Page 98 of Miss Delightful
She rubbed her fingers across her forehead. “I’ll send him away. Back north, perhaps. Find him a little congregation where he can’t get into much trouble.”
Dorcas resumed her seat. “You think only of him and of the fact that he might well end up in jail for crimes he has committed thus far with impunity. Assault, extortion, blackmail, and worse. I know women who face transportation simply because a shopkeeper accused them of stealing—no proof, no witnesses, just a man’s word against theirs—and those women are ripped from home and family to face deprivations without number. You will not inflict your grandson on some unsuspecting rural parish.”
“Fine, then I’ll warn those in charge of him at Lambeth, and they’ll keep a close eye on him.”
Dorcas leveled a stare at Lady Phoebe. “He will leave the Church. He will leave the country. He will subsist on an allowance determined by my father and brother and paid by you, and he will receive that money only so long as he maintains good behavior. A breath of scandal, a brush with the law… If he so much as curses at a stray dog, he will be cut off. Are we agreed?”
Lady Phoebe looked honestly bewildered. “He will never agree to those terms.”
“He will face a choice,” Thomas Delancey said. “He can cling to his lies and to your skirts, in which case he will be held up to generations of aspiring churchmen as the ultimate bad example, or he can for once think of his family’s standing. If he’s as smart as you believe him to be, he’ll quietly put off his collar and discreetly slip away. I’m sure your powers of persuasion are sufficient to help him make the right choice. Shall we be going?”
Michael was on his feet. “Lady Phoebe, good day, and good luck.”
“But you cannot… You leave Isaiah no choice at all. He’s ruined either way. On remittance in some foreign land or defrocked and disgraced in his homeland.”
Alasdhair got to his feet and offered Dorcas his hand. “We could doubtless arrange for both. Public disgrace at the hands of the bishops and transportation to Botany Bay. There’s a curious loyalty among the constables to the ladies plying the street trade. Assaulting a streetwalker still qualifies as assault. The charges alone would cause an ocean of talk. I understand false imprisonment might apply, and Miss Delancey is prepared to announce Mornebeth’s perfidy toward her to the world.”
Dorcas rose. “Indeed, I am, starting with theCharitable Circularand moving on to the London papers. I will also make it plain that you knew of Isaiah’s crimes against me and my family and sought to protect him by having him marry the woman he’d treated so ill in the past.”
Alasdhair had been taught to respect the elderly, but he would have enthusiastically tossed Lady Phoebe out the window in that moment.
“Sheknew?” Alasdhair asked very softly.
Lady Phoebe examined her rings. “I hear much, and Miss Delancey was seen calling several times at my residence when I was away from Town. I know my grandson, and the best I could do was get him out of London for a time. A wife cannot testify against her husband, and Miss Delancey has become formidable. She is a suitable match, up to Isaiah’s weight. Isaiah isn’t awful, and… it was the best I could do.”
“Isaiah,” Dorcas replied, “is beyond awful. He’s vile and dangerous. He excels at driving others to make impossible choices. You were given a choice between protecting an innocent girl or guarding your family’s reputation. You made the wrong choice, given what your grandson is, but you can do something about that now.”
Lady Phoebe left off studying her rings long enough to glower at Dorcas. “Begone with you. I will deal with Isaiah, and he will be much improved for some extended travel.”
“A decade of extended travel at a minimum,” Dorcas said, “because he has been preying on the innocent for at least that long.”
Lady Phoebe looked like she wanted to argue the length of the sentence, but the door opened, and Isaiah himself marched into the room, followed by a pink-faced butler.
“I’m sorry, my lady,” the butler said. “Mr. Mornebeth refused to wait in the family parlor.”
“My lady.” Isaiah offered his grandmother a deep bow. “I hope you haven’t been listening to the scurrilous accusations from these, these—”
“Hush,” Dorcas said. “Your grandmother is changing her will. You will listen to what she has to say, andyou will not interrupt her.”
A brief, complicated look passed between Lady Phoebe and Dorcas.
“Miss Delancey has the right of it,” Lady Phoebe said. “I am changing my will, and you, sir, are changing your ways.”
Dorcas slipped her hand around Alasdhair’s arm. “No need to see us out, my lady. You clearly have family matters to discuss.”
Mornebeth drew himself up into the picture of outraged propriety. “You cannot come to my grandmother’s house, casting aspersions on the Mornebeth name, making baseless—"
Alasdhair permitted himself a wee display of temper, mostly for show, but not entirely. He grasped Mornebeth by the neckcloth and gave him a gentle, teeth-rattling shake.
“To use words you might comprehend, Mornebeth:Mene, mene, tekel upharsin. You cannot bluff, manipulate, slander, lie, or cheat your way out of this. Show some damned dignity for once and listen to your granny.”
Dorcas looked at Alasdhair as if he’d just promised her the whole of Scotland as her personal demesne. “The book of Daniel,” she said. “Chapter five, Belshazzar’s feast.”
Mornebeth appeared baffled.
“A slight paraphrase,” Michael Delancey said. “Your schemes are at an end, you have been weighed in the balance and found wanting, and your cousins are likely to inherit in your place. Think of them as the Medes and Persians, if you want to get biblical about it.”
They left Mornebeth gaping like the fool that he was and proceeded to the tea shop, where Dorcas had both cinnamon and nutmeg with her hot chocolate, and Mr. Delancey pronounced the hot cross buns nearly as good as Ophelia Oldbach’s—but not as tasty as Mrs. Benton’s tarts.
