Lady Derring Takes a Lover Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Announcement

  About the Author

  By Julie Anne Long

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  Lady Derring had been raised to believe breeding and manners were a bulwark against all of life’s vicissitudes. So as she peered through her black veil at her husband’s solicitor, her spine was straight, her chin was high, and her brow was as smooth as the curve of the Chinese porcelain urn she’d wrested from the hands of the man who had come to take it away this morning.

  “But I’ve a list!” He’d thrust it at her. “And I’ve a crew what’s been promised a day’s pay!”

  He did indeed have a list.

  One could very nearly ruffle its pages like a book.

  It read like a diary of every beautiful thing her husband had ever purchased.

  With the possible exception of her, of course.

  By the bottom of the first page (which ended with “statue, naked, stone, Leda and Swan”) suspicion had crept in like a killing frost. Her heart felt like a foreign object she’d inadvertently swallowed. Lumpen, frozen, jaggedly lodged.

  She took a breath.

  And then another.

  Only then was she able to look up at the man through her eyelashes. “I’ll just have a more thorough look at this, shall I?” she said brightly and firmly, in her best, most imperious countess voice.

  And then using the only weapons she had at her disposal—guilt, widow’s weeds, and limpid brown eyes—she somehow managed to herd him back out the door.

  She aimed a black look at the perfidious butler who’d accepted a bribe to let him in.

  He had the grace to cast his eyes sideways.

  Then she’d called for the carriage and paid her first unannounced visit upon her husband’s solicitor four days after her husband’s funeral and one day earlier than Tavistock, in a hushed, sympathetic voice, had arranged for her to visit him.

  Mr. Tavistock, round, balding, and self-satisfied, had been startled to see her, but blunt.Doubtless he charged extra for blow cushioning.

  “Oh, yes. Devil of a way to find out, so soon after the funeral,” he mused. “But our Derring hadn’t an honest sou to his name when he cocked up his toes. Was in debt up to his eyeballs. I daresay the whole of his estate was held together by credit.”

  Her heart was now thudding inside her like a trapped beast. It was the only thing she could feel. Her tightly folded hands, gloved in smooth black kid, felt oddly separate from her, like a creature that had crept into her lap looking for refuge.

  This peculiar numbness was about to become a luxury, that much was clear. Her wits were going to need to get involved.

  No one, particularly not her late husband, had ever valued her for wits.

  Oh, but she possessed them.

  “This is all that’s left of his estate, if you’d like to have a look.” He opened a drawer and grabbed a fistful of papers. “I’m sure it can be reconciled with the list of items you have in your hand.”

  She gingerly accepted them.

  While Tavistock silently watched, she read through three of the bills.

  The first was for “statue, naked, stone, Leda and Swan.” From a mason in Sussex.

  The third was from Madame Le Fleur. “Gloves, black kid.”

  The ones she was wearing.

  That was when she stopped. She laid the bills carefully back down on Tavistock’s spotless desk and returned her hands to the safety of her lap.

  Tavistock didn’t say a word. He began to fidget with a quill. He had the air of a man who was mightily struggling not to glance at a clock.

  She cleared her throat. “But Derring was wealthy—”

  “Was,” Tavistock repeated laconically.

  “Perhaps there is a more recent will, Mr. Tavistock, reflective of more current holdings.” She heard her own voice as if through a pillow. “Perhaps you could ask the nice young clerk outside the door to have another look through—”

  “There was but one will and one Earl of Derring, the one that you and I knew and loved well, rest his soul.”

  And then Mr. Tavistock had the nerve to bow his head.

  Delilah stared at him, fascinated and repulsed. The stink of sanctimony clung to him like the smoke from Derring’s foul cigars—the ones that called to mind the meaty breath of a fanged carnivore, mingled with the things the gardener burned after a day of trimming the roses, with a top note of perhaps leather.

  The only things Tavistock had “loved” were Derring’s connections and those foul cigars.

  And the most feverish emotion she’d felt for Derring was gratitude.

  She had tried to love him. She’d wanted nothing more. She’d yearned for a house full of children and laughter and friends and musical evenings, a house of easiness and joy. She’d struggled to find a handhold—a hearthold?—some endearing habit, like humming when he read the newspaper, the way her father had for instance, some little ember of charm or vulnerability that she could somehow fan into love. Derring was fifteen years her senior. And by the time they’d met, his personality was as fixed and impermeable as those statues he loved to collect.

  Her wedding night—a revelation composed of sweaty grappling, muttered instructions (If you would be so good as to shift to the left, Delilah?), and a grunted sorry, sorry and thank you—put paid to those notions. Clearly romantic love was a myth, like unicorns or leprechauns, used to lure young women into marriages in order to perpetuate the species and produce heirs so future generations could go on enjoying being aristocrats.

  She had lavished Derring with kindness. She hoped he’d never known the difference. Perhaps the failing was, indeed, hers.

  Tavistock cleared his throat. “You’re still on the young side, if I may be so bold, and you could mar—” He stopped abruptly. “Well, perhaps you could marry a widower with children who need a mother, if you can find one.”

