He thought of the boy, even now. “I don’t know. The nursery is quiet and I gather John enjoys a full belly.” Dorcas was always careful, because she had to be. The offer to shave Mr. MacKay was not one a careful woman would have made. Charitable, perhaps, but not careful. “Shall I shave you?”
“I’ll be fine once I eat something. You have my thanks for your concern.”
Harrison arrived then with a tray of sandwiches and a pot swaddled in a thick linen towel. Dorcas poured out, the coffee aromatic and strong.
“You are to eat before you swill the whole pot.” Perhaps she liked giving him orders, a disturbing notion.
He saluted with his cup. “A sip to revive the dying. You want to leave me some privacy, but you are worried, Dorcas Delancey, because you think I will try to back out of my promise to house John here for the next fortnight.”
She resorted to making the bed, the only bit of busyness available. “I am more concerned you forgot that you made that promise. You were half-swooning at the time.”
“And yet, you badgered me into an agreement. I admire your tenacity.” He consumed a sandwich and poured a second cup of coffee, this time adding cream and honey.
“Swoony men should not be held to account for their delirious declarations.”
“I do not swoon,” he said. “I grow light-headed. I become vertiginous. I am prone to syncope—a French doctor patching up British troops taught me that one—and presyncope, but I do not swoon. Perish the thought.”
Dorcas went to the wardrobe and began laying out a suit of morning clothes. “You fell upon me. I could not stop you from collapsing. You must promise me to leave the nursery to Timmons tonight. She can sing as well as the next person, while you cannot… lactate.”
“My dear Miss Delancey, you are blushing.”
I am not your dear anything. “Have another sandwich.”
He did, this one disappearing more slowly. “Now, I can tell I’m hungry, but this will hold me for the present.” He rose and surveyed the outfit Dorcas had chosen.
“I would not have paired that mulberry waistcoat with a blue morning coat.”
“Too showy? A touch of gold—cravat pin, cufflinks, watch chain—will pick up the gold embroidery in the waistcoat. You must have a care with your appearance to reassure your friends that you are back on your mettle.”
He stood improperly close, but then, what was propriety when she’d offered to shave him? When she’d seen him snoring on the floor? When she’d badgered him—his word—into keeping John here for the next two weeks?
“You put me back on mettle,” he said, “and I state only the somewhat surprising truth.”
Dorcas moved away, for she was blushing again. “Then I am no longer needed here. If you have any news to impart regarding John’s situation, please call on me at the vicarage.”
She wanted distance between herself and Mr. MacKay, or that’s what she should want. What Dorcas truly wanted shocked her.
To touch his hair again.
To see him without his shirt.
To watch the transformation from bearded ruffian to clean-shaven Master of Abercaldy and former officer.
To ensure that he did not again grow peckish because he was too worried about a teething baby.
Perhaps she was the one grown light-headed and unsteady.
Mr. MacKay escorted her as far as the bedroom door. “I will keep John for the next fortnight, and I will not part with the lad until I’m certain he’ll be well cared for. If possible, I’ll send Timmons along with him, and I make you a solemn vow, Dorcas Delancey, that he will never want for anything.”
His gaze was utterly serious, as if he were in fact taking a solemn vow.
“I should not have carped at you as I did,” Dorcas said. “That’s why they call me Miss Delightful—because I am not delightful. I am tiresome and difficult.” She made that confession staring at the bare skin of Mr. MacKay’s throat. She was tempted to collapse against him, to give him the weight of all her disappointments, and forget for a time who she was and where the line lay between propriety and folly.
He really had given her a bad turn.
“You are delightful,” he murmured, very near her ear. “I keep my promises, Dorcas, and I do not lie. You are maddening, brilliant, determined, and as tenacious as a seagull at a picnic, also entirely delightful. The boy is lucky to have a champion such as you.”
Something warm and soft brushed Dorcas’s cheek. His lips. He moved away behind the privacy screen with its intriguing collection of portraits.
She had just been kissed by the dour, unsmiling Alasdhair MacKay, and she had enjoyed it. On that startling revelation, Dorcas slipped out the door.
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