Page 6 of Miss Delightful
She glanced around at a neighborhood that qualified as decent, but not fancy. Affordable, in other words.
“I cannot be seen to dodge down an alley with you. Bad enough I have accepted your escort on short notice. You are no relation to me, and no family friend of long standing, that I should entrust my welfare to you.”
“I am an officer,” Alasdhair began, only for her to wave a hand at him.
“Amery Beauclerk was an officer. He ruined my cousin.”
Logic in a female was a vexatious quality. “I am a gentleman.”
“Meaning you do not work to earn your bread and thus have more idle hours in which to get up to mischief.”
Some emotion was trying to gain Alasdhair’s notice, which was of no moment when he had a task to fulfill. “Idleness might be true of your English gentlemen, but I am a Scot, and indolence is foreign to our nature. You agreed to accompany me, Miss Delancey, and the longer we stand here spatting like a pair of fishmongers, the more likely you are to cause that talk you seem so wary of.”
Finely arched brows twitched lower. “Alleys are dark and noisome.”
She sounded as if she were reading the stitchery on a sampler. “Have you ever been in an alley?”
“Of course I have.”
“Meaning you cross from your papa’s garden to his mews. Come along, and I will introduce you to the wicked pleasures to be had in London’s better alleys.”
He winged his arm, a courtesy he’d not thought to offer previously. She coiled her hand at his elbow, her fingers lighter than winter sunshine on his sleeve.
“Some alleys are foul,” Alasdhair said. “You are right about that, but this is not a foul neighborhood. This is where shopkeepers retire and old sea captains finally get to enjoy some time with their grandchildren. These alleys are as tidy and pleasant as the local citizenry. The birds love the alleys, and thus the cats do as well.”
“And the rats,” Miss Delancey said, peering around as her grip on Alasdhair’s arm tightened. “Do they love alleys?”
“They love all of London, from what I can see.” The figurative rats as well as the literal ones. “That’s a sparrow hawk up in that maple. A female, given her size and splendid plumage. She’s the better hunter, and she’ll keep the rats from sight as long as she’s up there.”
“The female is larger?”
“And takes down the bigger prey. Unfortunately, she’ll scare off the redwings, fieldfares, and robins who probably call this alley home.”
“What do the other birds find to eat this time of year?”
What did the children scavenging London’s alleys find to eat as winter descended? What fare did the streetwalkers and beggars subsist on?
“They manage. An apple core will delight a flock of thrushes for a morning. Rowan and cotoneaster feed them through the winter. The robins in particular go where the food is in winter, rather than defending a territory. That all changes when it’s time to build a nest.”
The winter wind had swept the cobbles bare of leaves, though the alley bore the pleasant scent of horses and hay.
“How do you know so much about birds?” Miss Delancey asked.
“I owe my life to birds. In Spain, we used birdcalls as signals between patrols and pickets. Whether the recruits hailed from Scotland, Wales, Ireland, or England, the lads knew their birdsongs. The French never cracked that code, for some reason, and thus I survived.”
“Was the war very bad?” Miss Delancey asked.
Not a question anybody had put to Alasdhair previously. He gave some thought to his answer, because for Miss Delancey of the earnest gray-green eyes, only a thoughtful answer would do.
“Yes, it was awful. Imagine a pretty, sunny plain, perfect for grazing or growing fodder. Then imagine that every few yards, lying in that lush grass, is a man or a boy either killed in battle or longing for death. You can hear the flies from hundreds of yards away, see them like a miasma darkening the sky, and the stench…”
He fell silent. Be she above his touch, worthy of his concern, or neither, Miss Delancey did not deserve this recitation.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “If we are consigning our men and boys to hell, we ought to at least make certain they’ve committed some mortal sin other than patriotism first.”
“Not patriotism, Miss Delancey. Most of the enlisted men simply wanted to eat. In Scotland, the entire weaving industry was cut down by the power looms, and all those weavers’ sons still needed to eat. So we made them killers and sent them to Spain, and the factory owners were left in peace.”
Unlike in England, where the Luddites and machine breakers had wrought terrible mischief.
