“A bordello. The child—Danny—has been restored to Letty’s keeping, and Banks has left the village where anybody might have connected the puzzle pieces. The money Letty sent to her sister-in-law has been given back to Letty, for Olivia, of course, had kept her extortion secret from her husband.”
The blank page stared back at Nick while churchyard gossip nattered in his imagination like so many crows.
“Does Banks think to stash this mercenary helpmeet on some Scottish island?”
The weights whirled through the air faster. “I have no idea what Daniel thinks these days about anything. He’s always been a quiet, self-contained fellow, and he’s grown worse since last I saw him.”
“Perhaps he needs to sort matters out with his wife. Relocate to America or Peru. I’m sure Christians are in high demand in the wilderness. I’ll pay his fare, cheerfully.”
Fairly caught two of the rocks. The third smacked onto Nick’s blank page.
“That’s a generous offer, Nicholas, but I doubt Banks would leave the boy’s ambit at this point. You’re in a mood. What’s amiss?”
Nick closed his sketchbook. Fairly was a nuisance and an irritant, but he was also a friend. When Nick had needed an expert medical opinion—and he had, more than once—Fairly had been unhesitating and generous with his expertise.
“Kirsten has taken notice of your Mr. Banks.”
“Lady Kirsten is the noticing sort.” Fairly collected the third rock and set all three in a neat line at the top of Nick’s workbench. “I’d be surprised if a full-grown, well-mannered, male houseguest in good looks didn’t gain her notice.”
“Not that sort of notice. Kirsten dislikes people in general, but men in particular get the rough edge of her tongue.”
Fairly hopped off the worktable, nimble as a fox. “Intelligent women are in a difficult position when they’re also saddled with high birth and fine looks. You can trust Daniel, however. He’s the last man who’d take advantage of an innocent.”
“Because he himself was taken advantage of by that wife?”
“Because Daniel is genuinely good, genuinely honorable. He would no more take advantage of Lady Kirsten’s friendship than he would have imposed on Addy Chalmers.”
“A saint as well as a martyr,” Nick groused, rising from his stool. The workshop was at the back of the stable and not exactly cozy, but it was quiet—mostly. “I’m heartily sick of damnation and Doomsday. My sisters became prone to megrims on Sundays, and my own Sabbath health was growing precarious too.”
“You won’t have that problem with Daniel,” Fairly said, once again taking up Nick’s hammer. “He’s the soul of kindness, tolerant of the elderly and the very young, and his sermons are short and full of forgiveness and Christian charity. Could you make a smaller version of this hammer?”
“Of course. Why?”
“For the boy, Danny. We’ve yet to find much that interests him, and he’s too young to be kept shut away in the schoolroom all day.”
Nick stretched, hands braced on the small of his back.
“The child needs storybooks and toy soldiers. No boy should be shut away in the schoolroom all day, not even a very big boy. You’ve yet to tell me what Banks will do about his wife.”
“He’s sent her off to visit her family in the north, and that has served for the nonce.” Fairly, being married to Olivia’s victim, had probably advocated for criminal charges and transportation.
“Has Mrs. Banks remained docilely tatting lace in the West Riding? If she’s the disagreeable sort, then her relatives are likely tired of her. I’ll send her to Canada and Banks to Peru. Seems like a fine plan to me.”
Fairly was considering juggling the hammer. Nick could sense this by the angle of the viscount’s blond brows.
“The problem is the boy,” Fairly said, letting Nick snatch the hammer, but then taking down an awl instead.
Nick took the awl from him too. “You could put your eye out with that, Fairly.”
“I’m not a child, Nicholas.”
And apparently never had been, for what English peer was raised without benefit of toy soldiers?
“I cannot like this situation with your Mr. Banks,” Nick said, hanging the awl on its hook and shrugging into his greatcoat. “An unhappy wife is seldom quiet in her misery.”
“She need not be quiet, she need only stay far away for a long, long time.”
