He closed his eyes and shook his head. “Of course she did. I’m sorry.”
Delilah crossed her arms over her chest and gave him a rueful smile. “She’s a woman who knows what she wants and intends to get it.”
“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. I say she’s a spoiled termagant.”
Delilah laughed. “Or that. I’m nearly certain she threatened Miss Adeline too, but unlike me, Miss Adeline threatened her back.”
Thomas’s bark of laughter followed. “I’m not certain who I’d bet upon to win that particular fight.”
Delilah pursed her lips. “I had to tell Miss Adeline he was not allowed to pull out her hair.”
“That seems reasonable.” Thomas let his gaze wander over her softened features. “By the by, how did Lavinia threaten you?”
“She told me if I didn’t get Lord Berwick to come up to scratch, she’d spread rumors about me to Branville.”
Thomas rolled his eyes. “God. She’s awful. What was your response?”
Delilah shrugged. “I told her I was doing my best and that she must be patient, which of course is completely hypocritical coming from me because I have no patience whatsoever.”
“Did you put in a good word for her with Berwick?”
“No. Instead, I had a discussion with Lord Stanley and told him he cannot talk about drainage anymore if he hopes to capture her attention.”
Thomas laughed again. “Did you give him any suggestions for suitable conversation?”
“I told him to talk about Lavinia’s favorite subject.”
“Herself?”
“Precisely,” Delilah said with an impish grin.
They both laughed. And Thomas found some tension draining from him.
“How’s it going with Branville?” Thomas asked next, thinking the slightly unkempt curls brushing her forehead were especially fetching tonight.
“How’s it going with the woman you’re madly in love with?” Delilah countered.
The tension returned. Thomas took a deep breath. He could either keep pretending he’d been jesting or attempt to use what he’d already said to his advantage. “It’s not going particularly well.”
“Nor mine,” she murmured, her attention drifting across the room to the object of her affection. “Nor mine.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“Call you me fair? That fair again unsay. Demetrius loves your fair. O happy fair! Your eyes are lode-stars, and your tongue’s sweet air. More tunable than lark to shepherd’s ear. When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear. Sickness is catching. O, were favor so. Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go. My ear… My ear…”
It was no use. Delilah could barely remember her first lines. All she could think about as she uttered them was how she might be playing Helena speaking to Hermia, but she might as well be herself speaking to Lady Emmaline Rochester.
Precisely three days ago, Delilah had been told by her maid, Amandine—who was friendly with the other French ladies’ maids about town—that the Duke of Branville had been paying regular calls to Lady Emmaline. That unwelcome news had thrown both Delilah and Lucy into a whirlwind of action. They’d scrambled tocome up with a plan to attempt to gain Branville’s attention and favor.
As a result, over the last three days, Delilah had been shamelessly throwing herself at Branville. During rehearsal, she’d hinted that she would very much like him to pay her a call the next day. She’d waited impatiently at home all afternoon with only the regular call from her cousin Daphne. At the Mortons’ soirée, Delilah had been forced to askhimto dance, a situation that still caused her cheeks to heat every time she thought of it, especially when she recalled that during their dance, she stepped on his feet no less than three times. And last night at the Cranberrys’ ball, she’d managed to convince him to walk in the gardens with her, only to have been paying scant attention, resulting in her being whacked in the face by the branch of a particularly low-hanging tree. She’d barely had five minutes alone with him, not to mention the ridiculous incident had left her with a large scab on her forehead. The opposite of attractive. It could easily be said that not only was her courtship with Branville not progressing, it was, in fact, deteriorating daily, and Delilah was at her wits’ end. Adding to her sense of failure, she also hadn’t managed to drag a name out of Thomas as to whom he might fancy.
She tried her line again. “Yours would I catch, fair Hermia, ere I go. My ear…”
“My ear should catch your voice, my eye your eye. My tongue should catch your tongue’s sweet melody,” Danielle Cavendish said softly as she came to stand next to Delilah in the corner of Lucy’s library.
Delilah gave her a tentative smile. “Yes, thank you, Cousin Danielle.”
Danielle inclined her head toward her and returned the smile. “How are you, Helena?”
