Evan could not even fix the church’s roof. How could he fix Lady Farnham’s troubles? “Perhaps you can convince another man to marry you. A beautiful woman with a bank account ought to have no difficulty finding a husband.” Evan knew he was suggesting just the sort of coldblooded, business-arrangement type of marriage that he deplored, but needs must when the devil drove. No child should be born a bastard.
“Do you think I have not considered such a course? How can I find an eligible parti while I am in Randy’s keeping? There is not one man in London brave enough to poach on his preserves. Besides, how can I give myself to another man, knowing that I only want Whittendale, hard as that may be to believe? How unfair to this hypothetical husband, a wife lacking both her virginity and her heart. I could not be that dishonest to any man I cared for enough to marry.”
Now she discovered a sense of honor? Evan thought. He shook his head, wishing he had his handkerchief to mop his damp brow. Fornication was acceptable but fabrication was not? He would never understand the beau monde and its morality, or lack thereof.
Lady Farnham, meanwhile, had regained some of her composure and was regarding Mr. Merriweather with a speculative eye. She noted that he was thin but nicely muscled, with a full head of sandy hair in need of a trimming. “It seems to me that you could do with a helpmeet, too. Especially one with a bit of blunt. I don’t suppose…?”
“M-me?” His voice came out like the bleating of a goat “That is, I could not offer you the life you are used to, the style you enjoy, not even with your money. I am a simple country vicar, and content to remain as such. I am honored—nay, I am confounded—that you could consider me in your dilemma, but I wish my wife to love me, as I would love her, and no others.”
She nodded. “It was a moment’s thought, nothing more, but I’d wager you would make a good father.”
Evan thought of that quiverful of children Alice wanted, all blue-eyed, blond-haired cherubim. He would love them, every one of them, but he could not feed them or clothe them or send them to school. He sighed. “I fear I might never know, for it is going to take a power greater than mine to see such a thing come to pass. I cannot afford a dog, much less a wife and children.”
Now she sighed. “Life seems so unfair sometimes.”
“But never hopeless. We’ll both come about, I swear. The Lord will provide.”
Lady Farnham looked around, noting the angled pole supporting the roof, the boarded-over windows. “It seems the Lord is having troubles enough providing for His own house.”
*
The young church mouse had doubled back through another hole in the stone wall of St. Cecilia’s. He was hiding under the floorboards, quivering, catching his breath, and getting lectured.
“For certain you were named rightly.” Exultemus Domine was also quivering, in outrage. “For it passes all understanding how you can be as greedy as a fox cub and as stupid as a duck. What if the lady had hit you with her Bible, or one of those panicked fools had stepped on you? What if Dread Fred were on patrol outside? Then what would happen? Our whole line would die out, that’s what. Not one Churchmouse would remain to pass on our ancient heritage. Don’t you understand responsibility, destiny, Noah-blessed oblige?”
“Oh, stop nattering at me and listen. They’re talking about Viscount Whittendale.”
After hearing Lady Farnham’s tale of woe, Ed wrinkled his nose as if he smelled a ferret. “His lordship is a wicked, wicked man.”
“Aye, but he’s the one getting to sow his seed.”
6
“The devil!” Arriving back inside the church, the viscount was not best pleased to find his mistress nearly in Merriweather’s lap.
Misinterpreting his lordship’s exclamation, Evan jumped to his feet, explaining, “Lady Farnham is not injured, merely frightened.”
Belatedly, Whittendale noticed Beatrice’s tear-streaked cheeks and reddened eyes. “Dash it, Bea, it ain’t like you to be hen-hearted. You drive with me in my phaeton, don’t you?” When she gave him a teary smile, he held out his hand. “There’s my girl. Come on now, the others are waiting in the carriages to return to White Oaks.”
Instead of mounting his chestnut gelding to ride back alongside the carriage, Whittendale motioned the driver to proceed. He returned to the church, tapping his crop against his leg.
“Blast it, Merriweather, were you trying to make a fool out of me in front of my friends?”