  She was glad of the veil. Shame and fury arrived in swift succession, nauseating and scorching. If she couldn’t provide an heir in the six years she’d been married to Derring, what good was she to anyone, really?

  And now she would be passed about among relatives, like the little carved stool from India that Derring had bought for no reason, and which was shunted from room to room, from house to house, always a little out of place, a little in the way. She’d last seen it in the library, where she’d barked her shin on it.

  “Thank goodness I have you to advise me, Mr. Tavistock.”

  “It’s no trouble at all, Lady Derring,” he said, surrendering to a glance at the clock.

  “Am I keeping you from another appointment?”

  He looked surprised. “I’m about to set out on holiday with my wife and family. Long overdue. Long overdue. Nothing like the seashore, isn’t that so?” he
said brightly.

  She merely stared at him.

  Their heads turned in unison when voices suddenly rose in the little anteroom where Tavistock’s young clerk sat—a woman’s, dulcet and cajoling, determined; the young clerk’s, polite and firm.

  Delilah cleared her throat. “Mayhap some item has been overlooked in the accounting. If you would be so kind as to review it one final—”

  “I assure you, Lady Derring, we do not make mistakes here at Tavistock, Urqhardt, Ramsey, and Donne.”

  Unctuous toad didn’t think her sentences were worth finishing, apparently.

  “Isn’t it odd that I should find so little reassurance in assurances of your firm’s infallibility, Mr. Tavistock?”

  He blinked as if she’d flicked water into his eyes.

  She could hear her mother’s appalled voice now. Irony will not catch a husband, Delilah.

  That had been the entire point of her, once it had become clear that she was going to be pretty: to catch a husband. They’d all been relieved, Delilah included. It meant she might be a savior, not a burden, to her family. Her father was a minor lord, but the guillotine of poverty had gleamed over her entire childhood such that they seemed to live in held breath, hushed tension, lest one wrong move bring it crashing down.

  That the Earl of Derring had been smitten with Delilah was seen as both an act of providence and a triumph of her mother’s careful training. Be sweet, be dutiful, be awestruck. Yield to his needs and moods. Flatter his vanity. Lilt, do not declare.

  If only her mother had taught her the pitfalls of trusting a man completely.

  Funny. Delilah never lilted in her private thoughts.

  And in her fantasies, she never yielded.

  “You ought not worry, Lady Derring. Women who look like you need never go hungry, if they prefer not to.”

  Tavistock would never have dared to use that melting, insinuating tone only a few days ago. Inside her unpaid-for gloves, her hands had gone clammy.

  And now she understood that the only bulwark against vicissitudes was a husband.

  She imagined Mr. Tavistock climbing aboard and rolling off his poor, unfortunate wife. Something of her thoughts must have radiated clear through the veil, because Mr. Tavistock’s little smile vanished.

  He cleared his throat. “As you are aware, the properties in Devonshire and Sussex will now go to the next male heir, a nephew, since there was no male issue of the marriage . . .”

  Issue was a grotesque word.

  “But—” He froze as some realization struck.

  Suddenly Tavistock pulled out a drawer and slapped something that jingled on the desk between them. A great collection of keys on a ring.

  “I’d nearly forgotten. Derring owned one building outright. Think he won it in a card game or some such. The one at 11 Lovell Street by the docks. It is now yours.”

  She looked down at the keys.

  “The one on Lovell Street by the docks,” she repeated slowly.

  Derring had never mentioned it. She choked back a nearly hysterical laugh. But only scoundrels and rogues lingered by the docks. Countesses did not go by the docks.

  “A right wreck of a building, I believe,” Tavistock continued blithely. He cast an eye on the wall clock. Busy men like him could only apportion a certain amount of time to explaining the destruction of her life.

  Delilah swept the keys toward her. Clutched them in her hand. “What kind of building is it?”

  “Don’t know, to be honest. All I know is you’ve a week to vacate the London townhouse, as Derring is in arrears.”

  The voices on the other side of the door rose suddenly to argument volumes.

  The doorknob rattled.

  The door was wrenched open a few inches.

  It seemed to be yanked shut again.

  Then was wrenched open a few more inches. Delilah could see a woman and the young clerk who manned a small desk outside were doing battle over the doorknob.

  It was wrenched open another few inches.

  “For heaven’s sake, Mr. Mackintosh,” the woman cajoled, “he’ll see me, no need to fuss so. By the by, have you gone and had a new coat made? You look dashing. I think you’re finally growing into your looks.”

  Paralyzed by the confusing compliment, the clerk turned pink and loosened his grip on the doorknob.

  The woman’s perfume—sultry, celebratory—preceded her, but the rest of her arrived in a swirl of the most dashing black silk widow’s weeds Delilah had ever seen.

  Mr. Tavistock shot to his feet so swiftly his chair staggered drunkenly.

  “Angelique—er—Mrs. Breedlove—”

  His head ricocheted between Delilah and the woman and back again like a pendulum on a clock.

