Chapter 5
Matthew hadn’t really slept.
The picnic disaster, on merit of having fallen on a Saturday, had given him precious little time to plan his response to the congregation. Mr. Green, in a true act of benevolence, had offered to give the sermon in his place, but Matthew had declined.
If his father had taught him anything, it was that he must face his flock when something had sent them into a scatter.
Though Matthew suspected his father had never been the something in question, personally.
He had spent most of the night pacing his room, scribbling thoughts onto a pile of parchment on the little rolltop desk in the corner, and attempting to drowse in mostly failed pockets of time that he spent in his bed.
He never even bothered to change into pajamas.
If Rosalind Murphy had to spend the night sleeping in her day clothes, then he would too. It would be his first act of husbandly solidarity, he thought. If she was still considering the offer after the effects of that murky tonic wore off.
When the sun began to peek over the hedges at the corner of the property, he splashed his face with water and pulled a fresh set of vestments from his wardrobe, muttering to himself in what he hoped was a properly encouraging tone of voice that it was just a Sunday like any other Sunday, and he would get through it.
Perhaps it was his muttering that prevented him from hearing the people gathering in his home belowstairs.
He ran his fingers through his curls, knowing they looked frizzy and unkempt, and not finding it within himself to care as he took the stairs down, already rehearsing what he was going to say to the Murphy siblings when he rounded the corner, expecting that they were likely still asleep and would be roused by his necessary preparations of his breakfast.
Instead, he found them not only awake, but in the company of several other people, all of whom were working together to help Rosalind finish the laces of a clean, new frock while she supported herself against the arm of his sofa.
“Good morning, parson,” said Abe Murphy cheerfully from his perch against the opposite wall, where he was pointedly not participating in dress wrangling. “Sleep well?”
“I …” Matthew said, his brows wrinkled as he turned back to the trio of women surrounding Miss Murphy. “Hello?”
“Yes, hello,” huffed Vix, dropping the cords of the dress so that Hannah could tie them off, and turning to him with an impatient little rise of her brows. “Christ, Matthew, do you not own a comb?”
He blinked several times, wondering if perhaps he had fallen asleep after all. All of them were dressed in fine clothes, including the wincing and lovely Miss Murphy, who was now easing herself back onto the sofa, favoring her good leg.
“We’ll get you a cushion to sit on in the pew,” Mae Casper assured her. “We can bring one of these, even.”
“Yes, that sounds wise,” Rosalind returned with a grateful smile.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Hannah said with a smile, turning to shine it upon Matthew. “I enjoyed the last service of yours I attended. Very different from synagogue. Do you recall? It was Jacob and Esau.”
“I …” he said again, only to have the door thrown open by another arrival of people, this time Abe’s wife and toddling child, flanked from behind by Thaddeus Beck. “What is happening?”
“We don’t have time to get your big, dusty book,” Vix said, pushing past him and heading toward the stairs. “You’ll have to announce the banns as though the ink is already in it and fill it out afterward. I’ll be right back.”
He stared after her, his mouth still open from the words he’d spoken before her announcement.
“We don’t have a set pew, of course,” Abe said, reaching down to pick up his daughter and setting her on his hip. “But we think Rosalind ought to be visible, to make the point.”
“Visible?” she repeated, blinking like an owl. “I don’t know. I haven’t curled my hair.”
“We’ll stuff it into the bonnet, sweeting,” said Mae, already moving to do exactly that. “We need to proceed with intent.”
“You’re all … coming?” he stammered, looking around and landing on Tod, whose glowering visage was somehow the safest in the room. “To the sermon?”
“Of course we are, you foolish fop of a man. Sit down,” said Vix from his rear, her claws coming into his shoulders and pushing him down into a chair from his kitchen that had appeared seemingly from thin air. “I am fixing your hair.”
“Don’t,” he said, but she was already smearing something tacky into it as she clicked her tongue.
“What will you say?” Tod asked, drawing a little closer, his brow heavy with concern. “Did you decide?”
“I … ow! Vix!”
“Shut up,” she suggested, and tugged again.
He frowned. “I have two homilies. I was up half the night coming up with them. One for if Miss Murphy decided to rescue me and one for … well, for my farewell, I suppose.”
“Do not fret, Mr. Everly,” Rosalind Murphy said softly, still tilted at an odd angle on his sofa. “I was never going to leave you to face it alone.”
He frowned at her, glowing like milk and honey in the sunlight. His heart clenched, bleeding at the edges in conflict for how this had come to pass, at what it meant.
“You are hurt,” he reminded her, clenching his jaw against another assault on his scalp. “You ought to be resting today.”
“It is not arduous,” she replied with a gentle little smile. “It is just sitting and listening. I daresay it will be easier than traveling back to my brother’s townhouse, even.”
“And you are … certain?” he asked, once Vix had huffed in moderate satisfaction and stalked away. He leaned forward, trying to speak only to Rosalind despite half the city of London being in the room with them. “You have truly considered what you are agreeing to?”
