“It’s a practical way of storing one’s wealth, when you think about it,” Lucien contributed. In a devil’s advocate way.
“While I remain grateful for the many exciting ways in which you’ve expanded my horizons, Tristan,” Delilah said so dryly Captain Hardy’s lips finally twitched toward a smile, “here is the conundrum. Though I haven’t seen Delilah in nigh on a decade, I am personally acquainted with her. I’ve been to herhome. Furthermore, I know her family, and they are quality.”
“What sort of quality? The Lucien’s father sort, the Duke of Brexford, who is a right bastard, or the ‘you’ sort, quality to the bone?” Captain Hardy said to Delilah.
“Aww,” Angelique teased him softly.
Captain Hardy cast his eyes sharply at her. He was never going to be comfortable exposing the tenderest contents of his heart to anyone but his wife.
And even then, he still struggled.
No one objected to his assessment of the Duke of Brexford, because it was simply true that he was a right bastard.
“I’m talking about character, Tristan,” Delilah said. “That’s what we mean when we discuss ‘quality’ here at The Grand Palace on the Thames. For instance, we think Mr. Delacorte’s character is of the highest quality.”
Mr. Delacorte was one of their very first guests. He was a salesman of remedies from the Orient, which he sold to surgeons and apothecaries up and down England, a lover of donkey races and festivalsinvolving the pursuit of greased pigs, and he mostly confined his flatulence to the smoking room, for which they remained grateful. And while he was also a partner in the Triton Group, he coped with his worries rather differently than Captain Hardy and Bolt did. For instance, tonight he’d gone to a pub to sing bawdy songs and he hadn’t yet returned. Which was unlike him. He was very close to missing curfew, and he’d never before missed it.
“And here is the thing, and why I’m concerned about Daphne,” Delilah continued. “The last time I saw her—just before I married the Earl of Derring—she was engaged to the son of the Earl of Havelstock. Henry, his name was. And in truth, I cannot say we were close—she was always my social better, and her family was so much grander than mine. But I do think we liked each other. She seemed very happy last I saw her. Absolutely radiant. I wonder what happened?”
“Havelstock?” Lucien mused. “I’ve spoken to him at White’s. He’s besotted with his beautiful wife. Word has it that she was his younger brother’s governess.”
There was a moment of total silence honoring the potential crushing of a heart.
“Oof,” Hardy said quietly.
Delilah glanced with concern at Angelique. She’d been a governess once. While her circumstances had been similar, things had gone rather more badly for her.
Angelique’s expression had gone unreadable.
“Well,” Delilah said carefully. “We don’t actually know what took place. Perhaps she broke theengagement herself. I feel it isn’t my place to pry. We should not assume. But Angelique and I know full well—too well—what it’s like for life to crash down around our ears, and how it feels when you finally find the person who feels like home. She seems to have chosen the husband of her heart. Which takes courage. Sometimes even fortitude,” she added dryly. Pointedly.
“While that may, in fact, be true,” Captain Hardy said with irony, not wholly unamused, “I believe ‘the husband of her heart’ coordinated a smuggling operation between France and London so sophisticated and efficient that we were never quite able to prove it. Primarily silks and liquor. It seems to have ceased operations about three years ago. Coincidentally when he allegedly became a privateer. His nickname on the streets is ‘your Lordship.’”
This time silence fell like an anvil.
“Youbelievehe headed a smuggling operation.”
Delilah said it gingerly. After all, her husband, and the men in his command, had been legendarily ruthless about breaking the chokehold the many and often violent smuggling gangs had on English towns. He’d been so very good at his job he’d bartered his heroism to the king in exchange for a visit to The Grand Palace on the Thames. His Majesty had briefly parked his majestic behind on the settee in the sitting room of The Grand Palace on the Thames.
One of the thousands of ways, large and small, that Captain Hardy had proved his love for Delilah since he’d met her.
“Am I certain of this?” Hardy said. “Yes. Could I ultimately prove it?”
But it seemed Captain Hardy couldn’t bring himself to say the word “no.”
Lucien said thoughtfully, “I only knew St. Leger to be incredibly skilled with a sword, for which I had cause to be grateful at the time. But if Hardy says it’s true...”
The unspoken part of that sentence was, “it must be true.”
And it probably was.
Both Delilah and Angelique desperately wanted it to be untrue.
“But what is he like?” Delilah asked on a near hush. “Was he violent or unpredictable when you knew him?”
“All men are capable of violence,” Captain Hardy said shortly. “You ought to know this by now.”
Yes. She knew this. And Delilah had witnessed firsthand what Captain Hardy would do to a man who threatened her.