Evan was trying to restore the trampled greenery. “What, do you think I arranged for a mouse to run amok in my church?”
“I am not speaking about your deuced resident rodents. I’m referring to your arms around my chère ami. I can just imagine all the talk if any of the fellows had seen that tender little episode. They’d laugh that I was being supplanted in the lady’s affections by an impoverished cleric in ill-fitting clothes.”
Evan would not be cowed. “She was startled, and you were not here to soothe her, that was all.”
“You were holding her hand, by George!” The viscount slapped his crop against the first pew, disturbing the dry rot “I saw the way you were looking at the little Prescott chit, and you might get away with that until I come to terms with her father, but you have no right to be looking at Bea Farnham, much less touching her.”
“As a man of the cloth I have every right to stand as spiritual advisor to whomever needs my comfort and my counsel.”
Lord Whittendale recalled Bea’s wistful farewell to the vicar, and her promise to visit St. Cecilia’s again. “No one comforts my woman but me, do you hear me?”
Evan frowned. “I heard a troubled woman not getting solace from those who should support her in her hour of need.”
“Need? Need? Bea wants for nothing. She wouldn’t have any need for you if your cheese-paring church wasn’t overridden by rats!”
The vicar was a forgiving man, but an insult to his church was a slap in the face. Being accused of dalliance with a demi-rep was bad enough; being charged with bad housekeeping in the home of the Lord was too much. Evan squared his shoulders, glad for the extra heft. “What do you know about need? You have never wanted for anything in your life, except for a conscience, perhaps. If you met your responsibilities, the church wouldn’t be infested and your lady wouldn’t be weeping.”
“How dare you lecture me on my duties, you impertinent clod. If you weren’t in orders, I’d order you horsewhipped.”
Evan snapped back to the man who thought his wealth and title could purchase Alice, “If I weren’t in orders, I’d pop your cork for your treatment of those around you, especially women.”
“Hah! I’d like to see you try.”
Things might have progressed to a bloody, schoolboyish conclusion, but one of the floorboards suddenly shifted with a loud squeak.
Recalled to their location—and their respective dignities—the vicar and the viscount both nodded and stepped back. The reverend knelt to inspect the faulty board, while the lord paced toward the rear door. Before he left, however, Whittendale warned Evan: “I will brook no interference with my females, not the ones I bed nor the one I’ll wed. Stay away from Bea Farnham and the Prescott chit or I’ll tear this place down with my bare hands.”
Evan shifted the board back into alignment with its fellows and straightened up. “You’ll never marry Alice Prescott,” he told his supposed benefactor, “not after I inform Squire that you intend to litter the countryside with your butter stamps.”
“Butter stamps? I have never left a by-blow any—Bea? She is increasing?” Lord Whittendale sat down abruptly in the last row.
Evan blanched. “She did not want to tell you.”
“Of course not, the peagoose. She knows I’ll send her into the countryside somewhere, and she can’t bear to miss a ball. She’ll have to forgo the spring Season, I suppose. Can’t have a breeding female on my arm.”
“That’s all you can think of, parties and appearances? What about the child? Have you thought about the child for one instant?�
��
“I only just heard about the brat this minute, by Jupiter. I suppose I can find a decent family to take it in. Give it all the best, that kind of thing.”
“The best? You’d buy your son a pony and send him to an expensive school. You’d offer your daughter a china doll and a dowry. That’s your best. But what about love, what about Lady Farnham’s heartache to hold her own babe to her breast?”
“Thunderation, this is none of your concern.” Whittendale stood to leave, but was stopped at the door by the reverend’s words: “Can you bear to see another man raise your child? What if he drinks or grows violent? What if the mother tells the poor babe that his own parents did not want him? Is that what you want for your son? Can you truly live with such a decision?”
Whittendale hesitated at the threshold, almost as if he was considering the vicar’s questions. Then he straightened his caped riding coat around his shoulders and turned with a sneer. “Stay out of affairs that are beyond your ken, Merriweather. You have a small church and a small mind.”
