Delilah hid her smile behind her wine glass. Oh, dear. She could commiserate with poor Clarence Hilton. The young man was clearly as harassed by his father as she was by her mother.
“I feel quite ill,” Clarence moaned. His forehead was sweating profusely, and he was rapidly turning an unfortunate shade of green.
“Get yourself together, Clarence,” Lord Hilton commanded, his nostrils flaring.
Delilah pushed back her chair and stood. She hurried around to Clarence’s side of the table and placed a hand on his forehead. “He feels quite hot,” she announced. “Perhaps he should rest in the salon.”
“Yes, thank you,” Clarence said. He clutched Delilah’s arm as she and one of the footmen escorted him out of the dining room.
She helped to settle him in the salon, before turning back toward the door. “I’ll inform your father you’re all right,” she said.
“Please ask him if we may go home,” Clarence said, and Delilah realized then that he was as uncomfortable as she had been, perhaps more so. Clarence didn’t want to marry her any more than she wanted to marry him.
“I’ll do better than that,” she said with a friendly smile. “I’ll tell him you must go.”
She turned to leave. “Thank you, Lady Delilah.” Relief was apparent in Clarence’s voice. “Thank you very much.”
“May I ask you a question, Lord Clarence?”
He nodded, rubbing his belly and groaning.
“When you saw me at the theater with the Duke of Huntley, did you truly care that we were together?”
Clarence blinked his eyes open. “Father said I should tell you to stop spending time with Huntley. He said it was unseemly.”
“I see,” was all Delilah replied before she quit the room. But it made sense. Poor Clarence Hilton had never had a thought of his own. His father told him everything to do. Delilah shook her head. She couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. Not sorry enough to want to marry him, but sorry nonetheless.
A quarter hour later, Lord Hilton and his son had taken their leave. Delilah and her mother had seen them to the door.
“I do hope Clarence recovers,” Delilah said, as she started toward the staircase to retire.
“Beginning to care about him, are you?” her mother said snidely.
“Why?” Delilah asked. “Would that make you wish you hadn’t picked him for me?” She didn’t turn back to allow her mother to see the smile that rested on her face as she mounted the stairs.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The next evening, Thomas took Delilah to Vauxhall Gardens to see the fireworks. The gardens were dark, the perfect place for a rendezvous if one didn’t want to be seen. They’d found a secluded spot in the trees where he spread out a blanket for them to sit on.
“How did your dinner with the Hiltons go?” Thomas was watching her profile. He often watched her profile of late. It was a distinctively unfriend-like thing to do. She tried to pretend she didn’t notice. She also tried to pretend as if she didn’t want to kiss him—and do more—a task that was becoming increasingly difficult.
Delilah sighed and leaned back on her palms to stare up at the inky night sky. “Exactly as you might expect. Clarence refused to speak unless prompted by his father. My mother talked of nothing but the weddings, and I was a complete failure at my attempts to change the subject. Fortunately, Clarence declared a stomachache halfwaythrough the meal, and he and Lord Hilton were forced to take their leave.”
Thomas glanced away. He shrugged out of his coat and tossed it to the edge of the blanket. This time, she had the opportunity to stare athisprofile.
“I can’t believe you’re still acting as if you’re truly going to marry him,” he said.
“I have no intention of marrying him, but I haven’t yet thought of how I shall avoid it. I suppose I could run off and elope.” Belatedly she realized she shouldn’t have said that. She tried to force a laugh, but the humorless sound that emerged from her lips was unconvincing.
“Say the word,” Thomas clipped.
Silence fell between them, a heavy silence in which the reality of their situation weighed upon them. Thomas had no idea how much she’d love to ask him to take her to Gretna Green to save her from Clarence Hilton. But ever since the night his father died, Thomas had turned into a knight in shining armor. He wanted to save everyone, especially his friends. He deserved a woman whom he truly loved and who truly loved him. Not his desperate friend who was in need of a timely rescue. It wouldn’t be fair to Thomas to let him save her.
She was about to tell him so when he turned to her. “Delilah,” he murmured. “Your mother doesn’t deserve you. You are a breath of fresh air, a light in the darkness. You’re everything she’s not, and if she was half the mother you deserve, she wouldn’t waste you on a man like Clarence Hilton.”
Delilah opened her mouth to respond, but words failed her. How could she answer to such a thing? Her mother was her mother. One didn’t get to choose one’s parents. She highly doubted anything she did at thisstage in her life would change her mother’s opinion of her.
“Thomas,” she whispered. “I don’t think you understand.”
