“Drink it,” Mrs. Breedlove advised firmly, but gently. “The sherry.”
Delilah sighed. They raised their glasses simultaneously and ironically clinked them together. Delilah threw hers back like she’d seen men do, and swallowed.
She gasped. Her eyelashes whirred as water flooded her eyes.
Then a lovely warmth spread from her diaphragm out in little tributaries in her body. Simultaneously reviving and anesthetizing. Magical, really.
“Well,” she said. Intrigued.
“Smooths the edges a bit, yes?” Angelique was amused. She’d sipped hers. Even though only a tiny amount remained.
“Rather.” As she had earlier with cursing, she understood, suddenly, the point of a little alcohol.
They sat in silence a moment.
“You didn’t love Derring, either,” Mrs. Breedlove said. It sounded oddly sympathetic.
Delilah’s jaw dropped. “OfcourseI...”
Hell’s teeth. She hadn’t the strength to continue to prop up her own facade.
She lowered her voice. “What makes you say that?”
“You’re a woman of feeling, clearly, but none of your feelings seem to be shredding grief for your late husband.”
Delilah breathed in and released the breath slowly. Behind her, both the fire and the man snoring next to it crackled.
“I tried.” Her voice was hoarse. He’d frowned in discomfort when she was playful or laughed too loud. And yet he always, always expected her to smile.
And suddenly the regret foryearsshe’d lost in that loveless stasis was lacerating. To what end? She had ensured the last years of her parents’ lives were comfortable. Was safety worth it?
“I was grateful to him.” Her voice was frayed. “I truly was. He wanted an heir. And I felt as though I failed him. I wanted children, and a house full of music, of—”
“Guilt is ballast,” Angelique said startlingly firmly. “Release it. It won’t serve you in your—our—current circumstances.”
Ah, yes. Thecurrentcircumstances.
Delilah fell silent again, as the current circumstances asserted themselves through remembering where they were: a pub by the docks, because she was penniless.
“He held you in the utmost esteem, you know,” Angelique said gently, ironically. “Derring did.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. It seemed impossible that you could truly care for someone and leave them ignorant of living on the knife-edge of disaster.
“If only one could pay the landlord with esteem,” Delilah mused.
Angelique gave another slow smile, as if everything about Delilah was both unexpected and a little entertaining.
“Haven’t you family, Lady Derring? A place to live?”
Delilah slowly shook her head. “I was an only child. I haven’t family on this continent, anyhow. I have Dot.” They looked over at Dot, her petite frame slumped in the chair, mouth open, snoring softly. “She’s the only one who didn’t flee. And... I haven’t decided yet where I might go. My options are limited and unattractive and involve begging for charity.”
Angelique quirked the corner of her mouth. “I had two servants who abandoned me with alacrity when they sussed out the state of things. And no place to go.”
She tapped her fingers against her sherry glass. “Imagine a world in which someone can buy an entire life—and two entire women—on credit propped up by virtue of atitle. An accident of birth. Though of course some of them think their titles are ordained by God. The world is ridiculous.”
She said this last word with surprising venom.
Which made Delilah realize that Mrs. Breedlove was not so much cool as very, very controlled. That beneath her facade was, as she put it, a woman of feeling, and those feelings were as seething and complex as her own.
