Page 79 of Miss Delightful
Mrs. Lovelace wielded a dust mop and a scold with equally impressive skill.
Alasdhair hadn’t bothered passing her his coat, because he would not be staying long. His explanation to his cousins was succinct and to the point.
“You’re sure you’ve seen Melanie Fairchild?” Goddard asked, adding a square of peat to the fire.
“Aye. I know it’s her. I’ve broken bread with the woman, called upon her, watched her cooing at her darling son. I know her by sight quite well.”
“Have a nibble,” Powell said, taking a plate of shortbread from the tea tray and holding it out to Alasdhair.
“If I eat one more piece of shortbread, I will turn into a pat of butter.”
Powell gave him that mournful Welsh stare, the disappointed saint crossed with the chiding nanny. Alasdhair took a piece and popped it into his mouth, lest Goddard and Powell fret even more than they already were.
“I’m raising Melanie’s son,” Alasdhair said. “I have a right to assurances that she won’t come waltzing back from the dead in five years and whisk him off to some godforsaken American slum.”
Goddard pushed the fire screen against the hearth and set the poker aside. “Tell us about Miss Delancey.”
“Miss Delancey is none of your goddamned business.”
Goddard had risen higher in the ranks than either Alasdhair or Powell. They agreed that his good fortune was strictly the result of his paternal English antecedents, though that was not the whole story. Goddard had an air of calm, an unflappable ability to look life squarely in the eye that commanded respect. He neither flinched nor looked away from life’s messes and was enviably secure in himself.
Perhaps a brush with blindness did that for a man, or perhaps years of being dogged by scandal had imparted a blessed detachment. When Alasdhair’s rudeness should have earned him a shove, Goddard’s expression conveyed only pity.
“You love that woman,” he said. “You came back from the dead for her, and now she’s tossed you over. That has to hurt.”
Alasdhair was hungry, his cousins were right about that, but more than food, he needed to hit somebody, to smash something, to howl at fate, and wreak vengeance on a world that made the wrong kind of sense.
“She changed her mind,” Alasdhair said softly. “And if you don’t shut your stupid English yap this instant, I will shut it for you.”
“Schoolboy taunts,” Powell said, taking a sip of his brandy. “A sure sign you have missed lunch and probably gave breakfast a pass as well. Miss Delancey has relieved you of what little sense you brought with you from the Highlands.”
Alasdhair curled his hands into fists rather than slap the glass away from Powell’s mouth. “And what the hell am I to do about it? Dorcas has the right to refuse my suit. A lady should always have the right to choose, to decide. It’s her future, and it’s her life that will be put at risk every time she’s brought to childbed. She has the absolute right to send me packing, or have you now become an advocate of seizing women and carrying them off against their will, Powell?”
Even Goddard was silent in the face of that tirade.
Mrs. Lovelace, however, was not. How much she’d heard, Alasdhair did not know, but she bustled into the library, carrying a wooden tray piled high with sandwiches.
“Eat something, Major. If you are preparing to thrash your cousins to smithereens, you will need your strength. Wreaking havoc is a hungry business.” She set the tray on the sideboard and eyed the three of them. “Will there be anything else?”
Powell shook his head without taking his gaze from Alasdhair. Mrs. Lovelace left, and the tension in the library was thick enough to be cleaved with Powell’s cavalry sword.
“I’m sorry,” Alasdhair said, sinking into a wing chair. “I know you would never condone rape.”
“But,” Powell said, “you are nearly so far gone with frustration that you would take a swing at me.”
Alasdhair glanced around the tidy little library. “I want to tear down London. Hurl rocks through the windows of every so-called gentlemen’s club, raze the churches full of their pious hypocrites, and blow up the bridges so no more young women can take their lives by leaping into the waiting arms of the demon Father Thames.”
“A mob of one,” Goddard said, rubbing his hip. “But you can’t even toss a single insult at Powell without feeling remorse.”
The trouble with Goddard was that he knew when to shut his mouth. If he’d launched into a reprimand or a sermon, Alasdhair’s dignity might have borne up, but Goddard wasn’t half so obliging. He took the second wing chair, sinking into the cushions on a sigh.
“You love her,” Powell said. “You love her, and you can’t keep her safe, and that drives you mad.”
“She doesn’twantme to keep her safe,” Alasdhair replied. “That drives me mad. I am to take her at her word that she’s making a choice of her own volition, but I contemplate murdering that slithering disgrace Mornebeth with more joy than I have contemplated anything save marriage to Dorcas.”
Alasdhair heard the words come out of his own mouth and knew them to be hyperbole, but only just.
“Is she trying to protect you?” Powell asked, setting his brandy aside and perching on a hassock. “Women do that. They protect their menfolk and their children.”
