The Lord I Left

by Scarlett Peckham

Embarrassed them before a crowd?

  And would he not face outrage and calls for an explanation were it known that the author of Saints & Satyrs had married a woman he’d found in a brothel?

  He’d be a laughingstock. She’d be a target.

  If he were to subject either of them to that, it must be because he’d thought the arguments through and truly believed them. Made certain within himself that shame would not come back to haunt him, and corrupt what he felt for her with guilt.

  Only then, could he truly ask her to be with him.

  She was not the one who had to change. He was.

  His father was standing quietly, seething. “This is not an idle threat, Henry. I am giving you one final chance to save yourself.”

  “I’m going back to London. You may do whatever you feel you must, with my blessing.”

  His father spun on his heel and strode out the door.

  Henry finished shaving, dressed himself, and gathered his possessions. He found his mother and sister in the parlor and explained he had had a disagreement with his father and would have to leave.

  Both their faces turned pale. His mother cleared her throat. “Your father indicated he expected you to have some happy news about Miss Bradley-Hough,” she said tentatively.

  “It seems he’s been under a misapprehension.”

  “Perhaps you will stay for the christening,” his mother ventured. She bit her lip. “You know he has a temper, Henry, but I’m certain that if—”

  Henry went up and put his arms around his mother. “I love you, Mama. I wish that it were different.”

  She squeezed him so hard she hurt his ribs. When she released him, his sister came to him and took his arm. “I’ll see you out,” she said.

  She walked beside him to the stables. “Is this about Mrs. Hull?” she asked in a low voice. “I overheard Papa and Jonathan—”

  “Yes,” he said simply, not wanting to hear whatever filth had been said.

  “She loves you, doesn’t she.” She said it as a statement, not a question.

  He stopped walking. “Pardon?”

  Josephine smiled. “I thought there was something between you when she dressed down Jonathan at supper. But then, when I saw her watching you in church, I was certain. I tried to make her gossip about you, just to be sure she was kind, and she wouldn’t.”

  His sister stood up on her toes and kissed his cheek. “I suspect Papa won’t let me write to you. But know that Mama and I think of you, and we want so much for you to be happy.”

  Oh, was he going to cry again? Such kindness after the emotions of this day was more than his aching heart could endure.

  “Jo,” he said hoarsely. “I know it isn’t easy for you here, and I fear it will get worse, given Papa’s finances. If you should ever need anything at all—money, a home—just find a way to get a letter to me.”

  His sister nodded. “I love you, Henry.”

  “And I you, dear girl.”

  He drove the horses as far as he could until dark, his mind lost to prayer.

  With every mile he drove, he felt more certain of himself. He knew what he must do.

  And he was glad of it.

  At sunset he found an inn, took a room, declined a meal, and opened the windows of his chamber to let in the cold air from outside. He lit a fire and the lamps and sat down at his desk and removed the draft of his report to the House of Lords.

  He took out a fresh quill and began to work from the single premise that he had meditated on all day:

  To be a man of faith is to live in constant tension between the love of the spirit that lies in the heart—grace—and the impulse toward sin—nature. To know God is not to eradicate nature but to live in this tension, striving for grace. That fight is the work of faith. It is also the work of character. To know God is to strive towards the highest ideals, despite the sin within us. To burn for them.

  I burn for two things: I burn for grace, and I burn for the natural pleasures of the world that God has made. My faith resides between these impulses, and will never be perfected. But sin can exist where it does not reign in isolation. Virtue, too, can exist where purification is not whole and perfect.

  To wish for perfection is to wish for Godliness, which is to lack humility. For men are not divine. We are creatures, striving. Never certain, but ever capable of faith.

  Love is where the spirit of God and the nature of man meet. Tenderness, compassion, care, affection, kindness—here is where the best of the carnal meets the highest promise of the spiritual.

  In love, we can burn doubly.

  These words felt true.

