Page 37 of Miss Delightful
“This is your noble steed?” Dorcas beheld a big, roman-nosed bay. “Hello, Your Highness.”
Charlie wuffled and craned his neck over his half door.
“He’s a shameless flirt. For a bite of carrot, he will sing you odes with his soulful brown eyes, and for an apple, he will promise you his firstborn, though, mind you, the poor lad’s a gelding.” Mr. MacKay passed Dorcas a carrot, which she broke in half.
“Tell me about kisses, Mr. MacKay, and about being bothered.”
The horse crunched his treat into oblivion and wiggled his lips in Dorcas’s direction.
“Horse, you are not helping my cause,” Mr. MacKay said, scratching the beast’s chin. “I saw her first, and she likes me better.”
Dorcas fed the horse the rest of the carrot. “I like you. I don’t like many people, and especially not many men.”
“Neither do I. Come along with me, and I’ll show you a secret.” He took Dorcas by the hand, and she wished she wasn’t wearing gloves. “The saddles and whatnot are stored in here.” He opened a plank door and ushered Dorcas into a cozy space redolent of leather and oats. The room had a pair of windows—latched in defense of the winter cold—and a little parlor stove, as well as a cushioned settle and sagging wing chair.
“Henderson and Oldham spend the milder evenings out here, dicing with the other grooms and domestics, lamenting the state of the world. Oldham was my groom, though I shared him with Powell for much of the campaign. He bides mostly with Powell, but when I come to London, my cousins send Oldham to spy on me.”
Halfway through this explanation, Dorcas spied a pile of toweling in the corner of the floor near the stove. Upon that toweling was a calico cat, and curled next to her were three kittens.
“Kittens at this time of year?” One orange, one black, one orange and black.
“My secret treasure. Come spring, there won’t be a mouse left standing. Diana and her offspring will see to that.”
“Diana the huntress.”
“The enchantress, to hear the neighborhood tomcats opine on the matter. Sit with me.”
As badly as Dorcas longed to hold John, as much as she wanted to press kisses to his russet curls and cuddle him close, the kittens tugged at her heart nearly as much. Alasdhair MacKaytreasuredkittens, maybe half in jest, but only half.
“Will you be back in Scotland come spring, Mr. MacKay?”
“I might.” He took the seat on the high-backed settle and patted the place beside him. Dorcas lowered herself to the cushion, though the seat was narrow and afforded no room for a proper distance between her and Mr. MacKay.
Not that she wanted such a distance.
“I will explain why I winter in London,” Mr. MacKay said, “and a few other matters too. I was soldier, a good enough officer, as officers go. Looked after my men, obeyed all but the patently stupid orders, of which there were a few. My cousins and I weren’t part of the inner circle. We have little wealth, only minor standing, and our driving ambition was to survive the hostilities without disgracing ourselves.”
Dorcas’s own ambitions in a nutshell. “Did you disgrace yourself?”
“Yes. Abominably.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Abysmally. Sometimes, you disgrace yourself by failing to act, failing to speak up. The disgrace is private and thus all the more corrosive.”
He spoke in eternal verities, and yet, Dorcas could respond. “Sometimes, speaking up is futile.” Worse than futile. “Speaking up can cause hurt and misery for no good reason.”
“A gentleman has a duty to speak up, especially when the exercise is futile. What do you know of the Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, Miss Delancey?”
Dorcas thought back to the years before Waterloo. “Britain was successful. Wellington’s artillery opened two breaches in the walls, and the French could not adequately defend them both. The entire French siege train fell into our hands and occasioned quite the celebration by the victorious troops.”
How the newspapers had crowed, and how anxiously the citizenry had scanned the casualty lists.
“Not a celebration, Dorcas, a riot. Compared to what followed, that was an easy victory. A few hundred lives lost on both sides, but our rank and file didn’t realize how much worse it could have been. They sacked the town, though the Spanish were our allies, and it was hours before order was restored.”
“One heard rumors.” But rumors only. Military misconduct would never have been permitted to reach the ears of the British public. They had sacrificed much to finance a war that had dragged on for nearly two decades, and many had been against the Peninsular campaign altogether.
“You heard rumors,” Mr. MacKay replied, “but the reality was the stuff of nightmares.”
The orange kitten rose, stretched and arched, then tottered away from the mama. So tiny and so sweet.
“Tell me of your nightmares.”
