Her top lip was a little shorter than her bottom.
Her mouth was, in fact, rather like a lush, pale pink heart.
Before too long he would need to do something about getting Mrs. Breedlove into his bed. Because if he felt this restless now, he would be well nigh on savage within days.
The notion made his mood soar.
He stretched luxuriously and inhaled deeply. “Ah, the docks.”
He was only being partially sardonic. He’d been to dozens of worldly cities, but he frankly loved London, replete with all of its smells. Ocean, food, feces, humans, animals, coal, lashing winds off the ocean,life. And a beautiful woman who seemed out of context here at the docks, and yet something about her was like the first flower poking from barren ground in the spring.
“Oh, yes, thedocks.” She mimicked his cheerfully ironic tone.
He sensed the docks would not have been her first choice of home.
“Don’t you have urgent business to attend to, Lord Bolt?”
“Oh, no business occurs if I’m not present for it. If I may be so bold, you seem to be out here on this fine day staring avidly at nothing, Mrs. Breedlove. You call to mind Nelson on the deck of a ship with a spyglass.”
“I am, in fact, staring at this patch of dirt here between the buildings. And waiting for Helga to emerge with her basket so we can go to the market. A scullery maid needed a talking to. They generally do.”
“Helga is...”
“Our cook.”
“Indeed. She is gifted.”
“She knows.”
He smiled at that.
“Andour excellent food is one of themanyreasons people enjoy staying with us at The Grand Palace on the Thames.” She turned to him, delivering this little advertisement pointedly.
He nodded, with exaggerated gravity. “Does this patch of dirt hold significance, Mrs. Breedlove?”
The patch of dirt in question was surrounded by cobblestones. What might have once been a tree occupied the center. It was stripped bare now and sported two sad spindly branches. It could just have easily been a twig blown violently in off the ocean and hurled like a trident by the wind in muddy ground during a storm.
She hesitated. “I imagined a garden here. With benches and flowers. Surrounded by perhaps a little wrought iron fence with a gate. Leading to the building we’d like to buy.”
He went still. “The one I might buy.”
“Why, yes,” she said brightly.
They stared each other down.
“That is fascinating, indeed, Mrs. Breedlove,” he said idly. “One would think you would have mentioned it yesterday.”
“I suppose one would think that,” she agreed pleasantly. “Why haven’t you bought it yet, Lord Bolt?”
“Why haven’tyoubought it yet?”
Neither one of them took that up. Lucien was waiting for a ship.
“Buyers aren’t precisely clamoring for it,” he said. “Given its location. So one of us is bound to eventually be the proud owner. But why the devil do you need this building, Mrs. Breedlove? One building near the docks strikes me as enough of a liability.”
She sighed. “We imagined it as an annex to The Grand Palace on the Thames. Delilah and I envisioned it brimming with happy families in London for, oh, a bit of a vacation. Or Londoners needing a place to stay if repairs or renovations are being performed on their homes. Children running about, perhaps. It would be... lively. Heavenly, even.”
She sounded wistful.