Enter Pale Death(5)

She was puzzled to see that a frown and a long silence preceded the smile as he replied cheerfully enough: “Oh, yes there is. The unlucky girl is Dorcas Joliffe. She’s well on this side of the horizon, in fact. Sailing into port, you might say. I don’t believe you’ve ever met her, though I’m sure you’ve heard me speak of her?”

Eyes wide with astonishment, Lily could only nod.

“Yes! That Joliffe!” he said, answering her thought. “And before you ask—she’s twenty-one these days, soon to be twenty-two. I tell people she’s the daughter of a neighbour and dear friend of mine, which she is. She’s also by way of being my sister’s ward. She’s been away … I mean, out of my life for seven years and only came back into it again in January. We were last together in … April, I suppose it was. The Easter break before she went back up to college for her final term. She’ll be wanting to tell us all how well or otherwise she did in her finals. She’s been trying to call me with her news for the last two days, but …” His voice trailed away as he heard himself turning querulous. “You know how it is.”

“Good lord! Well, I never!” And, doubtfully, “Are you sure?”

“Well, there you have it, Lily. No, I’m not sure. I mean about the future. She loves me, I love her. Always have. We’re having a very happy time and it’s all going to end eventually in marriage. But, but …”

“You haven’t asked her yet, have you?” Lily said shrewdly.

“Hole in one! No, I haven’t.”

“Why on earth not? It’s not like you to be reticent. You can talk your way into or out of anything.” Struck by a sudden thought, she added: “Have you two …? I mean …” Lily failed, for once, to summon up words acceptable enough to disguise her intrusive question. “Er … plighted your troth?” she finished with an awkward attempt at humour.

“Troth well and truly plighted, I’m glad to say,” Joe replied comfortably, picking up and running with the euphemism. “Though Dorcas would fail to recognise the phrase—she’s a very modern young lady. She’s not your average English Miss, Lily. Something of a free-thinker. In fact, ‘bohemian’ is probably the kindest word that comes to mind to describe her style.”

“Then I can’t see what’s holding you up.”

“The problem’s not with me. It’s difficult. She’s quite the academic, you know. She won’t let me use the word ‘bluestocking’ but that’s what she is these days. She was a late starter on the degree business but took to learning like a duck to water. Most girls her age are either married or snatching desperately at the few good men left standing, but Dorcas doesn’t seem to care much about domesticity. She speaks scathingly about friends she’s made at the university, girls with good brains who work away for three years and then give it all up because they’ve met and got engaged to another undergraduate with wonderful prospects, or none. Dorcas has made it plain that’s not for her. She’s planning a few more years of research into her subject. And this is where the problems arise. Now—if she were fiddling about writing a thesis on, oh, the disputed authorship of Titus Andronicus, I’d tell her to put her pen down and let it remain a mystery, but it’s not ivory tower stuff she’s involved with. It’s scientific enquiry which could benefit mankind, she tells me. It’s difficult to set one’s unworthy self up against the Good of Mankind.”

Lily sighed. “Oh, dear! I can understand why you haven’t fallen to your knees yet then. Might as well ask Marie Curie to stop stirring that filthy pitchblend and go and put the cabbage soup on. Poor Joe. Poor Dorcas. There’s no entirely happy solution. I didn’t find it.” More hesitantly, she added, “Though I think you ought at least to put a proposal before her. Perhaps she’s just waiting for you to come out with it? You know—putting on a show of couldn’t-care-less independence in case the offer’s not forthcoming. That was my situation exactly with Bacchus.”

Joe grinned. “Was I the last one to twig that you were conducting an illicit affair for two years with my top Branchman right under my nose?”

“Yes. And the only one to object to him making an honest woman of me. ‘Over my dead body,’ I remember you said.”

“No—over Bacchus’s dead body—you misremember! Reducing my two best agents to one at the peal of a church bell was never going to please me.”