Her swift, sharp, secret intake of breath was perhaps the most erotic thing to happen to him to date.
It conjured an image of her, eyes half-closed, head thrown back, hair spilled across a pillow. He curled one hand into a tight fist, as if could contain all his lust there.
“CHECK. And MATE.”
“You bastard!” Mr. Farraday breathed in good-humored amazement.
Mr. Delacorte was celebrating with little gleeful hops in his chair, hands thrust upward in triumph.
But all the feminine heads had whipped toward them, uniformly reproachful.
“Begging your pardon, mesdames, sorry. The heat of competition, you see.”
“Congratulations, Mr. Delacorte, on your win. But I’m afraid you’ll need to put a pence in the jar, Mr. Farraday,” Angelique said.
“A pence, not a bean, as you did the other day,” Delilah added. “Don’t think we aren’t paying attention.”
He glared at her incredulously.
He slowly swiveled that glare about the room, as if, once again, he was wondering how he’d gotten there at The Grand Palace on the Thames in the first place, or perhaps searching for someone to take his side.
He just met limpid-eyed reproach from the women.
And a “what can you do, mate?” one-shouldered shrug from Tristan, who followed rules, and didn’t mind at all seeing the handsome squire called to task by two women.
He sighed heavily, pushed himself away from the table. Everyone watched Mr. Farraday trudge across the room. His pence clinked into the jar.
He returned to his chair.
They all smiled warmly at him.
And after what was clearly a valiant struggle not to smile, he smiled, too.
And all at once Tristan felt an errant little knife twist of resentment that her attention should be fixed elsewhere.
“Lady Derring . . .”
She turned back to him, her smile still in place.
“Why do you want me?”
She went still. She studied him, lamplight turning her eyes into enigmatic pools.
And then she just curved her lips in a little smile.
And then she pushed back her chair and stood to leave.
As she passed him, she bent slightly and whispered in his ear, “Because you want me.”
Chapter Sixteen
It was a negotiation now. Of that, Tristan was certain.
Should not happen again, she’d said. Ought not was also true.
Will not had not been said by either of them, and this was the lever he would use.
She would not behave heedlessly. She was a grown woman, and hardly a virgin. And it wasn’t heedless, if one deliberately made a choice to take a lover.
He suspected she knew that well.
She wasn’t to know that he was a ruthlessly subtle negotiator and he knew how to identify an opportunity and take the advantage.
Which was what he did the very next morning. He’d just turned the key in the lock of his room and was about to run downstairs to meet Massey when he saw her.
Arms full of folded linens.
She’d paused in a rectangle of wan light thrown in from the windows in the alcove on his floor. She was staring down at the street wearing a complicated expression. Wry, wistful. Pale shadows beneath her eyes.
“Tolerable day, isn’t it, Lady Derring?”
It was the best one could say about London weather at most times.
She gave a start. Her face lit, then went uncertain, then turned swiftly back toward the window, cheeks a little pink.
“The gentleman who relieved himself against the building certainly thought so.”
“If only he’d had a chamber pot painted in periwinkles, it might have been more picturesque.”
She gave a short laugh. But her expression remained wistful. Her posture was a trifle tense. It was both his presence, he suspected, and the fact that Lady Derring wanted the world to be one way, and it wasn’t. A list of rules notwithstanding.
“Have you plans for the day, Captain Hardy?” Her voice had gone lulled and soft. This was what his presence did to her now.
“Oh, yes. Various bits of business about town. I’m to meet a friend for a meal.”
How did it happen that the distance between them all but dissolved in a few seconds? He hadn’t moved and neither had she, not perceptibly. But suddenly he could feel the heat of her body against his. Like water sinking into earth.
But he closed his eyes briefly, and breathed her in.
A strand of hair had slipped from her cap to lie against her cheek. And his fingers, as if of their own accord, went up to delicately lift it away, tucking it behind her ear, then trailing down her throat. Which was as precisely as satiny as he’d dreamed.
Her eyes fluttered closed; her lashes shuddered on her cheeks.
And her breath was coming short.
“Imagine,” he whispered close to her ear, as his finger delicately traced the whorls of it, then skimmed to where her heart swiftly thumped. He watched the gooseflesh rise along her throat. “That my fingers are my tongue, and my lips. Imagine that there is nothing at all between you and me, not nankeen, not muslin. Just my skin against yours. My hands and mouth discovering every part of your body. Imagine me taking you here . . . now . . . where anyone may come upon us.”
She swallowed. Her head had tipped back. Her lips had parted, and now her breathing was ragged.
His fingers traced the pulse in her throat.
He let his breath play over her skin as he whispered, “Imagine how you feel now . . . and multiply it by a thousand. That’s how it would be.”
He stepped back.
“Because you’ll have to imagine, you see, as we agreed we shouldn’t do anything about it.”
He left her.
That bastard!
Delilah was very impressed. It was quite a tactic. And it certainly conveniently answered her question about whether Captain Hardy possessed an imagination.
She couldn’t move a hair from that window for a full minute, her body was in such an uproar of pleasure. She wanted to savor every hot, shivering, yearning feeling that he had started up until it faded completely.
Her breathing did not recover for another minute after that.
And then thinking about him thinking about her—because clearly that’s what he’d been doing—brought with it a fresh wave of that delicious, unnerving heat.
And it was not so much that she’d thought about nothing else for days since he’d kissed—very well, since they’d kissed—in the hallway. It was just that lust now formed the very emotional weather of her days. Every single thing she did occurred against a languorous, thrilling backdrop of it.
And her sleep—though she did sleep—was fitful. It was fair to say she was just a little irritable.
