“Yes. A little.”
His parents were modern and for the most part quite accepting people—after all, they managed to like Mr. Delacorte, and Mr. Delacorte was the very definition of an acquired taste—and while he’d made certain his daughters, Lillias and Claire, could properly play the pianoforte, his father thought—not without some justification—that musicians, poets, painters, singers, and the like were at all times about two steps removed from debauchery. (Which St. John knew wasn’t too far wrong. They all did indeed seem to know how to enjoy themselves.)
Lord Vaughn heaved a sigh. “Well, I suppose we’ll look forward to your recital,” he said ironically, shaking his head as he made his way down the hall, wondering if his children would ever cease to surprise him.
“St. Leger had us by the short hairs,” Tristan said half admiringly, half irritably to Delilah in bed the night theZephyrhad limped into port. He’d told her about the tentative agreement they’d all struck in the smoking room. “He had something we needed, and damned if he didn’t know how to work that to his advantage. He was ready with the figures. And I know how smart he is. How effective he is. How good of a leader he is. I was already halfway to yes before he was done speaking. But Delilah...” He sighed, and stretched and yawned on her name, and gathered her into his arms, and she burrowed closer into his body. “The main reason I said yes... well, the man has nerves of iron. I never knew him to blink at all even when he was tracked for smuggling. But when he first mentioned he had a ship, I noticed his hands were trembling just a very little when he was holding his cheroot. It meant everything to him. Because Daphne means everything to him.”
For a respectful moment they basked in the sweetness of someone else’s vulnerability and love.
“I’m happy for them,” Delilah said softly.
“Be happy for all of us. Inside a decade, we’ll be merchant kings. Barring caprices of fate here or there,” he murmured.
“ONE, two, three, ONE, two, three...” Daphne murmured to Lorcan. “Watch Mr. Delacorte and his partner now, they’re heading our way...”
He had taken to waltzing the way he’d taken tothe sea, and Daphne felt as though she’d boarded a great galleon to sail about the ballroom of The Grand Palace on the Thames.
Hans, Otto, and Friedreich promised to come again as soon as they were able, and were told they’d be warmly welcomed, which was mostly true. Their farewell gift to their hostesses and hosts and fellow guests was an emotional concert, which gave Daphne and Lorcan another excuse to gaze into each other’s eyes while in each other’s arms, which was one of their favorite things to do. They would be moving on, too: Lorcan had found a very pleasant house to rent while they looked for a permanent home in London, for Daphne longed to set up housekeeping with him now that they were a couple.
“And we’ll invite everyone from The Grand Palace on the Thames to a party for your birthday, with dancing, and ratafia, and little cakes...” Daphne mused.
“...and oranges,” he added.
Since Lorcan didn’t know the actual day he was born, he had chosen the day he’d met Daphne as his birthday. Their winters, for the rest of their lives, would be filled with celebrations.
And so there ensued a bit of a lull at The Grand Palace on the Thames—a wistful one, as most lulls often were when they occurred, because they were often preceded by the departure of guests of whom all the residents had become fond. But Helga could exhale, now that the German musicians would be departing, and she could loosen,just a little, the constraints around the menu and the food budget. There was now time to mend Mr. Delacorte’s waistcoat, to aggressively pursue the drafts to repair them and to perform other loving and energetic acts of building maintenance.
But lulls become unnerving if they go on too long, for The Grand Palace on the Thames depended on new guests.
As it so happened, they were not fated to enjoy a dull moment. For the lull ended and drama began on a Wednesday, during a full moon, when it was finally Mr. Pike’s turn to open the door.
Two and a half years later...
Lord Henry Havelstock plucked up his hat and patted his handkerchief across his damp forehead, something he’d done five minutes ago and would likely need to do again in another five minutes. The fact that the sun seemed to be conspiring to boil everyone in London like crabs in a pot had not deterred his wife from insisting on a shopping trip—shopping was her very favorite thing to do—to The Strand. He found it easier to indulge her, to set her loose with his money and her lady’s maid among the shops while he waited elsewhere; he might have to talk to her otherwise, and he had tired of listening to her years earlier. He could not quite say why. He loved his childrenwell enough; both were currently home with their governess. He had realized too late that what made him feel alive was newness and beauty, and he was too young, he felt, for life to become so relentlesslyuneventful. Still in the prime of his life. Perhaps a mistress would be just the thing. One could always get another mistress if one grew bored. Rather unlike a wife.
As if his thoughts were made manifest, a woman entered the ice shop in which he had taken refuge and he promptly lost his breath.
She was glowingly, arrestingly lovely. Her frock was the color of marigolds. Her bonnet was tied beneath one ear with a satin ribbon of the same color. Her mouth was soft and full and her complexion called to mind the finest pearls.
He stared, suffused with restlessness and longing.
Perhaps the heat was the reason recognition took so long to set in.
When it did, it nearly knocked him off his feet.
“Daphne?” He almost choked the word.
She turned swiftly about at the sound of his voice.
She froze, too, her lovely brown eyes huge with astonishment. But her expression registered not much more than recognition. Certainly it betrayed nothing of the shock he felt. Nor did it convey dismay or pleasure. It was pleasant enough but abstracted, as if her thoughts were entirely elsewhere.
It had been a decade at least since he’d seen her, but Lady Daphne Worth had never before lookedat him as if he hadn’t mattered at least a little. He was badly jarred.
He could not seem to stop staring. His last memory of her was her face, pale with shock and contorted with an effort not to weep. Some days, when he felt taken for granted by his wife, he conjured that image to remind himself that he had once mattered so intensely to someone. He had been appalled to hurt her. It had seemed at the time it could not be helped.
He had heard, not too long ago, that she had yet to marry. He wondered if she would be amenable to another arrangement of some kind.
Suddenly the sun was nearly blotted out, as though by an eclipse.