with someone else!” she said indignantly. “Wouldn’t you? I know you’re both a bit on in years but I daresay even now you wouldn’t turn away from the possibility of a grand romance.”
Delilah and Angelique very, very carefully did not look at each other. Neither of them was yet thirty.
They were both tempted to give her ears a slight boxing.
They could tell her a lot about the myth of romance. Delilah, in particular, could now tell her that a disappointing marriage could be stifling but magnificent sex on a boardinghouse settee with a man she hardly knew and who was not a gentleman could be in her distant future by way of compensation. The delicious soreness between her legs and a hint of whisker burn against her cheek conspired to remind her of that all day.
But it seemed impossible to say that to such an open, indignant, hopeful face.
And something about that open, hopeful face made Delilah feel just the little bit sordid. A little bit nostalgic for a time when she didn’t know all the things she knew. A little wistful that Miss Bevan-Clark could marry a friend, who knew her so well.
It wouldn’t matter, regardless. Miss Bevan-Clark would never believe them if they told her there was no such thing as romance.
“To marry a friend! I ask you. I daresay we crawled about in nappies together! Not romantic at all!”
“There are worse things than marrying a friend, Miss Bevan-Clark.”
“Is that what we should aspire to? Seizing upon something because it isn’t the ‘worst thing’?”
“Absolutely,” Angelique said as Delilah was saying, “It’s a bit more complicated than that.”
But it wasn’t as though Miss Bevan-Clark didn’t have a point.
“I have money with me! A lot of it. I can pay you whatever you like. If you let me stay for a time.”
Oh, the idiot child.
Delilah sighed. She and Angelique didn’t even have a decade on Miss Bevan-Clark, she suspected, but she suddenly felt as old as Westminster Abbey.
“Miss Bevan-Clark, how old are you?” Angelique asked.
“I shall be eighteen next April.”
“Very well,” Angelique said. “First of all, do not ever tell strangers in London that you have a lot of money. You’re fortunate that you’ve stumbled into The Grand Palace on the Thames where we will charge you dearly but not more than what our accommodations are worth. We are quite respectable and you are safe and welcome here.” She paused. “At the moment.”
The faintest hint of a threat of eviction was a good way to keep unruly guests in line.
“All right,” Miss Bevan-Clark begrudgingly allowed. “Thank you,” she added, though the last two words sounded like a question.
“Second of all, you’re the veriest twit.”
Miss Bevan-Clark’s mouth dropped open. “Well, I never!”
“What she means is . . .” Delilah leaned forward soothingly, placatingly. Then she sat back again. “No, Mrs. Breedlove had it right the first time,” she said cheerfully. “You are indeed the veriest twit.”
Miss Bevan-Clark clapped her jaw shut. Her eyes were enormous with amazement.
“You shall be respectful if we allow you to stay with us,” Delilah said firmly. “You will speak to us with the respect in which you hold your mother, though we’re scarcely much older than you.” The word “scarcely” was all a matter of interpretation, of course. “We’ve experience of the world and you would do well to listen. I suspect you’ve been rather indulged until now, and now this—your parents’ insistence on marrying your friend—is the first time you’ve been challenged. And so you’ve gone to pieces like a little baby.”
There was a stunned silence.
“Well, that’s very unkind.” Miss Bevan-Clark seemed more surprised than incensed. Doubtless people had never been unkind to her before. She seemed a little pleased at the novelty of it.
“It is true, however. Buck up. Learning how to accept criticism without throwing a tantrum is how you become an adult. I don’t suppose you’re stupid. You don’t seem so, anyhow.”
Miss Bevan-Clark was clearly torn between pitching a dramatic little fit or basking a little in the compliment.
“I’m not stupid.”
Her choice of words suggested she might be speaking truth.
“I thought not.” Delilah beamed at her encouragingly, and Miss Bevan-Clark beamed in return, like a prized pupil.
“Are you here alone?” Angelique said suddenly. “This area by the docks is quite dang—” Delilah shot her a warning glare. “—erously appealing.”
“My maid, Miss Wright, is waiting outside in the hack. She thinks I’ve gone quite mad. She refused to come in.”
“Well, at least one of you is sensible,” Angelique said.
“Thank you.” Miss Bevan-Clark had