“We are usually more civilized, Mr. Bellingham. Oursincerestapologies,” Angelique said earnestly. “We’vehad a very exciting few days and everyone is feeling their oats, it seems.”
“Oh, it’s only a blush,” Mr. Bellingham said easily. “I shan’t perish from it. Perhaps I ought to have a little more of the sherry, too, just to catch up with everyone else.”
Mr. Delacorte stared at Bellingham and his happy smile took on a bemused, somewhat pensive quality, as though he just couldn’tbelievehis luck. He was likely imagining dragging Bellingham to a variety of pubs and getting him happily drunk enough to sing bawdy pub songs.
Mrs. Pariseau got up and put her penance pence in the jar and Mr. Delacorte paid three pence for all of his “feckings,” as well, and they returned, each happily enough, to their chairs.
“Lord Bolt sailed through the air over the banister in just his shirt to help rescue Mr. Hawkes,” Dot explained helpfully to Mr. Bellingham, just in case he wasn’t tired of picturing it.
“Oh,” Mr. Bellingham said, politely, with a somewhat wobbly smile. He had not been apprised of all the dramatic details of Mr. Hawkes’s arrival.
“We were all there. In fact, Mrs. Gallagher was one of the first by his side,” Lord Bolt added gallantly.
Mr. Hawkes turned sharply to regard her with such wondering solemnity that Aurelie nearly clapped her hand over her jolting heart. As if to disguise the fact that just like that, he’d set it aglow.
She found she could not speak. Her own cheeks were likely turning shades of red.
“It’s funny, ain’t it,” Mr. Delacorte mused. “It’s obvious Bolt puts his shirt on first, but Hardy puts his pants on first. I guess we all do it differently. I like to do shirt, then pants. The Duke of Valkirk said he had a series ofservants lift him on pulleys to lower him into his pants, lest he be unduly abraded. Ha! He was a very amusing fellow. I miss him.”
Aurelie gave a start.
Because Mr. Hawkes had gone as still as an arrow striking its mark.
“Valkirk?” Hawkes said nearly sharply. “Valkirk was a guest here?”
“He stayed with us for some weeks and left with a wife,” Delacorte said. “He was splendid, and she was splendid, too. Everyone seems to leave here with a wife,” he added. Somewhat wistfully.
“Good man, Valkirk,” Captain Hardy said. He was looking at Mr. Hawkes, somewhat meaningfully.
“The finest,” Hawkes said shortly.
But Aurelie noticed, because it seemed she noticed everything now, that sharpened, concentrated quality of Hawkes’s attention at the mention of the famous General Blackmore, now the Duke of Valkirk.
Everyone—everyone in Europe, and probably the world over—knew who the Duke of Valkirk was. Valorous Valkirk, they called him now.
It did indeed seem remarkable that he’d come to stay at this little place. Perhaps that accounted for Mr. Hawkes’s reaction.
“What about you, Bellingham?” Mr. Delacorte said, while Bolt considered his next move. “Do you put your shirt on first or your pants—”
“Mrs. Gallagher,” Mrs. Hardy said brightly. “Would you be so kind as to favor us with something pretty on the pianoforte? And perhaps Mr. Delacorte would like to sing?”
“Mr. Delacorte wouldloveto sing,” Delacorte said delightedly.
Chapter Fourteen
Delacorte was almost at once in full, fine voice while Mrs. Gallagher played the pianoforte.
But before the singing got underway in earnest, Captain Hardy and Bolt retreated to the smoking room adjacent to the sitting room, and Hawkes went with them because not only had he been curious about it since Mrs. Gallagher mentioned it, he wanted to get Hardy and Bolt alone for a few questions. Mr. Bellingham had charmingly demurred when invited along. He wanted a turn at singing.
The room had clearly been furnished by women who understood men, Hawkes thought approvingly. They’d created a refuge for male visitors and residents of The Grand Palace on the Thames to be quietly disgusting or profane if they so chose. It was decorated in shades of brown, spread with a lush carpet in a stain-hiding pattern of brown and cream and hung with long dark brown velvet curtains. The chairs were vast, worn, and comfortable and the little table, upon which a man could hoist his booted feet, had seen better days.
Hawkes lowered himself carefully into the chair, and was given a glass of brandy by Hardy and a lit cheroot by Bolt, and he sighed.
As they all quietly, reflectively enjoyed that first inhale, Hawkes thought of Mrs. Gallagher—Aurelie—preparing to go to Boston, apparently alone. It wasabout as far as someone could run. It was hardly a frivolous undertaking for someone who had never taken an ocean voyage. They were expensive and could be perilous, and either she wasn’t aware of this or had decided the risk was necessary, and his money was on the latter.
It was a fairly desperate act of someone who could not get far enough away, fast enough. It made him restless.
Although, from a professional perspective, he appreciated the invention of a dead husband. It was the sort of thing one could wield skillfully as a shield.