a house of easiness and joy. She’d struggled to find a handhold—a hearthold?—some endearing habit, like humming when he read the newspaper, the way her father had for instance, some little ember of charm or vulnerability that she could somehow fan into love. Derring was fifteen years her senior. And by the time they’d met, his personality was as fixed and impermeable as those statues he loved to collect.
Her wedding night—a revelation comprised of sweaty grappling, muttered instructions (“If you would be so good as to shift to the left, Delilah?”), and a grunted “sorry, sorry” and “thank you” put paid to those notions. Clearly romantic love was a myth, like unicorns or leprechauns, used to lure young women into marriages in order to perpetuate the species and produce heirs so future generations could go on enjoying being aristocrats.
She had lavished Derring with kindness. She hoped he’d never known the difference. Perhaps the failing was, indeed, hers.
Tavistock cleared his throat. “You’re still on the young side, if I may be so bold, and you could mar—” He stopped abruptly. “Well, perhaps you could marry a widower with children who need a mother, if you can find one.”
She was glad of the veil. Shame and fury arrived in swift succession, nauseating and scorching. If she couldn’t provide an heir in the six years she’d been married to Derring, what good was she to anyone, really?
And now she would be passed about among relatives, like the little carved stool from India that Derring had bought for no reason, and which was shunted from room to room, from house to house, always a little out of place, a little in the way. She’d last seen it in the library, where she’d barked her shin on it.
“Thank goodness I have you to advise me, Mr. Tavistock.”
“It’s no trouble at all, Lady Derring,” he said, surrendering to a glance at the clock.
“Am I keeping you from another appointment?”
He looked surprised. “I’m about to set out on holiday with my wife and family. Long overdue. Long overdue. Nothing like the seashore, isn’t that so?” he said brightly.
She merely stared at him.
Their heads turned in unison when voices suddenly rose in the little anteroom where Tavistock’s young clerk sat—a woman’s, dulcet and cajoling, determined; the young clerk’s, polite and firm.
Delilah cleared her throat. “Mayhap some item has been overlooked in the accounting. If you would be so kind as to review it one final—”
“I assure you, Lady Derring, we do not make mistakes here at Tavistock, Urqhardt, Ramsey, and Donne.”
Unctuous toad didn’t think her sentences were worth finishing, apparently.
“Isn’t it odd that I should find so little reassurance in assurances of your firm’s infallibility, Mr. Tavistock?”
He blinked as if she’d flicked water into his eyes.
She could hear her mother’s appalled voice now. Irony will not catch a husband, Delilah.
That had been the entire point of her, once it had become clear that she was going to be pretty: to catch a husband. They’d all been relieved, Delilah included. It meant she might be a savior, not a burden, to her family. Her father was a minor lord, but the guillotine of poverty had gleamed over her entire childhood such that they seemed to live in held breath, hushed tension, lest one wrong move bring it crashing down.
That the Earl of Derring had been smitten with Delilah was seen as both an act of providence and a triumph of her mother’s careful training. Be sweet, be dutiful, be awestruck. Yield to his needs and moods. Flatter his vanity. Lilt, do not declare.
If only her mother had taught her the pitfalls of trusting a man completely.
Funny. Delilah never lilted in her private thoughts.
And in her fantasies, she never yielded.
“You ought not worry, Lady Derring. Women who look like you need never go hungry, if they prefer not to.”
Tavistock would never have dared to use that melting, insinuating tone only a few days ago. Inside her unpaid-for gloves her hands had gone clammy.
And now she understood that the only bulwark against vicissitudes was a husband.
She imagined Mr. Tavistock climbing aboard and rolling off his poor, unfortunate wife. Something of her thoughts must have radiated clear through the veil, because Mr. Tavistock’s little smile vanished.
He cleared his throat. “As you are aware, the properties in Devonshire and Sussex will now go to the next male heir, a nephew, since there was no male issue of the marriage . . .”
Issue was a grotesque word.
“But—” He froze as some realization struck.
Suddenly Tavistock