He turned his horse to fall in step with Della’s mare.
“Dorning, greetings. How fares the club?” George asked.
“Splendidly. How fares marital bliss?”
“More splendidly than you can imagine, young Sycamore.” George waggled his eyebrows, though he might have been five entire years Cam’s senior. “Might I impose on you to escort Della down the path? I see the Pickering twins, and they will talk the leg off a chair, but they are good fellows, and I ought to acknowledge them while I’m in Town.”
Meaning they would cut Della, but had no reason to cut George on his own.
“I will gladly escort Lady Della,” Sycamore replied, “if she has no objection?”
“None at all,” Della said. “I’ll see you at home, George.”
George trotted off, his gelding whisking his tail at Della’s mare.
“So I ask myself,” Sycamore said, “why a lovely and unattached female would send me a late-night note asking me to meet her for an early hack. But then, my charm is abundant, my good looks are the envy of Bond Street, and among the ladies, my legendary talents as a passionate—”
“Braggart,” Della interjected, “are without peer. Ash didn’t say anything?”
“Ash never says anything,” Sycamore retorted. “He is the soul of self-sufficiency, the pattern card of discretion. Then he nips off to Jackson’s and nearly gets himself killed because he’s seething over some customer’s slight to a dealer.”
“That’s not why he boxes,” Della said, though Sycamore’s perspective was interesting. “Ash didn’t say anything about the musicale?”
“Not a word. The gossip at the club last night was that you were all but tearing Ash’s clothes off, and he was not objecting. Ash neither confirmed nor denied the rumors, but rather, went about his usual late evening duties at the club with his usual pleasant and damnably self-possessed air.”
While Della had tossed and turned all night. “The gossip isn’t wrong.”
“I’d rather hoped that was the case.” Sycamore tipped his hat to a passing matron perched on a sturdy cob. She offered Della no acknowledgment whatsoever.
“You wish to see me ruined?” Della asked.
“No, love. I wish to see you and my brother happy. You are mad for each other, and that you can inspire Ash into making torrid advances suggests you are also made for each other.”
“I don’t want to force Ash into marriage,” Della said, “but if I refuse him, he’ll think it’s because of his blue devils, not because I am trying to put his welfare first.”
“So you care for each other too much to try for shared happiness? Spare me from such backward devotion.”
Sycamore, blast him, had a point. “How bad are Ash’s blue devils?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“So I can be a better wife to him. He will try to protect me from the worst, and that’s pointless chivalry.”
Sycamore held back a branch for her. “To be honest, my lady, Ash’s bad spells are awful. The names we give them—the mulligrubs, blue devils, low spirits, doldrums, dismals—are nearly whimsical compared to the reality. Ash becomes a different person, the antithesis of the urbane, polite fellow who cuts such a fine figure on the dance floor. He becomes a creature of darkness and mourning, though for what I cannot say.”
“He keeps to himself?”
“He remains in his room for days at a time. Casriel made him agree that the door would not be locked, but the concession Ash demanded was that nobody would open that door without Ash’s permission. He will go for three days without eating, a week without shaving. He refuses the physicians, but in fairness to him, he has tried all of their suggested remedies to no avail. He is truly afflicted.”
This recitation, so free of Sycamore’s usual drollery, made Della’s heart ache. “What remedies has he tried?”
“What remedies hasn’t he tried? A bland diet, morphia, cold plunges, a beef-tea diet, frequent bleedings, inversion—”
“Inversion?”
“Being hung upside down by his heels. Fasting, temperance, abstinence—from the ladies, which would part me from my every reason to live—abstinence from strong spirits, patent remedies, memorization of sermons or Bible verses, quiet… He has tried them all to no avail. If you marry him, Della, you will be marrying a man who is periodically quite out of sorts.”
“How long does this go on?”
“Months sometimes. Weeks otherwise. Winters are the worst, but Ash can hit a rough patch any time of year. Occasionally, I will think he’s drifting into the doldrums, but he’ll rouse himself. Other times, I’m rollicking along, my brother his usual self at breakfast, but that same afternoon, he retreats to his room, and I don’t see him for the better part of a week.”
Della drew her mare to a halt on the verge and let her have a loose rein. “Then this illness is both a misery and unpredictable. How long has he had it?”
Sycamore’s gelding stopped as well. “You should be asking Ash these questions, my lady.”
“And would he answer them honestly?”
“For you, if you caught him in the right mood, he might bare his soul, if he hasn’t already. May I be blunt?”
That Sycamore would ask was alarming. “Of course.”
“The physicians generally contend that marriage and procreation are helpful to the melancholic.”
“They do?”
“In that order, while I contend—never mind. In any case, there’s reason to believe, reason grounded in medical science, that the right wife might bring some ease to Ash’s situation.”
Della certainly hoped as much. “But?”
“But to fail at marriage would wreck Ash’s soul,” Sycamore said gently. “To disappoint the people who love him eats at him as badly as the sadness itself. You take a great risk if you marry Ash, for yourself, also for him.”
Della considered that advice, which was meant as kindly as Sycamore Dorning meant anything. “And what is the risk if I, who involved Ash in my troubles, turn away from him?”
“Don’t marry him out of guilt, Della.”
She gathered up her reins. “He was determined to not marry me out of guilt.”
Sycamore nudged his gelding forward. “And people wonder why my amours are so plentiful and superficial. Have a frank discussion with Ash, a frank, private discussion. Tell him why you’re marrying him and leave pity out of it. He neither wants nor deserves your pity.”
Nor did Della want his. What a coil. “Will you see me home?” she asked.
“Of course, and unless I miss my guess, you can expect a call from Ash this afternoon. Make him get down on bended knee, Della. A little begging works a treat on a man’s hubris.”
“As if you’d know about begging a woman for anything.”
Chapter Seven
Ash’s spirits were unaccountably good as he waited for Della to join him in the Haddonfield family parlor.
“Mr. Dorning.” Della looked pale and composed, also quite fetching in a blue afternoon gown and cream silk shawl. “Shall I ring for tea?”