Page 7 of Miss Devoted
Mr. Delancey’s eyes were still defying the best efforts of Psyche’s pencil when Hazel arrived nearly two hours past midnight. Aunt gushed about the charming waiters, the delicious profiteroles, the exquisite carving on the banister rails, before eventually wafting up to bed.
An expensive place, the Coventry. That should be a warning to the guests who sought to gamble there—illegally, of course—though they were instead doubtless comforted by the trappings of wealth.
Psyche’s pencil stilled over Mr. Delancey’s right eye, and a detail came back to her. She’d listed his possible assumed personas—rising young clergyman, his papa’s pride and joy, and impecunious bachelor.
He’d admitted to only poverty, suggesting that his apparent bachelorhood was also…
Damn and blast, was hemarried?
Why had Psyche Fremont eschewed remarriage?
Michael pondered that question on the short walk from his rented room to his place of work, revising his query as the bitter morning air stung his nose. He approached Lambeth Palace by traversing the Thames’s south bank. The Palace of Westminster sat slightly to the north and across the water in symbolic opposition.
Lambeth’s immediate surrounds were lovely, with acres of gardens, stately fig trees, and an unobstructed vista of the river. Pervading all, however, was the stench of the Thames itself, London’s sewer and the lifeblood of its vast commercial wealth.
“More symbolism,” Michael muttered, adjusting his scarf over his nose. As he passed the ancient Lollards’ Tower and then the stately Great Hall, he posed to himself the more revealing question: Why did Mrs. Fremontwork so hardto avoid remarriage? Why the severe bun, the drab gray-green dress, the equally unimpressive conversation in company? Women of means were often knowledgeable about art, and every schoolgirl was expected to dabble in watercolors.
But for Psyche Fremont, art was apparently a passion, one she’d risk scandal to pursue.
Michael was early to his post out of habit—rising churchman and all that—also because his little office was much warmer than the room where he slept at night. He had just pulled his chair up to the parlor stove and begun plowing through the day’s correspondence when Ignatius Ingram poked his head past the door.
“Helmsley wants to see you when he gets in. Danner’s mother sent him a loaf of currant bread, and you’d better get your slice before our good Christian fellows do their plague of locusts imitation.”
Mrs. Danner—and her cook—occupied a place of near veneration among the correspondence staff. “Did she send butter?”
“And jam, Delancey.Raspberryjam.” Ingram slipped through the doorway and closed the door, taking the only other chair in the room. “How is Danner to learn the joy of self-denial if we don’t lend our aid in the face of Mama Danner’s unrelenting generosity?”
“He learns that very lesson when he denies himself the pleasure of slapping some virtue into a lot of thieving schoolboys. What does Helmsley want to see me about?”
“Really, Delancey. If Danner truly begrudged us the sweets, he would find better hiding places for them. Besides, if he ate everything dear Mama sent along, he’d have the dimensions of a hippopotamus. Gluttony is a terrible sin.”
Natty Ingram, with his red hair, freckles, and bobbing Adam’s apple, would have a schoolboy air even if he became a bishop, but his puerile looks hid a brilliant grasp of ecclesiastical law.
“And covetousness is a virtue?” Michael retorted.
“Come now, don’t be cross just because last evening was spent being dutifully familial. Your sister means well, and she doubtless sets a splendid table.”
Ingram was also kind, if a bit nosy. “Potatoes in bearnaise sauce,” Michael said wistfully. “Beef done to a turn and a mousse so rich and light I wanted to whisk the bowl off the sideboard and leap out the window with it.”
“While licking the contents from your bare fingers. So, of course, you declined a second helping. The next time your sister invites you to dinner, tell her you’re bringing that wonderful Natty Ingram along. Did you know this office would be so cozy when you chose it?”
Well, yes. Warmth and light were the sine qua non of a habitable space, and of the two, warmth counted for more. Any man who’d survived a few Yorkshire winters grasped that truth.
“I knew a glorified closet was too small for more than one person to work in,” Michael said. “You are either dodging about Helmsley’s summons, or you have no idea what he wants of me.”
“I have a pretty good idea. Do you know what happens in spring, Delancey? I think not, because you are too new to Lambeth’s ranks to have discerned the pattern. Spring is when the old guard, having survived yet another winter in drafty vicarages and poky villages, decides to reap their long-overdue rewards. They lay down their Books of Common Prayer, attend one last fellowship feast, and turn their thoughts to daughters and nieces living closer to Town. They think of their grandchildren and the sublime pleasure of sleeping late on an occasional Sunday. In short, they succumb to the siren call of comfy retirement.”
“You should have been a playwright.” Though Ingram’s grandiloquence put Michael in mind of his own father, who’d pastored the same London congregation for decades.
“The stage, alas, doesn’t pay very well, so I’m told. In any case, pulpits will soon be in want of preachers, and you did your bit as a curate in the frozen north for years. You were to the vicarage born, Bible verses flowing through your veins, and you put the rest of us to shame with how much correspondence you get through in a week.”
“Because I have my own little office, where I’m undistracted by the temptation to purloin another man’s currant bread.”
Natty sat back, perusing Michael as if he’d been a portrait by a talented unknown. “It’s not just that. You are blessedly smart, which goes beyond memorizing all the handy quotes, and wealthy old ladies adore you.” Ingram rose and turned his backside to the parlor stove, lifting the tails of his coat to reveal trousers gone a bit shiny in the seat. For men who should have been focused on ecclesiastical law, the staff was universally preoccupied with mundane concerns—food, boots that didn’t leak, Sunday clothing worth the name, and enough blankets to keep the night chill away.
They spoke of women only rarely, and always with a forlorn sense of respect.
“I might,” Michael said, “one day years hence, step into my father’s shoes, and I’d be pleased to have that honor. I don’t particularly seek a congregation of my own at this point.” Rather like Mrs. Fremont, who with every gesture, silence, and wardrobe choice, made plain that she did not seek to remarry.
