“That was before we did only what we were supposed to do.”
“Andwe can more or less do what we like now,” Delilah said pointedly.
Rathertoopointedly.
As though she knew precisely what Angelique wanted to do and with whom she wanted to do it.
Or was letting Angelique know that what she got up to was entirely her prerogative.
“Everyone went up to bed a few minutes ago,” she said. “Except for Lord Bolt. He left the house about two minutes after you did.”
Angelique felt marginally better hearing that, which was probably inadvisable.
The trouble with good friends was that they knew one rather too well. Which was also the brilliant thing about good friends.
“It’s just... Delilah, for the past several months, I have felt safer and more at peace than I have since I was a girl, when both my parents were alive.”
“I’m glad. So do I, oddly.”
“I do not want anything to change that. Or interrupt it. I want to go on feeling safe and happy in one smooth trajectory until I die in my sleep as a dashing old woman.”
Delilah pressed her lips together. The temptation, obviously, was to smile, and Angelique hardly blamed her.
“While that is indeed an admirable ambition...”
Delilah’s careful dryness made Angelique laugh.
“...I would like to submit that safety is not quite the same as happiness. And happiness is... Well, do you remember when Helga accidentally left salt from the stew...”
Delilah was very careful with her own joy in loving and being loved by Captain Hardy. Mainly she radiated it, and shared as kindness and gentleness, as if she had great fresh new stores of it to spare. She was too wise to assume that everyone would be blessed with that kind of joy; it still felt a bit like a miracle. But she wished it on everyone. Most particularly Angelique.
“But the potential for misery is precisely equivalent to whatever happiness you might feel,” Angelique said.
Delilah took a breath and reached for a shirt needing mending.
She thought for a moment. Without being explicitly told, she knew Angelique had reasons to distrust.
“You see, that is all the difference now. You are safe to feel anything you please, because if those emotions should knock you off course, why, everyone who lives here will right you again. You canskipalong that fence rail if you wish, and we will catch you should you fall, and we will make sure you’re able to get on with things even if that fall is bruising.”
Angelique smiled at her. “Thank you, Delilah.”
“Peh,” Delilah said, and waved a hand.
They both gave a start when a thud signaled the arrival of Dot and the tisane, which arced through the air and splashed on the floor when Dot tripped on the last step.
When Delilah and Dot went to bed and she was alone again, Angelique sat on the edge of her bed with its charming quilted counterpane and realized she couldn’t yet even contemplate sleeping. Her comfortable little room seemed much too small to contain all of her still-roiling feelings.
She decided to take a candle downstairs to make herself a cup of tea. She would sit by the lowering fire and maybe finish the embroidery work Dot had left behind. She’d suggest to Dot that fairies had sneaked in to do it, which might be amusing.
The candle lit only a few feet in any direction. But the dark didn’t bother her and the sounds of the big house—the little creaks and groans and sighs, as if it, too, were snuggling down for the night, like Gordon in his basket—she’d come to find comforting. She could hear Delacorte snoring as she crept down the stairs. She tried not to think of Lucien in his room alone.
She’d just settled down onto the settee when she heard a key turn in the front door.
Her heart shot into her throat.
It opened and closed noiselessly.
They lovingly cared for every knob, latch and hinge here at The Grand Palace on the Thames.