*
The viscount brushed right past Alice on the church steps without recognizing her. He tipped his hat automatically, but was concentrating too hard on his own thoughts, and on the rickety stairs, to notice that this was the woman he intended to marry.
Alice dropped a curtsey and a murmured “My lord,” before hurrying inside. She had seen her mother dosed with the laudanum bottle, her father ensconced with the brandy bottle, and her great-aunt closeted with the ink bottle. Aunt Minerva was writing all of her friends about the debacle, how all those fancified London swells went sprinting for their lives as if the Hounds of Hell were snapping at their heels, instead of a wee bit of whiskers. This was the most entertainment she’d seen in Lower Winfrey in years. Alice, of course, had not shared her relative’s delight. Using the usual Sunday food baskets as an excuse, she’d driven her pony cart to the church, and Mr. Merriweather, as soon as she could, just in time to overhear the last of the viscount’s conversation.
“Heavens,” was all she could say, sinking onto a pew next to Evan, under the statue of St. Francis.
Evan had his head bowed, his hands clenched on the back of the seat in front of him, the picture of despair. He couldn’t look at his beloved. “Now I have torn it for sure. I’ve gone and offended Lord Whittendale so badly that he’ll never help us.”
Alice put her gloved hand over one of his. “You cannot know that for certain. When he gets over his shock and his anger, perhaps your words will have some better effect on him.”
“No. If he thinks about what I said at all, he’s liable to replace me as vicar here altogether. Ah, Alice, I am so sorry.”
“He’s the one who should be sorry, Evan, for planning to abandon his child and its mother.”
“You heard, then?”
“Yes, and I think all the less of Lord Whittendale for his cold heart. No matter what happens, if Papa never gives us permission to wed, I would never marry a man who could leave his baby for strangers to rear.”
He grasped her hand. “Good, for seeing you as another man’s bride would be bad enough, but to think of you going to an arrogant jackass who would not appreciate you as you deserve would break my own heart all over again. If I cannot have you, I can at least pray for your happiness with an admirable man.”
“You are kinder than I, my dearest, for if I cannot marry you, I would despise the woman who did. Nor do I think I could bear to see you happy in such a union, whilst I was steeped in misery. No, I would have to leave, go somewhere I would not be reminded every day of my own loss, if such a place exists.”
He had to bring her hand to his lips, he simply had to. “I will have no other woman to wife, I swear.” Evan would do nothing more than kiss her gloved fingers, despite the invitation in her blue eyes. In fact, he regretted the kisses they had already shared. No, he did not rue the dishonorable kisses, he regretted that there could never be any more. And that he’d sent Lord Whittendale away in anger.
“I pity the poor female the viscount does marry,” he said now, turning the subject from his dismal thoughts. “Such a one as Lord Whittendale would make a wretched husband for any woman.”
“And a dreadful father, I should think, even to his legitimate offspring. Why, he’d likely forget his children’s names.”
“And their birthdays, unless his secretary reminded him,” Evan added.
“Or if they threw spots from strawberries, or were afraid of thunder.”
“He’d never take his sons fishing, nor share dolls’ tea parties with his daughters.”
“What, and chance soiling his boots or having his friends see him? Never.” Alice squeezed Evan’s hand and said, “You, however, would make an excellent father, my dear Mr. Merriweather.”
Evan laughed, but without humor. “So everyone seems to think, for all the good anyone’s opinions will do. I am afraid it will take a miracle for sure now for me to afford a wife and children.”
“We have to have faith, Evan.”
“Oh, I do, my dear,” he said, brushing flakes of paint off her shoulder. “I do, even with the church falling down around our ears. Nor do I intend to sit around waiting for Lord Whittendale to develop Christmas cheer and a generous spirit. After we deliver your bundles of food, I can start splitting wood for new stair treads this very afternoon, and I can get rid of the mice, at least. I’m sure Mrs. Cotter won’t mind if I close her cat in here for a bit.”
