Page 83 of Miss Dauntless
“Thank you, Delancey,” he said. “I’d be happy for the company. Do you ever refuse your sister’s invitations?”
“I don’t feel I have the right.” Delancey set a relaxed pace along the deserted street. “I was off in the north for years, while Dorcas was all but running St. Mildred’s and contending with other challenges. I should have been here for her and for my father. She still keeps a hand in at St. Mildred’s, while I…”
Delancey’s voice trailed off, and his gaze narrowed on a heap of shivering blankets tucked against the door of a grocer’s shop.
“You are to rise swiftly through the ranks at Lambeth,” Tremont said, “and make your father proud of you?” The reminder that other men had burdens was timely. Matilda and Tommie would sail out of Tremont’s life tomorrow, and some comparable sorrow had apparently sailed into Mr. Delancey’s pious and worthy existence.
“Oh, something like that. MacKay pulled me aside and said I was not to mention Mrs. Merridew’s name. I gather she’s left her post?” Delancey approached the heap of blankets and knelt. “You’ll catch your death out here, my friend. Do you know where St. Mildred’s is?”
The heap scrabbled back against the wall, revealing the crossing sweeper Patrick. “Don’t touch me, mate. I’ve got a knife aimed at yer…” The boy leaped to his feet. “Milord. Evenin’.”
“Mr. Delancey means you no harm, Patrick. It’s too cold to weather the elements tonight. Take yourself off to share the kitchen fire with Charlie and tell him you’ve missed your supper.”
Patrick shoved unkempt dark hair from his eyes. “I dint mean to fall asleep.”
Delancey unwound a green and white plaid scarf from about his neck. “Do as the earl says, lad. As cold as it is, you might have awakened without the use of a few fingers and toes, if you awoke at all.” He wrapped the scarf around the boy’s ears. “Away with you. My sister knits me a different scarf every week. You’d do me a kindness if you kept that one. The colors do not suit me.”
“Smells good,” Patrick said, taking an audible sniff. “Like the bakery on biscuit day. I can keep it?”
“Please do.”
The boy trotted off before Tremont could toss him a coin. “If you’re crossing the river, Delancey, you have a long walk ahead of you. You’re welcome to spend the night with me and take my coach to Southwark in the morning.”
“No, thank you. The walk will do me good. About Mrs. Merridew. She’s quit her post?”
“She’s quitting England. Ready for a fresh start.”
Delancey muttered something that sounded like,Aren’t we all?“Dorcas left me with the impression that you and Mrs. Merridew might suit.”
What was this interrogation in aid of? “The lady decided otherwise, for reasons I cannot question. What’s it like, working for the archbishop?”
Tremont turned down his street, and Delancey accompanied him. “I do not work for the archbishop. I work for the Almighty, or so I’m to believe. Who would have thought that the Creator had need of so many glorified clerks?”
“Perhaps you should take ship for Philadelphia.”
Delancey shook his head. “I’m needed here.” An automatic and somewhat bleak reply.
“As am I. Sure you won’t join me for a nightcap? Allow me to loan you a scarf? Mine are all in the best of subdued good taste.”
“I will decline your kind offers and bid you good night.” He bowed at the foot of Tremont’s front steps. “You’ll keep an eye on Patrick? He’s set himself up for lung fever, at best.”
“I will keep a roof over his head if he’ll allow it. One must deal gently with puerile pride.”
Delancey smiled. “And its adult equivalent. You are welcome to spend the night roaming the metropolis with me, my lord. I promise not to pry, and I won’t lead you into any gaming hells or dens of vice.”
How would a bishop-in-training know to find his way to such entertainments? “Most kind of you. I’ll page through a few scenes from one of the Bard’s plays, and I should be ready for slumber. Wander carefully, Delancey. The MacKays would take it amiss if you should run into foul luck.”
“I am ever cautious, thank you. If you want the best soporific known to man, may I recommend ecclesiastical law? I defy any sentient creature to remain awake for more than one page of the bishops’ maunderings. Thanks to the arcane proceedings of the church courts, I have become a sleepwalker of no little skill, but you must not tell that to my superiors. Adieu, Tremont, and pleasant dreams.”
He saluted with his walking stick and strolled off into the night.
Tremont paused outside his home, watching Delancey disappear into the gloom.He doesn’t feel the cold.Saints were that detached from bodily concerns, but so was a particularly miserable class of sinner. Tremont had been among their number when he’d first returned to London.
Melancholia was too simple a label for such a complicated problem. As Tremont made his way up to his apartment, he offered a prayer for Delancey’s eventual waking. Sleepwalking took a toll, though as to that, waking could be nearly as painful.
Memories took a toll as well, and because Tremont did not want to toss and turn in the very bed where he and Matilda had become lovers, he opened a volume of Shakespeare and found himself staring atRomeo and Juliet, act 2, scene 2.
Two lovers caterwauling into the night, about family feuds, birthrights, and names, and Romeo offering to cast his name aside for Juliet’s love.A rose by any other name…
