The Lord I Left

by Scarlett Peckham

  And what about what she wanted? He hadn’t even asked.

  “I … Henry, you’re a minister and I am training to be a whipping governess. Marriage between us is not possible. You must realize this.”

  He straightened. The last vestiges of her lover’s impossibly sweet face hardened into the wiser-than-thou visage of her old foe, the Lord Lieutenant.

  “I do know it will not be without complication,” he said, his speech becoming rather arrogant and clipped. “But my ministry will serve fallen women, and you can use your knowledge of the trade to run our charitable efforts. And you can lead the choir, play the organ in church.” He smiled at her, nodding. “It’s quite logical.”

  Quite logical. Almost as touching as you’ll make me a fine shop window. What a run of romantic declarations she was having.

  She shook her head. “’Tis not logical at all. You were moved by what we shared. And it was lovely. But in your heart you know you cannot marry me. Don’t make things difficult.”

  She looked away, began gathering her possessions. He stood up and caught her hands. “Don’t fiddle with those,” he chided. “I’m trying to have a conversation.”

  “No, you are trying to browbeat me into marrying you. Which I will not, for even if we were to ignore my circumstances and yours, we don’t agree on anything.”

  She saw him consider this, hesitate, and then dismiss it. She saw him rearrange his face into something like sweetness, to cajole her. “Alice, we’re not so different. We can make a life together. We’ll have a family of our own. I’ve always longed to be a father. I shall look forward to the effort of trying to become one. I very much enjoyed our night together. And our morning … I shall never forget our morning so long as I live.”

  He smiled at her shyly, sincerely, and he was the full picture of the kind of man Henry Evesham might grow into. A caring, compassionate reformer with an abiding faith in God and a drive toward doing what he felt was right, no matter the odds against him. A man who would take his public responsibilities in stride and welcome private ones with tender affection.

  A man who engaged in ideas, kept intelligent and interesting circles, loved music as much as she did.

  For a moment, she longed to say yes to this fantasy he spun.

  But he was ignoring the truth of the situation. Of her. And it made her angry that he put the burden of acknowledging reality solely on her shoulders.

  “And how will you explain who you are marrying to your friends in Parliament? Your friends in church?”

  He shook his head. “No one ever needs to know about your past.”

  She threw back her head in frustration. “Helmsley knows. Others will learn of it. Have you considered the difficulty of that? The shock it will cause? The damage to your own reputation? You know how eager people are to shame those they think are guilty of low morals. You’ve been one of them yourself. If we hide it, it would haunt us. And I don’t want to hide who I am. I’ve done that long enough with my family and ’tis a very anxious life. I’m happy to be free of it. I’ll not do it again.”

  The Lord Lieutenant dismissed these concerns with a swishing of his wrist, like he had the power to shove them in a bin. “I understand your fear, Alice, but I’ve prayed on it, and I am confident your past does not matter if you ask God for absolution. You will repent and be saved. And should others learn your history, your redemption will serve as a powerful demonstration of God’s mercy.”

  Repent?

  She squared her shoulders and glared into his eyes. “But I’m not sorry.”

  He closed his eyes. “Alice, I know how good you are. I see your spirit. You only need have faith—”

  A single word coursed through her: no.

  Whether she had faith was her concern. She would not make it the condition on which she was accepted. Married. Loved.

  “You cannot mold me into the woman you want out of convenience, Henry. The fact you like to touch my cunny doesn’t change who and what I am.”

  He softened. “I know who you are. You are brave and compassionate and sensitive and kind. I adore your spirit, I revel in your beauty.” He paused, blushing. “And your, erm, cunny.”

  “And what of the fact that I don’t go to church and barely know how to pray? That I don’t share your views on sin?”

  “I see how the spirit moves through you when you play music, Alice. I know that God loves and welcomes you, and that he is there when you are ready to open yourself to him.”

  He was sincere now. Fully sincere. And that was so much worse.

  “And what of my sins, Henry? I’ve had lovers since I was a girl. So many I could scarcely recall their names if I tried. I’ve assisted on sessions on Charlotte Street. Witnessed lovemaking and torture. Supplied the instruments myself. Done it all without a second thought and not a regret to my name.”

  Each sentence she uttered seemed to hit him like a physical blow. He stared at her, his jaw pulsing with emotion. She did not enjoy hurting him, but she had to make him hear it, for both their sakes. “I wanted these things the same way I wanted you. And I’m not sorry. Not the slightest bit. Not for any of it.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” he rasped out.

  A tear fell from the corner of his eye, and he wiped it away angrily, but another one came after it. She reached out and took his face in her hands and kissed the trail it made beneath his eye.

  “Henry Evesham, I love how good you are. I love how kind you are, how much you care about doing the right thing, and helping people. I love watching you pray, and preach. And it would be an outrageous sin to pretend that being with me would not deprive you of the life you want to have. You’re a Lord Lieutenant, and a Methodist, and a good man. And you deserve to have the life you wish for. It hurts me, to have to give you up. But I can’t ask you to change the core of who you are for me.”