“How will Banks, a penurious, kindhearted, tolerant Christian sort, make certain that happens?”
Fairly let Nick hold the door for him. “Prayer, I suppose.”
Now that was interesting, because Banks had been under Nick’s roof for several long days, and other than grace before meals, Nick had yet to catch the good vicar at his prayers.
Not even once.
Three
The Sabbath ritual no longer comforted Daniel, which in itself added to his unease. For nearly a decade, he’d prepared for the Sunday morning service the same way—no breakfast, plain tea, his sermon notes, and silent reflection as the sun came up and the household stirred to life.
In Little Weldon, that had meant the maid of all work putting together Olivia’s and Danny’s trays while Daniel used the warmth of the kitchen to aid his devotions. The kitchen had been quiet and welcoming in a way the rest of the house hadn’t been.
At Belle Maison, breakfast was a lavish meal served with endless helpings of chatter in a bright, east-facing parlor.
“Nita writes from London that arrangements for her wedding journey are almost completed,” young Lady Della reported. “I wish I were going with them.”
“They don’t wish you were going with them,” Lady Susannah replied. “It’s a wedding journey, after all. Pass the pot, Della, if there’s anything left in it.”
“But to see Paris!” Lady Della marveled.
She went off on a flight about the great capitals, and art, and culture, while all Daniel wanted was quiet. Across the table, Lady Kirsten caught his eye, raised her toast point in a silent salute, and winked.
Daniel stirred his tea, though he didn’t take it with sugar or milk on Sundays. How had Lady Kirsten divined his thoughts? Divined his mood when he himself couldn’t decipher it?
“What of you, Mr. Banks?” the earl asked from the head of the table. “Do you look forward to Sunday services, or does the celebrant admit to a certain relief when his duties are over for another week?”
The entire pretty, chattering table turned to regard Daniel, like so many colorful birds flitting about the park would perch on a high branch when a rambunctious child gamboled by.
“I enjoy my Sunday duties,” Daniel said, though Sunday was the least of a vicar’s responsibilities, “and doubly so today because I will meet my new congregation, and in such fine company too.”
Bellefonte smiled, for he was peacock-proud of his womenfolk. “I share that company with you begrudgingly, Banks. A shame you won’t meet our sister Lady Nita and her new spouse.”
“This is the lady traveling to Paris?” Daniel asked.
Lady Della, predictably, blessedly, snatched the conversational reins and did not give them up for the duration of the meal. As luck or a mischievous Deity would have it, Daniel was wedged into the sleigh next to Lady Kirsten for the journey to the village.
A mercy and a torment, for reasons Daniel didn’t examine.
“Next Sunday morning, you take a tray in your room,” she murmured as she tucked the lap robe around her. “They’ll natter you to Bedlam otherwise.”
“One doesn’t want to appear rude to one’s host and hostess,” Daniel said as the coachman gave the horses leave to walk on.
“You ate nothing, Mr. Banks, and you had no sermon prepared even forty-eight hours ago. Nicholas seems to think your duties consist of an hour of playing dress up on Sundays, and you did not correct him.”
The horse trotted along, the cold more tiresome than invigorating. Beside Daniel, Lady Kirsten appeared not at all affected by the elements, the company, anything.
This woman disquieted Daniel in ways that had only a little to do with the greater disruption in his life. If he’d come across her in Little Weldon, she would have disquieted him there too.
“Must you always be scolding somebody, Lady Kirsten? I would not expect an earl to comprehend the routine of a vicar’s days any more than I’d know how to be an earl.”
“You’d manage,” she said, making that sound like either another scold or a dire prediction.
She’d manage. “You are a grouch, Lady Kirsten. I haven’t met a genuine grouch in some time.”
The notion cheered Daniel, and proved in a small way that he was not a grouch. His observation apparently cheered the lady as well.
“I am a grouch,” she said, patting his sleeve. “Good of you to notice. My family acts as if there’s something wrong with me because I am honest and unsentimental. You have the right of it. I cannot change who I am.”
