by Jenny Frame
Charming the Vicar
Finnian Kane, famous master of illusion, mentalist, and renowned atheist, has a crisis of faith after her sister’s death. She rents a cottage in the village of Axedale in Kent, desperately trying to find a safe haven from the intrusive media to grieve and work out how to move on.
The Reverend Bridget Claremont makes it her mission to help the enigmatic Finnian find her faith in life again. Bridge has long yearned for a life partner, and her best friend’s wedding has intensified that desire. But when you’re a lesbian vicar in a small English village, it’s not easy to find your perfect match.
Their chemistry is clear from the start, despite their different beliefs and Bridge insisting Finn isn’t her type. But will the mentalist find the magic that can charm the vicar?
Charming the Vicar
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Charming the Vicar
© 2018 By Jenny Frame. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13:978-1-63555-030-6
This Electronic Book is published by
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First Edition: January 2018
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editor: Ruth Sternglantz
Production Design: Stacia Seaman
Cover Design: Sheri([email protected])
By the Author
A Royal Romance
Heart of the Pack
Courting the Countess
Royal Rebel
Dapper
Unexpected
Charming the Vicar
Acknowledgments
Big thanks to Radclyffe and all the BSB staff. I’m grateful for your tireless hard work and how much you all help to make our writing community a wonderfully supportive environment.
Thank you to my editor, Ruth. Your help, encouragement, and patience are greatly appreciated. I couldn’t have wished for a better or kinder editor.
This year has been one of the most difficult years my family and I have had to face, but through it all, love and support have seen us through. Love is the most powerful thing in the world. It brings people together through adversity, and gives us hope for the future. There is nothing more important than love and family. So thank you to my family, for everything they do.
My darlin’ Lou, I’m the luckiest girl in the world. The day I met you was the biggest gift the universe could have given me. I’ll always love you, and I’ll always be on your side.
To my Barney Boy. You keep me company as I write each day, and with your presence I know that I’m never alone. You’re crazy, but we love you.
For Lou,
I’m always on your side…
Prologue
Even though Finnian Kane, master magician and illusionist, was hanging by her feet from a burning rope one hundred and eighty feet above huge spikes on the London Arena floor, she was centred and happy. The atmosphere in the auditorium was tense to say the least, but the show had gone like clockwork, and this illusion was the finale, the one the audience left talking about every night.
Finnian’s show had a steampunk circus style, so the audience was circled around the middle of the arena floor, which Finnian made her stage. As Finn struggled with her straitjacket, she kept her eye on the fire burning its way through the rope above her feet, burning its way down to the threads. She then looked below her at the floor covered with four-foot high razor-sharp spikes. A large piece of meat was impaled on them, a piece of meat one of her stagehands had thrown down from the platform, before the illusion started, to prove to the audience that the spikes were real.
Everything was going to plan, and Finn had her audience in the palm of her hand. The trick was to delay her escape from the straightjacket until the rope was nearly on its last thread, to heighten the suspense. Finn fed off the audience’s trepidation, fear, worry, wonder, and amazement. Here onstage she was accepted and loved for being different, not chastised for it, and that was why she loved it so much. There was risk, but the risk made the payoff even more exciting. If she had her environment and the people around her in her control, then it worked. Finn always kept ten steps ahead—if she didn’t, she’d get hurt, both physically and mentally.
The rope was down to its last few threads, and the audience was starting to squeal with fear for her. She released herself from the straitjacket and unclasped her feet just in time for the rope to break. Everyone in the crowd screamed, and she landed miraculously, on two feet, perched on spikes beside the impaled meat. There was silence for a few seconds, and then Finn looked up, smiled, and gave a nod of the head, and the audience roared.
The stage went black, and when the lights came up again, Finn was on the ground a few feet away from the spiked floor. Finn’s dancers appeared and the music played while the crowd cheered. Finn took her ringmaster’s jacket and steampunk top hat, with a playing card and feather tucked in the band, and put them on.
She walked around all sides of the audience taking their applause. The cheering crowd filled her with the high of performance. There was nothing like it, nothing like the pleasure of people loving her, wanting more of her.
Finn took off her top hat and gave one last low bow, revealing her trademark hair. It was brown, shaved in short at the back and sides, but on top she had a sweep of platinum blond, which she styled in many elaborate different ways, depending on her mood. Tonight it was gelled up into a longer version of a fauxhawk.
“Thank you for coming, everyone!”
She ran backstage while the noise was still at its loudest. “Great show, Finn,” her PA Christian said. He took her top hat and handed her a bottle of water and a white towel.
Finn was physically tired and her muscles burned, but she felt energy coursing through her veins. She took a long drink of water and said, “Thanks. Is my guest here?”
