Angelique shimmied her shoulders as though the creature had crawled right down the back of her dress.
Rat or no rat, by the time they reached the kitchen the feeling that had begun next to the pianoforte had crystallized into an idea, and Delilah’s heart picked up a beat.
The centerpiece of the kitchen was an enormous heavy work table, furred with dust. She stopped short, so vividly could she imagine Helga cheerfully shouting orders to the kitchen staff while they sat here and chopped and stirred. She could almost smell simmering onions and fresh bread and—had she just caught a whiff of one of Derring’s cigars? Perhaps she’d dredged it from her imagination? Or had he stood in this dusty kitchen, for some reason?
It was empty of everything apart from the table and dust, and it could easily become the bustling heart of a house again.
The light in here was gray now, squeezing in through the chinks in the shutters.
All at once Delilah’s heart was pounding. Hope was painful, but it was also like exposing a wound to the light it needed to heal. She hadn’t realized how little hope her comfortable, stultifying life had contained. She’d been sealed and locked up, in some ways the same as this house.
“I think this building has potential,” she began idly, offhandedly. She traced aDin the dust on the table.
“The potential to be a whorehouse, which I suspect it was some time ago. Or a truly fine and dangerous gaming hell, given its location,” Angelique agreed, on a yawn.
Delilah cleared her throat.
“Actually... I think it has the potential to be a very fine boardinghouse.”
She’d said it.
“Do you think you may still be a little drunk?” Angelique tipped her head, suggesting gently.
“Onhope,” Delilah said, beatifically. Though she was, in fact, still a little drunk. “But think about it. The rooms could be made very comfortable and charming. The wholehousecan be made very comfortable and charming. It’s filthy, not decrepit. Look around you at this kitchen... imagine it filled with cheerful staff, making apple tarts...”
“Ohhhh, apple tarts,” Dot breathed, caught up in the vision. “I do like apple tarts!”
“And if the roof leaked, it would smell like mildew, and it doesn’t, does it?” Delilah demanded.
“It doesn’t,” Dot agreed.
Angelique was staring at her oddly.
“And we’ll get a cat or two for rats and mice,” Delilah said firmly.
“Oh, I do like cats!” Dot enthused.
There was a little silence as her words, her idea, her vision, hung and sparkled in the air like that listing chandelier.
“We’llget a cat?” Angelique said quietly.
It was a fair question. Delilah hardly knew this woman. Their only bond was that a certain feckless earl had kept both of them alive, bored them silly, rolled on top of them and rolled off, and then left them terrified and flailing and penniless. At this moment they might be cleaving to each other the way shipwreck victims will cleave to the first available flotsam. Her judgment might be colored by terror, sherry, hope, hunger, and fury. But her instincts about people—save, perhaps, Derring—had always been good.
“Why not?” she said on a sort of bemused, gleeful hush. She hiked and dropped her shoulders.
Something like hope flickered in Angelique’s expression, as fleeting as one of those rainbow colors winking in the chandelier. Her mouth twitched, and she almost smiled.
She visibly, ruthlessly tamped it down again.
“But Delilah... here near the docks... the people who want to stay in an inn might be a little... well, they might not be the sort a countess is accustomed—”
Delilah waved a breezy hand. “Oh, we’ll have mixed company, of a certainty. But it could be so lively! I wouldloveit. Just imagine! You might be able to use all of your languages.”
Angelique began to laugh, then she bit her lip to stop it.
But now Delilah was slowly rotating, as if filling all the shelves with food and imagining a cook before the stove.
She pressed on, her words rushing together now. “At first I thought I might be mad, too. But the more I think about it, the less outlandish it seems. Between us we’ve enough experience to run a large home. We need only allow people weliketo stay, and we’ll charge them handsomely for excellent service. And—” She allowed the fantasy to bloom fully, drumming her fingers on her chin. “Andwe’ll require guests to eat dinner together at least four nights per week and sit in the drawing room with other guests most nights out of the week. So we’ll all come to know one another and feel like family. Oh, we can even havemusicales.”