  She paused, wiping away her own tears. “And I deserve that too. I do. I cannot marry a man who will always be ashamed of my past, or wish it were different. I can’t simply repent and become this woman that you want, because I’m not sorry. And living with a man who thinks I should be … It’s too much to ask.”

  He sucked in a breath like he’d been punched, but he did not answer.

  Because there was no answer.

  That was her point.

  She kissed him tenderly on both cheeks.

  “Thank you, you dear man, for all you’ve done for me. I will never forget you, Henry Evesham. I have great faith in what you will become—all the good you’ll do. But now I’m going to take the mail coach home.”

  He stared at her like he might sink onto his knees and take her ankles and cling to her as a set of shackles.

  “Please don’t go,” he whispered. “I know we are meant to be together. Why else would God have led me to Charlotte Street just as you needed to travel in the same direction I was headed? Why else would we have been felled by snow on our journey, when there is no sign of freezing weather outside our path? Why would we be forced into such close quarters over and over? It’s providential, Alice. It must be.”

  She picked up her satchel. “It’s coincidental. Please don’t argue. Let’s part as friends.”

  “Friends!” He cried. “Alice I love you.”

  He didn’t though. Not all of her.

  God might forgive her transgressions. But Henry wouldn’t.

  And she would not stand by and allow either of them to sacrifice their nature as the price of love.

  “If that’s true, Henry,” she whispered, unable to look at him. “Then let me go.”

  She walked into the corridor and shut the door behind her and dug her fingernails into the palm of her hand, trying to quash down the tremendous sense of loss that engulfed her.

  If she let herself, she could so easily put aside her principles and her instincts for the fantasy of a life with Henry Evesham.

  But she’d only just begun to live for Alice Hull.

  She was not prepared to give it up.


  Chapter 31

  Henry sat on the cot that smelled vividly of sin and stared at the door as the sound of Alice’s footsteps faded.

  He itched to get up and chase after her, but he willed his feet to stay planted on the floor.

  He didn’t know if he could walk even if he tried.

  But he could get on his knees and pray.

  This time, his words to God came easily and urgently.

  He prayed for forgiveness. He prayed for clarity. He prayed for strength.

  He prayed that someday this might hurt less.

  That someday he might forget her.

  Finally, he collected what remained of his things and went to pay the innkeeper.

  At the sight of Henry, the man’s face soured. “I hope you and your sister had a pleasant night,” he sneered.

  “Yes, thank you,” Henry said, reaching in his pocket for his coin purse.

  “No need. Your sister paid when she left, asking after the post chaise.”

  He winced that Alice had felt the need to pay their fee. “I see. Thank you.”

  The man stared at him in outright contempt. “Why would your sister have need of a post chaise?”

  Henry paused, stunned at the force of the man’s anger. “Sir, I beg your pardon—"

  “For shame,” the innkeeper shouted, beating his fist down onto his desk. “Do not darken my door again. We do not trade to whores in this establishment.”

  Henry went very, very still. “How dare you say such a thing?”

  “How dare I?” the innkeeper snarled. “This is a decent place, sir. I heard the ungodly racket coming from your room. God should strike you down for bringing the likes of that trollop here. Leave, before I toss you out myself.”

  He reached across the desk and put his hands on the innkeeper’s shoulders. He was gentle, careful not to injure him, for he knew the force of his size, the measure of his calm, would do as much to shock and affront the man as slapping him.

  “I will own my own transgressions, sir,” he said evenly. “But when you speak of any woman that way, the only person you shame is yourself.”

  The innkeeper spat viciously in his face.

  Henry dropped his shoulders and stepped back. He took his handkerchief from his pocket and mopped the man’s spittle from his cheeks. He walked to the door, feeling the eyes of the breakfasting strangers in the public room looking upon him with open curiosity and judgment.

  A woman glared at him, moving toward her husband like he might reach out and grope her.

  “Hope the tart was worth it, lad,” an old man chortled, slapping him on his back as he passed.

  Alice was right. It did hurt, to feel the condemnation of this crowd.

  But it did not match the pain of leaving this inn without her. Perhaps that is what she’d meant by private morality. It was not society’s rebuke that flayed him. It was hers.

  But what did that make him? What did it mean that he had coupled, passionately and flagrantly and more than once, with a woman to whom he was not married? What did it mean that he would rather be exposed, to lose his position, than to give her up?

  He was anguished for failing God, for failing to live up to his ideals, for believing himself to have been above such lapses. But he was not sorry he had lain with Alice. Nor that he had fallen in love with her. He was only sorry that he had not seen earlier that she was right.

  If Alice accepted God as her savior, it would bring him tremendous joy. But that was her decision. If he wanted her, he had to love her without condition. He could not sit in judgment of her, or of himself for choosing her.

  He drove back to Bowery Priory lost in thought, pondering what to do. When he arrived, the footman informed him that his father wished to see him as soon as he was home.

  To gloat, no doubt.

  He went upstairs to change his clothes and shave. He was shirtless and covered in shaving soap when someone pounded on his bedchamber door so forcefully that he nearly cut himself with the straight razor.

  “Yes?” he called.

