Chapter 1
Two Years Later
The Reverend Matthew Everly wanted to punch a philanthropist.
Specifically, he wanted to punch the one currently bustling about his parish garden, shouting at workers as they installed a marble statue beneath the fig tree.
It was not a statue Matthew particularly wanted in his garden, but such was the size of the donation that went along with it that he could not say no.
They couldn’t see the thing properly yet, of course.
Lord Keaton had insisted on keeping it under several fluttering white sheets for the duration of this choreography, revealing only a few scandalous peeks of youthful masculine ankles rendered in Italian marble as they tried to work the wretched thing onto its plinth.
“It won’t be so bad,” Vix Aster said from his left, patting his shoulder with a dry, businesslike briskness that communicated her utter lack of patience for his suffering. “You won’t have to look at it if you just face in the other direction.”
“Maybe it will be a nice statue,” Hannah Beck put in from the right. “Maybe it will be lovely.”
“How attractive it is is hardly the point,” he muttered, running a hand through his mop of brown curls with a frown. “This whole thing is putting a bad taste in my mouth.”
“Yes, well,” Vix said to him, tilting her dark head to the side, “go wash it out with some punch and get yourself together. We all must do distasteful things for the sake of good works.”
He grimaced but looked over his shoulder anyway at the tables that were being set up alongside the walls of the church. “Is there punch? What sort?”
“The fruit sort,” Vix said with a raise of her brows. “What else?”
He sighed. “I know it’s too late to bring this up again, but I am terribly worried that Lord Keaton is going to be less than gracious to our Quaker and Jewish friends today. I know the clinic needs the money, ladies, but this might be too high a cost.”
Hannah smirked, hiccuping out a little titter of amusement. “I can only speak for my Jewish brethren, of course,” she said, tucking a strand of copper-red hair behind her ear, “but I assure you that we are well accustomed to whatever manner of pompous superiority he has in store.”
“And the Quakers excel in polite silence,” Vix reminded him. “It’s delightfully infuriating.”
Matthew nodded but could not stop the queasy curl of anxiety that bedeviled him anyway. Keaton was one of his most powerful congregants, unfailingly self-important, and extremely preoccupied with ideas of Anglican superiority and the great English bloodline and all that nonsense.
He still hadn’t warned the fool that the key healer of the clinic they were raising funds for today was a Black woman. An Anglican Black woman, but all the same, not a man or even a dainty English rose to soothe Keaton’s delicate sensibilities.
“Matthew,” Vix snapped. “Stop it.”
He groaned and dropped his head in his hands. “Why did my mother move to Croydon?” he demanded, rounding on Vix. “Why would she do that? She was the one who handled people like Keaton.”
Vix stuck her bottom lip out in a mocking pout. “Missing your mummy, Matthew?” she intoned. “I miss mine too. But here we are anyway. You are a grown man. Act like one.”
He gave an affronted huff at his childhood friend. “You try running a church, Vix,” he snapped back. “You try it.”
“No, thank you,” she said with a sniff. “I’ve business to attend.”
He watched her flounce off toward the tables with an ever-deepening frown. He felt Hannah pat him sympathetically on the arm as she, too, walked around him in search of her husband, Vix’s brother, Tod, leaving him alone on the green while that bloody statue teetered on its pedestal under his tree.
“There, now that looks very fine!” Lord Keaton boomed, arriving in a flurry of brocade and oversized top hat to stand akimbo next to Matthew and admire his own work. “I remember when this tree was just a sapling, you know! Ho, ho, your father planted it when you were born, lad! Imagine that!”
“Yes,” said Matthew quietly. “I know.”
“The sculpture is very fine work, very fine indeed,” Keaton continued, barreling right over him.
“I’ve been trying to get my artist’s work in his parish for many years, lad, many years, as you know.
But the time is finally right. I only wish I’d commissioned a pair so the other could go to this clinic of yours. Where did you say it was? St. Giles?”
“Clerkenwell,” Matthew answered, forcing his face into a slack, polite neutrality. “It is in Clerkenwell. On the site of a tenement collapse from two years ago.”
“Oh, terrible thing, terrible,” bumbled Keaton. “But now it’s a place of recovery. Very Christian, isn’t it?”
“It was actually started by the rabbi,” Matthew returned, raising his brows. “Rabbi Hirsch. Have you met him yet? He’s just there, with Sir Ambrose by the gate.”
“A rabbi?” Keaton returned, wrinkling his nose as he turned to observe. “No, I haven’t had the pleasure.”
“You should,” said Matthew firmly. “He is an exemplary man.”
Keaton’s face flickered with discomfort.
“I did know about the synagogue starting the endeavor, of course,” he said, his bluster settling into something more firm.
“And the Quakers too. It is why I chose Seth for the subject of the sculpture. Third child of Adam and Eve, much like we, the Church of England, were third to join this charitable cause, but the most important of all. Seth begat the whole of humanity after his brothers failed to thrive.”
“Failed to thrive,” Matthew repeated, blinking at the other man. “You mean after one beat the other to death with a rock?”
He did not, to his credit, look at all of the very heavy and palm-sized rocks conveniently located within reach as he said this.
“Just so,” said Keaton with a narrow little smile. “It’s a fine work. You will be pleased. Ah, there is my family. I must go greet them.”
