“I’ve already made a good start on the section on shops, which will be the longest,” Della informed him. “I’ll do my best to finish my draft in two months, as we agreed.”
“Seven weeks, now.”
“Yes, yes.” Della waved this away. Seven weeks was still heaps of time. “But as to how much say you should have in the final text, that depends on whether you can reassure me.”
“Reassure you of what?” Lord Ashton still sounded tired. She wished she knew how to resolve this debate in a manner that would please both of them.
“That your advice will be useful to me. That your intention to help is sincere.” Thus far, he’d opposed her far more than he’d encouraged her. Not the best beginning for their imminent friendship. “That you can be trusted.”
If Ashton had seemed preoccupied at the outset of this conversation, something about that last part caught his attention. He looked up at her sharply, his indifference vanished.
“Unfortunately, I can’t be.”
His expression was so intense that she suffered afrisson. He wasn’t joking, unless it was his odd, grim humor again. There was something in his manner that reminded her of what he’d said about his wife. Like then, Della wasn’t sure how to interpret it.
After a beat, he continued in a more measured tone, “You said so yourself. You don’t know anything about me.”
“But that’s exactly why we should take some time to become acquainted,” she protested. “I’m not comfortable letting a strangerhave any say over something I’ll be working so hard on, particularly when you only warmed to the idea after you bargained your way into a share of my money. It’s not enough to know that you’ve written a successful book. I want to know your character before I share any control over my work.”
“Thirty-five,” he answered with the grim tone of one getting an unpleasant task over with. It took Della a few seconds to remember her earlier question. “And I haven’t written one successful book; I’ve written three. There are also guides to Brighton and Dublin, and I’m working on Bath next.”
Only nine years between them then. She would have guessed he was older. But perhaps it was the gray in his hair that aged him.
“What else do you want to know?”
“About your wife…”
His face hardened immediately. “There are limits to my willingness to indulge you, Miss Danby.”
“I have no wish to pry into the details of your private life,” Della began (a blatant lie), “but youarethe one who brought it up at our first meeting and seemed to imply you’ve been living separately for years. May I ask whether you’ve both concluded that reconciliation is out of the question?”
“Why should this be of any interest to you?”
“I suppose I’m trying to judge whether I’m risking my reputation by meeting with you. I’m an unmarried woman, after all, and you are…a married man who doesn’t seem to be bound to his wife any longer. It might make a difference in how things appear to others.”
Annabelle cleared her throat.
Oh, be quiet, Annabelle.It took all Della’s self-control not to kick her sister in the shins.
“Reconciliation is out of the question, and it’s safe to assume that you’re risking your reputation, yes.” Ashton delivered these factsmuch as the ladies at Bishop’s laid winning cards on the table. The emotion fell somewhere between triumph and fatalism. “But I would think that ship sailed long ago.”
Was he referring to her club, to the way she’d shown up at Verey’s café to meet him without a chaperone, or to her behavior at this meeting? Regardless, his words had the appearance of an insult, and they loosened her tongue accordingly. (Something she hardly needed help with today.)
“Did you and your wife part ways because you frequent houses of ill-repute?”
Lord Ashton choked on his tea. By the time he was done coughing and could finally speak, his voice was reduced to a thin rasp. “What?”
“I read the portion of your book on dancing halls.”
“I don’t that’s not—” He paused to compose himself, mopping his cravat furiously with a handkerchief. “Just because I made mention of a well-known location doesn’t mean that I engaged the services there.”
Annabelle put her book away, all pretense abandoned.
Della continued on, following her thoughts down whatever path they took, as she usually did. “Is there an equivalent for ladies?”
“I’m not sure I understand you.”
“I’d never really thought about it before now, but surely if bordellos exist for men, they could exist for ladies too. I’m asking you for research purposes, by the way, so you can count this as working on my book again.”
