Page 75 of Miss Delightful
He knew how to strike a blow to the heart without raising a hand. “I am hale and whole. I will manage.” She would have offered another platitude or two—thank you for looking after John, take care, I’ll think of you fondly—but heaping platitudes on heartbreak was beyond her.
“Farewell, Alasdhair MacKay.”
“I’m not to walk you home?”
“You need to eat. I need to leave.”
“And your intended is likely spying on you, so best not stroll down the boulevard with the besotted Scotsman again.”
“Alasdhair?”
“Miss Delancey?”
“There is such a thing as too much honesty. Good day, be well.” She would have swept out the door on those parting lines, but Alasdhair stood between her and a grand exit.
“Anytime, Dorcas—three days from now, three years from now—you can send word to me, and I’ll come. I will behave with perfect propriety toward you, but I will get you over the border before Mornebeth knows you’re gone. I will keep you safe from him if you’ll only ask that of me.”
“Thank you.” She kissed his cheek and waited for him to step aside.
She left, the door closing softly behind her. The day was sunny but cold, with a biting wind. Appropriate, that the weather should promise the appearance of warmth and deliver only a chill. As Dorcas passed the tea shop, she realized what about Alasdhair’s parting offer bothered her, among all the many things bothering her:
He gave coach fare from London to any streetwalker who asked him for it. By rejecting Alasdhair’s proposal in favor of Isaiah’s, Dorcas had reduced herself to the status of a woman no longer safe anywhere in London.
She dredged up her internal litany about feeling awful and tried to refashion it into a source of some comfort, however faint. All that came to her was,I feel awful now, and in another decade, I will have spent an entire ten years feeling more wretchedly awful yet.
* * *
“Off to the tea shop?”Henderson asked as Alasdhair shrugged into his greatcoat.
The butler’s good cheer landed on Alasdhair’s mood like orders to prepare for another siege. Dorcas Delancey felt she had to marry Isaiah Mornebeth, and Melanie Fairchild had believed it necessary to abandon her son, if not the entire mortal sphere. Alasdhair was tempted to find a compelling reason to start a riot, except that his cousins would be worried when he was taken up for inciting mayhem.
And inciting mayhem invariably resulted in harm to the innocent. “I’m out for a walk. Don’t wait lunch for me.”
Henderson took up the pile of morning mail waiting in the tray on the sideboard. “You need to eat something, sir. Your cousins have spoken to me very pointedly on that subject on several occasions. You are not to go from breakfast to noon without eating.”
I do not care if I ever eat again.I do not care if I ever draw breath again.
Except, if Alasdhair were to leap from the bridge as Melanie had, literally or figuratively, then who would teach John when not to use the letterf? Who would explain to him about respect for the ladies and how to hold his drink? Who would put him on his first pony and provide manly reassurances after his first tumble from the saddle?
“Wait here, sir,” Henderson said, setting the mail aside. “I’ll fetch you some bread and butter. You have that woozy look about you, and you must not go out without eating.”
Not woozy, destroyed. “Fetch the tucker, and I’ll wait.”
Henderson dashed off as Timmens came down the steps, John perched on her hip. “I thought I heard Miss Delancey’s voice.”
“Miss Delancey has gone, very likely not to return.” The words were so simple, the feelings so complicated.
“She’s taken you into dislike of a sudden?”
Timmens was a short, plump, unprepossessing creature upon whom John’s life depended. She was also a grieving mother, and yet, she’d found a way to move forward after losing her child. She remained on the second step and thus nearly at eye level with Alasdhair.
“I told her I loved her.”
Her skeptical gaze turned sympathetic. “Scared her off, then?”
“She’s frightened, that much is true. Timmens, have you run across an affable, blond fellow of perhaps thirty-five years down at the pub lately? One whose friendliness shades toward nosy questions about the household?”
“That one.” She sneered the words. “Lily-white hands, Mayfair manners, and the eyes of a hungry lizard. Henderson pointed him out to me. Said to keep mum. The fellow had a go at Henderson and got nowhere, so he tried chatting me up. Never you fear, Major. I’m too stupid to know anything more than how to wash a soiled nappy so it doesn’t dry stiff.”
