Not the flood that would ensue in a few weeks. A card party here, a ridotto there, nothing formal or fancy, but all of it requiring time and energy.
Psyche left two windows cracked to provide some ventilation and repaired to her bedroom, only to find the space occupied.
“Shall I summon the watch?” Psyche asked. For Hazel to intrude was uncharacteristic.
“I didn’t want to bother you,” she said, opening a drawer in Psyche’s vanity. “You were painting, and on such a glorious, tempting day. I thought to borrow your sapphires.”
“For daytime?” One did not wear jewels by daylight in the normal course.
“Only the earbobs. They bring out my eyes.”
Magnificent eyes they were too. “You’re going driving?” The carriage parade would not start for a few hours, such as it was this early in the year.
Hazel set Psyche’s jewelry box on the vanity. “An early gesture in the direction of the carriage parade, and then who knows what a pair of creative minds might get up to? Lord Shreve is the friendly sort, and we have interests in common.”
Shreve was the third son of a marquess, an MP with more than token reformist leanings. He was also five years Hazel’s junior and a fine-looking specimen.
“Spring is in the air.”
“Not quite,” Hazel said, fishing out the sapphires. The gold settings winked in the midday sun, and mischief gleamed in Hazel’s eyes. “But right around the corner. Don’t wait supper on me.”
“Bring him up to see your portrait,” Psyche said. “As it happens, I’m going out too.”
Hazel slipped the earbobs into a pocket. “Sketching?”
Psyche shook her head. “I’m meeting Mr. Delancey for a walk in the park.” Not quite the whole truth, but close enough.
“How dreadfully dull, but better than breathing paint fumes all afternoon.”
“Time with Michael is never dull. He listens, Hazel, truly listens, and when I expect platitudes and pleasantries, I get considered answers, caring replies.” Psyche sank onto the chest at the foot of the bed. “He encourages me. Says my talent should not be hidden under a bushel basket, and yet, he also argues with me.”
Hazel took the place beside her. “You’ve fallen for him. What have I told you about dallying, Psyche? One can be friends, one can and should be fond and attracted, but one must guard one’s heart.”
“Michael doesn’t guard his, and that… I have never met a man so possessed of courage and integrity. So fierce. He inspires me to be fierce, and I’m not ready for that.”
“You’d rather slink about as Henderson, sketching in coffee shops and sitting at the back of the classroom?”
Psyche would rather be Mrs. Michael Delancey, and that was impossible. “I could set up a studio in Rome, Hazel. My Italian is passable.” While the thought of another social Season wasted on inanities… And yet, the Season was when many a fashionable sitter was available in Town and happy to grant commissions.
“Why not marry him, Psyche? He wouldn’t be the first parson to take on a wife of means.”
“He won’t ask me. In the past, he made some choices that, if revealed, could reflect poorly on him.” Could see him disgraced, defrocked, hanged. “He will not risk my prospects, as limited as they are, for so paltry a thing as worldly security.” Michael hadn’t said as much, but his reasoning had been evident in his silences and in his praise for her painting.
Hazel rose. “To shield you from his past is quite noble, but if he truly listens as you say, then he ought to be discussing the whole business with you. Not strutting around under a figurative halo until it’s time to come by for a Thursday night modeling session.”
“That is unfair. Michael has a vocation, Hazel. A true vocation.” Not for standing around in the churchyard exchanging pleasantries, but for saving lives and inspiring others to save lives. “His work is here, not lounging around my studio in Rome or Paris.”
“Then stay here,” Hazel said. “You don’t have to remove to the Continent.”
“If I want to be taken seriously, I do.”
Hazel’s smile was sympathetic. “And we do so badly want to be taken seriously, don’t we? I will miss you, if you go.”
“I feel increasingly as if I must leave England while I still can.”
“Because, like a fool, you finally found a man to fall in love with, but he’s the wrong man. At least he’s not married.” Hazel spoke as if from experience.
“Michael isn’t the wrong man, but it’s the wrong time for us both.” And always would be as long as Michael considered himself a potential fugitive from the law.
Hazel sat on the vanity stool and held the earbobs up to her lobes. “What do you and Delancey talk about when you aren’t sketching?”
“Everything. The fellows he works with. He’s quite fond of them, though he doesn’t admit that. His family, which includes more colorful characters than I’d realized. He knows the crossing sweepers and strumpets and beggars, the clergy struggling in London’s poorest parishes, the grand dames in his papa’s congregation who remember him when he was in short coats. Many of them dismiss him as a dutiful cipher, and he wants it that way, but he knows and cares for them all.”
That picture had come together one quiet conversation at a time, one affectionate aside, one murmured regret. Michael preferred making love face-to-face, but in the drowsy interludes after and between lovemaking, he held Psyche close and gave her the intimate words that shared his whole world with her.
Hazel set down the jewels and swiveled on the stool to face Psyche. “If he is as committed to the Church as you say he is, and he trusts you with all of these confidences, then you had best cut him loose, my dear. He’s probably telling himself that his time with you is a frolic, a stolen pleasure, but he confides in you, and men like him don’t confide in mere passing fancies.”
Hazel articulated what Psyche hadn’t wanted to face. “Ending it won’t get easier for being put off, will it?”
“It might, if his past covers him in scandal or if you get a commission to paint some Scottish laird’s offspring at his Highland castle. The longer you and Delancey cavort, though, the more likely you and he are to cause a scandal that has nothing to do with his past.”
Psyche rose and opened the wardrobe, though none of her drab walking dresses and sensible boots appealed to her. Scandal would set her back artistically, but she was hardly awash in recognition as matters stood.
“As a widow of independent means,” she said, “society will permit me an indiscretion, provided I slink off to the countryside for a year or two as my penance. Michael would be tossed out of Lambeth on his ear. He’d be lucky to find himself in a destitute parish in the far north.”
Hazel returned the earbobs to the jewelry box. “I ought to tell you to be done with the man. The whole business has served its purpose. You’ve flirted with heartbreak and with pleasure, thought about something besides pigments and portraits, and that’s all to the good. Set him aside and treasure the memories.”
Psyche chose a dress she seldom wore, a dark raspberry velvet. Sensible, but luscious to the eye and scrumptiously comfortable. Not the typical walking dress, but hemmed so as to meet the basic definition.