“Winter is coming. Shouldn’t like any of our guests to shiver even a little,” she expounded politely.
“Yes. Winter is always an eventuality,” he contributed. Somberly.
She fixed him with dry, baleful amusement, eyebrows raised. She could not have said “You can do better, Lord Bolt” any more plainly if she’d said it aloud.
He smiled slowly at that.
Mrs. Pariseau had persuaded Delilah and Dot to join her in a game of Whist over in the corner and they were all arranging their chairs happily around the table. Dot hadn’t yet learned how to play Whist, which ought to make the game last a lot longer than it normally did.
He stood and wandered, nonchalantly, over to where Angelique sat, and pulled out a little chair, a Chippendale copy. He had misgivings about it bearing his weight, and about how he looked perched on it. Probably a bit like a spider perched on the head of a pin.
She eyed him, bemused and wary.
“Your yarn is looking a bit tangled,” he said.
“Because it is. Gordon got into it the other day and had unrolled it all the way down the stairs. It was rather hastily recovered from his clutches. It has not been the same since.”
“Shall I untangle it for you?”
She flicked her gaze up, amused but cautious. A little pleat of concern appeared between her eyes.
“If you like,” she allowed magnanimously, finally, like the gracious hostess she was supposed to be.
“Anything to help a friend.”
The expression flashed sort of cautious optimism and pleasure jabbed him ever so slightly in the solar plexus with its sweetness, even as it did nothing at all for his pride. Clearly she hoped he was taking friendship seriously.
He shifted his chair across to the settee where she sat, then picked up the yarn and inspected it critically, as if looking for a way in.
The Whist had rapidly become lively, from the sound of things. Under cover of domestic cheer, he could speak to her.
And yet for a time, neither he nor Angelique said a word. It was oddly less torturous than he would have expected, sitting in silence unraveling a ball of yarn simply because, like the proverbial prisoner in a cell marking off days with a bit of charred stick, it was all there was to do.
“I untangled a lot of nets and ropes and the like when I worked on a ship. It was all I was fit for at the time, both physically and in terms of skills. It’s rewarding work.”
She looked up, surprised and clearly fascinated.
He was encouraged.
“Bastard lords don’t get a lot of training in useful things, apart from riding and shooting and fencing, all of which are surprisingly much more useful on the high seas than in London. Shall I put a pence in the jar for the ‘bastard’?”
“A donation wouldn’t go amiss. But now it’stwopence.”
“I see why you are now turning a profit here at The Grand Palace on the Thames.”
She smiled, but abstractedly. “Hence the gambling?”
“And believe it or not, they in fact tried to teach me to knit—most sailors can—and I can, after a fashion. I haven’t your gift for precision.” He thought he might as well flatter her. As a friend.
“Maybe it’s because my father was a surgeon.”
“Ah. Perhaps that is also where you get yourveryprecise way with a cutting word.”
She smiled. “Probably. What do you suppose you got from your father, Lord Bolt?”
Ah ha! He’d found a place to begin unraveling the knot. He proceeded to follow it methodically.
“A signet ring. A gold watch. Height. Arrogance. Devastating good looks. A gift for making piles of money.”