Page 50 of Miss Delightful
“Say something,” Dorcas muttered. “Or leave. I will understand if you leave.” She might also stay drunk for a week, or at least have two glasses of cordial. “I hadn’t meant to raise this issue without considerable forethought, but now that I have, I want your honest reaction.”
He remained at the railing, his expression as remote and cool as any winter breeze.
Chapter Eleven
Some philandering Lothario had toyed with Dorcas’s affections. That fact, which she tried to present as a stale crumb of ancient history, explained much to Alasdhair.
Her unrelenting reserve, which she wore like the clergy’s high church vestments.
Her compassion for women suffering society’s judgment.
Her guilt over Melanie’s fall from propriety.
Alasdhair sat on the porch railing, to outward appearances calm—he hoped—though his cousins would have known that his explosions of temper were often heralded by a period of brooding quiet.
“Very well,” Dorcas muttered. “Don’t say anything. Silence can speak volumes. I wish you good day—”
“Haud yer wheesht, woman.”
She remained by the door, hand on the latch, ready to make an exit from the conversation and from Alasdhair’s life. He’d used his commanding-officer voice, and that had been the wrong choice.
“I will leave this place,” he said, remaining seated by dint of sheer resolve, “and I will go directly to procure a special license. We should have the documents within the week. Your father can marry us. You have soldiered on alone long enough, Dorcas Delancey, and so have I. I don’t care a donkey’s damn that you were a little adventurous as a younger woman. God knows I was a roistering lout. I care very much that the experience still clouds your opinion of yourself.”
“A special license?”
“Or we can have the banns cried. The how of it matters not, though those will be the longest three weeks of my life. What matters is that you put aside the notion that your earlier experiences could in any way diminish you in my eyes. My God, Dorcas, you know what lies in my past. The utter lapse of honor, the—”
“That was war.”
“Which makes my failing all the more egregious. I was an officer, and I had seen the havoc soldiers could wreak in victory. You were innocent, likely overlooked by your only parent while your brother was fawned upon at every turn. You would never think to judge the women you see in the jails, but you have sentenced yourself to needless shame.”
Her chin came up a gratifying half inch. “Not shame. I was, as you say, young and foolish. I regret my decision, and I did not think I could in good conscience allow you to pay me your addresses without… Why are we having this discussion all but on the street?”
Alasdhair rose, though he stayed a good two yards away from Dorcas. “Because inside this vicarage, you are not free to raise topics that trouble your saintly father. You cannot acknowledge that had he been a more competent parent, you might have been spared the fumblings of some rutting hound. Your dear Papa was too busy panting after a bishop’s miter or parading his brilliant son around to guard you from the plundering troops.”
That comment went too far, and yet, Alasdhair would not take the words back. No daughter of the vicarage, in the absence of a mother’s guiding hand, could grasp the extent of her own vulnerability. Even with a mother, chaperones, and all the admonitions in the world, such a girl would be tempted to break the rules.
“You must not disparage Papa.”
Alasdhair wanted to do more than disparage the old windbag. “Fine, I won’t, but neither will I allow you to disparage yourself. You know how many of your father’s parishioners are married in June and parents by December.”
“Those couples are engaged, already committed to a shared lifetime…”
He took a step nearer. “Bollocks, Dorcas. Let us deal honestly with one another. Some of those couples were engaged, many were not until an engagement became necessary. Your father’s parishioners might be genteel, but they aren’t a collection of courtesy titles and pampered heiresses. They are flesh-and-blood humans with all the folly and glory attendant thereto.”
She looked, of all things, like she wanted to argue the case for her own wickedness, which was nearly laughable, except that this was Dorcas, and this was probably the most important discussion of Alasdhair’s life.
“You don’t understand, Mr. MacKay.”
“Alasdhair. We’ve shared my flask,Dorcas, and I hope to share much more than that with you. I understandfirsthandthat young people are exceedingly foolish and lusty and that you are worrying for nothing. I don’t care if you were among the Regent’s many conquests, or if you danced naked in the Carlton House fountains. I am not in love with the girl you were, though I doubtless would have been, given a chance. I am in love with the woman you are.”
Alasdhair had eaten recently. He could not blame his tirade on a lack of sustenance, though a chilly porch was no place to make such a declaration.
He was horrified to see that his rash words had brought Dorcas near tears.
“You awful man,” she muttered. “You outrageous, brave, heedless… I could thrash you.” She instead pitched into him, her arms lashing around his waist. “You have no idea… not the first clue. Nobody took advantage of me, but I refuse to descend into debate. You are awful, abominable, horrid, and hopeless.”
Never argue with a lady, particularly not when she was in the throes of what for her was doubtless a cataclysmic lapse in dignity. Alasdhair held Dorcas, wondering at the great upheaval shuddering through her. All this passion, buttoned and bonneted behind endless good works and meeting minutes.
