“Mr. Cassidy killed a bear once,” Mr. Delacorte added. “Perhaps we can do that instead.”
Mr. Cassidy shot a swift, wry sidelong look at Delilah and Angelique.
“How long do you think Delacorte will bewithus?” Angelique murmured to Delilah.
“He’s ours forever, I think, like Dot.”
Ours forever.
In some ways, it was the loveliest thought. Finally, finally her life had a forever ofsomekind. It was one she’d always thought she could live happily with.
Until she’d looked up from the carpet last night into Lucien’s stricken face.
And then he had disappeared for the night.
Their hands hovering in the air between the two of them, as though they knew something irrevocable would happen if they touched. A sword-from-the-stone kind of moment.
She had held these images in her mind all day, breathlessly, as though they were a new and exquisite object she would shatter if mishandled.
And her day had been wonderfully full: apple tarts, wrangling over the budget for the following month, firing a maid and hiring a new one, and she looked forward to dinner. Lamb in mint with peas.
But Lucien did not appear for dinner.
Very well. This was not shocking, she supposed. He was entitled to dine elsewhere now and again, though even the finest restaurants would struggle to match Helga’s skill.
And surely he would be in the drawing room tonight to readRob Royaloud, as he’d promised Mrs. Pariseau, and enact all the voices.
But he wasn’t.
And as everyone wandered up to bed, he was still nowhere to be seen.
As the night wore on, her worry amplified. In a way that made the backs of her hands cold and her heart feel small and shard-like instead of featherlight, the way it had earlier today.
By ten thirty in the evening, the house was quiet. Everyone had gone up to bed, and Angelique and Delilah and all the servants had performed the ritual of tucking in the house for the night—candles snuffed, doors locked, and so forth.
Angelique brushed her hair and plaited it and climbed into bed.
It quickly became clear that she would not be sleeping anytime soon.
She sometimes, restlessly, did one more round of the house to make sure the fires and candles were doused, and just to savor the silence and the pure pleasure of knowing that all of this was hers. Hers and Delilah’s. She decided to do that tonight.
At least that’s the reason she told herself for shoving her arms into her night robe and creeping quietly downstairs.
She paused on the landing of the floor where Lucien’s room was located. She heard nothing. No stirring, no breathing. Then again, no one could hear anything, really, over the sound of Delacorte snoring below.
She wasn’t quite so mad as to aim the candle at his keyhole.
She followed the stairs all the way down. Captain Hardy usually rather obsessively made certain the front door was locked by curfew, but surely it wouldn’t hurt to look one more time. Or to touch it to see whether it perhaps felt warm, as though a dangerously compelling man had whisked through and on up to bed.
She paused in the foyer beneath the chandelier that had so enchanted her and Delilah and Dot and stopped. Something made her turn her head.
Her heart leaped.
“Lord Bolt?” she said softly.
He was sitting on the long brown settee, his feet on the little table, his arms stretched over the back of it. He’d flung his coat somewhere; his rolled white shirtsleeves were brilliant in the dark.
His stillness unnerved her.