Had she tried to change who she was? “A grouch is not happy company,” Daniel said as the sleigh turned onto the Haddondale village square. “Or perhaps she’s simply not happy?”
He could ask Lady Kirsten that in the brisk air, the church coming into view. The question was vicarly—in this setting.
“Are you happy, Mr. Banks?” she retorted. “You say I’m a grouch, meaning I deal in truth rather than appearances and gossip. What do you deal in?”
“Not gossip.” Which left…appearances? “You deal in honesty, my lady, but what of kindness? Has it no place in your scheme? Truth can wound, cripple even, and should be wielded with caution.”
Olivia had taken it upon herself to bludgeon Danny with the unvarnished truth of his origins, for example.
The horse slowed, though before the sleigh could pull into the churchyard, the party in the earl’s traveling coach had to disembark.
“This business of honesty and kindness is not a philosophical debate to you, is it?” Lady Kirsten asked.
The word philosophy came from roots that implied a love of knowledge. Danny had enjoyed learning where words came from, how the Latin and Greek were related.
“Truth and kindness are not mere concepts to you either,” Daniel said as the sleigh inched forward. “I like that about you. You do not mine a topic for clever remarks you can toss out in company. You embrace a matter with your intellect, and wring from it what truths or contradictions it has.”
Lady Kirsten also knew how to find a man a bit of solitude to compose his sermons, and knew that a tea tray graced with a few lemon biscuits made Scripture ever so much more palatable of a chilly afternoon.
Interesting combination in a gently bred lady.
“My siblings will take forever to move away from the coach now that they’ve started socializing,” Lady Kirsten said, disentangling herself from the lap robe.
She alluded to her sisters, who were indeed visiting merrily with other women, not even stepping away from the earl’s coach in their eagerness to greet their neighbors. Daniel climbed out on his side and came around to offer Lady Kirsten assistance.
The congregation hadn’t noticed him yet, so he spoke softly as he handed her out of the sleigh.
“Whatever unkind truth you’ve been dealt, I’m sorry for it, my lady.”
She stepped down from the coach and kept hold of Daniel’s hand, even when she’d gained solid footing. He’d apparently surprised the lady who regularly ambushed others with her blunt speech.
Lady Kirsten’s grip on his hand remained snug. She blinked twice, staring straight ahead at the ladies chatting and smiling beside the much larger coach.
Then she tucked her scarf up higher, so it wrapped over her mouth. The gesture hid what Daniel saw only because he was studying her expression for some hint that she’d heard him.
“Thank you, Mr. Banks. Good luck with your sermon.”
She strode off, abandoning him as the earl’s conveyance lumbered away and exposed Daniel to the notice of his new neighbors.
“Mr. Banks!” Lord Bellefonte called. “Come meet the good souls of Haddondale, for they are eager to meet you.”
Lady Kirsten marched into the church as if her brother hadn’t spoken. Daniel had no choice but to allow the earl and the countess to introduce him around in the cold, sunny churchyard, until the organist began the prelude.
Daniel let himself be hustled into the building by his pastoral committee chair, and from there, routine took over. Vestments, Book of Common Prayer, a kindly, cheerful expression—Daniel assembled them all in the usual order and began the service as he’d begun hundreds of others.
Except this service was different. Lady Kirsten sat in the front row, a pretty blond well past girlhood. She occupied the same location Olivia often had, and she had Olivia’s faint air of chronic vexation too.
The similarities ended there. As Daniel called his new flock to worship, he was plagued with a question, which he doubted even the forthright Lady Kirsten would answer:
What about his final observation regarding the unkindnesses dealt her had inspired the lady to blinking back tears?
* * *
For Kirsten, Sunday services were a ritual to be endured. At best, the Sabbath was a time to collect thoughts, to sit for a while on a pretty spring morning and admire sunlight coming through the church’s two stained-glass windows.
