His smile was disarming and utterly charming. “Shocking.”
She found herself smiling back at him. “You’ll be happy to now have an opportunity to exercise your resilience when you join Mr. Delacorte and Mr. Cassidy for cigars and brandy. Go on, they’re going now. I warrant they’ll be kind to you.”
“Very well,” he said with an entirely feigned air of martyrdom. “I’ll do it for you. But only because I yearn to be as treasured as your other guests.”
She stood up from her chair. Slowly and gracefully.
He didn’t bother to disguise that he watched every bit of that motion, the way one might watch a sunrise or any other beautiful thing one wanted to remember.
She didn’t attempt to disguise that she knew he was watching.
“I want for nothing, Lord Bolt, so do not bother on my account. Do it for yourself... that is, if you wish to remain here at The Grand Palace on the Thames.”
She delivered that with the kind of smile that ensured the last thing she saw before she walked away was Lord Bolt’s expression.
And it was dazzled and transfixed.
She returned to sit beside Delilah.
And she lowered herself gingerly onto the settee. Her entire body seemed to be humming just a little, like a plucked string. She found she wanted to sit with the sensation. She didn’t want to make another sound yet.
“Well, I heard him laugh,” Delilah murmured. “So... well done?”
Poor Delilah had clearly been knitting twice as fast as usual out of nervousness. She’d regret those tiny stitches when she had to pick them out later.
Angelique wondered if she wished she could unpick some of the things she’d said to Lord Bolt tonight. It was too late now. Something was underway.
How was it that she had forgotten the difference between life with desire and life without it? It was like the difference between life with music and life without it.
“He did indeed laugh,” she said finally.
“Does that mean it went well?”
She considered what to say.
“I think we shall be able to abide peaceably beneath this roof for the duration of his stay.”
Chapter Four
Much like Lucifer himself, Lucien was no stranger to sudden evictions and abrupt changes in atmosphere. From impoverished waif to favored child. From favored child to pariah. From dry land into the Thames. That sort of thing.
And now—in truth, out of curiosity as much as anything else—he found himself back in what felt like the equivalent of the Thames. Or in other words, a little parlor set aside for men to do things women apparently wanted no part of, and where he most certainly did not want to be.
He did not want to be here, but he was curious.
The curiosity was about Mrs. Breedlove.
A decade ago, on the day when he was finally able to climb up a ladder to the deck of the ship that had rescued him, his beard was so long he could clutch it in his fist and he could all but strum his ribs like the bars of a cell. The sunlight slashed like razors across his skin and his eyes. He’d tipped his head back to watch a silver gull cut across the blue sky; when he closed his eyes, he could still see its outlines in blurred gold emblazoned against his eyelids. Perhaps for the first time he understood that simply being alive was a glorious thing. Perhaps it was enough for anyone.
Watching Angelique Breedlove walk away reminded him of that moment. She felt burned against his eyelids. A glorious irritant.
A woman like that made a man glad purely to be alive.
He had not anticipated the sort of distraction a campaign of seduction would present. But he could always make room in his busy itinerary of revenge.
Mr. Cassidy, Mr. Delacorte, and Lord Bolt had claimed three separate corners of the Gentleman’s Room and not one seemed able to think of a word to say, which was probably Lucien’s fault.
He couldn’t bring himself to care very much.