“Well, then,” he said heartily. “What do friends such as we do, if we aren’t to passionately make love?”
“We shall chat pleasantly in the parlor at night, as I do with my other friends. I shall read aloud from a book, perhaps, and you shall read aloud, in your turn. Perhaps you’ll join in one of the musicales, or hold my yarn when I knit.” Her eyes flashed mischief.
“Holdyour—I regret my decision to be your friend immediately. I’d like to rescind.”
“But we shook on it, Lord Bolt, and rumor has it you’re a gentleman, momentary lapses notwithstanding.”
“Momentary Lapse. Perhaps that will be my pet name for you.”
“I’ll be happy to answer to Mrs. Breedlove in company. Perhaps as the years wear on I’ll allow you to call me Angelique.”
“And yet you called me Lucien outright a moment ago. Is that what you call me in your private thoughts? ‘I wonder what Lucien is doing right now. I wonder what he looks like in the bath.’”
She regarded him with a slight head tilt.
“Silly,” she said almost tenderly. “I don’t think of you at all.”
He’d never had a more baffling exchange with a woman. Or a more excruciating one.
Or one, perversely, he’d enjoyed more.
Silence again. A frustrating and fascinating one.
“But I can chat in the parlor withDelacorte,” he said finally.
She laughed. “If you can do that with Delacorte, then I’m afraid you have more than one friend, Lord Bolt. And doesn’t that make you a rich man, indeed?”
She backed away swiftly and gracefully, and trailing a glance alight with mischief and a hand raised in farewell as she moved out of the light, and down into the busy heart of the house, away from him.
He stared down at his hand, bemused. He thought perhaps he would not forget holding hers.
Chapter Eight
“What is it? Do tell,” Delilah urged on a bright hush. And elbowed Angelique playfully.
“What?” Angelique was startled.
Dinner was over and they were in the parlor alone, apart from Dot. This seldom happened, and while they loved it when it was full of happy people, it was rather nice to have the big room to themselves for a bit of a change. They’d brought down the basket of mending they usually saved for the upstairs sitting room, shifts and shirts and that sort of thing.
“You look as though you’ve a lovely secret or are preparing a pleasant surprise for someone. Your face is like a lamp. You’ve a very nice glow. And you’ve sewn yourself to Mr. Delacorte’s shirt.”
“Oh!” Angelique lifted her arm. Mr. Delacorte’s vast shirt did indeed come up with it, as though she were raising a mainsail.
Mr. Delacorte was hard on his shirts but they appreciated the challenge of keeping the rents from showing and the buttons all firmly in place.
Dot had once sewn her entire sleeve to a sampler that said Bless This Home, and they’d been hours extricating her.
“Allow me.” Delilah reached over and snipped the thread, and she was free.
Would that it was just that easy to free herself from thoughts of Lord Bolt. One snip and voila! A return to peace of mind.
“I suppose...” Angelique attempted by way of explanation. “I’m just grateful we’ve a house full of happy guests who seem to be enjoying each other. And I’m grateful for the quiet.”
Mainly because it wasanythingbut quiet inside her head. Things were an uproar in there.
It was indeed a rare evening where nearly everyone was availing themselves of what London had to offer: Mrs. Pariseau had gone to the theater with a friend; Mr. Delacorte had taken Mr. Cassidy to some race involving animals that weren’t horses, perhaps donkeys?—she’d stopped listening because she frankly did not want to know—and Lord Bolt was off some place, too, and she didn’t particularly want to know about that, either. Odds were she’d read about it in the newspapers in due time.
But she felt his presence so powerfully he might as well be sitting in the chair across from her, long legs outstretched, eyes fixed on her as though she were the first sign of land after months at sea.