“Oh ho! I wonder if the king visited for a particular reason.” His eyebrows wagged up and down and up and down and it was a minute before he was able to get control of them. “Remember the Earl of Derring? Cocked up his toes right over in that chair over there?”
He pointed to a chair occupied by a young man who appeared to be doing an imitation of a barking hound, his hands up like paws. Near him, a friend was laughing riotously and clapping his hands.
One really ought to stop aristocrats from reproducing, Lucien thought wonderingly,if they’re going to go and do a thing like that.
“I heard—mind you, it’s all hearsay, heard it from a fellow who heard it from a fellow who only knew her name, naught else—that’s where Derring’s doxie is living now. At that boarding house.”
Lucien went still.
He could practically feel the moment his blood stopped moving. Everything did, really, for that second. His heart. His lungs.
And yet somehow he managed to stare at Hallworth.
Who likely would be surprised when he looked in the mirror in the morning and discovered two singe marks.
Of a certainty Captain Hardy would be tempted to neatly impale the man in front of him if word got back to him that Delilah had ever, in the history of the world, been referred to as a “doxie.”
Lucien would need to get the story straight before he delivered this regretful news to him.
But Hallworth apparently interpreted Lucien’s fixed stare as fascination. “Oh, yes! I remember her well. A laugh like bells. All that golden hair. A body that made you... oh, you know just...grrrr!” He put his hands up like a tiger curling its claws. “It made one want to pounce upon her. D’ye know, Derring said her skin was like satin. Iburnedwith envy when I saw that he’d gotten that little piece himself. Last time I saw her was at a party, the sort one can’t bring a wife to, if you take my meaning”—he tried to elbow Lucien but missed him—“on Glover Street, tried to slide a few fingers into her bodice when I thought everyone was well into their cups.”
Lucien’s skin had turned to ice. A little screen of red dropped before his eyes.
“Ho, but I can still feel the sting of her hand on my skin even now. I always did wonder if Angelique was her real name. Couldn’t be, right? It’s a doxie’s name. I s’pose winding up at the old palace of the rogues is full circle for a whor—”
Lucien’s hands lashed forward like a snake and hooked into Hallworth’s cravat, pivoted, and hurled him up against the nearest wall.
The crash of the table and the tinkle of glasses and shocked gasps rose.
“If you value your life, Hallworth—and I expect that you do, though only God knows why, youworm—you will not finish your sentence.”
Hallworth dangled, legs thrashing, jowls quivering.
“Bolt.”
He heard someone’s voice distantly from outside the haze of fury. Lucien’s blood was roaring in his ears. A caustic pain seemed everywhere in him.
“Bolt. You’re hurting him.”
The voice seemed to come from a mile away.
“I ever hear you speak her name again in any context—if I ever hear you mention her again toanyone—it will be the last word you ever speak. Do you doubt me?”
Hallworth’s face was a white mask of terror. Lucien could see his own rage reflected in the man’s black pupils.
“Do. You.Doubt.Me.”
“No.” Hallworth choked.
Lucien opened his hands.
Hallworth’s knees buckled, and he slid down the wall to crumple on the floor. Wild-eyed, he stared at up at Lucien.
Lucien knew it was already too late.Hewas the one who’d all but ensured that everyone would know about Angelique and Derring, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
“You may name your seconds if you feel it necessary, if you prefer to die sooner rather than later.” He said it almost dully.
“I won’t be doing that.” Hallworth choked.