*
“Now see what you’ve done, fleas-for-brains?”
7
Lady Farnham returned to St. Cecilia’s as promised, with a basket of food from the White Oaks kitchen for the needy. She managed to get Lord Whittendale to drive her, to carry the hamper inside, and to apologize for any insult he may inadvertently have given Mr. Merriweather.
Inadvertent? The man had nearly threatened to have Evan boiled in oil for merely speaking to this woman. Or to Alice. Still, the vicar graciously accepted the basket and the new opportunity to win the viscount to St. Cecilia’s side. A reprieve, thank the Lord. He gladly shook the peer’s hand, then felt a coin pressed into his own palm. The viscount might merely be trying to appease his conscience, Evan thought, but St. Cecilia’s would be grateful nevertheless. He put the coin in his pocket.
When his lordship left to wait outside while the beautiful young widow prayed, Evan softly vowed, “Never again will I doubt the power of prayers.”
Lady Farnham smiled. “And never doubt the effect of a woman’s weeping. When Randolph told me what he had said to you, I confess I turned into a watering pot again. I understand women become highly emotional at such times.”
“He must love you very much, then, to care about your tears.”
She shrugged in her fur-lined cloak as she sat in one of the far pews, indicating that Evan should sit with her. “I suppose he does, in his way.”
“But not enough to…?”
Bea dabbed at her eyes with a scrap of lace-edged linen. Evan reached for his own, more adequate, handkerchief, but Lady Farnham shook her head. “No, I have used up all my tears. In fact, I must return the handkerchief you so kindly lent me.”
Evan took the freshly laundered square she held out, feeling the coins in its folds. “This is not necessary, my lady.”
“No, but you and your little church need it far more than I do. A few shillings will not make a difference in my condition, but they might mean the difference between an empty larder and a full one for some of your parishioners.”
“I thank you, madam, but surely you are going to need every groat for when—”
“No, Randy is being very generous. Shortly after Christmas he is going to purchase a little cottage not far from London, so that he can come visit frequently. He will make sure I have the best of care and want for nothing. I…I have hopes that he will let me stay on there with the baby, although he says he will have his solicitor look for a likely family. Perhaps if I cry enough, he will relent. Who knows? I understand that such an
unsanctioned arrangement cannot find acceptance in the eyes of the Church, but will you pray with me, Vicar?”
“Of course, my lady. Surely our Lord will hear your prayers, so close to Christmas and the birth of His own son.”
*
While the vicar and the widow prayed, the mice eyed the wicker basket of food sitting so invitingly in the aisle.
“Got to be something better than paint chips in there, don’t you think?”
Ed licked his lips. “And better than the pine needles from the decorations. I say we are as needy as anyone in the parish, and charity does begin at home.”
“Let’s go.”
So the last remaining hopes of the Churchmouse clan took a break from their gnawing and scurried across St. Francis’s niche, down the molding, under the loose floorboards, surfacing inches away from the basket.
The sexton’s wife’s cat was also speculating about the contents of Lady Farnham’s basket, and his chances of helping himself to a chicken leg or a bit of cheese or an apple tart. He was deserving of a reward, wasn’t he, keeping watch in this cold, drafty, dusty church, instead of sitting by Mrs. Cotter’s nice warm cookstove? Fred cocked one scarred ear toward the praying pair and stealthily stalked toward supper. Instead he saw…dessert!
“Well, bless my soul if Christmas isn’t coming a week early!” With a loud meow he leaped at the two mousekins.
Passeth-All-Understanding made it back to the gaping floorboard, with Dread Fred’s fetid cat-breath on his shoulder, but elder Exultemus Domine was too slow. Now the marauding mouser was between him and the hole. The people were between him and the crumbling stone wall. Ed froze in place, as still and stiff as the statue of St. Francis.
“Run, Ed. Run for the roof! You’ll be safe there.”
So Ed fled, up the post that the vicar had propped in the corner to support one of the sagging roof beams. Dread Fred followed.
Greetings of the Season and Other Stories Page 29