  He believed them.

  And in them was the answer that had eluded him for months as he circled his dilemma with his report to the House of Lords: a way to reconcile his faith and his intellect in fulfillment of his duty.

  Carnal law and spiritual law need not follow the same rules. For spiritual law is between man and God. But carnal law is earthly, a covenant between men. We can shape carnal law in line with spiritual law, but we cannot enforce faith, nor is it our responsibility to do so.

  God will oversee his own righteousness.

  On earth, man must do his best to make the world just as best he can. We should rule in the compassionate spirit of Christ, without overreaching to claim for ourselves the powers that are and should be held only by God.

  The rest of his report flowed easily from this principle. He spent the night enumerating his recommendations.

  When his manuscript was done, the sun was rising, and he’d never been more proud of something he had written.

  Nor as certain that his words would alter the course of the rest of his life.

  He did not know if there was hope for himself and Alice.

  He knew that he had hurt her, with his arrogance.

  But he hoped that she would read this document and see in it the lessons she had tried so hard to teach him. He hoped she would know it was, in its way, a love letter. That beneath every word there was a simple prayer: come back to me.

  He stepped out into the morning and drove back to London, bracing for what such a thing would cost him.

  Chapter 32

  The mail coach stopped in every town along the carriage road from Somerset to London, creeping at a crawl that made Alice want to pull out her own hair for sheer amusement.

  She’d found a seat inside the carriage, but it was almost worse than outside, filled with the chatter and smells of six-odd passengers all sitting nearly in one another’s laps. She was tired of hearing their chewing, their talking, their coughs, their wind. Her backside throbbed from sitting and her calves vibrated with the desire to walk and her jaw ached from grinding her teeth to keep from thinking about Henry, and why she felt so empty at the thought of losing him.

  And then it began to rain.

  The passengers sitting on the outside bench demanded to be let in, and crouched on the floor. The windows had no glass and drops of water dripped inside until everyone was miserably damp.

  “We’ll stop at the next town,” the driver called, thumping on the roof.

  Alice could not wait. She would rather walk the remaining miles in the rain than sit pressed among these people, feeling trapped inside her anxious mind.

  She drummed her fingers on her knee impatiently, willing the coach to move more quickly despite the pain that hit her arse with every bump.

  Thunder rumbled in the distance and the rain became an almighty squall. She thought of how Henry would give her a long-suffering look if he were here and make some joke about their impossible luck with weather.

  But Henry was no doubt back at Bowery Priory by now, safe and warm, regretting ever knowing her.

  The thunder boomed like it was on top of them. A young woman beside Alice yelped in fear. Alice patted her knee. “There, there, just a spot of rain. It will pass quickly—”

  Suddenly, the boom was all around them. They were inside the thunder, and it was a searing flash of light, launching them
into the air. Pain went through Alice, fast and hot. All around her, she heard screaming.

  She slammed onto a surface, blind, gasping sulfurous air.

  As soon as she smelled the smoke, she was choking on it. Her head was ringing and her body tingled and she scrambled in the darkness, coughing, wild with the pain, not knowing where the floor was, trying to find light, to draw a breath. Her arm was trapped against something, and when she tried to free it she found it was barely connected to her shoulder. She wailed.

  She was going to die.

  She was in a carriage and it was burning and she was going to die.

  Save me, she pleaded to her father’s ghost. To the night. To Henry Evesham’s God.

  And then hands were on her ankles pulling her roughly over wood and she screamed because her arm came free in a way that was worse than being pinned and she was thrown onto the cold, wet earth.

  She gasped, certain no more breath would ever come to her, that this must be the moment when she passed on to the other side.

  But the air was cold in her burning throat. Rain fell violently down onto her face.

  She’d never heard of rain in heaven nor in hell, which meant she must still be alive. Blessedly, miraculously alive.

