Hazel squeezed Psyche’s shoulders. “The two, my dear, are not mutually exclusive. Best of luck, and if Delancey doesn’t propose on the spot, I’ll have a word with him.”
“He cannot propose,” Psyche said, the realization stealing over her with a cross between wonder and exasperation. “Until he understands that his work will not interfere with my art, he will not propose.” And untangling that knot could take even a miracle worker more than five days.
“He cannot propose yet,” Hazel said. “But he can certainly become engaged.”
“Not Michael. He will not ask for my hand until he has thought through all the ramifications and what-ifs of our union, just as I don’t start on the oil painting until I have the canvas prepared and composition thoroughly worked out. He will never ask anything of me that could impede my artistic ambitions.”
“Is that bad?”
Psyche took up a parasol made of pink lace. “It’s complicated. Also, as you noted once before, ironic. Wish me luck, Hazel.”
“Luck—and happiness, Psyche. Also passion.” She kissed Psyche’s cheek and gave her a shove toward the door. “Passion most of all.”
“Right,” Psyche said, pausing on the threshold to assemble her dignity and her courage. “Passion most of all.”
Chapter Eighteen
Much had changed.
Michael now took breakfast with his children, slept under the same roof with them, and heard the music of their pounding feet overhead, as well as their laughter and spatting as he tried to compose letter after letter. Twillinger had asked him for epistolary introductions to some of the Yorkshire parishioners. Excessively polite of Twilly, but well intended, and those epistles had been easy and even pleasant to write.
Natty Ingram had penned a note asking for a walking tour by daylight of the stews. The first note to arrive today had been from Danner, inviting Michael to supper at a surprisingly fashionable club, because, “You could use a good meal, and I could use a good friend now that Twilly and Natty have gone for vicars.”
To know the correspondence office would be under Danner’s genial eye was a comfort. To be without employment was not a comfort. Michael had no wish to pursue a clergyman’s life, but that left… Inquiries to provincial schools, and throwing himself on the mercy of Mrs. Oldbach and her vast connections, now that he’d sat to Dermot for hours on end.
Goddard had mentioned that his club could always use a trustworthy accountant, but employment at a glorified gaming hell would be the ultimate irony for a man who’d embarked on adulthood by making an ass of himself in the same surrounds.
What had not changed was that Michael loved his family and loved Psyche Fremont. When he’d been gainfully employed at the palace, solvent if exhausted, he’d allowed himself to hope for a future with the most talented artist—and the loveliest woman—he’d had the pleasure to know.
Close association with a semi-disgraced clergyman could not in any way aid Psyche to achieve her goals, particularly when his shortage of coin was soon to become pressing. It was one thing to ask her to fight for a future with a relatively acceptable fellow and another to ask her to throw in with an ecclesiastical outcast.
The aristocracy leaned heavily in the direction of high-church Tory religion, and those were the same people Psyche sought to render in oils.
Compared to that reality, the lack of money did not bother Michael half so much as the need to bid his dreams with Psyche farewell.
Every time he tried to fret about what he and the children were to eat, and how they would be clothed, he was presented with the memory of his father offering to take them in and bedamned to church politics, or the memory of Dorcas and MacKay offering to send Michael and his children to safety in Scotland.
Of Meg Miller bellowing for young Jenny to come practice a bit of playacting, because “our Preacher” was facing a spot of bother.
Of Mrs. Oldbach’s descant, and the balcony and choir loft full of an angel chorus that had come forth to see the children and Michael himself kept safe.
That cloud of witnesses had been assembled by Psyche Fremont on two days’ notice, because she had seen how to act on what Michael had always known: Money mattered, love mattered more. MacKay’s streetwalkers, Goddard’s urchins, the charitable committees, old soldiers, and pastors had come to Michael’s aid because they were caring people willing to stand up in the name of love to see justice done.
“And what does love require of me now?” Michael murmured as he signed yet another inquiry. This one would go to a Quaker school for the children of transported felons. The institution was in Portsmouth, and while Michael did not relish the thought of leaving London, Bea, Thad, Mrs. H, and Finny had to eat.
That also had not changed.
“A caller for you, sir,” Finny said, passing over an embossed card. The silver card trays and fussy butlers were not for Michael’s household, even if he’d been able to afford them. “Quite a grand fellow. I put him in the parlor.”
The ink on the card was green, suggesting Lord Shreve might also be a vain fellow. “Grand indeed. Please ask Mrs. H to dust off whatever passes for our good service. If the shortbread is fresh—and mind you, Finny, I do mean fresh—let’s put some out for his lordship. If not, he can make do with scandal broth and my delightful company.”
“’E’s a blooming lordship? Calling on us? My, my, my… Mrs. H will be in alt, she will.” Finny bustled off with a considerable bounce in her step.
Michael used his reflection in the window to ensure his hair wasn’t sticking up and prepared to make the acquaintance of Lord Shreve. Before entertaining that august person, he jotted off a note—he loved Psyche Fremont to distraction, and that was an eternal verity—and entrusted its delivery to the porter of Mrs. H’s choice.
Love required honesty of him, and five days was long enough to put off the inevitable.
Michael’s first impression of Shreve was of a gloriously warm, rosy scent. The fragrance did not overpower, but rather, sent a light, luscious aroma wafting to every corner of the little parlor. The man himself stood with one of Bea’s storybooks in his hand, apparently reading by the window light.
“I am no great admirer of the social Season,” he said, closing the book and setting it on the sideboard, “but I adore the return of the light in spring. Like emerging from hibernation, though my hunger is for light, warmth, and fresh air rather than a good meal. Shreve, at your service.”
He bowed punctiliously, which a man of his rank need not have done.
“My lord.” Michael returned the courtesy, wondering if Shreve was part artist, because he was so attuned to light. “Delancey. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“No,” Shreve said, grinning like an unrepentant schoolboy, “you are not. Nobody needs a rubbishing lordling underfoot when there’s work to be done. Your cook is cursing my consequence as we speak, and you are wishing I’d find somewhere else to call.”
His lordship was blond and lanky, with the piercing blue eyes of the Saxon, and a nose that would have done a Roman emperor proud. Not a handsome man, but striking, and imbued with a restless energy even when merely perusing a storybook.