  The door flung open and his father strode into the room, looking at Henry’s half-dressed body with such an expression of revulsion that it made Henry want to dart behind the dressing screen. He forced himself not to flinch, to whisk away the whiskers from his neck as though he did not notice.

  “May I help you, sir?” he asked, glancing at his father’s reflection in the mirror.

  “I told you to come speak to me immediately.”

  “I was planning to do so as soon as I made myself presentable, sir.”

  His father pounded on the wall in anger. “Stop that shaving and look at me.”

  Slowly, Henry turned around. His father’s face was red and he was gripping a folded letter. He was so furious he seemed like his feet might levitate an inch off the floor.

  “This came to me this morning from Vicar Helmsley,” he shouted, waving the letter. “Would you care to guess what it says?”

  Henry leaned back against the wall, bracing himself, as his father put on a pair of spectacles, cleared his throat, and began to read aloud.

  “It brings me no pleasure to tell you that I discovered your son Henry in a rather curious pose with a woman of loose morals in my church this afternoon. Alice Hull, the chit in question, was known to consort sinfully with a number of men before going to London in a state of disgrace several years ago. Knowing you would be discomfited by this, I visited her family to ask after her relationship with your son, and discovered her mother in a state of extreme distress because Miss Hull had informed her she has been earning her living in a whipping house in London.”

  His father paused. “A whipping house in London,” he repeated.

  “Sir—”

  “Oh no, you will let me finish. It goes on: ‘To my horror,’ the Reverend writes, ‘Mrs. Hull informed me that her daughter left in Henry’s company following this announcement. I will, of course, keep this matter between us, but I would advise you to speak to your son quickly, lest this bring dishonor upon your family. No doubt the boy has been seduced and lost his head to this jezebel. The sooner he is brought into line the lest he risks damaging his prospects permanently, and yours.’”

  He stared at Henry, his face so pink with fury beneath his silver wig that he looked like a frosted cake. “I can only gather that this is the same ‘Mrs. Hull’ you brought into this home, to share a roof with your sister and Miss Bradley-Hough, who would both be ruined by the very rumor of speaking to a whore?”

  “Miss Hull is not a whore,” Henry said flatly.

  “You, my son, are lying. Jonathan warned me that he’d found her wandering around the house in the middle of the night looking for your rooms, and heard you humming some vulgar song about her quim. I chose not to believe this could be possible. Far be it from me to defend you, Henry, but I thought my son the minister bringing a whore into his own father’s house was simply beyond the realms of possibility.”

  “Alice Hull is a housekeeper at an establishment that—”

  “Whatever she is, she’s not a Methodist widow on her way to see her dying mother. You lied to me.”

  Henry inhaled deeply. “I did lie to you. For that, I ask God’s forgiveness, and yours. But Miss Hull is a woman of good character, whatever her reputation.”

  His father shook his head and held up a hand. “Enough. I don’t want to discuss such filth. The point, Henry, is that this letter I am holding is enough to destroy you. Vicar Helmsley is on track to become a bishop, and his word carries weight with the types who butter your bread. You will not find work as any kind of reverend if it is known you’ve been ferrying a harlot halfway across the kingdom, doing God knows what with her in a church.”

  Henry said nothing. He could not deny that what his father said was true.

  “Here is what you are going to do,” his father said tightly. “You are going to finish shaving and dress yourself half decently and try not to look like a farmhand. And you are going to find Miss Bradley-Hough and as
k her to marry you. You are going to assure her that you have decided to leave the ministry to return to the family business as soon as you have concluded your duties to the Lords, and look forward to a charmed life with her in Bath. And if you do that, Henry, I will throw this letter in the fire. You can continue with your revivals and whatnots as long as I get the money to secure the business.”

  Henry looked down at the floor.

  For an excruciating minute, the room was silent except for the sound of his father’s labored breathing.

  And then Henry began to laugh.

  “No,” he said simply, collapsing into a chair. “No.”

  His father stamped his foot. “Enough! Enough! This is not a negotiation. You will do as I ask or I will ruin you.”

  “Then ruin me,” he said, because Alice Hull’s words were echoing in his mind: I’m not sorry.

  He was not sorry either. Not really. And whether his father went through with this threat or merely said it to coerce him, he did not care.

  Alice had said if he wanted a woman like her, he’d have to be a different kind of man, and prepare himself for a different kind of life. She’d said she could not ask him to do this.

  But he could choose it.

  As he watched his father curse and rage and stomp about, he barely listened. All he saw, watching this display, was how naive his arguments must have seemed to Alice. This was exactly what she’d been afraid of. And it would only be the first of many such reactions.

  He’d asked her for something that was not possible. He’d done it out of hope, and faith in the Lord’s providence, and perhaps blind optimism.

  But hope and faith and optimism could smooth a life, not make one.

  The man he’d been could not marry Alice Hull and expect the world to reorder itself to suit his whims.

  After all, however fervently Henry wanted to wallop his father or Vicar Helmsley or the innkeeper, they behaved exactly the way Henry might if he were in the same position. Had he not done just this many times before—railed at sinners for their hypocrisy and lack of decency?