  Hazily, she watched a man run back to the coach to pull others from the flames. He was tall and thickly built and in the violet, smoky haze she almost thought that he was Henry, sent by divine providence to save her.

  But he wasn’t. He was just the coachman.

  He pulled all eight bodies out. Injured, but alive.

  She put her face into the dirt and sobbed, because she’d been so frightened. So certain she would die. So close to having done so.

  And all she wanted, now that she wasn’t dead, was Henry bloody Evesham.

  She wanted him to pick her up and take her home and wash her off and kiss her and put her in bed and curl around her like a cloak. She wanted to tell him that she’d been wrong, that life was tenuous and fragile and that if they could find each other despite the odds, then maybe …

  Maybe she’d been too quick to say what was impossible.

  She lay on the road, alone with her thoughts and God, and she prayed to the Lord for another chance.

  And then everything went black.

  She awoke in a strange bed, in an unfamiliar room, a month later, or perhaps a week, or perhaps only an hour. Her arm was pinned to her side with straps and every time she breathed a pain like none she’d ever felt went coursing up her side. Dimly, she became aware of a man, spooning something into her mouth.

  Henry?

  No, not him, some other—

  Then sleep, heavy and intoxicating.

  She dreamt of Henry, kneeling in a church. She dreamt of her mother, wiping her brow, whispering my Ally girl. She dreamt of a tart, the sweetest one she had ever tasted. She dreamt of her father, belting out a broadsheet ballad as he tinkered with an organ.

  “Ally girl,” her mother’s voice kept interrupting the song, impatient.

  “Ally girl, we must wash you up now,” her mother insisted, and she was angry at her mother, and wished she’d hush, and then the pain came swift and bright and she opened her eyes and once again she was in the strange room but this time it was mother was standing over her.

  She blinked, willing back the heavy, intoxicating sleep in which this awful pain could not reach her.

  “No more laudanum for you, miss,” her mother grumbled.

  Real, unfortunately.

  “Mama?”

  Her mother folded her arms over her chest. “Well now who’d you expect, the Queen? Open your mouth and eat some broth.”

  Alice moaned as the pain came back to her, worse with the light.

  “Where am I?”

  “A nice farmer’s house in Rye-on-Wilke. You were in a carriage accident. Nearly died, you did. Your arm is broken but the doctor says it will heal if you don’t move it. Told him my girl needs use of it, for she’s a right wonder on the organ and she can’t much play one-handed.”

  Her mother spooned broth into her mouth. Alice tried to swallow it, but gagged. Her mother wiped her chin, like she was a child.

  “How did you know I was here?” Alice asked, when she’d eaten enough to satisfy her mother.

  “Your satchel was thrown from the carriage when you crashed, and they found Liza’s letter in it. Figured you must have family in Fleetwend. William drove me here to tend to you as soon as we heard.”

  She felt a flood of terror, because she was trapped here in this bed where they could carry her away. “Mama, I’m not going back. I won’t marry him. I won’t.”

  “Oh, hush, Ally girl, you’ve made that clear enough. Besides, he’s engaged to Liza.”

  “Liza! She’s barely sixteen.”

  “Old enough to have the sense to know that a man offering security is not a great imposition she must endure. William wants to marry a girl who knows the business, and she’s no light on the organ like yourself but she can keep figures and look after a workshop well enough. Besides, she likes him. We all do. Save for you, my changeling child, who prefers working in a brothel to using her God-given talent.”

  Her mother offered her another spoon of broth. Alice waved it away.

  “Why did you come here if you’re still angry with me?”

  Her mother rolled her eyes. “If I had let you die every time you acted willful and perverse you’d not have lived past the age of two, Alice Hull. Always said you were a changeling, but you are mine, aren’t you? Every bit as stubborn as your mama.”

  Alice was not sure whether to shout at her or laugh.

  She decided to laugh.

  She instantly regretted it. It was the devil on her arm. “Shit of dragons,” she hissed.

