Despite herself, Psyche smiled. “I will slip up and call him Dimwit to his face, and then he will start a fracas—as he tried to start one just now.”
“Talent in others annoys him. Other people earning praise annoys him. He’s a nasty piece of work.”
“And next time,” Psyche said, “he won’t stop at ripping up a sketch. What would have happened if I’d kicked him in the crotch?” A question she might have asked Jacob, who’d been ever so helpful regarding all things male.
“If you’d connected with your target, Dermot would have dropped to the floor, howling in agony and probably retching up anything in his belly. Then, when he could again draw breath, he’d have sworn vengeance upon you. That tactic is not used among gentlemen, ever. The nadir of bad form. In the schoolyard, a boy might resort to it in desperation, or have it inflicted upon him, and the lesson serves for a lifetime.”
Sadness and fatigue abruptly leached the heat from Psyche’s temper. “Dermot interrupted me while I was working—mortal sin the first. He handled my work without my permission—mortal sin the second. He appropriated my charcoal—the third. He purposely damaged my sketch, which goes so far beyond a betrayal of artistic honor that it should require somebody to tie his damned cods in a knot.”
“You enjoy swearing.”
“Very much. Men swear all the time and take the privilege for granted. My point is, I am the wronged party, and Dermot now feels aggrieved. What is so hellaciously appealing about feeling aggrieved that a pampered lordling courts that status of victim like a devoted suitor? Please do not hold the door for me.”
Mr. Delancey obligingly stepped through the door of the Brewpot ahead of Psyche, which allowed her a moment to examine the line of his shoulders when clad. He wore very fine clothing and kept it in excellent repair.
“Lord Dermot is a spare,” Mr. Delancey said as the proprietress welcomed them with a smile and waved them toward the tables, half of which were empty. “Spares can either focus on the many blessings of their familial security, or bemoan the gap that stands between them and the heir. This looks to be a cheerful place.”
“Mrs. Fletcher has the knack of being hospitably commercial, and she doesn’t hurry her customers along for the sake of the next sale.”
The lady, a chubby, friendly blonde, bustled up to their table before they’d even removed top hats and gloves. “Gents, what will you have?”
“Chocolate for me,” Psyche said, “and my friend will have the same. A plate of toasted cheese sandwiches wouldn’t go amiss either, with some apples and a few of Cook’s cinnamon biscuits.”
“You come here often,” Mr. Delancey said, remaining on his feet as Psyche took her seat.
“Occasionally. I can sit in the corner and sketch subjects not found in a Mayfair drawing room. As Mrs. Fremont, that indulgence would be forbidden to me. Do sit down, please.”
“Apologies,” he said, doing as she bade. “Treating you as Henderson when I know you to be… otherwise is confusing.”
How delicate he was. “That confusion fascinates me,” Psyche said, shifting her chair to put her back to the wall. “As a female, I would never think to use violence against Lord Dermot, and he would not anticipate it from me. Dermot, though, tried to provoke Henderson into a physical altercation wherein size gives his lordship an advantage.”
“Don’t fall for Dermot’s baiting,” Mr. Delancey said. “He doesn’t want to beat you black and blue. That would take too long and create too great a risk of discovery. My guess is he wants to wreck your hands. Failing that, he’d break an arm and immobilize your talent that way.”
Psyche had always valued the noted appendages more for their skill than for their graceful mannerisms. “Wreck my hands?”
“One good stomp with the heel of his Hoby boots, and he could break several fingers.”
Fear uncurled in Psyche’s belly, the kind of corrosive, breath-stealing emotional wallop that had befallen her when she’d realized Jacob would not recover. In the space of a heartbeat, the fear was eclipsed by anger.
“I cannot help that I take my art seriously. Dermot has talent, but he refuses to work with the gifts he’s been given. Berthold was brilliant about the critique subject for today, and all Dermot could do was pout and sigh and try to look bored. He’d brought in a cheap print to enjoy seeing it ridiculed. Dermot should have hung on Berthold’s every word, as the rest of the class did. We critique grand portrait after grand portrait, and that little print was at least a change of subject matter.”
An older patron at the next table glanced over, smiled wistfully, then went back to his newspaper.
Mr. Delancey shifted his chair so he and Psyche were more or less sitting on the same side of the table, with both of their backs to the wall. “You are so passionate.”
“Is that a failing, Mr. Delancey? Would you approve of me if I were as slothful and arrogant as his lordship? As disdainful of my gifts and as jealous of others’ abilities?”
Psyche was spared a further opportunity for rhetoric by the arrival of the tray. Mr. Delancey put his table napkin on his lap then held out the plate of sandwiches to her.
Psyche took a half. “I apologize. The notion of having my fingers broken because I can draw better sketches than Lord Dimwit—who has had the best drawing masters since he was in short coats—is most provoking.”
Mr. Delancey put both halves of a sandwich on his plate and several apple slices. “He is a brat and a snob and a disgrace to good tailoring, but I suspect the greater provocation was his attempt to subject your flower girl to derision. For what we are about to receive, we are unendingly grateful. Amen. That print is your work, isn’t it?”
Psyche could deny her flower girls, and Mr. Delancey would politely change the subject, but he’d understand that she’d taken the coward’s course.
He’d forever know Psyche had turned her back on her own art as all of Parliament and polite society turned its backs on those flower girls—after paying them tuppence for enduring the elements at all hours, going without food and sleep, offering a cheerful smile to any who passed by, and risking the pawings of the ungentlemanly.
Two of Psyche’s eight flower girls had clearly been anticipating motherhood. Two others had sported the pallor and gauntness of consumptives.
“I am an ordained minister of the Church of England,” Mr. Delancey said very softly. “Do you know how much havoc you could wreak on me and my family by disclosing my evening employment?”
“Why would I do such a thing?”
He had set aside his cheese toast and started on the apples. “If you were Lord Dermot, you would either blackmail me as a diversion or reveal my secrets for the pleasure of hearing the bones of my good name break. But you are Henderson, and even Dermot should have noticed your signature use of light and shadow in that print.”
Blazing hell. Was that why his lordship had brought in the print for criticism? “Perhaps the artist who drew the flower girl is influenced by the same sources that appeal to me.” Though, what did Mr. Delancey, the realm’s first ordained nude model, know of manipulating light and shadow?
“I listen,” he said, after crunching an apple slice into oblivion, “as I’m sitting about in my birthday best. I have little else to do besides ponder the imponderables, and Berthold is an excellent art critic. He has no prejudices—witness, he praised your ha’penny print, but he will rip up at the so-called Renaissance masters when they put a shadow at the wrong angle. That was your flower girl and a fine rendering of a subject most would disdain as trivial.”