the breeze created by her nosy neighbors abruptly dropping curtains when she’d appeared.
Delilah hiked her skirts in her hands and dashed up the stairs and through the broad double doors. And then she heaved them shut and threw the bolts behind her. She was halfway across the foyer when she stopped abruptly: her footsteps were echoing oddly, dizzyingly.
All at once she realized that it was because everything that had once genteelly cushioned her life—acres of plush, patterned Axminster, velvet curtains bound in tasseled golden ropes, the plump settees on their little bowed legs—was gone.
Her stomach was ice once again.
She stared down at the floor contemplatively, as if it were the sea she intended to cast herself into.
And then she ran, her footsteps eerily clattering as though there were an entire herd of Delilahs chasing her, and bounded up the stairs to her rooms. She lost a slipper (dyed black satin with a tiny heel, unpaid for) on the way.
She skidded to a panting stop at the doorway of her chambers.
Astonishingly, everything—the mirror, the wardrobe, the writing desk and chair, her bed with its fluffed pillows, the rose-and-cream carpet—was still precisely as she left it.
There sat Dorothy on her bed, holding a hatpin in one fist and a knitting needle in the other, like a Turk wielding two scimitars. Her big blue eyes fierce.
“I wouldn’t let them through, Lady Derring. They just laughed and said they’d be back on the morrow.”
“Oh, Dorothy. How valiant. Lay those weapons down so that I may hug you.”
Dot obeyed.
And Delilah gave her a quick, fierce squeeze.
“What is happening, Lady Derring?”
“Well, creditors are taking our possessions away. It seems Derring was in a bit of a financial bind. I’ve only just learned this myself from the solicitor. He didn’t mean to leave us this way, but it cannot be helped. I didn’t know it would happen, and I am in a bind, too.” She kept her voice bright, for Dot’s sake. “We will need to leave here within a week as the rent has not been paid. Now, I will write you a letter of reference so you can find another—”
“Oh, I would never dream of leaving you, Lady Derring.” Her eyes were wide and earnest.
This was precisely what Delilah was afraid of.
“Who else would have me?” Dot added practically, showing an uncharacteristic sense of self-awareness that lacked self-pity. Or pity for anyone else who employed her, for that matter.
As this was all too true, Delilah said, “Oh, now.”
All at once, she was pathetically glad to not be alone. Dorothy’s loyalty was touching.
And suddenly, now that she was responsible for someone other than herself, she could think more clearly.
“What about Mrs. Blenkenship?” she said, furiously thinking. She was the head housekeeper, who had a ring of keys very similar to the ones now stuffed in Delilah’s reticule.
“Went off to the Duchess of Brexford straight away. The duchess fired her own housekeeper to get her.” Dot said this with some awe.
Perversely, Delilah was proud. Her staff was the best.
“And Mrs. Vogel? Helga?”
“The Duchess of Brexford,” Dot confirmed.
“The Duchess of Brexford again? That . . .” She considered which word to use, then chose the one that fit best. “Bitch.”
“Lady Derring!” Dot breathed, delightedly scandalized.
Odd that uttering the word gave her a little burst of energy. She’d never before said such a thing out loud. So that’s why people did it.
Not that she intended to make a habit of it.
Then again, she was apparently a woman who owned a building by the docks, so maybe it was appropriate.
“Oh, Lady Derring, what will we do?”
Delilah didn’t answer. She stood slowly, and ventured toward Derring’s room, adjoining hers.
It had been all but stripped of its furnishings and appointments.
A coat lay on the floor. She hesitated.
Then lifted and smelled it.
And dropped it immediately. It reeked of those cigars.
It ought to have been poignant. But it brought with it a sizzling fury.
And with fury came clarity.
“Come with me, Dot.” She seized Dorothy by the arm and led her down the stairs, retrieving her shoe on the fourth step, then headed out the kitchen door.
“It might be helpful for you to know, Lord Kinbrook, that I haven’t a soul. I found it an encumbrance in my line of work.”
Captain Tristan Hardy explained this in kindly tone to the aristocrat who sat across from him and sweating nearly through his Weston-tailored coat.
White’s was crowded tonight. Waiters bearing trays disappeared into and emerged from clouds of cigar smoke like genies coaxed from bottles. Spirits were