Chapter 2
“Ithink he likes you, you know,” said Mae Casper over the rim of her glass of punch. “The vicar.”
Rosalind blinked, pushing a spoon into her little cup of custard, and shook her head. “Well, that’s nice,” she said evenly, glancing over her shoulder at Matthew Everly for a moment and then back at Mae. “I like him perfectly well too. He seems a very good sort.”
“No, sweeting, I mean he fancies you,” Mae said, pressing the rim of the cup into her bottom lip. “You know that’s what I meant.”
Rosalind frowned around the spoon as she tasted the custard, lingering there for a moment before she pulled it free of her mouth. “Why do you think that?”
“Call it a hunch,” Mae answered. “I can always tell.”
“We never know what a man actually thinks,” Rosalind replied with a fluttering little sigh. “I’ve made that mistake before and I don’t care to again.”
“Well, that much is true,” Mae allowed with a shrug. “I’m not professing the whole of his intent, Rosalind, I’m just saying he’s clearly taken a shine to you. Remember Vix’s ball last year? That dance?”
“I remember perfectly well,” Rosalind snipped, and took another bite of the custard, a bit too quickly this time, then had to take several extra steps to swallow it properly without dissolving into a coughing fit.
“Shall I get you something to drink?” Mae asked, dimpling as she watched. “Something to help get all that sweetness down?”
Rosalind gave her a desperate, teary-eyed whimper which sent her off to do just that, chuckling under her breath.
By the time she returned, the guests were all being ushered into the central garden, near the fig tree in the center, where a sculpture had been staged under a cover for a grand reveal.
She had to shuffle along, forcing down sips of punch alongside Mae, dabbing at the tears in the corners of her eyes as the crowd murmured in excitement about the unveiling.
Vix and Hannah appeared alongside them as they took their places near the benches, the former looking entirely unimpressed by the entire affair.
“It looks terrible there,” she said, crossing her arms. “Perhaps Matthew can move it after the picnic to somewhere a little more appropriate.”
“Like the nave?” Hannah asked, her lips twisting with mischief.
“Like the basement,” Vix said flatly. “Or the canal.”
Mae laughed, stifling it under her hand as Rosalind frowned at them.
“Someone is going to hear you,” she warned. “Perhaps even the artist himself. How hurt he might be, to hear such things before we even see the work.”
Vix gave her a weary sidelong glance, but Hannah immediately sobered and nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “We are making fun of the patron. The artist has done nothing wrong.”
Rosalind pressed her lips together and nodded, drawing in a little breath of air through her nose in vindication. She sipped a bit more punch and looked once more over the crowd, seeking distraction from the custard still lodged in her throat.
“Oh,” she said in realization. “Mr. Reed did come after all. He’s just there, Mae.”
“Yes, Mae,” Vix repeated, her lips curling up in a wicked little grin. “Do look at Mr. Reed.”
“I’m sure I don’t care at all,” Mae replied, lifting her chin.
“Oh,” said Rosalind quietly, blushing at having embarrassed her friend. “I’m sorry. It’s only that you asked.”
Mae tossed her a frown as Vix’s grin grew wider.
“Goodness, but he’s just tearing into that turkey leg with no plate at all,” Hannah said, looking impressed. “Look at Thaddeus attempting to coax him into a napkin at the very least.”
“An old dance,” Vix said with a titter as they all observed Hannah’s tall and burly husband flapping a cloth towelette impatiently at the lithe and golden Roland Reed. “And a futile one.”
Beside them, the reverend was watching the exchange with an affectionate look of resignation. Rosalind watched him for a moment, wondering at what Mae had said, but he must have felt it on the air, for his head turned toward them, startling her so much that she almost dropped her punch.
“Gracious,” she said under her breath. “It is so warm today.”
A finely dressed man in a glinting brocade waistcoat strode up to the tree, patting the flat of his hand on the shrouded sculpture as if testing it for stability.
Worryingly, it teetered a little, though it did not seem to disturb the man at all.
He had already shifted his focus to the crowd, gesturing for Mr. Everly to come and join him by the tree as he cleared his throat three times in a row in an effort to silence the general rumble of the assembled crowd.
Rosalind glanced down at the plinth, which looked as though it had been shimmied into the soft soil near the tree, only just enough to get it to stand flat. When the man touched the sculpture again, she could see it tremble, flecks of dark dirt coming up around the white base in the process.
“Hannah,” she said quietly, nudging her and trying to point. “The plinth.”
“Hm?” said Hannah.
“Ladies and gentlemen of Holy Comfort Parish!” the brocaded man boomed, so suddenly and loudly that both Hannah and Rosalind startled. “Welcome to the centerpiece of today’s little picnic! We cannot thank you all enough for coming.”
Matthew gave a tight smile, as though he firmly disagreed with everything being said but was too polite to say so.
“Before we progress with the unveiling,” he said, his voice mild but clear enough that it stopped the bombastic man in brocade from continuing, “I do wish to acknowledge and thank those who are central to our cause. Please take a moment to applaud for the Friends of our local meeting house and Rabbi Hirsch’s synagogue for their early and continuing efforts in healing and tending to the flock of Clerkenwell. ”
He gestured toward the back of the crowd as everyone broke into a spattering of polite applause, turning to see the rabbi and a gathering of simply dressed Quakers nodding and smiling in appreciation of the acknowledgement.
