Thirty minutes later, he admitted defeat and took a leaf from Psyche Fremont’s book. “Damn you, Hannibal Arbuckle. Damn your arrogant, lazy hypocrisy and bedamned to your polite flourishes too. May you rot in a purgatory populated with corrupt, lying churchmen and managed with the same lack of compassion that feckless babies find in the poorhouse.”
The quiet, private cursing helped some.
Not enough.
Chapter Seven
Bitter wind still pushed snow flurries around on the cobbles, sunsets still shaded into virulent reds and oranges, and ice yet limned the Serpentine’s shores, but winter was losing ground.
The sun rose earlier and departed later, and that was all the proof Psyche needed that her time with Michael Delancey was already running out. When spring arrived in its full glory, so would the social Season, and with it, demands on Psyche’s time that shoved art to the smallest corners of her day.
Maybe not this year, she thought, watching Michael Delancey’s chest rise and fall beneath the thin linen of his unbuttoned shirt. He was once again sprawled on the sofa, candles on the floor, book open beside the candelabra. Maybe this year she’d have a talk with Hazel and retreat to the country—except that Mr. Delancey could not accompany her into the country, and Thursday nights had become the high point of Psyche’s week.
“I’m not to allow you to fall asleep,” she said, adding a line to the gathered fabric at the shirt’s shoulder. The garment was well made, also mended here and there. The left cuff wasn’t quite the same cream shade as the right. The top buttonhole was a touch frayed.
“I’m thinking,” Mr. Delancey replied, keeping his eyes closed. “My sister has invited me to supper again on Saturday. Shall I ask her to invite you and Mrs. Buckthorn too?”
Psyche lifted her pencil from the paper. “For supper?”
“That business where we all sit around eating good food, chatting about nothing in particular unless our hostess indicates that political topics are permitted. Then the gents go off for a round of flatulence and port—MacKay prefers his whisky—while the ladies discuss fashion and charitable undertakings. I can’t stay late on Saturdays. I plead nonexistent Sunday-morning obligations, and Dorcas pretends to believe me, but I have been dreaming of a certain orange mousse and of a quiet widow who is better at not-flirting than I am.”
For Michael, that was tantamount to bursting forth into song.
Psyche’s first impulse was to refuse. “The quiet widow will continue to not-flirt with you, Mr. Delancey. If I do otherwise, Hazel will get ideas neither of us wants her to entertain.”
“You are intent on preserving your independence?” He asked that as if he were truly about to drop off into slumber, the question merely idle. Thursday evenings with Michael Delancey had inspired Psyche to reexamine the benefits of her widowed state.
“Let’s take our supper break. I have decided to render this pose in oils, and that requires some thought.” Her most ambitious portrait to date, and one that might get her into the National Academy’s summer exhibition, provided she submitted as Henderson.
Michael opened his eyes and rose smoothly to his bare feet. “What troubles you about this pose?”
“Not the pose. The composition works very nicely. I must decide why I am painting that image. It’s not heroic, not grand, not in the preferred style, and the aristocratic commissions are where my ambitions lie. The best artistic talents all try to end up there. A gentleman drifting into a nap on the couch at the end of the day is not a particularly remarkable subject, regardless of the fellow’s masculine pulchritude.” She passed him the silk banyan that did such marvelous things for his blue eyes. “There’s the aesthetic pleasure of immortalizing a handsome subject, but anybody can paint a likeness.”
He shrugged into the banyan, retrieved his stockings from inside his boots, and sat back down. “Few can render a likeness as well as you do. Dorcas cannot sketch a recognizable cat, despite the good efforts of a progression of drawing masters. My own ability to render an image improved markedly in Yorkshire. I grew sick of applying myself to Scripture in my few idle moments, and the Dales offer intoxicating vistas on every hand. The vicarage had an ample supply of pencils and paper, so I’d go out walking and contemplate the glory of nature.”
Another speech, and this one shading in the direction of a confidence. Psyche set aside her sketch pad and stuck her pencil behind her ear.
“You were unhappy in Yorkshire?”
“At first, I was so lonely for my family I was sick with it, then my vicar realized he could shove the whole load of parish duties onto me, and exhaustion eclipsed loneliness. I loved the scenery, and I grew to appreciate the people, but a curate’s post can be difficult.”
Psyche considered him, perched on her sofa, one stocking on, the other still in his hand. “Something went wrong. All the world knows that curates are underpaid, overworked vicars-in-waiting, but something made your time in the north nigh unbearable.”
Mr. Delancey rose, reminding Psyche that even in his stockinged feet, he was a tall, formidable specimen.
“Was your time as Fremont’s wife nigh unbearable?” He sounded again only mildly curious, a skill likely learned in churchyards and village pubs.
“You invite trust, but one must not pry into your affairs,” Psyche said. “Your sister should sew a warning label onto your hat.”
He took a step closer. “When I am not lusting in my heart after orange mousse, I do ponder your situation. As you said about my time in Yorkshire, something went wrong during your years as a wife. Marriage to Fremont solved problems for both parties—you pursued your art, he pursued his passions as well—but he put you off the whole business of matrimony.”
He winged his arm at Psyche, as if they’d promenade about Berkeley Square rather than pass through a few mundane rooms.
“I cannot afford to support a wife,” he went on as Psyche wrapped her fingers in the crook of his elbow, “but the idea of having a friend, somebody to talk to, somebody who knows by my tread on the stair whether I’m weary or happy… My parents had that, and I can see now that the marriage sustained them both. The intimate pleasures doubtless also brought joy, but those acts can be ridiculous without mutual caring to give them meaning.”
They passed through the bedroom in silence and came to the parlor while Psyche wrestled with a choice. Jacob was dead, his memory fading to small moments and sad smiles. He’d admonished her to be happy. To take her generous dower funds and decamp for Italy or Paris or someplace where it was acceptable to be a female artist.
He’d been a good friend, for all he’d been a poor fit as a husband.
The meal awaiting them was a glorified luncheon. Ham and barley soup fragrant with basil, oregano, and bay sat steaming in a small crock. Toasted sandwiches of ham and melted cheddar were stacked on a tray in the center of the table. The sweet was gingerbread, a dish of butter next to it.
So much sustenance. Mr. Delancey had referred to his parents’ marriage as offering an entirely different sort of nourishment.
Psyche yielded to impulse and tucked herself against her companion. “I cannot have children.”
Had she embraced him so he could not see her face when she made that disclosure? So he could not step away? So she would not feel as alone with a flaw that nearly disqualified her from the ranks of adult women?