Page 34 of Miss Delightful
“Very good.”
“Then I will leave the matter in your competent hands, but if the boy should want for anything…”
“Yes?” John would want for nothing, not lullabies, not stuffed bears, not bedtime stories or abundant affection. Mr. MacKay would see to it.
“We are his family, as you say, and a little discreet assistance here and there would be no bother. Perhaps if Melanie had been able to turn to us for help sooner…”
“Perhaps if Melanie had not been so determined to run off with her officer in the first place, Papa. Don’t torment yourself.”
“So sensible.” Papa patted her shoulder and wandered off toward his study.
Dorcas watched him go, both saddened by the exchange and encouraged. Papa was aging. The years left to him in any professional capacity were trickling away, and he’d labored conscientiously in the church’s vineyards for decades. The contribution he’d made didn’t seem adequate in his own eyes, and that was wrong.
But his attitude toward John put compassion—albeit discreet compassion—over appearances, and that counted for a lot.
“Papa?” She wanted to call him back, to once again be a girl wrapped in the security of a paternal embrace that sheltered her from all perils.
He paused at his study door, hand on the latch. “Daughter?”
“I love you.”
“And, I you.” He shuffled through the doorway and gave her a little wave. “Until supper.”
* * *
“The thing to do,”Alasdhair muttered, “is ask the lady what she thinks of kisses to the cheek and all they signify.” Not for anything would Alasdhair welcome a return to the battlefield, but a discussion of romantic sentiments struck him as nearly as daunting.
“Bah.” This was John’s response to most of Alasdhair’s maunderings. “Bah-buh-buh-bah.”
“Thank you for that learned reply,” Alasdhair said, taking the boy for another circuit around the desk. Timmens was napping, bless her, and Alasdhair was… fretting?
“Pondering,” he said, pressing a kiss to John’s downy crown. “Pondering the proper course with a very proper lady.”
Though not too proper. Dorcas had a sense of humor, she had a temper. She had above all an independent and formidable intellect, as well as an unerring moral compass.
“She will not let me falter where you are concerned,” Alasdhair said, making a rude noise with his lips against the top of John’s head.
John chortled and bounced in Alasdhair’s arms.
“Like that, do you?” Alasdhair did it again, though he knew the result could be an entire morning spent making the boy laugh and smile. “We fellows are uncomplicated creatures, aren’t we?”
And yet, the subject of kisses with Dorcas would be complicated, by honesty and by the fact that if Dorcas wanted nothing more to do with Alasdhair and his kisses, there was an end to some dreams.
“I had stopped dreaming,” Alasdhair told the boy quietly. “Stopped hoping. Hope must be the greatest torment the damned suffer. You put it aside, or lose your wits.”
Except Alasdhair was not damned. He lifted John high before him. “You might be that tall someday, young John. A braw, bonnie laddie with your mother’s gorgeous blue eyes and your cousin Dorcas’s quick mind. The ladies will besiege you, and I will say, as all the elders say, ‘I knew him when he was in leading strings.’”
He cuddled John to his chest, already wanting fortification against the day when the boy went out into the world, leaving home, possibly going to war.
“Go for the Church,” Alasdhair said. “You can do a lot of good in the Church, and your most powerful weapons will be kindness and courage. No firearms, no artillery that can rip a man in two.”
“The Church has its artillery.”
That voice… that crisp, clipped, confident voice. Alasdhair was in serious trouble when even the sound of Dorcas’s voice made his heart lighter, but how long had she been standing in the doorway, and how much had she heard?
“Miss Delancey, a pleasure to see that you survived supper with the serpent. John was assisting me with estate matters.”
“Was he really?” She swished into the room, her dress a becoming blue ensemble that brought out the unusual verdigris color of her eyes. “I’d advise him to become a steward long before I’d send him to the Church, Mr. MacKay. The godly excel at vexing one another. I assume Timmens is enjoying a cup of tea in the kitchen?”
