Loretta Chase - The Devil's Delilah Read Online Free PDF

telling herself, as her father had assured her, she hadn't had any choice. She might have attempted at least to reason with the earl before drawing out her pistol. Certainly she needn't have wrestled , for heaven's sake, with Mr. Langdon. She might have pretended to faint or burst into tears, but not one of these alternatives had occurred to her, though they would have been instinctive to any truly genteel young lady.
    Delilah Desmond had a great deal to learn about ladylike behaviour, that was for certain. She hoped Lady Potterby would be up to the task of reeducating her grand-niece. Otherwise that grand-niece would never attract the sort of gentleman she needed to marry.
    Right now, for instance, she ought to make an effort to impress her stony hostess by conversing with her on some suitably dull subject, preferably while doing needlework. The trouble was, Delilah was heartily sick of Lady Streetham's condescension and would be more likely to plunge her needle into that lady's starched bosom.
    Miss Desmond decided her wisest course was to take a stroll in the gardens. At least they were extensive enough to make the walk something like real exercise.
    She crossed the terrace and followed one of the neat gravel paths bordered by low, scrupulously manicured hedges until she came to an enormous fountain where water spewed from the mouths of four enraged stone dolphins. Staring raptly at the carved monstrosity was Mr. Langdon, book clamped to his side. He seemed oblivious to her approach.
    "I wonder if they bite," said Delilah.
    He spun round to face her, his countenance colouring slightly.
    Miss Desmond was surprised to feel her own cheeks grow warm. She wished she hadn't struck him quite so violently last night — or at least not in that unseemly way. She shook her head to drive off the recollection, and two pins flew out of her hair to drop with a faint tinkle upon the paving stones.
    As his glance went from her hair to the pins, his eyes seemed to darken, but Delilah could not be certain because he immediately bent to retrieve the pins. In her experience, gentlemen invariably used the return of her hairpins as an excuse for squeezing her hand. Mr. Langdon, however, gingerly dropped them into her outstretched palm as though he were afraid of being contaminated.
    "Thank you," she said with an inward twitch of irritation, "but you needn't have bothered. I'm forever losing them. Papa says he can always tell where I've been because I leave a trail of hairpins behind me."
    "Then why pin your hair up at all?" he asked.
    She glanced at him suspiciously, but his expression was innocently enquiring. Thrusting the pins back any which way, she said, "Little girls may leave their hair down, Mr. Langdon. A young lady who does so may be mistaken for a demi-rep. At least, so my abigail repeatedly tells me. I have enough problems being mistaken for what I am not," she found herself adding under his sober grey gaze.
    He winced as though she had struck him. "Miss Desmond, no words can express my shame and sorrow regarding my behaviour last night," he said hurriedly. "I should have realised — I should have tried to think first at least — it might have been obvious to an imbecile — "
    "That I was only demonstrating the use of a pistol to his lordship?" Delilah smiled in spite of her discomfort. "Even I must admit the circumstances were most incriminating."
    "That hardly changes the fact that my behaviour was ungentlemanly, to say the least."
    How unhappy he was! That rather took the sting out of her own embarrassment. "Mine was unladylike," she said. "That makes us quits, Mr. Langdon. Shall we forgive each other — and ourselves?" She held out her hand.
    He hesitated a moment before accepting the handshake. His clasp lingered just an instant longer than pure sportsmanship required, but after the business with the hairpins this might be accounted a minor triumph, and Miss Desmond had never been one to quibble over instants.
    "As long as