Andyoumust be Mr. Farraday. Deuced good to meet you. Captain Hardy won’t play me because he’s afraid to lose, something he’s not accustomed to doing.”
He winked broadly.
“The very notion makes me quake in my boots, Delacorte,” Captain Hardy intoned, without looking up.
Delacorte laughed delightedly.
“He’s never quaked a day,” Delacorte told the room at large. “Damned hero!”
Captain Hardy glanced up balefully and returned his gaze to the page.
Mr. Farraday, proving he was indeed like a spaniel, immediately glowed at the sound of a friendly voice and proffered his hand to be vigorously pumped by Delacorte.
“I sell exotic treatments to apothecaries,” Delacorte said. Who, resigned, moved over and put a pence in the jar for hisdamned.
“Oh!” Mr. Farraday said, in complete confusion, but cheerfully enough, because what else could one say? “I’m a fair hand at chess.”
“Well, then, shall we?”
Angelique had poured a sherry for the two of them and a cordial for the Gardner sisters as they attended to their mending, and Delilah had taken two sips when she said, offhandedly, softly, “I wonder if it’s just that Captain Hardy is a bit shy?”
Angelique turned her head slowly and regarded Delilah with incredulity.
“Words likeshydo not apply to men like Captain Hardy any more than they apply to a rock or a trebuchet.”
“I see. And you know this because you’ve cataloged all the varieties of men, then?” Angelique’s tendency to adopt sagacity—about, well, nearly everything—was lately shaving curls off Delilah’s nerves. “Or have you been privy to a menu?”
Angelique was not rattleable. “I’m not saying that I have. I’m also not saying that I haven’t.”
“A field guide would be useful. Perhaps a set of books like those Mr. Miles Redmond wrote. If one showed up at the door, we could identify him straight away. I suppose we’d call him the Silent Bronze-Visaged Taciturnicus.”