“I won’t refuse a lift,” Goddard said. “Might as well yield to the generosity of the ladies, Delancey. Spring is a long way off.”
“That it is,” he said. “I am grateful for your kindness. Dorcas, my thanks for a lovely meal.”
More of the correct words were said amid proper bows and polite curtseys, and within minutes, the guests had departed.
Dorcas led MacKay back to the family parlor and poured herself a nip of whisky. “Michael is worse than ever, Alasdhair. He’s so remote, so… stilted. This is the brother who dared me to smoke a cigar when I was thirteen and helped me sneak a kitten into my bedroom? The fellow who joined us at dinner is a changeling. The Yorkshire fairies have stolen my real brother and left me a tailor’s dummy who resembles my Michael.”
MacKay offered the only encouraging words he could think of. “Delancey seems in great good health to me. He’s hale, for all that he does appear preoccupied.”
Dorcas considered her drink. “Perhaps he’s afflicted with melancholia. I thought surely Mrs. Fremont would have some appeal for him. Mrs. Buckthorn described her niece as a quiet paragon, never a foot wrong, but not a bore. Mrs. Fremont esteemed her late husband, but didn’t turn mourning into theatrical production, according to her aunt. The lady is not vain, and she doesn’t put on airs. With a little work, she could be pretty.”
MacKay helped himself to a sip of his wife’s drink. “Michael hardly looked at her.”
“And she hardly looked at him. They weren’t rude to each other, they were simply indifferent. Why do I feel as if that makes them even more well suited?”
MacKay set aside the drink and wrapped his wife in a hug. “Dorcas, please, for the sake of your brother’s dignity and my nerves, give it a rest. Mrs. Fremont did not seek to attract Michael’s notice, and he clearly isn’t looking to find himself a lady. Leave them in peace. Goddard suggested Michael cannot afford a wife, and that notion has merit.”
Dorcas snuggled closer. “Dratted filthy lucre. Goddard could be right. Michael isn’t ever likely to be wealthy, but Mrs. Buckthorn said her niece is well fixed. Perhaps I should tell Michael that.”
“Perhaps we should mind our own business. Was that Ann’s recipe for the orange mousse?”
Dorcas graciously conceded to the change of topic. “Of course, and the bearnaise sauce on the potatoes is her creation as well. Different, but our guests seemed to like it.”
“I ate every bite and was considering seconds when Goddard beat me past the post. Another lovely meal, and now I hope to retire with my lovely wife.” He kissed her cheek, and she obligingly reciprocated his affections.
Nonetheless, through the end-of-day routine, the quick visit to the nursery, and even into the bedtime courtesies, MacKay could feel that Dorcas was still distracted by her brother’s situation. She did not subscribe to the myth that everybody ought to marry and the sooner the better, but she did worry for Delancey’s spirits.
As MacKay climbed into bed with his wife and embarked on a determined course to put all worries from Dorcas’s mind, he had to admit that Dorcas had voiced a curious truth.
In their very lack of interest in each other, Michael and Mrs. Fremont had suggested a sort of compatibility of spirit. Two diffident peas in a pod of drab, dreary propriety.
Heaven, so to speak, help them both.
Chapter Two
Heaven help me, he’s fascinating.
The coach rattled along, the heated bricks making the air too close and the coach lamps casting Mr. Delancey’s features in all manner of interesting shadows. Psyche yearned to hold a stick of charcoal and a sketch pad, but had to settle for slipping off her gloves and tracing surreptitious curves on the velvet upholstery.
She had managed for the whole evening not to curse, interrupt, raise her voice, or pose any blunt questions, but Michael Delancey’s performance had tempted her to every one of those rude displays. He was either brilliant or truly the most lackluster dullard ever to take a limp grasp of a lady’s hand.
When his fingers had brushed hers at the passing of the butter dish, he’d been casually polite about it. He contributed to the conversation, but never raised a controversial topic. He’d held Psyche’s chair, escorted her to the formal drawing room, and bowed over her hand with relaxed good manners.
In short, he had bored her silly. Had she not suspected that he, too, was bearing up under a load of social drudgery, she might have tried to provoke a lapse in his performance.
If she’d stepped on his toes, would he have yelped? Muttered a profanity? Given her a dirty look? Anything?
“Colonel,” Aunt Hazel said as the coach took a slow corner, “you really must allow me a peek at the Coventry’s kitchen. I am dying to meet the lady who devised that magnificent orange mousse. I do insist. Tell him, Psyche, that when I make up my mind, I am a force of nature. I promise I shall not interfere with the cooking—I would not know how to interfere with the cooking, of course,—but I must offer my compliments to your wife.”
“Aunt, you should not intrude uninvited,” Psyche said, ready to elbow Hazel in the ribs verbally if not physically. “Lady Goddard is doubtless approaching the busiest hours of her evening. Receiving guests won’t fit easily into her schedule.”
Hazel slapped Psyche’s arm not quite playfully. “Nonsense. The dinner hour is past, and this will be a teeny adventure for me. I haven’t been adventuring in far too long, and I won’t stay for more than five minutes.”
Hazel’s objective had little to do with meeting Sir Orion’s wife and everything to do with leaving Psyche alone in the coach with Mr. Delancey. For his part, Mr. Delancey appeared to be studying the dimly lit alley beyond the coach window, when he might have assisted Psyche to quash Aunt’s scheme.
“Mrs. Fremont has the right of it,” the colonel said. “My wife’s busiest hours are now upon her, the club being mostly a late-night activity. My workday is just beginning, while hers is approaching the pandemonium phase. We offer free champagne starting at midnight, and that draws considerable traffic.”
A dangerous gleam came into Hazel’s eyes. “What time is it?”
“Time that I should be getting home,” Psyche said, gleaming right back at her. “Late hours can bring on my megrims.”
“Pish to your megrims, my dear. You’d have fewer of them if you allowed yourself an occasional diversion. You should come in with me.”
And run into half of Monsieur Berthold’s life model class? Lord Dermot Anthony boasted of his successes at The Coventry Club’s tables, and he doubtless brought a coterie of aspiring artistic wastrels with him.
“The club itself is quite beautiful,” Mr. Delancey said. “I haven’t seen the interior in years, of course, but during my misspent youth, I enjoyed an evening or two at the Coventry. A rite of passage of sorts, and I recall being impressed with the décor.”
He offered this recollection blandly, as if a memory less than ten years old had gone vague about the edges in the mists of time.
The coach rolled to a halt in the mews behind the club, and the colonel offered his good-nights. His boots had barely touched the cobbles before Aunt was bounding out after him.