Christian nodded. “In your dressing room waiting.”
“Thanks. Get the car ready to take us to the restaurant in an hour.”
Finn walked down the corridors leading from the arena stage to the dressing rooms. The corridors were busy with her dancers and stage crew, who all congratulated her on a great show.
Normally after the show she experienced a gradual comedown after the high of performance, a downer which Finn tried to fill with sex and clubbing. But tonight the most special woman in the world was here, and she couldn’t wait to see her.
At the corner of the corridor, next to her dressing room, one of her main dancers, Layla, waited for her, and Finn sighed internally.
Finn didn’t know when it happened, but gradually the appeal of sex with her dancers or groupies who followed her entourage to a club afterwards had lost its appeal. She didn’t understand why, because she loved sex, loved women, but there was something missing now. Maybe there’s something wrong with me? Maybe she was losing her sex drive?
Layla had been with the show for a long time and knew that Finn usually wanted no-strings fun, and that had suited her completely. There was never going to be any other woman in her heart apart from the one sitting in her dressing room just now.
“Fantastic show, Finn,” Layla said, slipping her palms under Finn’s jacket.
“Thanks.”
Layla trailed her fingernails down Finn’s cheek. It should have made her feel something. The touch was meant to be seductive, and it was anything but.
“There’s a new girl in the troupe that wants to meet you. These new girls always fall for you, don’t they? They don’t realize what a cold-hearted bastard you are.” Layla laughed.
That assessment of her character stung Finn somewhere deep inside her. But that was part of her illusion. Only one woman knew who she really was. “You know me only too well, Layla.”
“Why don’t we head to the club and then see if she’s interested in coming back to the hotel with us?” Layla said.
Finn couldn’t think of anything worse. Threesomes or more, which used to be so exciting to her, now were just boring—but she had to keep up the mysterious, in control, untouchable, Finnian Kane illusion. So she took hold of Layla’s waist and backed her against the wall.
“That sounds like fun, but I can’t tonight. My baby sister is at the show tonight. I’m taking her out for dinner.”
Everyone knew Finn’s sister. Charity was the most important woman in the world to her, and when she came to visit, all her plans changed.
Layla brought her lips close to Finn’s. “Oh, well. There’s always tomorrow. You know I’m always here, ready to have any kind of fun you want.”
“Yeah, I know you are,” Finn said with a sigh. And the rest of the women I meet.
Layla squinted quizzically. “Is there something wrong?”
“No, nothing,” Finn said, anxious to get away and to see her sister.
Layla reached up and tried to stroke Finn’s long fringe, but she caught Layla’s wrist to stop her.
“I better go. Carrie will be waiting.”
She disentangled herself from Layla’s grasp and walked towards her dressing room.
* * *
Finn stepped into her dressing room and found Carrie waiting for her on the couch. “Come here, baby sister.”
Charity jumped up and flew into Finn’s arms. “Finn! The show was totally amazing.”
Finn squeezed her sister tightly and spun her around in her arms. Five years younger than Finn at age twenty-two, Charity Maxwell was the apple of her eye, and the only permanent woman in her life.
As she hugged her she felt the always petite Charity was slimmer. She pulled back and said, “Have you lost weight?”
Charity was unusually silent for a few seconds, and then just brushed it off. “I don’t know, probably. I hardly get time to eat, the café and shop are so busy.” She ran her hand through Finn’s hair, and softly grasped her blond fringe. “When are you going to get this thing chopped off?”
Finn laughed. It was a running joke. Carrie pretended to hate her hair, but secretly Finn knew she liked it.
“It’s my thing. It makes me”—Finn swirled her hands in an elaborate fashion—“mysterious. Come and sit down.”
She took Charity’s hand and pulled her over to the couch. When they sat Finn realized her sister looked tense. She knew her sister inside out—she had been solely responsible for her since age sixteen. Charity was the driving force behind Finn’s career. She had always promised her sister she would be a success and look after her the way their father never could.
Magic and illusion had been her life from an early age, and when she and Charity found themselves on their own, Finn worked two jobs and did some street magic and performed in clubs in London to make ends meet. She’d launched her own YouTube channel, and with her distinctive steampunk image to build a following, she soon was being noticed by media. Add hard work and perseverance, and she was finally able to give Charity the security her sister wanted. Finn had purchased a piece of prime London property and made Charity’s dream come true of owning a vegetarian café and New Age shop.
Finn was a staunch atheist, but her sister had found her own personal solace in the New Age world.
“They repeated your exposé on spiritualists and psychics last night on TV.”
“They did?” Finn smiled. “I didn’t even know it was coming on again.”