She thought about oughts, and how she’d vowed to never again let them dictate her decisions.
She ought not do a thing with him.
And then there were the wants.
My God, did she have wants.
But if it was merely an affair—and surely widows had them all the time—well, why shouldn’t she be that sort of widow?
The problem lay in the other things he’d said. The things that stole her breath for other reasons entirely.
The one visible star in a night sky.
Any fanciful notions about romance she’d consigned, like her childhood ribbons and christening spoon, to a locked keepsake box. There was no point in taking them out to revisit. But even if she could choose only one perfect thing for a man to say to her in her lifetime, she would not have arrived at something quite as romantic as that.
He was not the sort to resort to words in order to effect seduction. He was stating something he saw as a fact.
And while Captain Hardy claimed his intentions were specific—the satisfaction of an appetite, nothing more—the thing that worried her was that inherent in it, no matter their intentions, was the possibility—even the probability�
�of hurt.
For both of them.
And could she do it? Could she be someone who partook of pleasure for pleasure’s sake, without feeling like an object again, like a man’s means to an end? It was not so long ago she’d reclaimed her true self. It was still a little fragile, fresh out of the cocoon, as it were.
Would the hurt be worth the pleasure?
Oh, how she wanted to know about the pleasure.
When she could move again from the window, she went downstairs to the kitchen.
And as she’d anticipated, the kitchen was so bustling—Angelique and the two maids-of-all-work and Helga were all chatting, chopping, and peeling—it was temporarily easy to forget that while the rest of the building was emptier than she preferred it to be, one particular man seemed to take up an undue amount of space and air.
Delilah sat down and took up a paring knife and set into the apples.
“They eat like horses, men do!” Helga said happily. She was in her element stuffing hungry people full of food. “Girls, the scullery needs attention. Off wi’ ye now! Dot, would you be a good lass and go and fetch a bit of butter?”
The scullery maids and Dot scurried off.
Delilah lowered her voice. “May I ask you ladies a question? I must warn you it’s of a rather personal nature.”
“Of course, Lady Derring. There is very little what can surprise me now at me age,” Helga said briskly.
“Perhaps you’d like to put the pan down first, Helga?”
Angelique had already fixed Delilah with a wary look. Almost as though she knew precisely what she was about to ask.
“Well, now, I’m just about to put these apple tarts on to bake, Lady Derring. I’ve not a moment to spare, if we’re to have them with dinner, and I assure you my constitution is sturdier than even this.” She gave the bottom of the cast iron pan an affectionate pat.
“Very well.” She cleared her throat. Her face was already scorching. “My question is . . . my question is this: Does . . . having . . . er, relations with a man ever feel . . . well, pleasant?”
They all clapped their hands over their ears when the pan hit the floor.
They really had no choice but to wait it out as it wobbled to a stop.
“Is it really that shocking of a question?” she asked, weakly, when it did, finally.
“From you,” Angelique and Helga said at once.
“Sorry,” Helga had the grace to add hurriedly. “It’s just you’re so sweet and proper, Lady Derring, one doesn’t imagine you . . . wondering those sorts of things. Or doing those sorts of things.”
Delilah was scorching with a blush now, but she was determined to soldier through. “Because proper women don’t do them?” she said dryly. “Or because proper women don’t enjoy them?”
Helga and Angelique didn’t answer this question.
“Delilah . . .” Angelique began. “Whatever you’re thinking or considering, you ought to stop it straight away. You do not have the experience or the constitution to handle the consequences.”
To her astonishment a red haze of fury moved over Delilah’s eyes.
“Angelique.”
Her tone made Helga and Angelique go motionless in shock. It dripped icicles.
Angelique’s eyes went huge.
“I understand that life has been unfair to you and that your acerbic nature is something of a defense,” Delilah said. “I enjoy your humor more often than not. But I’ve grown weary of the condescension and I will thank you not to treat me like a child. Please remember how and through whom we came to be acquainted if you think to lord your experience over me.”
She was an aristocrat speaking to an underling. Even as the words left her mouth she was aware that she’d said too much, in the wrong tone, and in the wrong place, and the wrong time, and it was thanks to her nerves being abraded by want and the lack of sleep due to lustful imaginings.
And yet. The words and the sentiments had been simmering there all along.
Angelique’s face had blanked utterly.
Her eyes fixed on Delilah, unblinking.
Then she slowly pushed her chair back.
Stood motionless for a millisecond, while everyone watched her breathlessly.
And walked out of the room with the grace and dignity of an empress.
She didn’t look back once.
The room was silent after that.
“Shall I begin looking for other employment?” Helga sounded resigned. She’d worked in a number of households and circumstances, was accustomed to thinking three steps ahead. “Will it all go to pieces now?”
“No. Forgive me, 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 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. If you can refrain from speaking to me as though you’re the Duchess of Brexford.”
“I loathe the Duchess of Brexford! Did I sound like her?”
“I’m assuming. I loathe her, too. But if she should ever wish to stay here . . .”
“We’d charge her double the rate.”
They laughed at this.
“Derring never would laugh at my jokes,” Delilah said. “But I laughed at all of his.”
“Puns,” Angelique said blackly. “How I hated his puns.”
Delilah wanted to say, but didn’t: Captain Hardy smiles at me when I say things, and nearly every one of his smiles contains something of surprise and delight, like I’ve handed him a gift. His laugh is wonderful, and rare. He is far more thoughtful than one would think. He has on occasion made me laugh. He is dry, and a deeper thinker than one would suspect.
Lady Derring Takes a Lover Page 17