“Shall I begin looking for other employment?” Helga sounded resigned. She’d worked in a number of households and circumstances, was accustomed to thinking three steps ahead. “Will it all go to pieces now?”
“No. Forgive me, Helga. We are adults. I shall fix this.”
But not right away, she wouldn’t.
Angelique needed to marinate in those words a bit, too.
Still. Delilah felt like that dropped pan. Miserable and ringing and raw. She sighed and resumed peeling apples.
It seemed they had found yet another of the problems with men.
“Lady Derring...” Helga said. “In answer to your earlier question...”
Delilah looked up alertly. “Yes?”
She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Oh, my lord,yes.” She fanned a big hand across her bosom. “It bloody well can bepleasant. Pleasant isn’t the half of it.”
Delilah smiled slowly. And took a deep breath and sighed it out.
It didn’t help much. And yet it did.
“Thank you, Helga. I appreciate the benefit of your expertise.”
“Always happy to be of assistance, Lady Derring.”
A few hours later Delilah found Angelique in the upstairs drawing room hemming a petticoat with swift, meticulous little stabs of a needle. She’d brought up tea on a tray.
Angelique didn’t look up when Delilah entered, even when Delilah deliberately gave the tray a little shake to make the teapot rattle.
She settled it on the table with a clink.
Angelique did look up then. “Well, it seems you were right, Lady Derring. You’re not an entirely pleasant person.”
“I did try to warn you.”
Angelique regarded her with a taut little smile.
Then ducked her head and resumed the stitches. Delilah dropped in a sugar and poured two cups of tea. She passed the sugared tea over to Angelique. How odd that she should know how her husband’s former mistress liked to take her tea, but there it was.
They sat in silence for a time.
“If we were men,” Angelique said thoughtfully, “I probably would have called you out, and we would have met over pistols at dawn, and one of us would now be laid out in the parlor, freshly dead.”
“Which parlor do you envision for funerals, should that unhappy occasion arise?”
“Perhaps the other downstairs parlor. The smoking room. More gloom. Enough room.”
They both flashed little smiles at the dark humor. Because theybothhad thought of this, which was why this partnership was going to be a success.
If Delilah hadn’t ruined it.
“If your sense of honor is offended, perhaps we can instead have a contest to see who can mend a petticoat faster,” Delilah suggested.
“Justimaginethe bloodshed.”
A little more of the tension seeped away. They would in future be able to disagree, or even fight, no doubt, and survive it. Hopefully.
But it had begun, indirectly, because of a man.