She was clearly amused by this list. “And yet you haven’t bought that building.”
“Very well, Mrs. Breedlove, I will tell you. The greater portion of my piles of money are currently invested in piles of cargo that I will then convert into piles of money when they return to shore. The ship is a trifle behind schedule, which on occasion occurs. Nothing to be concerned about,” he said evenly. “I shall enjoy being your neighbor, Mrs. Breedlove. Perhaps you’ll come to love gambling. Now it’s your turn to tell me why you haven’t yet bought the building.”
“We can’t afford it,” she said simply.
“If you’re a gambling woman, I know how you can attempt to—”
She cut him off with an amused warning glare. “I suppose merchants abound here by the docks. Did you know Captain Hardy, Delilah’s husband, bought a ship not too long ago? He’s engaged in a similar business.”
“Delacorte did indeed mention this. When do I meet this Captain Hardy?”
She looked faintly, wryly troubled for an instant, and he wondered why. “In a week or so, I believe. If you’re still here. There was some problem with his crew or captain or some such that he had to see to straightaway.”
They worked in oddly companionable silence for a time.
“What did you inherit from your mother, Lord Bolt?”
“Her eyes. An appreciation for finding beauty in surprising places.”
Angelique’s gaze flickered.
Doubtless she’d heard compliments from those men in her life who had—how had she put it?—courted her, and left her convinced not one of them were worth the trouble, apparently.
But it was only the truth. And he did love to watch her face change when he said something to surprise her.
“And from whom did you get the relentless impulse to flirt?”
He laughed. “From my mother as well, I suppose. But I only speak truth when I flirt, Mrs. Breedlove. And my mother would also have stared at a patch of dirt and seen a garden, as you did. She had a talent for making things beautiful. She’d bring branches of blossoms into our house when the apple trees began to bloom. It’s what she missed the most when...”
He stopped suddenly, surprised at the rapid unraveling of his own story. He was accustomed to thetonat large knowing at least the outlines of his life. As Delacorte had pointed out, it hadn’t been easy for everyone to know his business. But it occurred to him that he hadn’t the sort of people in his life to whom he’d say these things offhandedly. To whom his own interpretation of these stories mattered.
She waited patiently. Eyes warm.
“...when he married and had no further use for us.” He said that shortly.
He quirked the corner of his mouth wryly at the raw truth.
Angelique had stilled. Her thumb and her forefinger rubbed softly together. She did that, he’d noticed, when she was troubled about something. As though she, too, were smoothing out a knot.
She resumed knitting more slowly than before, as though the weight of her thoughts controlled the speed of her work. She seemed to be deciding what to say.
And in the quiet he reflected on how odd the significance little things took on now that she’d made it clear they would not be passionately riding each other. The pale, soft skin of her throat, the curve of her ear, the flash of creamy flesh when she moved and her shawl slipped, just a little, and showed a shadow of cleavage. All the eloquent shapes of her.
“She would have liked you, I think,” he said. “But then, she was generous spirited.”
Angelique gave a short, delighted laugh at that.
This was more reason to like her. She laughed at things like that, because she knew her own worth. And yet he suspected this knowledge was another thing she might have learned the hard way.
She flicked her eyes up at him. They were still troubled and soft.
He’d put that particular expression on her face. That unguarded concern. This notion, for some reason, shortened his breath. As surely as if she’d slipped her hand into his surreptitiously.
He crowed with quiet triumph as he freed yet another long portion of yarn.
She knit a few more stitches, then stopped abruptly.
“Do you mind if I ask... Lord Bolt... how did you... This is, it is difficult for me to imagine how it must have been for you and your mother, and how... that is, what became of... if it’s not a presumptuous question.”