Kirsten had long ago cut off any discourse with her Maker, other than before meals or when a family member was imperiled. She occasionally exhorted God to keep her siblings safe or to look after the crops and livestock, because experience had proven even the Almighty occasionally forgot the basics.
From the opening hymn, however, this Sunday morning was different. The church was packed to the rafters with a flock bent on inspecting its new shepherd, and the congregation was in good voice.
Above the droning basses and warbling sopranos, a ringing baritone led a march through melodic scriptural sentiments. Mr. Banks had a fine voice, Kirsten had known that, but he also had something—a presence—a joy in his office that enlivened even the tired strains of Mr. Wesley’s music.
And—miraculous to relate—his sermon was short enough that Nicholas did not doze off halfway through.
Neither did Kirsten. Somebody deserved a moral birching this morning for directing a stranger to Addy Chalmers’s cottage when that sojourner had asked for guidance to the earl’s home.
Mr. Banks merely thanked the congregation for welcoming him so warmly, pledged his best efforts as their spiritual leader, and invited them to call upon him in any capacity he might be of aid or comfort.
Not a hint of a scold, not even an innuendo. What sort of vicar would they take Mr. Banks for if meekness and short sermons were his return when buffoons made sport of him?
Kirsten fairly bellowed the words to “Come, O Thou Traveler Unknown” as the service concluded, anger taking a familiar hold of her mood. Harold Abernathy shifted from foot to foot in the next pew back, and Robert Harker seemed to have developed a fascination with the back of Goody Popwright’s bonnet.
A bonnet Goody had been wearing since last year’s spring assembly.
Oh. Oh, yes indeed, come, o thou traveler unknown.
“We’re supposed to share the hymnal,” Susannah hissed at the end of the sixth verse. Mercifully, they’d leave the remaining half-dozen verses for some other occasion.
“We’re also not supposed to flip back to the Song of Solomon during the reading,” Della added from Susannah’s other side. “Shall we defend Mr. Banks from the Haddondale inquisition, or will you two stand here all morning bickering?”
In other words, Della didn’t want to miss a word of that inquisition.
Kirsten tucked the hymnal into the bracket designed to hold it. “I’
ve no wish to linger here, and I doubt Mr. Banks needs defending.”
Though he needed something. Kirsten recalled the lyrics of the opening hymn they’d sung that morning. Was there significance to Mr. Banks’s choice of “Thou Hidden Source of Calm Repose” as the first song he’d sung at his new post?
* * *
Daniel shook hands with the menfolk, bowed to the ladies, matched names with faces—he’d studied the parish rolls at length—and took note of whose Sunday finery was indeed fine and whose was much mended.
The church steps were chilly, but not even arctic conditions would have spared him this gauntlet of genteel inspection. Every pair of eyes, even the genuinely kind ones, held the same question.
Was there a Mrs. Reverend Banks, and if so, where was she?
Reprieve came from an unlikely corner, when Mr. George Haddonfield and his recently acquired spouse filed out of the church, a small boy perched on Mr. Haddonfield’s hip.
“I want to get down,” the boy insisted. “I won’t get muddy, and I won’t catch an ague, and I won’t bother the earl’s coachman.”
“Hush, child,” Mr. Haddonfield soothed. “We’ll greet the vicar and be on our way, and perhaps you can hold the reins for a bit on the way home.”
That bribe would certainly have worked for Danny.
“Good morning,” Daniel said, addressing the child, a sturdy boy, probably about Danny’s age. “Was my sermon too long, young sir? You can be honest.” Danny had always given an honest assessment of his papa’s—his uncle’s—Sunday morning efforts.
“Not long enough, sir,” the boy said. “You’re supposed to tell us a story, but all you said was hello and that you’d be a good vicar. You also said thank you, but I’m not sure what for.”
“Digby!” The child’s mother was not pleased with her offspring’s honesty. “You’ll not get a turn at the reins if that’s how you greet Vicar.”
On the opposite side of the steps, Lady Kirsten was probably listening to every word as she retied the ribbons of her bonnet, undid them, and retied them again.
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