Page 50 of Miss Devoted
“Patience is one of the seven heavenly virtues,” Psyche murmured, lifting her cloak from a peg behind the door. Patience being a form of prudence.
Ricardo took the garment from her and settled it around her shoulders. “I don’t recall Jacob viewing it thus.”
Michael surely did. “Jacob was not an artist. I hope to have another flower girl for you next week.” After Michael’s portrait was complete.
Ricardo passed over her reticule, gloves, and bonnet. “Excellent. I’ll spread the word, and you can start planning Henderson’s demise.”
“Let’s not be hasty.” Psyche pulled on her gloves. “Henderson is serving me well, and he’s learning a lot from Berthold. My thanks for suggesting those classes. Berthold cannot teach me how to draw, but he can teach me how to better see and portray my subjects.”
Ricardo gazed down at her, his expression for once serious. “Jacob would want you to set the Henderson ruse aside, Psyche. You’ve made your point. The public is noticing your talent. Do it now, or you’ll be stuck in Henderson’s shadow for the rest of your days.”
“Easy for you to say.” Psyche patted his lapel. “You assume the public will be delighted to learn that Henderson is female. You see commissions pouring in, sales soaring. I am not so sanguine. The Royal Academy hasn’t admitted a woman since its founding, and the two ladies who managed to slip in the door decades ago were never permitted any participation in the Academy’s governance. France abolished its equivalent role for ladies, despite an undisputed embarrassment of female artistic talent in Paris alone.”
“Do you want to govern a lot of squabbling painters?”
“I want to paint the serious subjects—portraits, historical themes, an occasional iconic landscape—and be respected and compensated for my talent, just as you are compensated for yours.” The compensation mattered more than it should for a widow of ample means.
Ricardo kissed her cheek. “Four more flower girls first. Then you can do a portrait of every milord in London.”
She’d be happy to start with two or three milords, or even a pair of miladies. Psyche offered Ricardo an exaggerated curtsey. “Your wish, and so forth. Until next week.”
He bowed in return and came up grinning. “Away with you. I have prints to make.”
Psyche remembered to moderate her pace as she returned to the coach, but really, why should a woman mince about in cold weather, while the men were free to nearly jog down the street?
She was tempted to ask Mac to take the coach across the river and past Lambeth Palace, but that would be the behavior of a besotted schoolgirl. She was not besotted, though she was happier than she’d been in ages and wishing every week had seven Thursday nights.
But she was most assuredly not besotted.
ChapterEleven
“If you put that scoop of coal on the fire, I will thrash you, Danner.” Natty Ingram halfway meant the threat. “Delancey is right when he claims excessive heat makes us mentally sluggish. Sit down and do some work.”
Danner was blond, solid about the middle, not quite as solid about the morals, and underendowed with ambition. He understood the request for what it was, though, dumped the coal back in the safe, and resumed his seat.
“Inadequate heat makes you peevish,” he said, fiddling with his quill pen. “I’m to be banished to Nottinghamshire, home of legendary bandits and my own dear uncles. They serve in adjoining parishes and trade sermons. Each fellow has to do half the work that way. The uncles are great ones for doing half the work, and being their curate will mean I’m doing half their work in two parishes as well as the curate’s jobs—they’ll share me, like I’m some subaltern on military campaign—and I won’t have a feather to fly with.”
“Worse yet,” Ingram said, giving up on his own letter for the moment, “you won’t have Mama’s baked goods to see you through each week. You won’t have the blandishments of the Old Smoke to comfort you.”
Danner parked his chin on his palm. “Barbara will kill me if I leave Town. She thinks it’s wonderfully naughty, keeping company with a priest.”
The fair Barbara was ten years Danner’s senior and had formerly been on the stage. She would spare him one fond sigh, perhaps a fare-thee-well, and then welcome some other lonely fellow into her boudoir on Sunday afternoons.
“Being a curate is a step up,” Ingram said. “A step forward. You aren’t likely to gain your own pulpit without a few years’ drudging in some rural nest of sin.”
“No sinning for me if I’m biding with my uncles. Not so much as a curse if the cart horse tromps on my toes, or Mama will hear of it. Ingram, I tell you, I’m considering a job in the City.”
For cheerful, good-natured Danner, that was acri du coeur. “You’d last two weeks in the City, and the pay for clerks without articles isn’t half what you make here.”
Danner rose and went to the window, which let in little enough light this time of year. “When will I be my own man, Natty? At least those clerks can put down their pens and walk away from the job once they have their articles. At least they have a say in whether they’re banished to godforsaken Nottingham.”
Which was beautiful and well-to-do, as rural shires went. “You are your own man now,” Ingram said, though that was a generous assessment of the situation. Danner was his mama’s boy, Barbara’s naughty caller, and an all-around decent fellow, but he lacked… some definition of self that Michael Delancey had in quantity. “Besides, some of those clerks don’t get a half day.”
“Neither did we until Delancey got us organized and shamed old Helmsley into it. Did Helmsley expect us to sit about stitching samplers when we’d no mail to answer?”
Ingram rose and perched a hip on the corner of Danner’s desk. “If you don’t want to go to Nottingham, perhaps a post in York appeals.”
“York is a nice town,” Danner said, brightening marginally. “All the modern amenities, though it also has Yorkshire winters and an archbishop lurking at the gates. Has Helmsley given you a pulpit there? I could beyourcurate.”
