“When have you known me to do anything rash, Exeter?”
This was, of course, a joke.
And such had been Lucien’s sorry state—morose, brooding, stubble-chinned—since he’d removed himself from The Grand Palace on the Thames that Exeter actually offered a small, taut smile.
He’d also brought him a cup of tea.
Lapsang Souchong, of course.
Lucien supposed he’d evictedhimselffrom The Grand Palace on the Thames this time, but living in the apartments above Mr. Exeter’s offices was like being transferred from Heaven to a cell. Which was an unfair, rather histrionic, comparison—the rooms were comfortable.
He was actually lonely and surprisingly bored, and boredom was a condition he’d always viewed as a luxury. He did not like prolonged periods of leisure for the sake of leisure. He’d grown unaccustomed to that. He liked his minutes filled with things that made him smarter or richer. He’d become quite spoiled by the diversity of company. He liked his room with the blue-and-white counterpane. He liked knowing who was walking down the hall or across the foyer by the sound of their footsteps, and he liked hearing a fat cat galloping up and down the stairs at night, and never knowing whether he would sleep soundly until the morning or whether a coal hod would shatter his dreams with a violent crash. He missed the excellent food and wondering what in God’s name Delacorte would say next. He missed, oh God, how he missed, waking to Angelique in his arms, and knowing that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. The taste of her, the feel of her hands on his skin, her soft voice, her laugh. He could not help but imagine these things, but every memory was like a drop of acid trickled onto his poor, raw, ravaged heart.
He had begun to picture a life that felt real and true and completely his—or rather,theirs—with Angelique and love at the center of it. Simple and full and happy. But every day that passed felt like he was caught in a riptide, pulling him farther and farther away from her.
It had been a little over a week since he’d seen her or heard her voice. His mind could not conceive of a destiny that didn’t include her. It was very like he was in the middle of the sea again, and everything in every direction was one color, and the shore was nowhere in sight.
He went to White’s. And to the shock of everyone, he’d apologized, once again, individually and sincerely, to those who had been present for his outburst, explaining that it was no longer reflective of the person he was, but that he had been wounded because the woman in question was dear to him, and would they not do the same for a loved one who had been grievously wronged?
He’d paid for the broken glasses.
He melted hearts all over again. Because Lord Bolt was clearly suffering an age-old problem: heartbreak. And he was doing it with such dignity, with such haunted, shadowed eyes, that even Hallworth consented to shake his hand, and vowed he would not repeat something so scurrilous.
He’d been, after a fashion, forgiven.
After a fashion, he was attempting to fix the unfixable.
But he knew how often a single newspaper was read. How they passed from hand to hand in coffeehouses and pubs and households, wound up tumbling as litter through the city, or wrapped about something breakable to be shipped across continents. The potential for that little snippet of gossip to be read and read again stretched on into perpetuity.
And if he’d shattered Angelique’s dream of safety and peace at The Grand Palace on the Thames, he didn’t think he could live with himself. If she could not forgive him, if the hurts inflicted by other men had so irrevocably shaped her life as to leave no room for hope or forgiveness for him, he didn’t know how to fix that. Perhaps he had experienced their time together one way and she had experienced it another.
In his arrogant, most honest moments he suspected their hearts frankly beat as one and that she could not do without him.
In other moments he acknowledged that even if this were so, it did not mean that she wouldn’t. If anyone knew how to endure things, it was Angelique.
And it was this that got him up in the morning, and made him shave his face, and eat food, and otherwise do things humans do. Because any moment of any day he might finally know what to do next.
And then his ship—delayed due to storms and a few bouts of illness on board, staffed by a frazzled crew ecstatic to see land, women, well-cooked food, and money—finally arrived. His cargo of riches, silks, and spice accounted for and undamaged. He’d profusely and personally thanked all of them and ensured their bonuses were doubled, and this was how relationships were cemented. And how the best people wanted to work for and with him. Perhaps people like him and Captain Hardy knew more than any officer behind a desk at the East India Company the dangers, risks, and skills involved in this endeavor.
And as he fingered a bolt of gold silk, so like the one Angelique had worn the day he’d met her, he knew, just like that, what to do next.
It would ensure her future.
And possibly his.
The idea was, perhaps, a little bit mad. Perhaps even a little bit quixotic.
And so he told Exeter what he wanted to do. Exeter was dubious because he was always dubious. Lucien paid the man to be a little dubious.
Hence the dry and anticipated. “Are you certain you want to do this, sir?”
But:
“Oh, yes,” he told Exeter. “I’m quite, quite certain.”
Angelique had taken a book to the parlor, which was the brightest room at this hour. The Grand Palace on the Thames was still experiencing a rather unnervingly quiet string of days. Nobody new arrived. Everyone inclined to speak in a loud voice or clatter across the marble entry (Delacorte, Cassidy) had gone off to do God only knew what, and everyone inclined to drop things, sing while they work, or bicker in whispers (the maids, and most particularly Dot) was still tiptoeing around her as if she were fragile and would blow over in a bit of a breeze.
It was beginning to work her nerves a little bit, this tender solicitousness. She tried to think of irritation as a sign she might be feeling a little bit more like herself.