Too late, Angelique realized she sounded like someone who burst onto the stage in a pantomime waving their arms about.
It was Delilah and Angelique’s habit to confer about potential guests before making a decision. And since the party celebrating three marriages—the Farradays, the Masseys, and the Hardys—was underway but showing signs of winding down, they were speaking in loud whispers on the stairs instead of in the opposite parlor.
“He’s not a... a... tusked boar, or some such, Angelique, who’s inadvertently wandered in. We can’t just shoo him out. He says he’s Viscount Bolt. I’m inclined to believe him, based on what I know of viscounts.”
“He’sinsufferable.”
“Yes. That’s what I mean.”
“And he wants to open agaming hell. What manner of pastime is that for a grown man?”
“A lucrative one, I should imagine,” Delilah said practically.
Angelique went mute in astonishment.
“Do you see?” she said darkly after a moment. “Usually I’m the one who says things like that. And then you exclaim ‘Angelique!’ in shock, andIlaugh, andyoulearn. He’s already upsetting the natural order of things.”
Delilah laughed, rather proving Angelique’s point. “Iamlearning from you. Thank you. Pragmatism is a fine quality.”
Angelique snorted.
“I wonder if that’s why he’s doing it.”
They were quiet for a moment of furious thinking. They would need to go in and bid farewell to Mr. and Mrs. Farraday and the Masseys, as they would be leaving soon, and Delilah would want a moment alone with her husband.
“And he has those... those... eyes.”
Angelique fervently wished she could unsay the words the moment they left her mouth.
Delilah stared at her. “Bolt does? Do you mean the ones in his... head?”
Delilah was beginning to sound a little concerned. About Angelique. Not Bolt.
They stood on their toes and peered into the parlor. They could see Bolt sipping his tea. Regretfully, probably. Given that he drank only Lapsang Souchong. For God’s sake.
His hair touched his collar and it gleamed in the light, like his signet ring and his boots and his eyes and his buttons. But even from here Angelique could see there were faint shadows under his eyes. He did not look debauched. When he didn’t know he was being watched, he in fact looked a little weary.
She didn’t want to feel anything like sympathy.
Where had he been during that ten years’ absence? Did she and Delilah have the right to know? It was and it wasn’t difficult to reconcile the legend of the newspaper gossip with the arrogant, seemingly immovable man who sat on their pink settee.
“I’m sorry. I can see you’re upset, Angelique.” Delilah had lowered her voice even more. “Do you know him from... That is, has he...”
Angelique went still. Delilah’s delicacy was both touching and mordantly amusing. The tacit agreement was that Angelique would prefer to forget her past. Entire days went by when she didn’t think much of it at all, so content, so busy, was she here at The Grand Palace on the Thames. She had begun to think it had ceased mattering to her.
Which was why she was surprised to discover that Delilah’s delicacy brushed against a raw place in her soul she hadn’t realized she still possessed.
“No,” she said finally. Her voice lowered. She sighed. “I’ve never met him until today. And to be honest, he hasn’tdoneanything in particular to upset me. You—and only you—know the whole of my history with men, Delilah.” Angelique had provided Delilah with a painful summary, sans emotion and details, on the day they’d first met. It could be summed up in one word: “disastrous.” Or, if one were to use more than one word: “a faithless squire,” “a feckless lord,” and “Delilah’s perfidious dead first husband, the Earl of Derring,” all of whom had partaken of her and left her flailing, terrified, and in the end, jaded.
She was not entirely faultless. What mattered was she was standing, and that was very much inspiteof the men who had populated her life.
And yet it wasn’t entirely out of the realm of the possible that she would have seen Lord Bolt at one of the Earl of Derring’s little parties, comprised of men and their mistresses and much appalling drunken tomfoolery. The Duke of Brexfordhadmade a brief appearance at one, after all. It really wasn’t the very proper duke’s sort of thing.
Of course, it hadn’t been Angelique’s sort of thing, either, but at the time she hadn’t had much of a choice in the matter.
“I suppose Lord Bolt simply rubbed me the wrong way, Delilah,” she said finally. “It’s been some time since we’ve had to contend with anyone we didn’t take to at once.”
“Oh, he’ll probably be insufferable for a time and then he’ll be off, because can you imagine a man like that agreeing to abide by our rules of conduct? We will not make an exception for him, of course. Including our epithet jar. And if you and I have expertise in anything at all, it’s managing insufferable men.”