“Our central and tireless benefactress, Mrs. Hannah Beck; our talented healer, Miss Mae Casper; and our teaching mistress, Miss Rosalind Murphy also deserve a moment of appreciation,” he continued, smiling warmly at where the ladies were gathered.
“As well as Lady Victoria Aster, who has joined our efforts for raising funds from around the nation using the power of firmly written letters and well-appointed charity events.”
Rosalind felt herself blushing under the scrutiny of the crowd and took a tiny step backward toward her friends.
The man in brocade was frowning at them, his silver brows drawn tightly together, but it was another gentleman, a young man from the local newspaper with glinting auburn hair, who spoke before the reverend could continue his speech.
“You cannot be the Dr. Casper on the clinic registry,” he said, raising his pencil up so that everyone would know it was he who spoke.
“Pardon, madam, but unless I am very much mistaken about the standards of the Royal College of Physicians, it would have had to have made some rather large changes for you to have become a doctor.”
There was a ripple of amusement through the crowd as Mae turned toward the man, batting her lashes at him dangerously as she assumed a pleasant smile.
“That would be my grandfather, in fact,” she called back. “I am simply his hands, while he, of course, is the brilliant mind. You will find he meets every standard of the RCP, from his aristocratic lineage to his lily-white complexion, should it concern you justly, Mr. Morning Chronicle.”
There was a pause during which the crowd seemed uncertain whether to laugh or gasp.
The journalist, however, was grinning as he jotted down Mae’s answer in his little ink-spattered book. “And you, Miss Murphy?” he said, looking up again so suddenly that Rosalind nearly toppled backward. “I did not know the clinic doubled as a school. Do you teach children?”
“No,” she answered, too softly for him to hear her. She shook her head and tried again. “No. I teach the injured who cannot return to work.”
The man blinked, his pencil still poised over the paper.
“She teaches manners to the cripples,” the brocaded man on the stage provided impatiently. “It isn’t complex, lad. They can’t haul barrels anymore, so Miss Manners here teaches them how to behave in an office.”
“Oh, that isn’t—” Rosalind attempted.
“We’re here to unveil this sculpture,” he continued. “A gift from the Keaton family to the Holy Comfort Parish in honor of this worthy cause!”
“Oh,” said Rosalind, but no one heard her.
The man whipped the sheets back with a flourish, seemingly oblivious to the sway of the heavy marble as he did so. “Behold,” he cried, “a rendering of Seth, the third son of Eden, father of us all.”
The sculpture was a fine thing indeed, a delicately rendered depiction of an angelically beautiful young man with hair that curled to his shoulders and otherworldly sharp features that gazed off into the distance as he held a sheath of wheat to his naked chest. The only modesty offered to him in his nudity was a fig leaf, placed where fig leaves often are.
Hannah immediately gasped, and Vix let out a snide little chuckle.
“Gracious,” Rosalind breathed, looking back at her friends. “It looks just like Mr. Reed.”
Mae looked a little bit sick about it.
“Christ,” muttered a voice to their rear that sounded very much like Mr. Beck.
Rosalind turned her attention back to the stage to see the vicar was covering his own mouth, staring at the marble with his green eyes gone wide with disbelief.
“I didn’t,” hissed another voice in the crowd, Mr. Reed’s. “It isn’t.”
“The hell it isn’t,” Vix mumbled to Hannah, making her chortle and shush the other woman.
It was clearly not the reaction Lord Keaton had been anticipating, and his face was darkening by the moment as he scanned the crowd. “This is a gift of value and artistic genius,” he added, for good measure, turning and slapping a hand over Seth’s muscled marble thigh.
It was the last bit of upset that the statue could take.
It began to tip to the left as the plinth slid with an aching grind in the soil to the right.
“Oh, no!” Rosalind cried, her body lurching forward before she could think otherwise. The punch she had been holding spilled down the front of her pink dress as she pushed Lord Keaton out of the way, her skirt tangling as the plinth came down on the hem of her gown.
She went toppling over, her hands scrambling out for purchase and finding only marble to grip onto as she fell hard to the ground, her leg landing painfully on the flat, sharp corner of the pedestal.
The statue hit the dirt with a thud and a delicate clicking sound as something broke off directly into Rosalind’s hand.
She did not know if there was a moment of shock, for it seemed to her through the pain in her leg that everything exploded into movement immediately, with Mae climbing over the toppled display and rolling her off it and onto her back in the grass with shocking strength before she’d even had time to try to draw a breath.
“Broke it!” Lord Keaton was screeching. “She broke the sculpture!”
Rosalind blinked, her vision bleary through the pain, and looked down at her hand, at the gentle, ruffled edges of the smooth stone in her palm.
“She’s gelded him,” another voice said with a delighted squeal. “Gelded Seth!”
“Mr. Everly!” Mae snapped over the chaos. “I need to get her inside. She’s bleeding through her skirt.”
Rosalind blinked again, feeling an odd little curl of nausea well up in her chest. She wondered if she was about to vomit on the statue for good measure.
“It’s only punch,” she said, but again, no one heard her.
Mercifully, she was gathered up in a pair of strong arms before that could happen, and heard the deep, reassuring rumble of Thaddeus Beck’s voice asking where to take her as she let herself drift into the dizzy fugue that offered an alternative to experiencing the burning discomfort in her thigh.
And then she supposed she must have fainted.