Page 89 of Miss Delightful
Alasdhair had paced, and he had not eavesdropped. He’d heard no shouting, no wailing, no loud recriminations, and when Melanie summoned him, he found Dorcas sitting on a straight-backed chair, nibbling on a bun.
“I’ll wait for you at the lych-gate,” Melanie said. “Try the hot cross buns. They are wonderful.” She gave him a shove, and Alasdhair found himself three yards and a world of heartache away from the woman he loved.
Dorcas set aside her bun, rose, and closed the distance between them. “You found her.” She wrapped her arms around him. “You found her, she’s alive, and she’s going to be h-happy.”
Alasdhair was helpless not to return Dorcas’s embrace. To have her in his arms again was both a torment and the answer to endless prayers.
“I suspect she wanted to be found. She was hoping to catch Timmens on the way to the pub, or to slip a note to Henderson. I gave her a means of listening to her better angels.”
“Thank you,” Dorcas said. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for being decent and kind and generous, and I am so glad to see you, I could… Iamweeping. I hate to cry.”
“You have much to cry about.”
She gave him one more hearty squeeze, then stepped back. “You were right, Alasdhair. You were right about everything. Mornebeth never forgave Michael’s debts. I asked Michael for a few particulars when I’d had a chance to think about it. Isaiah made him sign a promissory note and pay interest. For years, Michael has been scrimping to pay off that debt, and he’s free of it now, while I…”
She turned away and crossed the room to close the lid over the piano keys.
“Have you accepted Mornebeth’s suit, Dorcas?”
“I have not. He’ll wait until Michael has left before he springs that trap. I do not want to marry him, Alasdhair, but I don’t see any other way of limiting the threat he poses.”
Alasdhair joined her near the piano, though he did not dare touch her again. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes, absolutely, but I do not trust Mornebeth to be anything other than devious, self-serving, and vicious. I don’t understand him, Alasdhair. He has been given so much, and yet, he must have more and more. More influence, more authority, more means. He’s Lady Phoebe’s heir, but even that isn’t enough for him.”
“What do you suppose he fears most of all?”
Dorcas sat on the piano bench, her expression puzzled. To Alasdhair, the answer was obvious. A thorough public shaming was Mornebeth’s worst fear, and the absolute least that justice demanded in his case.
“One hesitates to admit having anything in common with Isaiah Mornebeth,” Dorcas said, “but I suspect he fears the same thing I do, the same thing every woman I met in those vile jails fears. Utter powerlessness. Women are dependent on the benevolent offices of men, which is probably why my mother admonished me to be so devoted to Papa’s and Michael’s happiness.”
“Powerlessness? Mornebeth is all but attached to the archbishop, who ranks above the entire peerage in precedence. The Mornebeth family has means, and his granny is still quite the force to be reckoned with socially.” And yet, Dorcas’s assessment had the ring of insight, of truth.
“Isaiah seeks power, Alasdhair. Why do that unless he fears what a life of powerlessness holds for him? His father died too young, much as my mother did. His choice of vocation was all but thrust upon him by his grandmother, while I am consigned to the role of daughter of the vicarage. His grandmother expects him to dance attendance on her, and he relies on her influence, which is considerable. He’s another version of the vicarage spinster.”
Dorcas fell silent, her gaze fixed on a table of baked goods, though Alasdhair doubt she saw anything of the immediate surrounds.
“I am truly powerless,” Dorcas murmured. “I hate that, but that’s precisely why Isaiah set his sights on me. I cannot fight back. I have no money, no authority, no influential friends. I am not in jail, but I am not free either. I have spent my life trying to be so good, so proper, and exemplary, hoping that virtue alone would keep me safe from the world’s evil, but it doesn’t work like that. Melanie was right.”
Melanie was a hoyden, at best. “You are not powerless, Dorcas. Far from it.”
She peered up at him. “I write my articles. They change nothing. I run this parish, and it might as well be the Sunday pub for all the good we do as a congregation. I look after my father, and he spends hours retranslating Scripture when he ought to be calling on Mrs. Oldbach.”
Dorcas was no longer crying, but Alasdhair knew the bitter detachment of heartbreak when he heard it. He sat beside her on the bench and took her hand.
“I ran into Aurora Feeney again.”
“The woman to whom you gave your gloves?”
“Aye, and she pawned them, exactly as you predicted. She came upon me in a bad moment, Dorcas. I have missed you sorely, I want to kill Mornebeth, I did not know what was afoot with Melanie, and I am sick to death of the cold and misery of a London winter. I saw Aurora, and I thought, ‘I cannot do this anymore. She’ll die of the pox, if the gin or the cold doesn’t get her first. What the hell am I doing?’”
“You are being kind,” Dorcas said. “You are being honorable.”
“In that moment, it felt like I was being a fool, pounding my head against a wall of misery so high, wide, and thick that no crack would ever form in that bleak façade. Then Aurora had a wee talk with me.”
“What did she say?”
“She said you are not powerless, Dorcas. Neither am I. You are very powerful, and Mornebeth won’t know what hits him when your version of the celestial thunderbolt knocks him onto his arse.”
