Page 16 of Miss Delightful
She cast her eye upon the ceiling. “If prevarications and falsehoods had that effect, the Commandments would have fallen from the ceiling long ago. I’ll fetch my cloak.”
She reappeared a few minutes later in the same dark blue wool cloak she’d worn the previous day, but—interestingly—she’d wrapped a plain gray scarf about her neck and eschewed a bonnet.
“The garden is small,” she said, “but the walls keep away the worst of the wind and hold some of the sun’s warmth. I have yet to venture forth today and would enjoy some fresh air.”
She wanted privacy. Alasdhair had not raised the topics of Melanie or wee John, and Miss Delancey hadn’t either. That suggested she did not confide in her staff or consider them allies.
“This is your idea of a small garden?” Alasdhair asked as they emerged onto a wide terrace. The enclosed area was a half acre at least, with crushed-shell walkways running along square beds framed with low privet borders. A stone-lined water feature ran the length of the garden’s center, the surface a glaze of cloudy ice dotted with dead oak leaves.
“In summer, when all the greenery is blooming, it feels smaller. I come out here to think and walk the paths around the flower beds by the hour.”
A lioness pacing her cage came to mind, or a stall-bound pony weaving before her open half door. Neither image flattered the lady.
Alasdhair offered his arm, and Miss Delancey took it after a slight hesitation. He descended the steps with her, mindful—as she doubtless was—that they could be observed from the house.
“May I speak freely, Miss Delancey?”
“Permission granted, Mr. MacKay.” Her pace was slower here than it had been on London’s streets, her voice less clipped. Perhaps she, too, was tired.
“We still have no body,” Alasdhair said. “I dropped around to the river police, made inquiries of the mud larks, and asked questions among the watermen. Melanie’s mortal remains have yet to wash ashore, and they might never be recovered.”
“Because of the tides?”
“Yes.”
“And because dead bodies have value,” Miss Delancey said. “In life, Melanie had no value to anybody. In death, the resurrectionists can sell her remains to the medical students.”
“She might well have been carried out to sea. Speculation will merit you nothing but nightmares.”
“A soldier learns that, doesn’t he? He learns to leave the battle on the battlefield.”
She would make that connection. “He tries to. Speaking of battles, John is not a good sleeper.” The nurserymaid had phrased it thus. Alasdhair’s version of the situation involved profanity in several languages.
“Hence the fatigue in your eyes. Is John well?”
“Quite. Timmens says teething children are simply wakeful. He wasn’t hungry, he wasn’t in need of fresh linen, he was simply…”
“Missing his mother?”
Alasdhair hadn’t wanted to say those words. “Perhaps. He likes lullabies.”
“You sang to him?”
“Either I sang to the lad, or nobody for three streets in all directions would have had any peace. He’ll soon know every marching song and camp ballad ever sung by Wellington’s army.” To say nothing of Burns’s vast catalog of laments.
Miss Delancey stopped at the foot of the garden, her gaze on the dirty ice in the little artificial canal. “And his cradle?”
“He slept in it last night, such as he slept at all. Shroop spoke the truth—it hadn’t sold, so I redeemed it.”
“With your fists?”
“You sound hopeful, Miss Delancey.”
“I would like to use my fists on somebody, Mr. MacKay. My cousin should not have died as she did, and the fact of her death troubles me more by the day.”
“If you were a soldier, you could march off your dismals. You could turn your attention to the next battle, to moving camp, or to regimental gossip. If the grief gets to be too much, you must find a distraction, Miss Delancey. I suspect you are good at distractions.” If she had been a soldier, she could also drink, brawl, or swive away her dismals. Alas, neither she—nor Alasdhair—were soldiers.
“Let’s sit, shall we, Mr. MacKay?”
