Lady Derring Takes a Lover - Julie Anne Long Page 0,10

in the face of penury. I would rise and curtsy, but once I sat down I felt as though I may never stand again. My name is Mrs. Angelique Breedlove.”

“Is that your real name?”

“Good heavens, no.” Her face lit with amusement, and for a moment Mrs. Breedlove looked five years younger than the haunted soul she’d seemed an unguarded few minutes ago. “What decent English mother names her daughter Angelique? And my mother was decent, I assure you. I was born Anne Breedlove, in Devonshire. The ‘Mrs.’ is an honorific I bestowed upon myself. It makes me more respectable, you see.”

Mrs. Breedlove was winning the irony competition.

They resumed the stares. Angelique’s chin was up ever so slightly, the only hint that she perhaps had a good deal to be defensive about. Her posture suggested it had gotten that way through repeatedly walking across a room balancing a stack of books as a child, the way Delilah’s own mother had trained her. Mrs. Breedlove’s pride was evident.

“May I ask you another question?” Delilah said finally.

Mrs. Breedlove nodded slowly.

“Were you my husband’s mistress?”

Chapter Four

Mrs. Breedlove’s little smile was weary and taut. “Do you often ask questions you already know the answer to?”

“A simple yes or no will suffice, Mrs. Breedlove.”

“Yes, for the last three years. Which I’m certain would be your next question.”

Delilah took in this information wordlessly.

She knew what she ought to feel. Or rather, what she was expected to feel. But she was beginning to understand how filtering her true self through a screen of oughts and shoulds had diluted her essence little by little, like water added to whiskey. If she wasn’t careful, there would be nothing left of her, whoever she once was, before Derring.

And God help her, she could not find it in herself to regret that Derring had mostly neglected the marital bed for the last two years, regardless of the reason.

Her next question required her to reach into a heretofore untapped reservoir of nerve. It was just that she needed to know the depth and breadth of the lies that had apparently formed the foundation of her life before she could free herself from them. She took in a subtle sustaining breath.

“Were you . . . were you in love with Derring? Was he in love with you?”

Angelique’s eyes flared in astonishment and something like jaded amusement, which she quickly squelched.

She regarded Delilah with something like sympathy, tinged with perhaps a little condescension.

But she was silent for a moment.

“Forgive me, I’m trying to decide which answer will be both accurate and sparing of your feelings.”

“I no longer have feelings, so you needn’t worry on my account.”

The corner of Angelique’s mouth quirked. “Ah, yes. The numbness. Don’t worry, all of your feelings will return with a vengeance at an inconvenient time.”

“You’re a sage as well as a mistress, then, Mrs. Breedlove?” The women’s jaded worldliness was beginning to abrade her nerves. And, to be perfectly honest, her pride. She was accustomed to being a countess: to issuing orders, albeit pleasantly. To commanding a certain respect and deference, without, of course, having done much of a thing to deserve them apart from marrying an earl.

Perhaps this was why she perversely admired Mrs. Breedlove’s worldliness, too. It seemed borne of an earned confidence. The sort gained from experience.

“I believe I do have a specific sort of wisdom to impart,” Angelique said coolly. “And no. I didn’t love him, Lady Derring. Nor did he love me. I’ve come to believe that romantic love is a fallacy. I think life is cobbled together by business arrangements and compromises, and it’s this fact—the pure business of it all—that I hoped you wouldn’t find hurtful. It suited him to have a mistress, I believe, because all of his friends had one, even that odious little Tavistock. The way it suited him to buy sculptures and urns and whatnot. I feel as though I was collected, and as my straits were dire when we met, I was grateful. I did spare a thought or two for you, but not many, I confess. Under certain circumstances moral cringing becomes a luxury.”

Delilah absorbed this silently. She didn’t know whether it was a relief to know or not. It certainly rather bleakly echoed her own conclusions about life and “love,” which interestingly wasn’t entirely pleasant to hear. It confirmed her own instincts about Derring. She supposed there was a bit of satisfaction in that.

And yet something about the unadorned directness of this answer was exhilarating. Refreshingly