“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 notevertell 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, Inever!”
“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 wordscarcelywas 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’mnotstupid.”
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 Mr. Farraday’s willingness to assume that all compliments were meant for them.
“Dot, go and bring her maid in. Miss Bevan-Clark, give Dot some money to pay the hack.”
