When she smiled, a painfully charming crescent moon of a dimple appeared at the corner of her lush mouth. Her top lip rose into two little rosy peaks in the middle.
He imagined tracing them the way he would draw his finger along a route on a map.
His breath was briefly, shockingly, and violently stopped by a surge of lust.
As if it had been lying in wait for him for days now, like the blockade runners on the road lying in wait for smugglers. Just waiting for him to notice.
“What is the point of you?” she asked.
“Duty.” He was still reeling a bit.
He lifted his gaze from her mouth.
He didn’t mind if she noticed he’d been staring.
Knowing Lady Derring, he was certain that she had.
“My goodness. You didn’t even have to think about it. And it’s hardly a lighthearted philosophical question.”
“It is entirely the thing that gives order and meaning to my life. That, and your list of rules here at The Grand Palace on the Thames, of course.”
“Ha. And do you think life is so anarchic as to require the ceaseless imposition of order and meaning?”
“Yes.”
Oh, hell’s teeth. Now her eyes were full of questions. The sort he didn’t want to answer.
The questioning light evolved into a sort of troubled thoughtfulness.
Oh, God. She was imagining things about him, no doubt, because that’s what women did. They embroidered. In their minds and on their pillows.
But she didn’t ask those questions.
“Perhaps the point of me is to be kind.” She said it almost to herself. As though she’d been waiting for him to ask, and she’d given up.
He sighed and lowered his book again. “Lady Derring,” he said, with grave, ironic pity that made her expression immediately alter to one that suggested she’d like to do him a small violence. Perhaps just a little jab with a knitting needle. “Such naivete will be the ruin of The Palace of Rogues. I think perhaps being jaded will afford more protection in this part of London.”
Her eyes sparked outrage. “Don’t you think I might be all too clearheaded about the world? I am a widow, after all. It isn’t every day a countess runs a boardinghouse. Consider that I might have been buffeted a bit.”
“No. I don’t believe you are all too clearheaded. Nor do I believe you have been particularly buffeted. I suspect you view the world through a very particular lens, which makes it easy for you to be beneficent in your new circumstances.”
She didn’t splutter.
She didn’t even blink.
But she did go still. And fixed him with a thoughtful, rather penetrating gaze.
If he’d been at all a fanciful man, and he most certainly was not, he would have thought perhaps she was rifling through the contents of his soul.
“Well. I stand corrected. You certainly know everything, Captain Hardy.”
“Well, very nearly,” he amended, modestly. Only a little ironically.
She smiled tautly.
“I must say, however, Lady Derring... that I’m intrigued and impressed by how you’ve managed to engage such a fine cook and such committed servants and keep the rooms so comfortable if you’ve experienced an adjustment, shall we say, in means. Wax instead of tallow candles in the sconces, crystal at the table. It must be some manner of sorcery.”
She went still. Their eyes met across the little lamp.