  “Tavvie, darling,” the woman interjected crisply. “I’ll be brief. I’ve creditors knocking at my actual door. Not the metaphorical sort of knocking.” She rapped her knuckles sharply on his desk. “This sort. You’ve not responded to the messages I’ve sent over, so I’ll do you the credit of assuming you’ve been busy, rather than neglectful.”

  She tipped her head ever-so-slightly coquettishly, and the feather in her hat—no veil for this widow—bobbed. Delilah caught a glimpse of a pert nose and large wide-set light eyes. It was hard to know how old she was; her brisk confidence made Delilah feel, for an instant, childlike.

  Also, the woman was frightened.

  Women who go through life wearing masks learn to recognize the ones other women wear to get through their days. It was in how her voice was vivacious but pitched a bit too high, the tightness of her jaw and around her eyes, how her fingers gripped the edge of her pelisse.

  Despite her own predicament, Delilah’s heart squeezed in sympathy.

  “Mrs. Breed—” Tavistock began. Sounding a little desperate.

  She ignored him. “I know dear Derring, rest his soul, would not have cocked up his toes without making arrangements for my pension. He vowed that he would on several memorable occasions. The matter is now of some urgency. Perhaps you can be a dear and facilitate this for me?”

  Tavistock’s eyes darted toward Delilah.

  Then he looked down at his desk and heaved a defeated sigh.

  The ensuing brief silence rang like the moment after a gunshot.

  Realization seeped in, the way blood seeped out of a wound.

  Delilah gave a soft laugh.

  It marked the first bitter sound she’d ever made.

  Well, then. And so it seemed the awfulness of the past few days contained infinite strata and variety.

  And to think she’d once or twice indulged in the luxury of feeling bored.

  Mrs. Breedlove—if that was indeed her name—gave a start, a hand over her heart, and pivoted toward Delilah’s chair. “I beg your pardon . . . I didn’t see . . . I’m terribly sorry to intrude.”

  Delilah slowly, slowly pushed the veil up off her face. And stood.

  All was so silent, and she felt so raw, the very air seemed to hurt as it pressed against her skin.

  She wanted to see that woman clearly.

  She wanted that woman to see her clearly, too.

  Mr. Tavistock’s face had gone gray. He’d frozen like a statue. He was probably three seconds away from wringing his hands.

  And all of this confirmed the suspicion, which had gathered, like a bath of icy acid, in her gut.

  “If I were you, I would never take up gambling, Tavvie darling,” Delilah said. Apparently she had great, great stores of suppressed irony to call upon. She didn’t take her eyes away from the woman’s face. “You haven’t a game face. Perhaps you ought to introduce us.”

  Mr. Tavistock sighed again. And then resolutely, like a man charged with issuing a verdict in court, cleared his throat.

  “Angelique,” he said evenly, calmly to the woman. The woman glanced toward him, then back at Delilah. She’d sensed something was amiss, and her expression hovered somewhere between concern and wicked curiosity. She seemed perfectly willing to commit
to either one. “I will speak to you after I conclude my business with the Countess of Derring.”

  He laid those last three words down slowly, evenly, like bricks.

  Tavvie didn’t have a game face.

  But Angelique, it seemed, did.

  She didn’t flinch. She didn’t blink. But nevertheless Delilah thought she could see the moment her heart stopped, for just one second. She’d gone motionless, frozen like one of Derring’s statues, half turned toward Tavistock, half turned toward Delilah.

  She met Delilah’s stare.

  Some emotion, very like pity but also like shame, scudded across Mrs. Breedlove’s features.

  Her chin went up ever so slightly.

  “My apologies for the interruption, Lady Derring, and my condolences on your loss,” she said quietly. “I shall speak with you another day, Mr. Tavistock.”

  She closed the door very, very gently behind her.

  Chapter Two

  Mrs. Breedlove’s perfume lingered, but the rest of her was gone when Delilah emerged into the anteroom five minutes later.

  Young Mr. Mackintosh was behind his desk, the pink of his blush still fading from his skin. The poor dear was still a few years away from being old enough to savagely disappoint a woman.

  How much he knew or understood about anything he’d just heard was a mystery, and she supposed, in the end, it didn’t matter.

  To his credit, he looked distressed.

  “Thank you, and good day, Mr. Mackintosh,” she said.

  “Lady Derring, Mrs. Breedlove wanted me to give this to you.”

  He leaped to his feet and handed a sheet of folded foolscap to her.

  Her hands, awkward with nerves, fumbled as she opened it, and read:

  I recommend sewing your jewels into the hems of your dresses before you flee into the night.

  It was unsigned. The handwriting was tidy and elegant, even a little prim. It might have been an invitation to tea from the Duchess of Brexford, whom Delilah despised and whose approval she had craved because her husband had wanted her to crave it and didn’t every woman want what her husband wanted?

  Delilah growled low in her throat and crunched the note in her fist.

  The extraordinary . . . the unmitigated . . . the gall!