Page 4 of Miss Devoted
“Delancey isn’t pious,” MacKay observed, taking another sip of the water of life. “He doesn’t flourish snippets of Scripture like so many fancy lace handkerchiefs that prove his churchliness. I wonder if he even has a vocation.”
“Since when has a true vocation been necessary for ordination?”
MacKay fired the pillow back, careful to aim for Goddard’s good hip. “We were soldiers. We know that you don’t win a war, a battle, or even a skirmish on your own. Delancey hasn’t learned that lesson.”
Goddard shoved the pillow behind his back. “So ask him what’s amiss. Have Dorcas ask him. Tell him he has family, and if he wants the parade of widows, beauties, and sweet young things to stop, he has to rely on that family to assist him with whatever’s wrong. This is very good cognac, by the way. Chateau Fournier?”
“How should I know? Sycamore Dorning gave it to me. All I know is it’s not whisky and my family didn’t bottle it.” Chateau Fournier was hard to come by in Britain, and exquisite libation for those whose tastes ran to the grape rather than the grain.
“Can Dorning get me a case of this cognac for the club?” Goddard asked.
“Ask him. We are discussing my brother-in-law and the dismal state of his affairs, not your wine cellars. Dorcas is concerned.”
“Ergo, you are concerned, and you will worry the matter like a pensioned hound gnawing an old boot.”
MacKay finished his drink and decided against another. “Delancey is my brother-by-marriage. I am entitled to take an interest in his situation. We’ve tarried the requisite fifteen minutes. Do you suppose we might rejoin the ladies?”
“Delancey has to rejoin us first. How long can one man dither in the retiring room?”
“He can’t plead a megrim, so needs must. Michael has the look of a fellow who has been given a harsh sentence and has decided not to attempt escape.”
Goddard’s sigh spoke volumes. “Delancey is a preacher’s firstborn following in his dear papa’s footsteps. Leave it, I tell you. He probably cannot support a wife on what he’s paid, and patience is the only sensible course for him at present.”
Well, damn.“That argument has merit.” The solution to a puzzle that sat in plain sight and yet had eluded MacKay’s notice.
Goddard shifted on his pillow. “Even a blind hog…”
“Has the eye been bothering you?”
“No, as a matter of fact.” Goddard rose and set his empty glass on the sideboard. “The winter gloom and shorter days give me a reprieve from too much bright sunlight. Ann makes me wear my tinted spectacles on sunny days, and the eye has ceased to be much trouble. Let’s find the ladies, and to blazes with Delancey.”
The ladies, as it happened, had found Delancey as he’d been on his way to joining the gentlemen. Michael, looking quietly amused at having been ambushed, declined a cup of tea.
“I have a good walk ahead of me,” he said, “and had best get started.”
The statuesque Mrs. Buckthorn laid a hand on Michael’s arm. “You will come with us in the coach, sir. The air on the river is bitter, and if we’re to drop the colonel at his club, we’re going your direction anyway.”
Mrs. Fremont maintained a silence that seemed characteristic of her. She was reserved, polite, and intelligent, but neither too serious nor too charming. The lady was also pretty in a blond, green-eyed way, but lack of animation kept her looks from true attractiveness.
“I won’t refuse a lift,” Goddard said. “Might as well yield to the generosity of the ladies, Delancey. Spring is a long way off.”
“That it is,” he said. “I am grateful for your kindness. Dorcas, my thanks for a lovely meal.”
More of the correct words were said amid proper bows and polite curtseys, and within minutes, the guests had departed.
Dorcas led MacKay back to the family parlor and poured herself a nip of whisky. “Michael is worse than ever, Alasdhair. He’s so remote, so… stilted. This is the brother who dared me to smoke a cigar when I was thirteen and helped me sneak a kitten into my bedroom? The fellow who joined us at dinner is a changeling. The Yorkshire fairies have stolen my real brother and left me a tailor’s dummy who resembles my Michael.”
MacKay offered the only encouraging words he could think of. “Delancey seems in great good health to me. He’s hale, for all that he does appear preoccupied.”
Dorcas considered her drink. “Perhaps he’s afflicted with melancholia. I thought surely Mrs. Fremont would have some appeal for him. Mrs. Buckthorn described her niece as a quiet paragon, never a foot wrong, but not a bore. Mrs. Fremont esteemed her late husband, but didn’t turn mourning into theatrical production, according to her aunt. The lady is not vain, and she doesn’t put on airs. With a little work, she could be pretty.”
MacKay helped himself to a sip of his wife’s drink. “Michael hardly looked at her.”
“And she hardly looked at him. They weren’t rude to each other, they were simply indifferent. Why do I feel as if that makes them even more well suited?”
MacKay set aside the drink and wrapped his wife in a hug. “Dorcas, please, for the sake of your brother’s dignity and my nerves, give it a rest. Mrs. Fremont did not seek to attract Michael’s notice, and he clearly isn’t looking to find himself a lady. Leave them in peace. Goddard suggested Michael cannot afford a wife, and that notion has merit.”
Dorcas snuggled closer. “Dratted filthy lucre. Goddard could be right. Michael isn’t ever likely to be wealthy, but Mrs. Buckthorn said her niece is well fixed. Perhaps I should tell Michael that.”
