Page 76 of Lady Scandal

“In a way. He is worried about the hotel.”

“The hotel? You mean me.”

She didn’t deny it, and he sighed, bracing himself. “What did he say? That I’m a tyrant of epic proportions I suppose?”

“Can you blame him for feeling a bit like that? I did at first.”

He opened his mouth to say there was a world of difference, because Ritz was crooked. But then, he remembered, much to his chagrin, that he still wasn’t certain about the extent of her involvement in Ritz’s schemes. All his instincts warred against her guilt, but given his passion for her, he knew his instincts could not be trusted. He took a deep breath and tried to speak impartially. “We’ve talked about this, Delia. We cannot afford to do things Ritz’s way anymore, and he simply has to accept that.”

“With as much grace as he can muster,” she said, offering back to him the suggestion he’d made regarding her in their first meeting.

“Yes.”

“Can’t the two of you just make peace?”

“What do you want me to do?” he asked, keeping his voice light. “Send him some hyacinths?”

She didn’t seem to take his teasing in the proper spirit. “I’m sure,” she said earnestly, “that the two of you could learn to work together.”

He shook his head, staring at her. “I just do not understand your loyalty to that man,” he said, both envious of Ritz’s appeal to her and baffled by it.

“He said much the same about you. He thinks I’m taking your side against him.”

“I wish you would,” he muttered, rubbing a hand over his forehead. “It would make my life so much easier.”

“But if the two of you could work together, wouldn’t that benefit everyone? Couldn’t you try?”

He lifted his head to study her face. Her hopeful expression was unmistakable, and he appreciated that this was why everyone at the Savoy loved her. Liniment for the lift boy’s mother, baby gifts for the laundress, her desperate attempts to make everything right and help anyone who needed it, and once again, his instincts whispered to him that she had no clue what Ritz was doing. His head, however, told him there was no way she could be that blind.

“Delia, listen to me.” He put his hands on her arms. “I appreciate that you want to help, but you can’t. Your concern for the hotel and the staff does you credit, and your loyalty to your friend is laudable, but let me handle Ritz. I’m asking this as a favor: please don’t meddle.”

She sighed and looked away, but after a moment she nodded, and he let his hands fall away.

Suddenly, in the silence, he remembered they were quite alone, making him appreciate again his vulnerability where she was concerned, but before he could suggest that they rejoin Cassandra, she spoke again.

“You said you don’t understand my loyalty to Ritz. Shall I tell you how he earned it?”

Her voice was musing, almost detached, its very softness impelling him to stay where he was.

“If you wish to tell me, Delia,” he said, “I’m happy to listen.”

She stopped and gave a laugh, but he sensed there was no humor in it. “It’s not an easy story to tell.” With an abrupt move, she turned to face him again, looking not at him, but into the lilac trees and the darkness, and she was silent so long, he thought she’d decided against telling him anything at all.

“When Lord Stratham died,” she said at last, “I was with child.”

A blunt statement like that, especially on such a delicate subject as pregnancy, made him blink. But he knew she had no child living, and when she looked at him again, the pain in her face hit him like a blow to the chest as he realized what she hadn’t said.

When he spoke, however, he was careful to keep his voice neutral. “Indeed?”

She nodded. “I was about six months gone. It was quite astonishing that I conceived at all. I’d never been with child before, and this time, it was only because I—”

She stopped and gave a laugh. “This isn’t the sort of thing a lady is supposed to talk about, but Hamish’s state of health had made him impotent. In the first six months of our marriage, we were only…” She paused and gave a little cough. “We were only together a few times, and on all three occasions, things ended in epic failure for him and frustration for me. He stopped coming to my room after that.”

He studied her profile in the moonlight, the pensive curve of her mouth. “Some women might have been quite relieved by such an arrangement.”

She turned her head, her smile a quick, impudent flash of white teeth in the moonlight. “I wasn’t.”

The naughty implications behind those words and that smile were plain, but it was clear she wasn’t flirting with him. She often used impudence, he realized, as a shield, to hide her true feelings, to avoid inconvenient questions—or, in this case, to ward off pity. “I see.”

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