Chapter 3
Later, it would disturb Matthew to recall how long it took for him to spur into motion. It seemed to him that he stood there, staring, for a very, very long time.
He heard Miss Casper call his name. He saw Tod shove the plinth off Rosalind’s dress and scoop her into his arms. But it wasn’t until Lord Keaton tore a real fig leaf off the tree above them and draped it mournfully over the toppled statue’s crotch that Matthew returned to his body.
“What is wrong with you?” he exclaimed, crashing back into himself with a sudden violence. “What in the name of God is wrong with you? She just saved you from being crushed!”
He didn’t wait for Keaton to answer, shouldering past him to lead Tod and the others toward the parish house, which was just beyond the garden gate.
He was shaking with such acute intensity that he wasn’t sure it was visible, but rather just a gentle vibration spread throughout the whole of his body as Rosalind’s slack form and red-stained pink dress draped over Tod’s arms just beside him.
“Is she …?” he asked, holding the gate open for the others.
“Just having a wee nap,” Mae said reassuringly, patting his arm as she passed him. “Take us somewhere with a bed or at least a large sofa.”
He nodded, fishing the key out of the pocket of his cassock and opening the door to the townhouse that adjoined his church.
He used a rock to prop it into place and ushered everyone inside, gesturing to the right of the little foyer to a sitting room with a large sofa that often doubled as a bed when he hosted the odd overnight guest.
“Good,” said Mae, nodding to Tod. “Good. Set her down on her side, gently. I need to look at her leg. Have you ice, Mr. Everly?”
“Ice,” he repeated. “Not in the house, no, but there was some brought for the picnic.”
“Hannah, please retrieve some,” she ordered, sending the other woman spinning out of the room immediately.
“Mr. Beck, perhaps you could go retrieve Miss Murphy’s brother?
He is likely at his townhouse office. If he isn’t there, her sister-in-law will do.
She will likely need some assistance getting home. ”
“Of course,” said Tod, giving Mae’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze before he, too, departed, leaving only Vix and Matthew in the room.
“Oh!” Matthew gasped as Mae began rucking up Rosalind’s skirt, revealing the line of her ivory stockings and the pale skin above her knees. “Oh, I should …”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mae said without looking up as she peeled the muslin petticoat off the rapidly blossoming bruise and the series of scrapes and cuts that crisscrossed over it, just below the swell of Rosalind’s bottom. “I need clean, warm water and soap. Can you see to that?”
Matthew was staring. He was staring and he hated himself for it.
“Matthew!” Vix snapped. “Soap. Water. Go!”
“Yes. Yes, I …” He blinked, shoving his fingers into his hairline and focusing on the carpet under his shoes for a moment to remember his bearings. “Yes, I’ll be right back.”
And he fled.
From the kitchen, he could hear their voices murmuring, and the soft soprano with a musical lilt joining the chorus as Rosalind apparently regained consciousness.
He only had to heat the water for a few minutes, blinking into the steam to dispel persistent images of her skirt being pushed up as his mind scrambled for coherence in the aftermath of this disaster.
He gathered up fresh linens from the closet and transported the whole kettle and a sauce pan into the sitting room, piled up on top of the towels in his arms.
Vix was gone when he got back, and Mae looked up in gratitude as he turned the corner.
“I haven’t the soap yet,” he said, setting down the kit of items at her feet. “I have only harsh lye for dishes and clothes down here, but I have some gentler stuff upstairs. Would that be better?”
“It would sting less,” Mae said, which was enough to send him out in search of it.
When he returned the second time, Rosalind’s face was turned to the side on the sofa’s armrest and she was smiling at Mae in a dazed, bleary sort of way as Mae cleaned the wound and Hannah hovered nearby with ice wrapped in a thin linen napkin.
“Vix has gone to manage the chaos,” Mae was saying. “It will be fine. Everything will be fine.”
“Oh, hello, Reverend,” she said, glancing up at him, seemingly oblivious to her exposed bottom half. “I’m so sorry for the trouble.”
She extended her hand toward him, a glinting, smooth piece of white marble clasped inside it, and in instinct he came forward to accept the offering, even though part of him knew it was the poor statue’s fig leaf.
She blinked, realizing as it transferred into his hand what she had been holding.
“Oh,” she said in the soft octave of mortification. “Oh, dear.”
“Don’t worry,” said Mae briskly, motioning to Hannah for the cloth-covered ice. “He wasn’t hiding anything underneath it.”
“I need to go assist Vix,” Hannah said, turning over her shoulder to look toward the door. “It is … I need to be out there.”
“Go,” said Mae with a brisk nod.
