Lady Derring Takes a Lover - Julie Anne Long Page 0,65

Helga. We are adults. I shall fix this.”

But not right away, she wouldn’t.

Angelique needed to marinate in those words a bit, too.

Still. Delilah felt like that dropped pan. Miserable and ringing and raw. She sighed and resumed peeling apples.

It seemed they had found yet another of the problems with men.

“Lady Derring . . .” Helga said. “In answer to your earlier question . . .”

Delilah looked up alertly. “Yes?”

She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Oh, my lord, yes.” She fanned a big hand across her bosom. “It bloody well can be pleasant. Pleasant isn’t the half of it.”

Delilah smiled slowly. And took a deep breath and sighed it out.

It didn’t help much. And yet it did.

“Thank you, Helga. I appreciate the benefit of your expertise.”

“Always happy to be of assistance, Lady Derring.”

A few hours later Delilah found Angelique in the upstairs drawing room hemming a petticoat with swift, meticulous little stabs of a needle. She’d brought up tea on a tray.

Angelique didn’t look up when Delilah entered, even when Delilah deliberately gave the tray a little shake to make the teapot rattle.

She settled it on the table with a clink.

Angelique did look up then. “Well, it seems you were right, Lady Derring. You’re not an entirely pleasant person.”

“I did try to warn you.”

Angelique regarded her with a taut little smile.

Then ducked her head and resumed the stitches. Delilah dropped in a sugar and poured two cups of tea. She passed the sugared tea over to Angelique. How odd that she should know how her husband’s former mistress liked to take her tea, but there it was.

They sat in silence for a time.

“If we were men,” Angelique said thoughtfully, “I probably would have called you out, and we would have met over pistols at dawn, and one of us would now be laid out in the parlor, freshly dead.”

“Which parlor do you envision for funerals, should that unhappy occasion arise?”

“Perhaps the other downstairs parlor. The smoking room. More gloom. Enough room.”

They both flashed little smiles at the dark humor. Because they both had thought of this, which was why this partnership was going to be a success.

If Delilah hadn’t ruined it.

“If your sense of honor is offended, perhaps we can instead have a contest instead to see who can mend a petticoat faster,” Delilah suggested.

“Just imagine the bloodshed.”

A little more of the tension seeped away. They would in future be able to disagree, or even fight, no doubt, and survive it. Hopefully.

But it had begun, indirectly, because of a man.

She had a suspicion Angelique knew which man.

The fact that she hadn’t said anything outright meant she probably trusted Delilah more than she let on.

“Oh, I think men have their merits,” Angelique said. “But they are invariably stupid about pride, and honor, and that rot. And thoughtlessly cruel. And selfish. All to varying degrees, but it seems to be built into their gender.”

The second hand swung away a few more moments of awkward silence.

“I should not have spoken to you in that tone of voice in front of the staff, Angelique. It was wrong and I apologize and I won’t do it again. But I don’t apologize for the spirit of my message.”

Angelique blew out a breath and laid aside her mending. She folded her hands in her lap.

Then cleared her throat.

“You’re also right that I have a tendency to talk to you as though you are a child. And for that, Delilah . . .” She inhaled again, releasing her breath at length. “I apologize.”

The hot spots of color on her cheeks suggested this apology was a good deal more difficult than it sounded.

“Has it something to do with Derring? Your . . . condescension?” Delilah hesitated to ask the question, but she needed to know.

Angelique winced. At which word, Derring, or condescension, Delilah was uncertain.

She thought for a moment before speaking. “Less directly with Derring . . . than perhaps the circumstances of your birth and your position. I suppose I am not as immune to”—she cleared her throat—“envy as I thought. I hadn’t realized it until I just kept doing it. Talking to you as though you are a child. And you are quite brave to call me out.”

This moment certainly felt perilous and delicate and important.

“Well, those I cannot help. My birth. My marriage. Any more than you can help yours. And I respect you no less.”

“I know. Of course I know. I shall attempt not to direct any of my lingering uneasiness about that at you.