Page 20 of Miss Devoted
“I am paying you for the inspiration of your appearance,” she said, getting to her feet and crossing to the worktable. “If you exhaust yourself into an influenza, I will be denied my objective. Next week, I might well ask the most outlandish pose of you or sit you in the corner and ignore you for the first hour of our meeting. Your payment.”
She held out the coins with no discernible emotion. Not distaste, humor, or self-consciousness. Payment for services rendered. Perhaps being Henderson had taught her how to do that.
“Thank you,” Michael said, accepting money he was pathetically grateful to have.
Mrs. Fremont assisted him to dress, the familiarity less awkward than it should have been. She tied his cravat with brisk efficiency, made a few more passes at his hair with her fingers, and handed him his hat.
“You’ll do,” she said, picking up a parcel from the table near the door. “Take this, please. Hazel doesn’t care for Cook’s mushroom sauce, and I can only consume so much at a sitting.”
Food. She was giving him more of that sumptuous beef, more perfectly seasoned, buttery potatoes. “You should not…”
“I have seen you as God made you,” she said, settling his scarf around his neck. “I know when a man could use a few more good meals, Mr. Delancey. The Church would praise you for starving, but I have need of you in excellent good health.”
He held his gloves in one hand and her gift of sustenance in the other, and thus when she hugged him, he merely stood, equal parts shocked and pleased, until she withdrew.
“That’s your coach,” she said as hoofbeats sounded on the cobbles in the alley. “Hazel’s friends take her up, so I ordered the coach for you. You walked here, you need not emphasize your contrary nature by walking home at this hour.”
Mrs. Fremont spoke with such brisk dispatch that had Michael’s heart not been beating at an accelerated tempo, he would have questioned his recollection of a brief, snug embrace from his temporary employer.
“I will bid you good evening.” He bowed slightly. “Thank you for your kindnesses.”
“Be off with you,” she said, holding the door open. “My coachman knows to set you down at Lambeth, so don’t think to fob him off at Green Park.”
Michael slipped through the door, both amused and appalled that she would guess his plan so easily. He took the servants’ stairs down to the back entrance and climbed into the waiting coach. The floor bricks were heated, the lap blankets soft and plush. The warmth radiating up through the soles of his boots was exquisite, and the money in his pocket an even greater comfort.
“What on earth have I got myself into?” He drew the line at investigating the parcel of food. He was not hungry for once, not for food.
For another of Mrs. Fremont’s fierce, bold hugs?
Yes, absolutely. He was starving for adult affection and closeness, and Mrs. Fremont’s sketch said she’d seen at least that much. The question became not how to earn another embrace from her, but how to resist the many temptations she offered while garnering more of her coin.
“We are for the lending library tomorrow,” Hazel said, marching into the family parlor shortly after midnight. “I vow you do nothing but sketch and paint anymore. This will not serve, my dear.”
While Hazel’s life was an endless round of social obligations, committee meetings, and inspections of foundling hospitals.
“How was your evening?” Psyche asked, setting aside her sketch pad.
“Boring, silly. Mrs. Oldbach has very fixed ideas about what constitutes a nourishing soup for the less fortunate, and those ideas are at variance with Mrs. Prebish’s well-considered opinions, though neither woman has ever in her life actually prepared a pot of soup.”
“Why do you do it, Hazel? Why listen to the nattering? Why put up with the posturing?”
Hazel bent to unlace her boots, the firelight turning her red hair into a study in subtle illumination. She straightened, set aside her boots, and settled her feet on a hassock.
“We make a difference,” she said. “Not enough of a difference, but a difference. If the cooper knows his apprentices come around to the church for an extra meal on Sunday, then he also knows Vicar will hear the boys discuss their working conditions. Are the hours too long? Is the morning porridge thin? The extra meal matters, but so does the knowledge that we keep an eye on our patrons.”
Interesting theory. “And thus you become an aid to the cooper’s conscience?”
“Something like that, or so I hope. The penny press will ignore grumbling apprentices—apprentices were born to grumble, according to John Bull. But the penny press and even some of the more respectable publications will give a nod to proper ladies grumbling about the lot of apprentices. If nothing else, our meetings give Mr. Prebish a night of quiet solitude, and that has to aid the peace of the realm.”
“I don’t care for Prebish. He’s all smiles and gallantry when I drop by his shop for a fresh bouquet of posies, but he treats the flower girls abominably.” And his oldest son, a strapping youth with an abundance of golden hair, had yet to learn how to keep his gaze from improperly straying over a lady’s person.
“Prebish is opening a second shop in Knightsbridge,” Hazel said, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. “Flowers are apparently good business these days. Why was the coach coming back just as I arrived home, Psyche?”
Damn and blast. Jacob had often said timing was everything. “I had a guest. I lent my guest the coach owing to the late hour and the cold.”
Hazel opened her eyes and studied Psyche. “May I hope you are indulging in a discreet frolic? Please say you are. One of us should enjoy an occasional diversion. It’s been so long, I vow I’ve forgotten how.”
“I’ve hired a model to work with me on Thursday evenings.” Psyche could admit that much without compromising Mr. Delancey’s privacy. She’d hired other models from time to time. “Shall I ring for tea, Hazel?” The staff would make Psyche pay for that imposition at this hour, and well they should.
