Page 96 of Miss Delightful
Alasdhair took her cloak from a hook and draped it around her shoulders. “For some. But then you read the casualty lists and join the burial details, and the exhaustion wins. For a few moments, though, there’s joy in victory, even in plain animal survival.”
Dorcas held his coat for him. “We must see your gloves replaced, Mr. MacKay. The night is cold.” She took down the plaid scarf and was about to wrap it about her own neck when she changed her mind and tucked it around Alasdhair’s.
“My cloak has a decent collar,” she said, “and that plaid looks good on you.”
“Are you giving me back the only gift you’ve allowed me to give you?” A Highland winter would have been cozier than the tone of Alasdhair’s question.
“I adore that scarf, and you will never get it back. I’m merely lending it to you, seeing to your comfort, as you so often see to mine. Are you hungry again yet?”
One side of his mouth quirked. “Soon. Dorcas, pronounce sentence on me, please. I presumed, I overstepped, I stuck my nose into a situation that was no longer my business.”
“You told the truth, Alasdhair. Mornebeth had been presenting himself to the world as a rising ecclesiastical light when, in fact, he’s been abusing streetwalkers and at least one vicar’s family. His mischief probably encompasses more victims than we’ll ever know. What you did was gather witnesses to attest to his wrongdoing.”
Alasdhair blew out the last candle, which meant only a few shafts of moonlight illuminated the hall. “I gathered them in the church itself, with every beldame and codger in the congregation looking on. I hadn’t meant to do that, but I was concerned…” He stood quite tall. “I was afraid Mornebeth would propose, and then you’d be trapped all over again.”
Dorcas led the way to the side door. “Whereas I, once again, could not see that ambush in the making. He did propose, and if I had accepted his proposal, I’d have been doomed. A man who aspires to consign others to doom for his own gain is surely in the grip of evil.”
The night was brisk and still, the churchyard quiet.
Alasdhair pulled the door closed. “Do we lock this door?”
Dorcas moved nearer to run her fingers over the lintel. She found the key and passed it to Alasdhair. “Locked in name only.” She remained close to Alasdhair in the shadowed doorway while he locked the door and replaced the key. “Alasdhair?”
“My heart?”
She leaned into him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “You followed your heart when you came here this evening. I followed my heart, too, when I decided to accept Mornebeth’s devil’s bargain. I knew only that I was to protect my family, and I forgot entirely that they are also to protect me.
“I did my best,” she went on. “I meant well. I can forgive that bewildered, overwhelmed girl, because she was doing the best she could. She has always done the best she could, and nobody notices that save you. My family loves me, and I love them, and we’ll sort out the rest, but for my younger self, trying so hard to be brave and wise when every star was aligned against her, all I have now is compassion.”
Alasdhair brushed the end of the scarf over her cheek. “Don’t cry. Please, Dorcas. Ye break my heart…” He gathered her close and rested his cheek against her temple.
She did cry, for that wronged young girl, for her family, for the women who’d come to her rescue and then returned to London’s cruel streets. She cried for relief and rage, and as Alasdhair held her, she cried as well for joy.
The battle was all but over, and she was in the arms of the man she loved.
“You followed your heart,” she said when the tears had run their course. “That takes courage, and without courage, all the virtue in the world is only so many stitched samplers.” She slipped an arm around his waist and walked him past the headstones gleaming in the moonlight.
“I am forgiven, Dorcas?”
“There is nothing to forgive, Alasdhair. There’s only the man I love, doing the best he can, and a future we will sort out together.”
Alasdhair tucked an arm around her shoulders and escorted her through the gate that opened onto the street. They would have parted, for Alasdhair turned one way and Dorcas the other, but she kept hold of his hand.
“My heart? The vicarage is this way.”
“True, but our house is this way.” She tugged on his hand, and with a low, thoroughly masculine laugh, he let her lead him home.
* * *
“That is a kilt.”Dorcas sounded both impressed and wary as she regarded Alasdhair standing on the walkway beside his coach.
She’d not been at all wary last night. She’d fed him a midnight snack, then shown him precisely how a couple celebrated their upcoming nuptials. To fall asleep with her in his arms had been sumptuous, to wake up and see her beside him had been the answer to his every prayer.
The words they’d exchanged in the darkened church hall, about compassion, forgiveness, and honor, had been difficult. The loving had been wordless, magnificent, and a new beginning. Alasdhair had walked Dorcas home in the chilly gray dawn a changed man. He was done with marching orders, commandments, and simple answers, except for the simple answer of loving Dorcas.
She, too, seemed to have risen in good spirits.
Not ready to take on the world as a warrior took on the world, perhaps, but ready to be her wonderful self and let the world make of her what it would. For today’s outing, she’d dressed in pale blue, which set off the plaid scarf nicely.