She blinked, her lashes pale and glowing against the morning glare. “I have always wanted to be married,” she said, in that overly earnest way of hers that had always stabbed him directly through the heart.
This was the first time that one of her little moments of honesty had been directed at him. It landed all the sharper for it.
“We barely know each other,” he said, ragged and helpless.
“Why are you trying to talk her out of it?” Vix demanded, crossing her arms. “Don’t be an idiot. Come on, we need to move into the sanctuary and get her cushioning set up before the parishioners arrive.”
Matthew narrowed his eyes at her. “Where is your husband?” he snapped. “Why don’t you go torment him?”
She paused and gave him a short, saccharine smile. “Sir Ambrose is across town,” she cooed, “bribing the congregation in Miss Murphy’s parish to read the banns for her today. You’re welcome.”
“Oh,” he said, staring at her. “I see.”
“Yes, I believe you do,” Vix answered. “Now, everyone, off we go.”
Abe handed his daughter off to his wife and hurried to Rosalind’s side, helping her to her feet and letting her lean against him as they all made for the front door.
“What happened to the statue, by the by?” Mae asked, bringing up the rear of their little procession. “It was not in the lawn when I arrived this morning.”
Matthew winced, glancing down at her. “It’s in the bridal dressing room in the church,” he said. “Though I faced it away from the vanity mirror, out of mercy.”
Mae smirked. “That lordling is going to want you to have it restored, you know. I hope you kept his particulars.”
“I did,” he said with a resigned little sigh. “I did.”
“Speaking of which,” Tod said, glancing back at them. “Reed insists that he did not sit for any sculptor in living memory. I think he is lying.”
“He is certainly lying,” Matthew agreed. “That monstrosity is the spit of him.”
“Or he just has a particular aesthetic to him, my love,” Hannah said playfully. “Does Mr. Reed look like an angel, or do the angels just look like Mr. Reed?”
“Hannah,” he said, in the tone of a man who knows his scolding will only delight the woman it is directed at.
And in true form, she giggled.
It took some time to get everyone situated into a section of pews that Matthew was confident would both be respectably visible and would not cause further unrest amongst his louder congregants.
They used two cushions in the corner of the pew for Rosalind, wedging the softness against her injured leg and allowing her to tilt at a bit of an angle to take her weight off it as much as possible.
“Oh, look at me,” she said with a frown. “I am crooked.”
“You are perfect,” he assured her, winning a blush and a shake of her head in denial. “Thank you for being here.”
It seemed only a blink of time before the rows were full and it was time to climb to the pulpit.
If he had hoped that Lord Keaton would abstain from attendance today, he was destined for disappointment.
The man and his equally disapproving family were seated in their placarded pew, watching him through narrow eyes as he took his position and cleared his throat, spreading his ink-stained papers out in front of him.
They weren’t the only ones wearing that expression, he noted. There was a marked chill in the sanctuary this morning, tempered only by what was obviously a sense of morbid curiosity about what might happen next.
“It is an unusual Sunday,” he began, to a murmur of agreement rippling across the pews.
“And as such, I will begin with an announcement to allay your curiosity and prevent distraction as we move into the true purpose of our gathering here today. We have only one marriage announcement for the banns this week: my own. I, the Reverend Matthew Everly, am announcing my intent to wed Miss Rosalind Murphy. Further details to come.”
There was a buzz of reaction, with Keaton himself in the front looking somehow both smug and irritated by this turn of events. He turned his head to behold Rosalind in her pew and smirked before moving his attention back to Matthew.
That alone was enough to send a wisp of anxiety through him as he transitioned to the remainder of the announcements prior to the sermon.
Something else was awaiting them, he imagined. Such smugness rarely appeared unless a move had already been made.
He swallowed and attempted to clear his thoughts, shuffling through his papers and taking time to breathe as the choir performed their opening hymn.
All the while, Miss Murphy sat in the pews with her hands clasped in her lap and watched him with an encouraging, wide-eyed expression of trust.
It was enough to kill most men, he thought. It was enough to kill him.
“Some burdens are chosen,” he began, when it was his time to speak again, “and some are ordained by God Himself. Today, we look to Seth, third son of Adam and Eve, whose burden befell him on the actions of his brothers, but sat on his shoulders all the same. Seth did not sin. Cain did. Seth did not fall. Abel did. But Seth answered for both the sin and the fall with every breath of his life.”
He did not look at Lord Keaton, but from the shuffling motion in that section of his pew, he gathered that his choice of topic was not appreciated.
“We must sometimes remember that fate is the will of Heaven, and though we do not choose the situations we may find ourselves in, we are all of us burdened with the choice of how we navigate their aftermath,” he continued, and pressed his hands into the podium so they would not shake.
“So let us return to the gates of Eden this morning, and the birth of Seth, and in so doing, let us all consider how we might have lived, had we been born in his place.”
His shoulders eased a little as he spoke.
And before he knew it, the bell was tolling, and he had gotten through the entire thing perfectly intact.
He did not know if he would survive this scandal with his parish or his position or even his ordination, but it seemed he would survive this Sunday, at the very least.