Without even shifting the candelabra, Psyche knew he’d put his finger on the solution. “I should have seen it for myself. You have an artist’s eye, Mr. Delancey, despite your clerical vocation. Let’s have supper, shall we? Now that you’ve put my composition to rights, I can set aside my sketch pad for some bodily nourishment.”
He rose and stretched, a gloriously languid display of male vitality. “Shall I dress for supper, so to speak?”
“Bother that,” Psyche said, leading the way to the bedroom. “We’ll only have to undress you afterward.” Though she actually enjoyed the business of getting him into and out of his clothes.
Mr. Delancey followed, pausing before the landscape of Selwyn Manor. “You never did answer my question about London. This is the estate where you grew up?”
How had he guessed that? “As did my mother and her mother, back for at least six generations. When Papa died, the property went to his brother, though it had been in Mama’s family since the Great Flood. My cousin dwells there during hunt season. I haven’t seen the place in ages.”
“And yet, this is the art you keep in your most private chamber. Does the estate have a name?”
“Tres Fleurs, after the symbols on Mama’s family crest. My cousin renamed it Selwyn Manor to avoid French associations. The food will get cold if we tarry to admire a rather banal painting.”
Mr. Delancey—blast him to perdition—peered at the corner. “P.A.? P.H? Psyche and your maiden name?”
What was worse than consigning a man to perdition, and why did his curiosity bother her so much? “Psyche Henderson. Landscapes are not my forte. My preferred challenge is the grand portrait. That likeness is accurate, but it doesn’t do the place justice.”
“A sense of peace and plenty pervades the image. How much land comes with it?”
“A few thousand acres are left. Cousin Merrill has been selling off the tenancies to pay for his hunters. We correspond at Yuletide.”
Mr. Delancey’s gaze shifted from the painting to Psyche’s face. “I’m sorry. I should have realized the topic is painful. Let’s eat, shall we?”
Psyche abruptly had little appetite. “Merrill hasn’t the heart or the head for tending the land. He has the soul of a merchant, as my father did. He sees Tres Fleurs as a place to entertain business associates, but profitable agriculture takes a much greater commitment than that. Mama loved that place, and I always thought it would be part of my dower portion. Then Jacob offered for me, and I wasn’t privy to the negotiations.”
She left the bedroom at as dignified a pace as she could manage.
“I take it the whole topic of Tres Fleurs is to remain neatly rolled up and stored in the figurative attic?” Mr. Delancey asked, accompanying her into the parlor. “Something smells scrumptious.”
Thank heavens for a man who could change the subject. “A quiche tonight. Cook likes to experiment when Hazel’s out and about.” Psyche rummaged in the cedar chest beneath the window and found one of Jacob’s old banyans. “A shirt doesn’t seem like enough protection from drafts.”
Mr. Delancey shrugged into the proffered garment. The dark blue silk was perfect for his coloring and brought out the azure of his eyes.
“Thank you. I cannot recall the last time I wore silk. Your husband liked his comforts.”
“A spouse can have worse traits.” Psyche seated herself before Mr. Delancey could offer that courtesy, and he took the chair opposite without comment.
She’d asked Cook for simple, substantial fare. The result was a steaming tomato bisque and a ham and cheese quiche served with a good Beaujolais. An apple cobbler sat on a warming tray on the raised hearth, a tea tray beside it.
“For what we are about to receive,” Mr. Delancey said, “our gratitude defies description. Tell me more about Mr. Fremont. Did he favor living in Town?”
“Very much. My husband made his fortune trading in wool, and he fell ill before Napoleon abdicated the first time. Jacob was already quietly backing away from reliance on military orders—victory for the Allies was within sight, and that would change market conditions significantly. His death meant his finances avoided collapse when peace came.”
“Nor, apparently, did you collapse. Shall I pour?”
“Please.” Mr. Delancey’s observation was offered uncritically, and thus Psyche could respond without rancor. “I observed proper mourning. Jacob had been suffering with a wasting disease, and he’d probably been hiding his condition from me for months before his situation became grave. He detested being ill, though he tried to be a cheerful patient. His death was honestly a relief to both of us.”
Mr. Delancey poured two glasses of the Beaujolais and passed one to Psyche. “He died knowing he would not grow old with you, have children with you, or see your art properly appreciated. While he might have welcomed a surcease of bodily pain, I’m sure he also took some regrets with him to the grave.”
Psyche accepted the glass. “If you propose that we drink to his memory, I will dash this wine in your face.”
Mr. Delancey regarded her, his expression patient and a little curious. In for a penny…
“I loved my husband, and he loved me. He was a good friend, an excellent provider, and our marriage was happy.”
“Were you happy?”
Psyche hadn’t posed that question to herself until months after Jacob’s passing, but when a woman was shut away in a house of mourning, staring at crepe-covered mirrors and stopped clocks, she had to eventually face the truth.
“I should have been quite content.” Psyche sipped her wine, and like the best of its vintage, the Beaujolais was forthright and vibrant, as Psyche herself had once been. “Jacob preferred men. I knew that when I married him. I’d always known that—we were friends, after all, true friends—but we were better friends than we were spouses.”
Hazel’s goading, less subtle and more frequent, might have had something to do with that disclosure, as might the long, brooding months of winter.
Or the certain knowledge that Michael Delancey would not judge Psyche for having married in haste.
Or even in desperation.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “Sorry that you were disappointed and that a good friendship became burdened by other factors. You doubtless still miss him.”
“In moments when he would have trotted out one of his favorite aphorisms, when I’m sitting alone at the breakfast table. Jacob was often out in the evenings, but he insisted we breakfast together. He genuinely cared for me, and I for him, and yet, my missing him is soured by…”
Psyche sought a polite word. Why was she always searching for polite words?
“By resentment?” Mr. Delancey suggested, tucking into his soup. “By guilt, by a nameless frustration that comes out as impatience with petty social rituals and their attendant hypocrisies?”
His smile was a subtle, devilishly charming surprise. His eyes crinkled at the corners, his gaze warmed, and his air became that of a fellow combatant, railing against life’s many disappointments.
“Are you married, Mr. Delancey?” Please say no.
“I am indentured to an institution that stands for every possible sort of hypocrisy. Don’t tell the archbishop, but I find the Corn Laws unconscionable and our monarch a disgrace. That the Church staunchly defends both disgusts me. This soup, by contrast, is marvelous.”