  Her mother shook her head. “I see even getting struck by lightning is not enough to cure your filthy mouth.” But her mother was smiling.

  And suddenly, Alice knew that everything would be all right.

  Her family was not perfect, nor was she, but there was love here. She felt it. Hers for her mother, her mother’s for her.

  “Mama, I know it must seem odd, my life. But I promise, I’ll be all right. I want to live in London. I have this wild notion that if I earn enough at Mistress Brearley’s, I might compose music on my own.”

  Her mother shrugged. “Ally girl, I never thought you wouldn’t be all right. Foolish maybe. But you’ll land on your feet. Always do.” Her mother paused. “William said you could still have the organ if you want it. Thought your pa would want you to have it, married to him or not.”

  Her mother reached down and straightened the harp pendant on her necklace, rubbing it for just a moment with her thumb. She’d known her mother long enough to know this was an apology of sorts.

  “Mama, I’m sorry I lied to you about my work.”

  “Well, if you hadn’t I’d have worried more. It’s all worked out. Just want my girls to have at least as good a life as I did, mind. Didn’t mean to have you running about the shire thinking I was dead.”

  Alice nodded. “That was unkind of you.”

  Her mother gave her a sly look. “If I hadn’t that handsome minister of yours may not have taken such a shine to you.”

  “Mr. Evesham? A shine? What makes you say that?” Her mother was a frustrating woman, but that did not mean she was not an observant one, especially when it came to eligible men taking shines to her unmarried daughters.

  “He gave me a right scolding for my so-called abuse of you when you ran off. Seemed more upset than you were.”

  “He did?” It was sweet he had spoken out in her defense.

  “Aye. And old Helmsley came and said he caught you with the minister in the church, sinning.” Her mother paused dramatically. “I said, well that’s my Ally. Never met a handsome boy she didn’t want to sin with, in church or otherwise.”

  Her mother chortled merrily, and it was all so incredible that Alice laughed too, never mind the wrenching pain it produced in her arm.
>
  Actually, she did mind. It hurt like her bones were being clamped in the teeth of a vicious dog.

  “Oww!” she cried.

  “That’ll be the Lord punishing you, no doubt,” her mother tutted, though there was affection in her eyes. “Corrupting a minister, agh. Were I not a godly woman I might be proud my daughter has such wiles, and her a wee thing with no bosom to speak of.”

  “You really thought he was fond of me?” Alice asked. She knew he’d felt something for her after they’d kissed in the church, and certainly by the time they coupled at the inn, but she’d wondered if he’d just been overcome by lust.

  But her mother looked at her without a trace of doubt. “Gazed at you the way your pa used to. Like you was God’s gift to us all.”

  Alice felt tears prickle in her eyes. “I miss him,” she whispered.

  Her mother rubbed the little harp again and sighed. “We all do, love.”

  Alice knew that her mother was speaking of her father. And Alice did miss Papa, every day.

  But she had been speaking of Henry Evesham.

  Chapter 33

  LORD LIEUTENANT OUSTED ON VICE

  Outrage erupted in the House of Lords yesterday following the testimony of Lord Lieutenant Henry Evesham, who concluded his investigation into the vice trade with shocking recommendations for reform. Evesham said strengthening regulation of the trade would be more effective than enforcing harsher penalties, and proposed a scheme to license prostitutes and brothel-keepers, suggesting a guild be formed to see to the health and interests of harlots and their customers. Evesham’s testimony was interrupted by strong objections from members of the Committee on the Eradication of Vice, who rejected the findings of his report and dismissed him for gross failure of his responsibilities. Lord Spence, who convened the Committee, called the report “an affront to moral decency and an insult to the resources of the Crown.”

  * * *

  —THE LONDON LEADER

  * * *

  As a man who’d spent his whole life dreading ambiguity, Henry found the swiftness and decisiveness of the judgment that fell upon him following his report a relief, if a painful one.