Page 42 of Miss Delightful
“When you finish organizing the fellowship melee, what will occupy your time?” he asked.
“It can become a melee, if the children are allowed too many trips to the dessert table and Mrs. Davenport gets to bickering with her nephew. I have thank-you notes to write, to a parishioner who donated flowers this month and to another who always gives the church a generous discount on floral arrangements.”
Alasdhair unwrapped the scarf from Dorcas’s neck and hung up her cloak for her, then held her chair. Small courtesies, but she’d learned to manage without them for the most part.
Until it was time to be the proper lady again, in which case, she slipped into that role for an evening or an afternoon. The waiter came around to take their order, and Dorcas asked for both nutmeg and cinnamon to go with the whipped cream on her hot chocolate.
“Celebrating something, Miss Delancey?” Alasdhair wasn’t smiling, but those blue eyes of his were quietly dancing.
“The approach of spring. I can feel it in the air. We are not done with the annual penance referred to as winter, but spring approaches nonetheless.” Spring approached in the person of Alasdhair MacKay, after a long, dreary winter.
The food arrived, and as Alasdhair tucked into his sandwiches, Dorcas took a spoonful of sweetened whipped cream dusted with spices.
“This is heavenly… This is… I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed a treat more.”
“Do you enjoy the church work?”
With anybody else, she would have trotted out some little platitude about finding joy in service, but this was Alasdhair MacKay, who’d become a self-declared male spinster rather than brush awful memories aside with drink and worse.
“I have learned to be patient,” Dorcas said. “To do what I can when I can. Ienjoyedthe nights I spent in jail, I’ll have you know. I asked those women what assistance they would find useful, and it wasn’t prayer, I can tell you that. I had the ladies equipped with slates and books. Sent along a crate of myths, fables, and children’s stories hidden beneath a few tattered copies ofThe Book of Common Prayer. The literate women took on the teaching of those without letters. It gave them something to do and improved their chances in life.”
Alasdhair started on his second sandwich. “And you did not stop there.”
“Mrs. Fry’s scheme, making quilts, is ingenious. Anybody can learn to sew a straight seam, and every household has scraps of fabric to donate. Fashions change, figures change, projects are put aside as children grow too quickly. The material is readily available, the expertise minimal to get started. The ladies learn to work together, and some of the designs they create are magnificent. That matters so much, to know that you can make something beautiful and useful, that you can add to the world’s joys with the labor of your hands.”
“These sandwiches add significantly to my joy. My brain knows I must eat every few hours, but the same brain grows very forgetful as those hours pass by. Goddard and Powell knew to feed me when I started babbling in my native tongue. I am only as smart as my last meal, according to them. If your calling is prison reform, why not delegate the more tedious church work?”
Because I need it for the camouflage it provides.“I am the vicar’s daughter, and unless Papa remarries, which he shows no signs of doing, I am the logical party to deal with the orts and leavings of running a congregation.”
Alasdhair had consumed his sandwiches with a businesslike dispatch, and Dorcas had enjoyed watching him do even that.
There was no camouflaging the joy she took in his presence, or the wonder his esteem engendered.You are safe with me.She was more than safe, she was cherished. He showed her that in the way he tucked the ends of his scarf around her neck, in the sauntering pace he set as they strolled the walkway. By his own admission, he was in no hurry to part from her, and that was both daunting and lovely.
“You have ambitions beyond keeping peace at fellowship meals,” Alasdhair said. “You want to write fiery treatises on behalf of those illiterate women, remonstrate with society regarding the care of our mendicants, and exhort Parliament on the need to keep children out of the factories.”
She did. As badly as Papa wanted his bishopric, Dorcas wanted London to be a more hospitable and humane city. “While you are concerned with fallen women.”
Alasdhair helped himself to a piece of shortbread from the plate in the center of the table. “Most of them aren’t fallen in any moral sense. They have regular jobs, they might be married, they look after their grannies and say their prayers every night. They simply aren’t paid enough coin to keep body and soul together. The law, in its wisdom, has made a life on the stroll safe from prosecution.”
“And society, in its foolishness, has made that life perilous in other regards.”
“Precisely. Many a client refuses to pay, others are abusive. Disease is a constant risk, as is childbed. It’s a desperate life for the streetwalker, and as the children come along, one that sinks her only more quickly into poverty. This is not a cheerful conversation. My cousins would despair of me for raising the topic with you, but in their way, they share your zeal for change.”
“You did not bring up this topic. I did.” Something that would not have happened with Papa or even Michael. “I want us to be able to discuss such matters, Mr. MacKay. More of society as a whole should be discussing such matters. They need discussing.”
His gaze grew bashful as he chose a second piece of shortbread. “You saidus. A lovely little word.”
And his burr had acquired a lovely little softness about the edges. Dorcas imagined that burr as a whisper in the darkness, a murmur near her ear, and the ease and pleasure with which those thoughts scampered through her mind took her aback.
She had expected to grow into contented middle age, eventually shifting from Papa’s household to Michael’s, leaving a trail of modest good works and carefully worded articles in her wake. A meaningful life, a life to be grateful for.
But Alasdhair MacKay valued her for more than her ability to organize a fellowship meal or wheedle flowers from people who could easily afford to donate them. Then too, there was John… Dorcas’s heart ached to be more than a distant cousin to him, to do more for the boy than she’d been able to do for his mother.
But most miraculous of all, Dorcas yearned to be closer to Alasdhair MacKay and longed for that closeness to encompass the physical as well as the intellectual and emotional. She had thought herself beyond desire, thought that aspect of life lost to her for all time.
What a stunning pleasure to be so wrong. “‘Us’ is merely a word, Mr. MacKay.”
“Not when it refers to thee and me, Dorcas Delancey. ‘Us’ is the embodiment of all things dear and delightful. Would you like another cup of chocolate?”
