“Your Dorcas gets high marks for tenacity as a matchmaker,” Rye Goddard said, accepting a glass of exquisite cognac from his host. “But Delancey gets higher marks for indifference to his sister’s efforts. Santé.”
Alasdhair MacKay nosed his whisky—honey, apples, pears, a hint of vanilla—and lifted the glass a few inches. “Slàinte mhath. Does your Ann have an opinion on the matter of Delancey’s never-ending bachelorhood?” MacKay had an opinion, one not fit for polite company.
Goddard eased into a wing chair as if the cold weather might be bothering his hip.
“Ann says as long as Delancey is in good appetite, we are not to worry about him. She also says a crooked pot needs a crooked lid.”
Ann was Goddard’s wife, also the chef in residence at the fancy gaming-hell-cum-supper-club he managed and now partly owned. She’d prevailed on Dorcas to get her husband away from the club for a night, and the colonel, ever dutiful, had heeded Dorcas’s summons.
“What do we hear from our cousin in Wales?” Goddard asked, propping a boot on a hassock.
“Raptures, odes, panegyrics.” MacKay settled into the second wing chair. “Marital wonderment in all its lovely forms, though subtly stated. Dylan and Lydia will manage.” A relief, that. Of the three male cousins, Dylan Powell had been the most determined to avoid parson’s mousetrap. “About Delancey.”
“He’s an adult,” Goddard said, holding his cognac up to the firelight. “An intelligent, well-educated, healthy, inordinately attractive man who has earned the notice of the archbishop. Dear Michael is making himself indispensable at Lambeth Palace, the saintly heart of the Church of England. Churchmen are supposed to be reserved, and Delancey has all the makings of a very successful churchman.”
Potential which impressed MacKay not at all. “Before he was a churchman, he was Dorcas’s only sibling. She feels as if Michael took up his first post in Yorkshire and five years later sent a ghost of himself south to resume life in London. Michael used to be a mischievous, high-spirted boy, and now he’s sober to the point of unrecognizability. A handsome, mannerly automaton.”
Goddard sipped his drink, looking exactly like what he was—a former soldier who’d survived many a battle and who’d had the courage to marry for love. He worked hard, he loved profoundly, and he was at long last happy.
“Meddling and matchmaking are but two faces of the same coin,” Goddard said. “We were all once high-spirited boys, and war knocked those spirits down to earth. Life—and the ladies—have revived us. Maybe Yorkshire was some sort of battlefield for Delancey.”
That metaphor fit MacKay’s own observations. “I’ve sent a few letters north.”
“Reconnaissance?”
“Keeping in touch with our former fellow officers. We know Delancey got deeply in debt before he took holy orders, and we know he’s resolved those debts.”
“High spirits have consequences.”
“Not always fair, but usually true.” As a youth new to the blandishments of Town, Delancey had been manipulated into amassing gambling debts, all of which had been cheerfully bought up by the same scoundrel who’d led him astray. An old and lucrative rig. The scoundrel figured in Dorcas’s past as well, and he’d been sent packing far, far away, though after Michael Delancey had paid every penny owed, plus considerable interest.
“Mrs. Fremont is lovely,” MacKay said, trying to put his finger on what exactly had been so off about the evening thus far. “Dorcas has paraded all manner of women before her brother. The sweet, the churchy, the bold, the funny, even a few beauties.”
“I can’t see Delancey caring much about a woman’s appearance. His good looks have taught him at least that lesson.”
“As my great good looks have instructed me on the same point,” MacKay said.
Goddard threw a pillow at MacKay’s knee.
“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.