“I won’t stay but a moment, Psyche, I promise. Mr. Delancey can regale you with more tales of his misspent youth, or maybe you can talk art with him. Come along, Colonel. Tell me about this free champagne.”
The colonel obligingly offered his arm, and as Hazel led him away, she waggled her gloved fingers in the direction of the coach.
Round one to Hazel.
“Is my company truly so objectionable as all that, Mrs. Fremont?” Mr. Delancey asked.
In the shifting shadows of the coach, his expression was impossible to read. His tone was bland, and yet, his question strayed half a step past idle talk.
Psyche had begun the evening secure in the conclusion that Mr. Delancey had not connected Mr. Henderson with Mrs. Fremont. His slightly challenging question introduced an element of doubt.
“Your company is a puzzle, Mr. Delancey. I thought I had perfected the art of social invisibility, but your skills eclipse mine by yards. You are neither too loud nor too quiet, too serious nor too silly, too friendly nor too remote. A pattern card of gentlemanly decorum.”
Or gentlemanly deception?
The colonel ushered Hazel into a back entrance to the club, and a muted cacophony of sounds drifted out through the open door, then ceased.
“Am I overplaying the role?” he asked after a few beats of silence.
“Which role? Rising man of the cloth? A preacher’s pride and joy? Impecunious gentleman bachelor?”
“The lack of means is entirely genuine, I assure you.” A hint, a subtle, fleeting hint, of humor crept into his words.
“And the rest of it?” Psyche’s question pushed well past the realm of small talk, and she had surprised herself by asking it.
“Shall we discuss art, Mrs. Fremont? Portraits or landscapes for you?”
“Either, but they must be well executed.”
“Still lifes?”
“Execution matters even more.”
He shifted on the bench across from her, his boot brushing the skirts of her cloak. “What of themes, Mrs. Fremont? Pastoral, mythical, or biblical?”
“Composition matters more than theme, Mr. Delancey. Either a centaur or a village lad is without merit if he occupies a poorly composed work. If you must know, I regard domestic subjects to be the greatest challenge.”
“Because the artist must make a quotidian scene fascinating.”
“Precisely.” Psyche sat in the near darkness and realized that Mr. Delancey was still being courteous, and he was being kind as well. “You recognized me.”
“And I daresay you recognized me. Shall we enter into a bargain of mutual forgetfulness?”
He proposed the only sensible course, and yet, Psyche hesitated. “I am a widow. You could get me kicked out of Berthold’s class and cause a minor scandal, but if I exposed the darling of Lambeth Palace as a nude model, what would happen?”
“Interesting turn of phrase, and I honestly don’t know what the consequences would be. Lambeth Palace might forgive me for removing my clothing in support of the arts, but Berthold would likely sack me on the spot. I’d rather not lose the job.”
“Snobs come in all walks of life,” Psyche muttered, one of Jacob’s favorite aphorisms. “I hope I am not a snob. Whatever your reasons for maintaining two sources of employment, they are none of my business, and I trust I can rely on your discretion as well.”
“You may. Coin I lack, but discretion I have in abundance.”
He offered his hand, and Psyche thought they were to shake as if to seal a bargain. He instead took her fingers in a secure grip and brushed a kiss to her gloved knuckles.
“I’ll bid you good night, Mrs. Fremont. You might consider journeying home and sending the coach back for Mrs. Buckthorn. The waiters at The Coventry Club are accomplished flirts and the buffet exquisite. The heights to which Mrs. Goddard’s kitchen can elevate the lowly potato defy description.”
He sounded fond of those recollected potatoes, more emotion than he’d shown all evening. “Do you suggest that waiting for the return of the coach would give Aunt Hazel an excuse to tarry at the tables?”
He tapped his hat onto his head. “I suppose it would, wouldn’t it? Being stranded at the Coventry might also remind her to have a care about what she wishes for.”
What did he wish for? “What gave me away, Mr. Delancey?”
He tugged at his gloves and rewrapped a dark green and blue plaid scarf about his neck. “You wear the most luscious fragrance. Jasmine with meadowy notes. Elegant and subtle. Not a scent one forgets and far from masculine. But for that detail, I might not have looked closely enough to see the truth. Good night, Mrs. Fremont.”
He descended from the coach and walked off, his steps fading into the darkness. He’d have to cross the river in the dark, in the bitter cold, and Psyche suspected he would barely notice the resulting discomfort.
She sent the footman to leave the appropriate message for Aunt Hazel, then directed Mac to turn the team for home. She managed to get her bonnet off and her cloak unbuttoned before ensconcing herself in the parlor and taking up her sketch pad.
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 he married?
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. Fremont work so hard to 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.