Page 9 of Miss Delightful
Mr. MacKay ran a hand over the top of the hard little chair. “Didn’t want to get your hands dirty?”
Dorcas had vast experience curbing her temper. She could cajole entire committees of beldames, reason with bishops, and keep order among feuding domestics, but Alasdhair MacKay’s question offended her past all bearing.
He could be a kind, decent man, apparently, though he was also snide, judgmental, and condescending. Then too, Melanie had sent John into his keeping rather than entrust the child to her own cousin.
Dorcas stalked over to him, standing between him and the door lest he think to take the usual male dodge of exiting the stage.
“I hinted, Mr. MacKay. Said in my notes that I would like to meet John. I offered to come by. I made express requests to renew in person the bond Melanie and I shared in our youth. She ignored me, she demurred, she pleaded fatigue or a sniffle or anything rather than allow me to see her circumstances firsthand. She wasashamed, and I hate that. She did not come to this pass all on her own, and yet, she alone was left to deal with the shame of it. The magnitude of that injustice defies description.”
Mr. MacKay’s expression was devoid of emotion. “Don’t you dare cry again. I forbid it.”
This close to his person, Dorcas caught a whiff of fresh, heathery fragrance. She patted his lapel when she wanted to slap him. “I don’t cry when I’m furious, Mr. MacKay.”
A curious moment ensued, in which Dorcas was unwilling to step back, as if in her very person, as unprepossessing as she was, she could compel some sort of accountability from this seasoned officer. She gave him the same baleful stare he’d turned on her. Flat, unflinching, cold…
A corner of his mouth tipped up. “I apologize, Miss Delancey. I have leaped to conclusions that are apparently in error. I beg your pardon for my mistake. Let’s be going, shall we? I want to talk to Mrs. Sidmouth, and that means coming back another time.”
He hadn’t quite smiled. That little quirk of his lips had been fleeting and barely reached his eyes, but for a moment, he’d not been the austere soldier, but rather, the gallant officer.
“Don’t try to cozen me,” Dorcas said, marching for the door. “Don’t flatter me, don’t charm me, and do not, on your most feckless day, think to flirt with me. If I even suspect—”
He touched her arm as they passed into the dingy corridor. “If I flirt with you, Miss Delancey, you will not be left to suspect. You will know it, and if I go about the task properly, your reaction will be anything but a nervous scold.”
“Now you flatter yourself.”
He peered down at her. “I am an honest man, and I speak the honest truth. We can argue about that another day. We have a pawnshop to visit.”
Good thought. Dorcas was too wroth with him to concede that aloud. Had he offered that little proclamation about his abilities as a flirt any time prior to the past five minutes, she would have been amused—also too polite to laugh in his face.
But she’d seen that hint of a smile, seen the fleeting warmth in his eyes and the crack in the armor he wore on life’s battlefield. If Alasdhair MacKay ever did flirt with her, she’d be far too surprised—and pleased—to offer him any sort of scold in return.
Which was, of course, of absolutely no moment when they had a pawnshop to visit.
Chapter Three
Pawnshops were a fact of London life, though Alasdhair hated them. They were toll booths on the low road to ruin, and nearly every woman forced to go on the stroll had paid her pence to them.
“Are we visiting any particular pawnshop?” Miss Delancey asked as she and Alasdhair returned to the walkway.
“The nearest one, which would be two streets over.” He set off down the walkway, moderating his pace in deference to the lady. “The neighborhood improves to the south and west, but there’s another pawnshop two streets north. They often mark the boundaries between the areas in decline and the ones considered decent.”
“How do you know such things?”
“I make it my business to know. The taverns tell a tale as well. If the intersection nearest the tavern is clean by day, that means the patrons can afford to tip a barmaid and, a few moments later, tip the crossing sweeper too. If the intersection isn’t as tidy, then the sweepers aren’t getting their vails.”
“What of the churches?” Miss Delancey asked. “What do they say about a neighborhood?”
Interesting question from a parson’s daughter. “Not much. Some of our churches predate the Great Fire and are relics of a neighborhood’s former glory. Others were rebuilt in a hurry after the fire and are more modest than the surrounds at present merit. I’m sure that for you an appraisal of the vicar would tell a tale, while I find them all… vicarly. Tell me of your charitable undertakings, Miss Delancey. Why fallen women?”
Of all causes she might espouse, why fallen women?
“Because if I leave their plight to the city fathers to resolve, nothing will change.”
How determined she sounded. “You’ve been able to single-handedly shift the course of London’s flesh trade? How did you effect this miracle without the newspapers trumpeting your success?”
Alasdhair was honestly curious, and also baiting her. When Miss Dorcas Delancey was angry, all the propriety fell away, leaving a firebrand in its place. She was, quite possibly, one of those women who delighted in her spinster state with the unrepentant glee of the happy bachelor.
Such women were rarities in Alasdhair’s experience, and their combination of guile and ferocity intrigued him. They needed that ferocity in a society that rendered women invisible, save as they could be—or aspire to be—wives or mothers.
