Page 30 of Miss Delightful
“We entertain frequently at the vicarage,” Miss Delancey went on, leading Alasdhair to the back hallway. “That’s part of the job with a parish such as St. Mildred’s, and my father is particularly conscientious about socializing with his fellow clerics. He is keenly mindful of church politics and does his best to navigate those waters carefully.”
Alasdhair was glad to get back outside, glad to enjoy the afternoon’s last rays of sunshine. The air might be frigid, but the light was lovely, and the days—thank Zeus—were growing ever so slightly longer.
“Your father curries the favor of his superior officers.” Alasdhair offered his arm and expected at least a glower for his presumption. Miss Delancey instead curled her gloved fingers around his elbow.
“I should argue with you. Papa aspires to a greater calling than St. Mildred’s, and just as polite society has rituals for who dances with whom, the Church has its protocols too. Curates are to be regularly invited to Sunday suppers, as are deans, bishops, subdeans, missionaries—provided they don’t beg for money at the table—and widows of same.”
The Church and the military got on well, oddly enough, considering one organization should have been about faith, hope, and charity, and the other was about violence, murder, and conquest—or defense of the realm, to use the preferred euphemism. They were both large hierarchies much concerned with power and influence.
Alasdhair had never realized that a parish vicar might have a lot in common with an ambitious officer.
“Your father expects to flatter his way up the ladder of holiness? Is your independence to be sacrificed to his ambitions? Has he already chosen your prospective husband from among the ranks of bishops’ nephews and godsons?”
Miss Delancey half dragged him down the terrace steps. “Tell me about your visit to Horse Guards.”
So there was bad news—Papa was scheming—and good news: Miss Delancey disapproved of her father’s choice. Alasdhair considered those developments as he and Miss Delancey made a circuit around the bordered beds and reached the privacy of the birdbath.
“I asked at Horse Guards after Melanie’s… after the man she eloped with, Captain Amery Beauclerk. His regiment shipped out for Canada after the fall of Paris and missed the whole debacle of the Hundred Days and Waterloo. He was back in London on leave more than a year ago, but nobody knows much besides that. Did Melanie indicate if John was baptized?”
“He was,” Miss Delancey said. “Melanie assured me of that by letter, though she did not tell me which parish. Might we sit for a moment?”
A fine idea. Alasdhair took the place beside Miss Delancey on the bench and retreated into silence. She was upset about her father’s grand plans, but Alasdhair derived backhanded comfort from the realization that whatever was bothering her, his presuming little peck on her cheek apparently hadn’t signified.
At all.
“I’m glad you came to call,” she said. “I am not at my best, and you remind me that larger issues demand my attention. I will endure supper as I have endured many other suppers.”
She sounded grimly determined, not cheerfully, obstreperously, or pleasantly determined. “You are afraid of this guest.” That any man should intimidate Dorcas Delancey was an abomination against nature.
“He took advantage of my brother, and I will never forgive him for that. Papa doesn’t know the details, and Michael has since been dispatched to an obscure congregation in Northumbria. Papa expects the same man who nearly ruined Michael to boost Papa up that ladder of holiness you refer to. This varlet could easily knock that ladder over when Papa reaches the highest rungs. If I were ever to hate, I would hate the one man my father is determined to flatter.”
Hate? Dorcas Delanceyhatedsomebody? “He’s a churchman?”
She nodded, and something daunted and wary about her posture alarmed Alasdhair. This holy scoundrel had betrayed Dorcas’s trust somehow and could still threaten the aspirations of her menfolk.
“Go ahead and hate him, Dorcas, particularly if that’s the only alternative to hating yourself. You did not lead your brother astray, you did not take advantage of a foolish young man, you are not spouting churchly platitudes while weaving a web of deceit and extortion. Your brother’s malefactor deserves your contempt.”
She peered at Alasdhair, and he had the sense that now, a quarter hour after he’d bowed his greeting to her, she was actually noticing his presence. “You speak from experience.”
What to tell her when she had troubles enough of her own? “Some officers are described as leading from the rear, shouting orders to the men they send charging directly into enemy fire, while they themselves remain safely out of bullet range. Wellington was emphatically not such an officer. He was inhumanly cavalier about his own safety and inhumanly lucky. He earned the ferocious loyalty of the common soldier as a result.”
“You would lead the charge too,” she said. “You would never allow others to expose themselves to danger while you sat back and observed their struggles.”
Whoever this pious reprobate was, Alasdhair certainly hated him. “I am no saint, Dorcas Delancey. Far from it. Come see John tomorrow and tell me how supper went. Perhaps you can spike your enemy’s soup with a physic, and he’ll have to cut the evening short.”
The last five minutes of the visit went well. The best part was not that Alasdhair made Dorcas laugh, a low, quiet little ripple of mirth. The best part was not even that she was looking quite fierce again when she saw him out the garden gate.
The best part was that after she’d shown him into the alley, she pressed a slow, warm kiss to his cheek, and whispered, “Thank you so much for calling,” before disappearing back into her chilly garden.
* * *
Isaiah Mornebeth bowedhis good-nights to the Delanceys and congratulated himself on time well spent. He was so pleased with the evening that he allowed himself to linger over Dorcas’s hand in parting. That little gesture of regard subtly flustered her, as Isaiah had hoped it would.
“I trust supper was enjoyable?” Uncle Zachariah asked when Isaiah stopped by the library for a nightcap. Uncle Zachariah wasn’t truly an uncle, but rather, a connection of Grandmama’s who’d once held some minor deanship at Canterbury. He was a generous host when a young man needed temporary lodgings, and he was an equally generous source of church gossip.
“Thomas Delancey is as skilled a conversationalist as any successful vicar must be,” Isaiah replied, helping himself to an ample portion of brandy. “The evening was thoroughly enjoyable.” Then too, Isaiah’s decision to spend years shivering in the north had been vindicated.
More than vindicated. He’d left London, knowing himself to be too young for serious consideration for the higher church offices. He’d been aware as well that Dorcas was too upset over her brother’s foolishness to consider a proposal of marriage. Isaiah had gone north, solemnly promising old Thomas that he’d keep an eye on Michael, and had even dropped in on the younger Delancey from time to time.