Matthew stood very still and remembered to breathe. The summer air was warm and sweet. The figs weren’t ready to pick yet, but they were already heavy and fragrant, dangling down from the branches of his father’s tree, promising a bounty later in the year.
The voices of the picnic attendees arriving, greeting one another, raised in joy and anticipation, drew his head around to the gate and reminded him that while standing there and seething might feel correct, it would not serve them today.
It would not benefit the sick and suffering who needed that clinic to remain funded and healthy in the year to come.
He straightened his shoulders and walked toward the crowd, making a point to greet the rabbi first and shake his hand.
“Look at all this food!” the rabbi said immediately, grinning widely. “I suppose it would look bad if I loaded my plate up all the way to my chin?”
Matthew laughed, some of the marble that had formed around his mood crackling away. “Perhaps I can distract the crowd long enough for you to do it for the both of us.”
“Ah, a good idea,” the rabbi said, tapping his bearded chin and standing on his toes to consider a platter of cream tarts. “The strawberries are very good this year.”
“Dessert first?” Matthew teased. “Should we begin the day with crimes?”
The rabbi chuckled. “My wife would pinch my ears if she were here to see my gluttony. But yes, dessert first, when you can get away with it.”
He was smiling again by the time he started shaking the hands of the new arrivals.
He kept an eye on the farthest point of the sidewalk, anticipating a particular guest, though she had not yet appeared. He knew it was foolish, of course, but even a vicar was entitled to going a bit sweet on a girl from time to time, as far as he was concerned.
When she did turn the corner, accompanied by the clinic healer, the two of them with their arms linked and giggling as they came down the sidewalk, he felt his heart give a little lurch and he immediately stood a little straighter.
Vix, who was greeting guests on the other side of the fence, immediately rolled her eyes and shook her head.
He ignored her.
He tried to ignore her, anyhow.
Rosalind Murphy was a vision in pink, her sandy-blond hair tied up in ribbons under her bonnet and her cheeks tinged like berries from the summer heat. She contrasted prettily with her friend the healer, Mae Casper, whose red-brown skin glowed against a daffodil-yellow frock.
They looked like a pair of wildflowers in a field, he thought.
He had asked her to dance once, last summer. And she had agreed. Their paths crossed occasionally, on merit of having many of the same friends.
He wondered how purple Lord Keaton would turn if he knew his parish vicar had eyes for a Presbyterian girl.
Quite purple, he imagined, which was why he hadn’t pursued the matter any further. He was already lucky to be tolerated by the more staunch and conservative members of his congregation, and they likely only gritted their teeth and did so out of fondness for the memory of Matthew’s father.
His mother taking off to rest on her laurels in Croydon really had not helped matters.
He put a smile on his face to greet Mae Casper and Rosalind Murphy as they reached the gate.
“Mr. Everly!” Mae Casper cried first, breaking into a dimpled grin as she reached for his hands. “We’re sorry to be running a little behind. There was a bit of a scramble getting out of the clinic this morning.”
“Dr. Casper was trying to set a bone,” Rosalind said, blinking her wide hazel eyes as she confided this shocking news. “With his hands as they are!”
Mae sighed and shook her head at the mention of her arthritic grandfather. “He is incorrigible, I’m afraid. We threatened to bring him along, but the prospect of a church picnic was more terrifying to him than any other punishment, so he put the arm down and promised to behave.”
“And you believed his promise?” Matthew asked, sharing in Rosalind’s polite shock.
“Of course not,” said Mae. “I’ve left our midwife there to keep an eye on him. That’s why we were late. Had to wait for her to arrive.”
“Ah, the midwife,” said Matthew, nodding. “Sally, is it?”
“Sally,” confirmed Mae, tilting her head to the side. “She gives us the days she doesn’t spend at her brothel, and we thank her kindly for the gift.”
“I recall,” said Matthew with a smile. “She was there when your amputee patient bit a chunk out of our friend Mr. Reed. Truly one of my favorite stories of our journey of healing together.”
Rosalind covered a shocked little titter, cutting her eyes to Mae, who was also smirking.
“Where is Mr. Reed today?” Mae asked, glancing around. “Did he decide the sunlight is too damaging to his mysterious nature?”
Matthew snorted before he could stop himself. “Doubtless,” he said, recovering poorly with a shift of his feet. “He might be about a bit later. He never could resist a potluck when we were young.”
“I wanted to bring a pie,” said Rosalind, breathy and apologetic. “There was no time, I’m afraid. And I’m not really that good a baker. But mostly there was no time.”
“Think nothing of it,” he said to her, giving her half a smile because the other half was melting in the lurch of his stomach. “Besides, even a middling pie is still a treat. You can always bring one next year.”
“That is true,” she said, brightening. “I like a lemon curd.”
And then she was gone, off with Mae to find Hannah and the others as the gathering grew.
He only watched for a moment before returning to his duties, pressing palms and exclaiming over how much babies had grown and asking after this family’s new business or that one’s upcoming wedding.
It wasn’t tedious or exhausting, he reminded himself. It was good work. It was good work that he was good at.
And from this angle, he couldn’t see the damned statue at all.
So that made the work all the more worthwhile.