Lady Derring Takes a Lover - Julie Anne Long Page 0,79

appalled the next (she’d had extraordinary sex on a settee with a gorgeous captain she barely knew). She could not and did not regret it. But was this the sort of person she wanted to be? She had been gently bred, whatever that, in fact, meant, and though she’d been triumphantly shedding shoulds and oughts for some time now, shedding her night rail in the middle of the drawing room was something else altogether. Try as she might, she could not get her thoughts to congregate and mull the problem of it. Her body was still echoing from the pleasure visited upon it. It drowned out reason.

She kept hearing his voice: I need you.

She had done her chores in a feverish, abstracted state and joined Angelique for tea in the upstairs drawing room.

Dot dashing up the stairs. She tripped on the last one, nearly arriving on her hands and knees in the little drawing room.

“Lady Derring, Mrs. Breedlove, we’ve a very young lady what wants a place to stay. She is rather, er, fancy and frantic and demanding.” She crawled a few paces then righted herself.

It was apparent Dot’s nerves had been a bit worked by this young lady, who had probably been under their roof for a few minutes.

“By all means let’s rush to see her then,” Angelique said, her eyes cast heavenward.

Delilah shot Angelique a wry look and laid her mending aside. “Of course we’ll see a frantic young lady. Will you bring in the tea, Dot?”

On the reception room settee sat a girl who, they could see in an instant, came from a family of some means. Her turkey-red wool dress and matching pelisse were enviably smart and current, and a darling felt bonnet trimmed in darling cherries and leaves sat next to her on the settee.

She’d made herself quite at home, so it seemed.

“I can’t go through with it. I can’t! I can’t, I tell you. I’d rather die,” was how she greeted the two of them when they appeared.

Delilah suspected she’d been saying this to herself since Dot left the room.

“Of course you wouldn’t rather die, darling,” Angelique said firmly. “Whatever the ‘it’ in question is. You could always open a boardinghouse instead.”

Delilah shot her a dry look.

“You don’t know!” the girl wailed.

“I expect a man is involved,” Delilah said.

This brought the girl up short.

“How did you know that?” she asked suspiciously. “Is it true what my mother says, with age comes wisdom?”

She was wide-eyed and disingenuous.

There was a little silence.

“I say we throw her outside to the wolves,” Angelique said.

The girl flicked her uncertain blue gaze between Angelique and Delilah. She was pleasingly round, with charming little pale freckles across her nose that she probably hated, and her honey-colored hair, neatly curled and pinned, was surprisingly unmussed for one so frantic.

Delilah sat down next to her and touched her arm gently.

“Why don’t you take a breath and tell us how you’ve come to grace our establishment, Miss . . .”

“Bevan-Clark. Lucinda Bevan-Clark.”

“Miss Bevan-Clark, I am Lady Derring and this is Mrs. Angelique Breedlove.” Angelique sat down opposite them. “We are the proprietors here at The Grand Palace on the Thames. Why don’t you tell us what brings you here and what has you so upset?”

Miss Bevan-Clark took a breath. “Are either of you married?”

After a little hesitation, Delilah answered for both of them. “We are widows.”

“It’s the most awkward thing,” Miss Bevan-Clark said fervently. “He’s been my friend my entire life. But I am not in love with him. The very notion of marrying him!” She gave a shudder. “But my parents got it into their minds that we should make a match because our families are rich, you see, and well, our families would only get richer should we marry, and wouldn’t that be lovely for everyone.” She said this with great snideness. “I’m terribly afraid he’ll be so awfully disappointed because I think he’s in love with me, otherwise why would he propose? I got word from a mutual friend of ours that he intended to propose at a house party we were both attending and I took it upon myself to run away from the coaching inn. I asked to be brought to the nearest boardinghouse and this is where the driver took me.”

She looked proud of this, and she really ought not be.

“Rich, you say?” Angelique said just as Delilah said, “Are you in love with someone else?”

“Well, I’d certainly like the opportunity to find out if I’m in love