Page 76 of Miss Delightful
“And you got a free pint out of it?”
“And some shepherd’s pie, though the fellow was also quite friendly with the barmaids and the publican. What will you do about Miss Delancey? She’s fair gone on you, and now you say somebody has frightened her off. That woman doesn’t frighten easily, sir. Spent nights in jail, she did, and wrote about it for the toffs to read. She went spare on ’em too. Cited holy writ and went on about what we spend on wars and royal fetes while we starve our prisoners and begrudge ’em a single blanket.”
Dorcas had a ferocious ally, though she’d likely be surprised to learn of that. “You’ve had family in jail?”
“Marshalsea. The consumption gets you sooner or later in that place, while Fat George bankrupts the exchequer for his paintings and naughty sculptures. What will you do about your lady, sir?”
“I have been given my marching orders, Timmens. I’m to leave Miss Delancey in peace.”
“This ain’t the army, Major, and a preacher’s daughter is not a general.”
John waved a hand in Alasdhair’s direction. “Feh-feh-fah-foooo!” He was such a cheerful boy, much as his mother had been cheerful. Until she’d been gone instead of cheerful.
“But a lady is a lady, Timmens, and a gentleman does not argue with, importune, or disregard the clearly expressed wishes of a lady.”
“He don’t leave her to deal with fawning lizards on her own neither.”
Henderson came up the steps, a paper-wrapped packet in his hand. “Sandwiches and shortbread. You’ll want gloves today too, sir. It’s nippier out than it looks.”
“I have acquired a pair of nannies.” Who nannied Dorcas? Who hadevernannied her? “Timmens tells me the blond toff tried to winkle secrets from you too, Henderson.”
Henderson wrinkled his nose. “Thought he was bein’ all sly and subtle about it. ‘So, you work for Major MacKay? I hear he’s taken in an infant. Didn’t think MacKay was the charitable sort…’”
“To which you replied?”
“‘Sod off, unless you want to wear that ale all over your fancy togs, mate.’ He found someplace else to sit, but the next evening, he was back and tried it on with Timmens.”
“Fum,” John said, patting Timmens’s cheek. “Fummmmm.”
“How did Mornebeth learn even that much?” Alasdhair asked. “If neither of you told him anything, then where did he learn that John has joined the household?”
Timmens gently extracted a lock of her hair from John’s little fingers. “The laundresses, maybe? They are a merry lot and hear all of the talk. Cook avoids the pubs altogether, and the grooms prefer the Ploughman Laddie three streets up.”
The situation wanted discussing with Alasdhair’s cousins.
But no, the situation was none of his business. Dorcas had made her wishes quite clear, and that was an end to it. London was not Badajoz, and Dorcas had been very clear about what her wishes were.
Alasdhair took out half a sandwich and shoved the rest of the food into a pocket. “Until further notice, I am not at home to anybody save Miss Delancey or my cousins.” He touched John’s cheek. “Behave, lad. Don’t get too carried away with thosef’s.”
“Fum!”
Alasdhair tapped his hat onto his head, his mind full despite his empty heart. The ache of Dorcas’s rejection was a dull, hollow sorrow that would worsen as the days and nights went on. The reality of the loss was muted now, but it would bloom into awful splendor when her engagement to Mornebeth was announced.
Alasdhair started down the street, glad for the chill. He ate the half sandwich, because he was a soldier, and soldiers survived to fight again, though nobody told them why that was such a laudable plan when the enemy was doing likewise, and dysentery was always a lethal possibility.
Stumbling from battle to battle was no way to live, and yet, that’s also how Dorcas apparently went on.
By the time the sandwiches and shortbread were gone, Alasdhair had wandered to the streets along the river. The Dove’s Nest, a humble establishment with a wooden nest fashioned atop its signboard, loomed before him, and the Strand Bridge stretched to the south at his back.
Foot traffic thronged the bridge, and wheeled vehicles crept over its span at an even slower pace. London traffic generally was choked with myriad turnpikes, such that navigating in and out of Town was never efficient. Alasdhair took a seat on an empty bench and idly watched the pedestrians, each intent on some mission, not a one of them knowing or caring that a brokenhearted man observed them pass by.
Dorcas’s decision to wed Mornebeth was logical, but also… doomed. Mornebeth would find ways to torment her purely for sport, because he was cut from the same cloth as Dunacre, born with a crippled soul.
Alasdhair was puzzling over the morality of putting Mornebeth on an East Indiaman when a lady dressed in a green cloak hustled past. Her bonnet was adorned with a pheasant feather, and she moved with the energy and purpose of a healthy young woman.
He was too surprised to call out to her, and then he was on his feet, head down, scarf pulled up, and following in her wake.
Chapter Sixteen
