It was the third time in five days out of five games Lucien had won.
“Ha!” Delacorte muttered weakly, finally.
Then he rallied. “Well, then! Ha. Ho. Good for you. You must be some sort of sorcerer, Bolt, that’s what it is.” He gave his fingers a little drum. If Delacorte possessed slightly worse manners, he’d likely be upending the chessboard by now.
“No. Just good at chess.” Lucien idly inspected his fingernails. Knowing this would madden Delacorte, who was very, very good at chess. But not at all good at losing. Perversely this amused him. But he also admired it. Lucien hated to lose, too.
And at least Delacorte fought hard for his wins.
He lifted his eyes reflexively, wondering if there was any point in fighting for something else he wanted.
Angelique was leaning toward Delilah, her face alive with mischief, and Delilah’s eyes were laughing. They were exchanging some joke known only to the two of them. He returned to this view again and again because it was really the only available option from his little cage of friendship.
He told himself he had no choice but to endure this odd little purgatory. He was still waiting: for his ship to arrive so he could convert all those silks and spices into money again, so he could buy a building, so he could build a gaming hell. For a message from his father that might never come. Though, of course, if that message didn’t come, he’d try another way, and another way.
His days passed eventfully enough. He put Exeter on the job of researching likely candidates for running his gaming hell. He revisited his favorite places in London, reliving his youth. He found that he still savored every filthy, shambling, beautiful corner of the city, its spires and bridges and gargoyles and columns and the Thames churning on through. He was fiercely glad to be back, a feeling that did not diminish as the days passed.
From the perspective of the man he’d become, he understood that his life in London after the duke had abandoned them followed by his mother’s death, had been like a cut suspension bridge thrashing in a windstorm. He wasn’t entirely certain that bridge had come to rest yet. But how different that rudderless man seemed from the one he was now. The one possessed of a preternatural patience.
Because deprived of innuendo and other overt tools of seduction and bound by the rules here at The Grand Palace on the Thames, Lucien had expected to die a slow death of tedium. He’d amused himself by remembering a man in Canton who claimed he’d once been held prisoner in a Turkish jail. He’d found a pebble and had made a game of rolling it from one end of the cell to the other. That was it. The entire game. One tiny pebble was all that separated him from madness.
Instead Lucien was reminded of the day he’d strolled along the beach in Brighton with his mother, collecting seashells. Each one unique, a fresh surprise, and he’d begun to horde them in his cap. Until his mother touched his arm and pointed up the beach. The bright specks of little shells scattered over the sand went on for yards, possibly miles. There was no end to the riches. He’d felt joy and panic simultaneously. He wanted to discover them all.
This was what it was like talking to Mrs. Breedlove.
And all the talking could lead nowhere except farther up those miles of beach, metaphorically speaking, he supposed.
And yet he could walk those miles.
It was a delicate business, this wanting to know. He could not go about it like a Bow Street runner and interrogate her, because Mrs. Breedlove was open in some ways, and very careful in others. He approached it strategically. Strategy often began with Delacorte, who could be counted on to enthusiastically run a topic into the ground, or spread it around the room like cholera.
Angelique had taken up her knitting again. A game of Whist was being negotiated on one side of the room. Mrs. Pariseau had recruited Delilah and Dot thus far. Lucien needed to move quickly before Mrs. Breedlove was swept into it, too.
Lucien stifled a little yawn. “Say, from where do you hail, Delacorte? I knew a chap who deployed a similar chess strategy. Came from a town in Scotland.”
“You don’t say. Northumberland border, originally. What about you?”
“I grew up mostly in Derbyshire, I suppose. Country house there.”
“Mrs. Pariseau, from where doyouhail?” Delacorte was predictably infected with curiosity.
“Grew up in County Clare, married a rich man, and had a right grand time traveling thither and on, when he died, rest his soul, and now I’m abiding withyoucharacters.”
Everyone laughed.
“New York,” Mr. Cassidy reiterated. “But you all know that. Mrs. Hardy?”
“I was raised in the country, too. Sussex.”
“You’re up, Cassidy, if you want to take your chance with Delacorte.” And with that, Lucien rose from the chessboard, strolling idly across the room to sit down, with studied nonchalance, across from Mrs. Breedlove. He picked up her yarn again, turned it about in his hands like a crystal ball.
She looked up at him. Then returned her eyes to her knitting, a little smile on her lips.
“How about you, Mrs. Breedlove? From where do you hail?”
She eyed him a moment, with a little smile.
“Devonshire,” she said shortly.