Page 58 of Miss Devoted
“It’s not the money. I can live on very little, and we both know the lengths I will go to for the sake of honest coin. It’s more…”
“What?”
Michael glanced around at a sunny, green respite in the middle of a hectic, noisy city. “Even here, I feel as if somebody is watching me. Helmsley set the other clerks to spying on me a few weeks back, and though I doubt they are bearing tales, I’ve also felt that somebody-walked-over-my-grave feeling.”
“Because for once in your life, you are happy.” Psyche had used plain language, and yet, her observation bore tangled insights.
“Perhaps I’m afraid somebody will snatch my happiness away, but then, why am I running into Dermot? Why are the other clerks whispering in corners? Why has Helmsley been so suspiciously cheerful toward me lately?”
“Maybe you are being promoted? Maybe your father’s congregation is about to become yours?”
“Maybe.” But the whispering and forced good cheer did not feel like harbingers of glad tidings.
“And maybe not,” Psyche said. “Shall we depart before the sun dips much lower?”
“We haven’t settled anything.”
She rose unassisted and smoothed down her skirts. “Oh, but we have. We want a shared future, and now we must ponder what’s involved in securing it. Maybe we aren’t willing to pay the requisite price, and maybe we are.”
“I want to kiss you.”
“What I want, if pursued in this location, would get us both arrested.”
They shared a smile, and between one heartbeat and the next, Michael came to a conclusion, to a peace born of bowing to the inevitable, no matter how challenging. He’d known precisely what his course would be when Bea was brought to that drafty vicarage in Yorkshire, and he knew what his course was now.
He would fight for a future with Psyche and the children—a real future. He would not give up his late nights in poor parishes, and Psyche would not ask that of him. She would not set aside her plans for the art world, and he would never expect that of her.
Michael shifted the hamper to the grass, picked up the blanket, and gave it a good shake. “I love you,” he said as Psyche took the trailing corners. “I love you, Psyche Henderson Fremont.”
She brought the corners up to match the two Michael held. “And I love you, Michael Delancey.”
After a pause spent grinning like fools, they folded the blanket, the most prosaic of undertakings. Michael hefted the hamper, and Psyche took Bea by the hand. While Bea chattered and capered about, the sun slipped behind a cloud, and the first, most tempting sample of spring’s joys came to an end.
“And Miss Feathers said not to be foolish.” Bea swung Psyche’s hand with the exuberance of a child in charity with the world. “Miss Feathers is never foolish, and she’s never cross.”
“She does have a lot to say sometimes,” Psyche observed while Michael maintained a diplomatic silence. Miss Feathers’s opinions had pattered along without ceasing all the way from the park. Psyche had listened with half an ear and realized how often her own mother had paid her the same sort of tolerant, patient attention.
How often Mama had held Psyche’s hand with the same combination of companionability and protectiveness that holding Bea’s hand stirred in Psyche.
How often Mama had managed to withhold laughter at some childish pontification…
And to think that Michael’s spiritual superior had blithely consigned this beautiful, wonderful girl to certain death at the poorhouse…
“Miss Feathers is very patient,” Bea went on, “and she can speak French. Parlay-voo Frawnsay? Mrs. Fremont?”
“Oui, mais mon français est rouillé.”
“Rusty,” Michael said. “Her French is out of practice, though it likely has mine beat to flinders. Ours is the house with the potted heartsease on the stoop.”
Psyche heard both the pride and vulnerability Michael’s casual tone attempted to disguise. Halfway down the unassuming street, which had the peculiar name of Circle Lane, sat an unassuming house. The flowers distinguished No. 209 from its equally tidy and unprepossessing neighbors.
“Mrs. Harris bought the posies at market,” Bea said. “If I’d gone with her, I would have picked out a larger bunch.”
“A larger bunch,” said Psyche, “might not have lasted as well. Those blooms are the perfect size for that pot.” A man loitered near the little splash of flowers. Psyche marked him as well dressed clergy. The traditional black shirt peeked out beneath the open collar of his greatcoat, his cravat was tied in a simple mathematical, and his walking stick was sober mahogany.
White hair, prosperous proportions, and when his gaze landed on Beatrice, he stilled.
Psyche felt rather than saw Michael react to the stranger on his doorstep. “Not a friend, I take it?” she murmured, keeping her tone light for Bea’s sake.
