Of course it was Delacorte who asked.
“I gave him a job, and paid him well, when his family was hungry.”
He said this evenly, for the benefit of Hardy.
Upon whom he knew it would grate.
Hardy would never know the specifics, but the job he’d given Davey had to do with moving contraband silks into London. Davey had been one of many decoys Lorcan had used to confuse and diffuse the blockade runners.
“You seem to know everybody, St. Leger.” Delacorte was pleased with this. A salesman at heart, more friends meant more people to spread the word of his wares, and possibly more people he could talk into going to donkey races with him.
“Aye, well, who can forget me pretty face?”
He’d rather hoped a few would, in fact. A slight beard only partially obscured his scar. It was more difficult to begin a new life when his old life was so vividly carved into him.
When his old life was everywhere underfoot in London.
When his old life was striding next to him, looking every bit of what he was, which was a former blockade captain who regretted not catching him.
“Reminds me a bit of Hawkes,” Delacorte said. “He seemed to have friends of all sorts, too. Dukes, hack drivers, chaps on the street.”
“Hawkes.” Lorcan was surprised. “You can’t mean Christian Hawkes?”
“You know Hawkes?” Delacorte was thrilled. “He stayed with us at The Grand Palace on the Thames. I miss him.”
“Of course I know Hawkes,” Lorcan said, as if it went without saying. “Hawkes is how I got a charter from the king to be a privateer.”
Hardy shot him a searching, penetrating sidelong look.
Hardy could well imagine how Lorcan had come to know a legendary British spymaster.
But he didn’t know the whole truth, and probably never would.
Lorcan would have been a spectacularly well-placed informant. Hawkes would have sussed that out straightaway. And Hawkes was the sort of negotiator who would be willing to overlook a good deal if the information at stake was critical enough.
“Very good man, Hawkes,” Lorcan said. He was. He’d been damned sorry he’d been caught by the French.
“He’s out of prison and a viscount now,” Lucien said. “Lord Redvers.”
“I’ll be damned. Everybody’s a bloody viscount now, aren’t they,” Lorcan muttered.
Lucien looked at him askance.
Delacorte had wandered away a moment to speak to someone he knew. He returned to them.
“The end of the Barking Road is flooded,” he told them. “Seems no one can get in or out. Well, not with anything like ease or safety. No hacks are on the roads, of a certainty.”
The Barking Road is what linked this part of the docks with the rest of London.
“Bloody fucking hell,” Lucien said on behalf of all of them.
More grim news.
“We’ll be fine,” Hardy said calmly. “We’re prepared to feed our guests for a couple of weeks if it comes to that. But it won’t. St. John will likely be climbing the walls, however.”
“Whereas you’ll be a bastion of tranquility,” Bolt said to him.
Hardy shot him a wry, weary look.