She should have known better, she could fool anyone except for her father. She learned just about everything she knew from him, it made sense that he was able to see right through her; a good parent knew their child and despite what everyone seemed to think, Slater was an excellent father. "Misadventure, I'm afraid, Papa." Misadventure was Delia's term for a failed relationship, here lately it seemed as if she had to use it an awful lot. It made her wonder if she was losing her touch.
"It was all going so well." she found herself looking at the floor. She was usually brave in all things, but with her father, and remembering how much convincing it took for him to let her go, she was a great deal less bold about the whole thing. "They adored me, and could not stand a moment apart from me, especially him, but that was the plan. When he asked his father for permission to seek an engagement, I had thought the lord would quickly agree, but he refused then and every other time his son asked. He did a little digging, you see, he found out about me. About my 'inferior and disastrous' connections. About..." she could not bring herself to say it, even if her posture and eyes, once they ventured up to find his, did. How anyone could not want her on account of him she could not understand, her father was a good man, perhaps not the sort of man the lord had been looking for, but a good man none the less. She put it down to ignorance, if he had met her father instead of just hearing of him, he would have agreed right away. "And Jimmy, oh I could have murdered him for what he said about Jimmy, I think I would have too if the man had been about at the time. He told his son all of this, and he was only brave enough to tell me when his father went off to Edinburgh on business. And, you know, he begged me to run away with him, asked me to find a ship headed for India and meet him there, he wanted me even without his father's blessing." but she knew better, if he went against his father he would lose his inheritance. Delia didn't love him, and if there was not to be any money or title, she saw no reason to marry him. "As soon as he shipped out, his father sent me back here to you."
Her eyes fell back to the floor, "I'm sorry. I know I should have pushed the father more, I had thought his son's happiness would be enough to convince him, but I was wrong."