Page 95 of Miss Delightful
Dorcas smiled at him faintly. “What’s wanted is to render Mr. Mornebeth as powerless as he has always feared to become. What’s wanted is for him and his family to bear the burden of his bad behavior, rather than me and mine. Be ready to go calling at ten of the clock.”
“Hardly a polite hour,” Delancey said. “But very well. Michael?”
“Of course I’ll come.”
“We are not calling at a polite hour,” Dorcas replied, “because the reason for our outing wants discretion. Mr. MacKay, you will join us?”
Alasdhair adored seeing her in charge of the situation, assembling her honor guard, taking matters in hand. “I will come around in my town coach on the half hour. Wild unicorns could not stop me.”
“Papa and Michael, you can see each other home. Mr. MacKay and I have more to discuss. Don’t wait up for me.”
Alasdhair expected her to have to shoo them off as she’d shooed off Mornebeth, but her father and brother were learning.
“Good night,” Michael said. “MacKay, it’s been interesting.”
Delancey kissed Dorcas’s cheek, nodded to Alasdhair, and fell in beside his son. “Mrs. Oldbach’s buns were delicious, but I do believe Mrs. Benton’s tarts were better.”
“Both were absolutely delightful,” Michael said as he closed the door to the corridor behind them.
Alasdhair eased his hand from Dorcas’s. “Go on, then, ring a peal over my head. I upset your plans, I meddled, I did not respect your stated intentions. I’m most sorry for that.”
“No, you are not. You are not sorry at all.”
He waited, ready for her to pronounce him the worst bounder ever to bound from Scotland. “I’m not. Mornebeth was unbearable.”
“But you never argue with a lady, Alasdhair. She gets to decide. Those are your eternal marching orders. What changed?”
Alasdhair mustered all of his courage and took the question seriously. What had changed? He’d explained to his cousins why he came to London every winter. They had listened.
He had seen Mornebeth for the sort of menace that could get good men killed and decent families ruined.
He had learned the depths of Mornebeth’s hypocrisy and the intimate danger he posed to Dorcas.
“I wanted life to be simple,” Alasdhair said slowly. “Follow orders, do my duty, and keep my honor bright, like some boy memorizing his proverbs. I wanted an answer that would always be the right one, in any circumstance, and ‘never argue with a lady’ fits that description.”
“A commandment?”
“Something like that, but proverbs stitched on samplers are meant to hang on the walls of nurseries or be displayed in guest parlors. Life isn’t a tidy little cautionary tale that such simple rubrics can always guide us. You told me not to interfere, but in my heart could not bear…”
He fell silent, and at some point, he’d taken Dorcas’s hand, to which he now clung fiercely.
“Alasdhair?”
“My heart said to act. My heart said I had to try. If you are angry with me, I am sorry, but I’ve had the experience of being angry at myself, Dorcas, of being disappointed in myself. I did not go on as I ought in Badajoz. I took no issue with the actions of a superior officer who was behaving abominably. I did not stand up for my own honor orthink for myself. I despise the man I’d be if I allowed your courage to absolve me of responsibility for that honor.”
Alasdhair did not care for this maundering on about complicated, difficult matters either, but Dorcas had found words to explain her past to her father and brother. When the moment had arrived, she had not flinched from the truth. What fool had blathered on at such great lengths about the imperative need for honesty?
“I love you,” he said, easing his fingers from her grasp. “I want to be worthy of your love in return. Allowing Mornebeth to force marriage on my beloved when a means of preventing that evil is at hand would make me unworthy. I cannot explain it any better than that. Let’s blow out the candles, shall we, and I will walk you home.”
He rose and began making a circuit of the room, extinguishing candles until only a single sconce remained lit. He’d known Dorcas would be angry with him, perhaps relieved and angry, but plenty furious enough. Men had been disrespecting her choices and her independence for years.
He’d taken a risk, bringing Big Nan and her friends into the church hall, confronting Mornebeth before the entire congregation. The reward was that Mornebeth had been sent packing, but at what cost?
Chapter Nineteen
Dorcas rose, fatigue making her steps heavy, though the relief—the sparkling, soaring relief—of being free of Mornebeth made her heart light. Alasdhair stood by the lone candle flickering in the drafty hall, shadows dancing about him. He was clearly braced for a tongue-lashing, perhaps even for a rejection.
“Is it like this after a battle?” she asked, joining him in the candlelight. “You are nearly bewildered with gladness to be alive, and also ready to drop from exhaustion?”
