Page 51 of Miss Devoted
One shuddered to think of the baker’s bills. “The post Delancey held in Yorkshire is already vacant again. From what I hear, the curate’s position in Hannibal Arbuckle’s parish was frequently vacant until Delancey stayed the course for something like five years.”
Danner peered up at him. “Delancey doesn’t say much about those years, but then, he doesn’t say much about anything. No wonder his sister is having trouble marrying him off. Good looks are fine across a supper table, but the ladies need some charm and humor in a husband.”
And Danner would know that exactly how? “Delancey’s a good sort, for all he’s so quiet. You might ask for the Yorkshire post and thwart your mama’s plans for you, but I’d talk to Delancey first.”
“Will he be honest with me? I mean, if he’d like to move up in seniority here, I was at Lambeth before he was, and my absence will mean advancement for him.”
Ingram thought back to the longest, coldest, most interesting—and terrifying—Saturday night of his life. “Delancey does not need or want our version of advancement, Danner, which would earn either his scorn or his amusement. Talk to him about the situation in York and consider asking for that post.”
Ingram sidled back to his desk and stared at the letter he’d begun drafting. A vicar’s wife was begging for help with a husband who used too heavy a hand on his spouse and children while preaching the livelong liturgical year about turning the other cheek and doing good to those who persecute you.
No template for this topic, though Delancey might have a few good ideas.
“What if Delancey says York was hellish?” Danner muttered, twirling his quill pen between his palms. “He don’t mince words, and he’s the sort who could withstand a hellish post far better than I could. I’m delicate, according to my mama, and you will not disabuse her of that notion on pain of excommunication from the favored company of the weekly treat. I could ask my uncles about this Arbuckle fellow.”
Danner was about as physically delicate as a rhinoceros. “You can look over Arbuckle himself,” Ingram said, rising and swiping the abused wife’s letter from his blotter. “Arbuckle is apparently coming south to see family, though for some reason, we are not to tell Delancey about his former vicar’s travels. Helmsley was clear with Twillinger and me that this is to be some sort of surprise reunion for Delancey.”
“That don’t smell right,” Danner said, frowning. “Delancey hasn’t been down from the moors for a full year yet, and I haven’t seen any correspondence for him from this Arbuckle person.”
“It doesn’t smell right because it smacks of Helmsley up to his usual tricks. If he can curry favor with a provincial cleric, he will, and Arbuckle has apparently been moldering away in the shires for decades. In any case, we’re not to alert Delancey, though I doubt he’d care much one way or the other.”
“Does he care about anything? I’ve never met a fellow who’s so parsimonious with opinions, laughter, quips… It’s as if he’s on leave from some battlefield assignment and dreads going back to war, but longs to get free of his mother’s fretting over the charms of the camp followers.”
“His mother passed away some time ago.” And yet, Danner’s comparison had an odd ring of accuracy. Delancey was like a soldier in some regards, sitting down to a proper Mayfair tea, with one ear cocked for the rumble of distant guns. “I’m off to discuss a letter with Twillinger. The village of Shepherd’s Rest has a brute in the pulpit, and his wife is ready to leave him.”
While Danner’s greatest woe was that he might have to actually work for a living. Considering how Delancey spent his Saturday nights, Danner ought to count himself lucky to be in the running for that post with his uncles.
“I have the portrait now,” Psyche said as Michael passed her his coat. “I mean, I have a sense of what I want to do with it. I canseeit.”
“Here, you mean,” Michael said, tapping a finger against her temple. “You can see it in your mind’s eye?”
“Precisely.” She shook his coat, then arranged it on the drying pegs beneath the mantel of the studio’s hearth. “Sometimes a painting doesn’t come clear to me until a second or third attempt, but with your portrait… I canseewhat the image wants to be.”
Michael hung his hat on a hook on the back of the studio door. He’d looked forward to this evening for days—and nights—and now that he was reunited with Psyche, he wasn’t sure how to proceed.
Toward what to proceed.
“I see you in my mind’s eye,” he said. “In your smock, that particular frown on your face, a paintbrush poised above the palette. I see you sitting in the shadows in Berthold’s classes, your pencil flying over a sketch.” He saw her straddling his hips and peering down at him as if she were deciding what palette to use to depict his eyebrows.
And he saw her dressed as Henderson, striding away from him into the gloom of a winter night with the exact note of jauntiness to her walk that a young man about Town would display.
Psyche remained standing by the hearth, watching the flames, her arms wrapped about her middle. “I am nervous. I don’t enjoy being nervous. I was a nervous wife until I realized Jacob sought only half a spouse. I am nervous in Berthold’s classes, always fearing somebody will see through my costume. I am nervous about the flower girls. I have sought recognition, but for true art, not for shop-window prints.”
Michael approached to a distance of about three feet. The fire threw out a good amount of heat, and the sofa would be warm and comfortable.
“What has robbed you of your usual composure this evening?”
She shot a glance at him, an up-and-down, somewhat humorous, somewhat exasperated glance.
“I have not been a merry widow,” she said. “I have endured the social Season and ignored Hazel’s frolics while wishing I could put all that spring sunshine to a better use than Venetian breakfasts and the carriage parade.”
Michael realized, with a combination of relief and glee, that Psyche did not know how to embark on a liaison. She could entertain the idea, she could enjoy the preliminaries, and relish the thought, but the specific steps of the dance eluded her.
They eluded him, too, though what he wanted with her was more than a pattern executed on the beat and according to the usual protocol.
“Shall we make love, Psyche?”
Her expression became peevish. “Just like that? ‘Terrible weather we’re having,’ ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ and off to bed?”
