Page 60 of Miss Delightful
Dorcas was snuggled in his arms, though she could hear the faint smile in his tone—also the all but hidden question.
“You upheld the honor of the house of MacKay most impressively.” He was upholding it still, rather than falling flat, to use his words. “I am… I have much to think about.”
“If you are capable of thinking right now, then I am not done being impressive, Dorcas. Kiss me, please.”
She did much more than kiss him, and when she fell asleep with Alasdhair spooned at her back, her last thought was that marriage to him would be absolutely, utterly, profoundlydelightful.
Chapter Thirteen
“Are you pleased to have your grandson back among the civilized?” Zachariah Ingleby asked.
Lady Phoebe Mornebeth smiled at him over her tea cup, as she’d been smiling at him for decades. Once upon a time, smiles over tea had led to the occasional frolic, but then dear Zachariah had married.
Phoebe had scruples. A married lady trifled only with handsome bachelors, and only after her duty to her husband had been fulfilled. She did not poach on the preserves of other wives, unless they poached first, of course.
She set down her tea cup and chose a tea cake. “Having Isaiah back from the north is an occasion for unbounded joy, of course.” A slight exaggeration. “His sojourn in the provinces has given him an air of thoughtful gravitas without costing him a young man’s sense of genial bonhomie. I gather you have had enough of his company for now?”
Zachariah was that most wonderful of specimens, the wise man. He looked the part now that his hair was snow white and his bearing dignified, but he’d always had a sense of how to go on, of how to attain the objective with the least fuss.
He lacked ambition, though, or Phoebe might have married him when they’d both finished with mourning. And now… Now she was consumed with preventing Isaiah from making the worst errors the Mornebeth menfolk were prone to making.
“Isaiah is out most of the time,” Zachariah said, “up to heaven knows what, because his duties at Lambeth don’t start until next month. I have occasion to know that he has already found bachelor quarters near the palace, and yet, he continues to avail himself of my hospitality.”
Phoebe sipped her tea. She’d taken to swilling gunpowder rather than the stout China black of earlier years. The black tea sat uneasily—or the adulterants used in it sat uneasily—while green tea was still enjoyable.
“What aren’t you saying, Zachariah?”
He rose, and though he was no longer young, his posture as he paced across the parlor was still impressive. “Whatever else Isaiah learned in the north, he hasn’t learned humility or even how to feign it. He talks to me as if I’m a dotard who cannot sort my own mail—much less his mail from my own correspondence—and with the hours he’s keeping, I can assure you regular prayer is not much on his schedule.”
“He’s a bachelor and a Mornebeth, recently returned to London. There’s a reason we have so few monks in England.”
“Two reasons: Good King Hal needed to plunder the monasteries, and he also sought to set aside a wife who hadn’t given him sons. Isaiah has been in Town long enough that the initial celebrations, as it were, should be concluded. Disease is everywhere, Phoebe, as are the gaming hells, the cockfights…”
“He’s not likely to run into any bishops in those locations, and I’ve already decided that Isaiah must take a wife.” The right wife, of course.
Zachariah resumed his seat with the air of a man whose rhetoric has failed to win over the congregation. “Matrimony with your grandson will be difficult, unless he marries a dull-witted saint.”
“He cannot marry a dull-witted saint. When Isaiah is bored, he gets into mischief. He must marry a woman who’s up to his weight in intelligence, who knows how to navigate church politics, and who will abet her husband’s ambitions.”
Zachariah poured himself a second cup of tea and topped up Phoebe’s cup.
She did not care to have her tea topped up. The result was a little more heat, true, but the brew lost the proper balance between preferred sweetness and the richness of the added milk.
But Zachariah was trying to be considerate, and for that she had learned to appreciate him.
“If you seek such a mercenary lady for Isaiah’s wife,” he said, “then a pampered heiress won’t serve. Perhaps a military bride?”
“Isaiah has no need of an heiress. I’ve seen to that. A general’s daughter might do, but her connections would hardly add to Isaiah’s sphere of influence.”
“A bishop’s daughter?”
That list was long—bishops tended to have large families—but woefully unimpressive. “The right bishop’s daughter might serve well, but Isaiah’s pride will not allow him to feel that his station is inferior to his bride’s.”
Zachariah saluted with his tea cup. “You inherit your diplomatic instincts from the late countess. The boy is vain and insecure, but thanks to you, he has means.”
Mama had understood the need for coin as Papa had not. The previous generation of Mornebeths, due largely to a privateering great-uncle, had had coin. Phoebe’s papa had been an earl, and the match with the Mornebeth heir had been declared successful.
The matchbecamesuccessful once Phoebe took over management of her husband’s finances—along with management of him, their progeny, and the family properties. He’d been content to ride to hounds, impose on his mistresses, and collect art, while his younger brothers had climbed the clerical ranks, and Phoebe had flirted with handsome bachelors.