However, as soon as she was gone, Mae made a groaning little sound of frustration, and glanced back in the same direction as though she wished to retract her permission. “Damn,” she said, frowning. “I forgot to ask for bandages. I don’t suppose you have any, Mr. Everly?”
“Bandages?” he repeated stupidly. “No, I … no.”
Mae nodded, huffing a breath out through her nose. “I know a woman in the market who will give me some on credit,” she said, “but I have to go myself. It’s only a block away. I won’t be a tick.”
“You can’t go,” he protested as she was already pushing herself to her feet, her hand still firmly pressing the ice cloth to Rosalind’s thigh.
“I can and I’m about to,” Mae corrected. “Come here. Hold this in place until I get back. I will only be a few minutes. The ice is going to save her weeks of healing time by stopping the swelling before it can start. It’s important, Mr. Everly.”
“Miss Casper,” he said, pleading, but she wasn’t having it.
She took his wrist and placed his hand on the pack of ice until he gripped the cloth to keep it closed. “I will only be a few minutes,” she repeated. “Thank you.”
And then she was gone.
She was gone and Matthew Everly was left standing over a half-naked woman, holding a block of ice to her nearly bare backside, staring up at the ceiling as though God might appear and explain Himself for this predicament.
Rosalind herself was quiet, perhaps sharing in the quiet horror of their current situation from her place, face down on the couch.
Matthew cleared his throat and put the marble fig leaf in his pocket, next to the vicarage key.
It will save her weeks of healing time, he reminded himself. Weeks! He was preventing this sweet, earnest, kind creature from days upon days of unnecessary pain with his discomfort, and he must simply make peace with that.
“... Because I am owed an apology!” came a booming, outraged voice from outside. “I have never been treated so poorly, and for all my generosity!”
“Lord Keaton, if you would only wait in the vicarage office,” replied the distinct, frantic tone of Mr. Green, the parish curate. “It is where such business is to be conducted.”
“I won’t be put off!” Keaton replied. “I have served this parish too long. Look, the door is open.”
Matthew reflected, for just a moment, just that one horrifying moment, that perhaps the way he dealt with horror was and always had been to freeze helplessly in place.
For that is what he did, his bones gone to ice and his feet turned to anchors as Lord Keaton, his wife, his daughter, and the curate all burst into the sitting room and took in the scene laid out before them: their vicar icing an unmarried woman’s bare bottom.
“What is the meaning of this?!” Lord Keaton boomed, staring wide-eyed at Rosalind Murphy’s exposed thighs. “What is happening here under this roof?!”
Matthew moved as quickly as he could to shield her body with his own, but even as he did so, he knew it was far too late.
“Did you conspire with this girl to humiliate me?” Keaton demanded. “And then come back here to fornicate?”
“Papa!” his daughter gasped, slapping a hand over her mouth.
“Out!” Matthew managed. “All of you, get out of my house at once!”
“I beg your pardon, but you only live in this house at the pleasure of the congregation!” Keaton blustered, coming closer. “This is not behavior becoming of a man of God, Mr. Everly! This poor girl is utterly ruined.”
“Oh,” said Rosalind Murphy in a soft, humiliated squeak.
“I’ll have you removed for this,” Keaton continued, puffing his chest up in that brocade as he turned to usher his wife and daughter back out toward the lawn. “We cannot have a lecher in the pulpit, a man who ruins innocent young girls. We cannot stand for it! This cannot stand!”
Mr. Green stood helplessly between the Keaton family and Matthew as they retreated, the voice insisting that such things could not stand echoing in lessening degrees of volume as they drew farther away.
Matthew watched helplessly, his hand still anchored on the pack of ice held to Miss Murphy’s thigh, as the story was likely being ignited and spread throughout his parish garden.
Mr. Green gave an apologetic shrug, grimacing. “I tried to stop him,” he said. “I did try.”
“Yes, I know,” Matthew said impatiently. “Will you please go out there and try to mitigate the damage he’s doing? Please?”
Mr. Green pressed his lips together but went, shuffling out as though it were the last thing on Earth that he wished to participate in.
Matthew sighed, squeezing his eyes together. The curate had never been a particular champion of Matthew’s elevation to vicar, especially in light of being ten years Matthew’s senior and having a much longer tenure in the parish itself.
If not for the legacy of his father, Matthew certainly would not have taken the post from under Mr. Green’s seniority, and they both knew it. He had never been hostile or unkind about it, but they both knew it was unfair. It simmered between their every interaction.
And he’d just sent him out there to defend his honor, when for all Mr. Green knew, the scene in the parish house sitting room was exactly what it looked like.
He stared toward the open door and waited, still as that damned toppled statue outside, for Mae Casper’s return. His stomach churned. His chest ached. His throat felt as though it would never be fully open again.
But he was still. He did not move.
All he could do was wait.