Not only a mentalist and magician, Finnian Kane was a crusader against the frauds and fraudsters of the religious and spiritualist worlds—faith healers, psychics, anyone who took people’s money and promised them something that was not humanly possible. For the benefit of the TV audience, she would show how the fraudsters made the alleged supernatural happen with nothing more than tricks and illusion.
Charity leaned on Finn’s shoulder. “You know your shows always bring in big TV audiences. Thank God my customers don’t know you’re my sister.” She joked, “It would be bad for business.”
“Don’t worry, you know I’ll never do a show on crystal healing and angels. That’s your thing and I respect that. Help me take off my make-up and we can go out for dinner.”
Charity suddenly looked uncomfortable and serious. “I need to talk to you first.”
“What is it? You haven’t got a new boyfriend I have to threaten with bodily harm, have you?” Finn joked, but she had a sinking feeling.
“No, no boyfriend for you to frighten as per usual. Let’s just talk for a while.”
“Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” Finn said seriously.
Charity simply nodded, and her eyes filled up with tears.
Chapter One
The function room of an upscale London gay and lesbian bar was an unusual venue for a Church of England strategy meeting, but although attended by vicars from all over the country, and one bishop, this meeting was highly unofficial.
Bridget Claremont, vicar to the parish of Axedale, sat at the head of the table, chairing the monthly meeting of the Christian LGBT group, Love and Hope.
Bridget smiled as she watched her colleagues—Kate, a vicar from Manchester, and Jerry, who ministered a parish in Leeds—argue over the tone of their next campaign.
Kate banged her hand against the table and said, “We need to, if you’ll forgive the pun, stop pussyfooting around this issue and trying to get change with gentle persuasion. We need to act now.”
Bridget didn’t blame Kate for her advocacy of more direct action. She had a beautiful spouse, who was her civil partner, and wanted to be married in the fullest sense of the word.
Jerry interjected, “But we don’t want to frighten the Church hierarchy off. We know a lot of them are dinosaurs, and some of them are so far in the closet they are in Narnia. If we don’t tread carefully, we could set our campaign back years.”
Bridge decided to step in, since they were coming to the end of the meeting. “I think I could sum up the feeling of the meeting by saying this: We are all frustrated by the inconsistency over the sexual freedom of gay clergy. As I know from experience, being gay in the Church means your freedom is based on the whims of your bishop. If you have a sympathetic bishop, you can be more relaxed in your personal relationships, but if you don’t, you can feel an alien in your own church. Before we work on the campaign for the marriage proposal at the next synod, we need to first have the Church recognize that they should not be looking into our private lives, or our bedrooms. Do the bishops ask our straight colleagues if they remain celibate before marriage? I think not. We must have equal rights with them. At our next meeting, we can look in detail at that question.”
Kate raised a hand to be granted one last chance to speak.
“Yes, Kate?”
“I just wanted to add that if we do not achieve our goals by the synod meeting next year, I will be prepared to marry and force the Church into action.”
Bridget could see the anger and frustration in her eyes. If the Church reprimanded her, she could see Kate dragging the Church through the courts. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.
“Thank you, Kate. I think we all understand your frustration. We’ll end there, and get some tea and coffee, shall we?”
Everyone agreed and started to st
and. As the meeting broke up, Bishop Claremont, who had been sitting to the side, made her way over to Bridget with a big smile on her face.
“There’s my little Bridge. Give your old aunty a hug.”
Bridge embraced her favourite aunt tightly. “You’re far from old, Aunt Gertie. You have more energy than most of us here put together.”
Gertrude Claremont had dedicated herself to the Church and its many causes from an early age and, after a long campaign, became one of the country’s first female Church of England priests, then the first woman bishop, and was Bridget’s inspiration to join the Church.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Gertie said.
She kissed Bridget’s cheek and they walked arm in arm over to the side table, where tea biscuits and cakes had been provided for the meeting.
After they each took a sip of tea, Bridget said, “Thank you for coming to the meeting. The support of a bishop is really important to our cause.”
“It’s my pleasure. Gay rights are very important to me, and should be to the Church if we wish to stay relevant in a modern world. You can always count on me.”
Bridget was lucky to have such a supportive family. The Claremonts were from a long line of trailblazers, rebels, and libertarians. Whether it was her mother, her father when he was alive, her brother, or her aunt, she could always count on their unstinting support.
Aunt Gertie took a bite of cake and asked, “How is Harry? Married life still suiting the once-committed bachelor?”
Bridget chuckled softly. “Amazingly, yes. I’ve never seen Harry happier in all her life than she is with Annie and Riley. It’s their anniversary today and we’re having a bit of a celebration at the church hall tonight for them.”
