Page 83 of Miss Delightful
“And without books on hand, they will never learn how. You’ve answered my question. You are not happy.”
“I’m tired, Michael. To have you home is wonderful, but winter has been long, and I am weary.” Not weary enough to understand why Melanie might have jumped from the Strand Bridge, but weary enough to accept that she’d likely had her reasons.
“I had to come south,” Michael said. “Yorkshire winters are a whole series of penances. The cold, the darkness, the overcast that hangs above for weeks, the wind that can blow for days, snow up to your hips… Yorkshiremen are nigh indestructible because they have to be, but I am not made of such stern stuff.”
“Then you are seeking a post in the Home Counties? Papa will be delighted.” While Dorcas wanted her brother as far from London—and Isaiah—as possible.
“The Home Counties will do, I suppose. I’ve missed you, Dorcas, but I felt I needed to ruralize until I’d paid off the balance of my debt to Mornebeth. I’ve finally done that, and now I find he’s lurking in Papa’s parlor and making sheep’s eyes at you.”
A different sort of cold passed through Dorcas and settled low in her belly. “What debt to Mornebeth?”
Michael rose and withdrew a handkerchief from an inside pocket. “You know exactly what debt. Mornebeth made the rounds of the clubs and gaming hells with me, showed me around Town when I came down from university. He then kindly bought up the trail of vowels I left all over St. James’s. His grandmother sees that he has ample means, and he used his funds to keep me from falling into disgrace.”
“Did he?” Dorcas remained on the chilly bench, but inside, she was reeling. “And you repaid him to the penny?”
“With banker’s interest, which was arguably quite decent of him. He could have charged me more than five percent.”
Dorcas was aware of the bitter breeze toying with Michael’s dark locks as he used the handkerchief to wipe at a streak of grime on Mama’s headstone. Aware that a man and woman tarried in the shadows of the roofed lych-gate, out of the wind and standing close to each other.
She was aware as well, that she had been an even greater fool than she’d known. How was that possible? Eve dashing from the garden of Eden, cast out over a few bites of fruit and some casual disregard for the rules, could not feel any more foolish or bewildered than Dorcas did at that moment.
“Allowing you to repay debts of honor with interest wasarguablydecent of Mornebeth? What does that mean?”
Michael finished tidying up the marble, folded his handkerchief, and tucked it into a pocket. “Debts of honor are to be repaid quickly. I have taken years to make good on my vowels. Nonetheless, I can’t help but wish Mornebeth hadn’t been quite so willing to indulge my curiosity in the first place. A night or two on the town for the sake of my education—and humility—is understandable. When I wanted to give it up, he insisted on showing me just one more den of vice.”
“And then another and another.”
“I should have known better, Dorcas. I should have refused to accompany him when he dropped around yet again offering me supper at his club, as if the company of a goggle-eyed fellow just down from university was such a welcome change from that of his usual associates. He taught me a lesson I will never forget.”
“What lesson is that?” Dorcas spoke calmly, though her heart had taken to thumping against her ribs as if the moment had portents beyond the obvious. She’d been stupid, stupid, stupid, and Alasdhair MacKay had been right, right,right.
“Don’t be so desperate for another’s approval that I compromise my honor to win it,” Michael said, gaze on the steeple of St. Mildred’s. “A man with compromised honor deserves nobody’s approval.”
“Michael, a man who will lead you into temptation over and over while professing to be your friend deserves yourdisapproval, if not your scorn.”
Michael was silent for a time, while Dorcas focused simply on drawing and releasing her breath. She’d surrendered her virtue to Mornebeth three times over, and fornothing. Michael’s debts had not been forgiven, and now—years later—Mornebeth was exacting interest at far more than five percent as the price of his continued silence.
Dorcas had supposedly paid for that silence in full years ago. But this was exactly how extortion worked—the debt was never paid, the debtor never free.
“And yet,” Michael said, resuming his place on the bench, “Mornebeth tells me he hopes to court you and take you to wife. For five years, my objective has been to send him every spare groat until I could look him in the eye again, free of indebtedness. I did that, and now I find him sniffing about your skirts.”
Sniffing about her skirts, watching her with a knowing smile from across the parlor, littering his conversations with the clumsy innuendo of a man maneuvering to be perceived as a hopeful suitor.
“I am quite nearly on the shelf,” Dorcas said as a raven landed on the headstone. “I should be flattered to have earned Mr. Mornebeth’s notice.” She had the odd thought that it was the same raven she’d seen with Alasdhair in the back garden of the vicarage. The bird treated her to an unnerving stare, then flew off to perch on the church roof.
“You don’t care for Mornebeth in the slightest, Dorcas. I have been gone for five years, but I am still your brother. You are polite to Mornebeth, nothing more than that.”
“I am polite to everybody, as you are.”
“Mama insisted on manners from me, and if a vicar has one trait, it’s mannerliness.”
Dorcas’s feet were cold, and her heart… Her heart was frozen and breaking and shattered. “Do you know what Mama insisted on from me?”
“Damned near perfection?”
Michael used to swear far more colorfully than that. “As she lay dying, she exhorted me to look after you and Papa. She said to guard your happiness as if it were my greatest treasure. Told me that if I loved her at all, I would honor her memory by dedicating myself to your wellbeing and Papa’s.”
Michael cocked his head, much as the raven had. “You were fourteen, and she was half delirious with fever. Mama had no right to ask that of you.”
