Chapter 27
The article ran on Thursday morning.
Miss Manners Speaks: Sanctuary, Statues, and Schooling in a Time of Scandal was the headline. The rest had been the result of Ezra’s time spent both with Rosalind and at the clinic over the past several weeks.
By the afternoon, the church was already a bustle of activity, and Rosalind would find out later that the same was true of the clinic in Clerkenwell.
Vix and Mae were handling the clinic, while Hannah and her husband had come directly to the church as soon as her copy of the Chronicle had landed on her doorstep, already anticipating that they would need aid.
What Does It Mean to Love Thy Neighbor? a subheading read, going into the mechanics of multiple faiths and corners of London society coming together to build a house of healing and the ongoing difficulties of funding and staffing.
Publicity and Parishioners, another declared, The Silver Lining of London’s Appetite for Gossip.
The entire affair spanned two full pages altogether.
It had rerun all of the illustrations from the original series of gossip columns, including Miss Manners Takes a Fig, Miss Manners Pecks Her Parson, and the one Rosalind hadn’t seen until that particular day of a huge crowd of people discovering Matthew with his hand up her skirt, which had read: Healing or Handling? A Vicar Knows Best!
Ezra had reiterated so many times that he was not responsible for that particular column or the artwork that had gone with it that Rosalind had finally been forced to tell him that she knew it was Lord Keaton who had been responsible, and of his friendship with Ezra’s Editor-in-Chief.
“It is why he was smirking at us so the morning after the incident,” Matthew had realized when she said it. “I had been wondering what he was up to.”
“Well, it’s done now,” she’d said with a sigh.
In any event, the revelation had led to a bit of a crisis for the lad, which was why she hadn’t told him in the first place, and while they were grateful for his help at the clinic, that work was not paying for his flat or his supper, so he would eventually have to return to the Chronicle, as unsavory a prospect as that be.
“The only person we pay is Mae,” Hannah Beck had told him apologetically when this conversation had unfolded, the morning after the paper had gone to print.
“She is the central force of the operation, and even she can only draw funds sporadically. Otherwise, we’d be happy to hire you on in a greater capacity. ”
“It is no matter,” he’d said with a set in his jaw. “I’ll be staying on anyway.”
“Yes,” said Hannah with a little smile. “That is how everyone feels after a day or two there. I’m still surprised that my sister goes back day after day, when she could be in teahouses and salons or otherwise just lounging about, reading her books.”
“Your sister?” Ezra asked, confused. “Not Sally?”
Hannah had choked on a laugh at the reference to the middle-aged brothel madam who served as the clinic midwife and shaken her head. “No. Dinah is my sister.”
“Oh,” said Ezra, coloring. “Dinah.”
“Yes,” said Hannah, noting his heightened color. “She feels the same way about you, I’m afraid. Though I hear your sniping is quite the theater for the sick children.”
At that, Thaddeus Beck had chuckled and ushered them back onto the topic at hand.
“Your curate is handling the information-seekers with aplomb,” he said, nodding toward the garden, where Mr. Green appeared to be hosting some sort of symposium brunch with a series of fascinated students under a tree.
“Maybe you were wrong about his capacity for having his own vicarage.”
“I was,” said Matthew immediately, watching as well. “I certainly was. One night with Mrs. Murphy’s circle of intellectuals, and he’s ready to command a full university.”
“But they don’t want Mr. Green,” Hannah said wryly, tilting her head as her eyes shifted to Rosalind. “They want Miss Manners.”
Rosalind winced. “I know. I’ll go out in a bit. Just let me gather up the gall first.”
Matthew squeezed her hand. “It won’t be any different to moving about the parish before and after services,” he assured her.
In the end, he was both right and a little bit wrong.
It was very different, but certainly not worse.
Rosalind felt the way a soprano must after delivering a grand aria, though of course many of the questions that complete strangers asked her, out in the garden of her own home, were a sight more personal than the average diva likely had to field from fan to fan.
She ensured that at the end of every encounter, she invited the person she was talking to and anyone else they might think interested to visit on Sunday and meet the bishop, and to express great interest in their works at the parish, even if they were not themselves Anglican, or in the case of the intellectuals, people of faith at all.
Charity, she had decided, need not the direct word of God to command it, only feeling for one’s fellow man.
“It is part of our great mission, after all,” she had said more times than she could count. “To extend the arms of good works beyond the constraints of denomination.”
A great many questions had been about her marriage, which Ezra had painted as a grand romance that defied the odds of its inauspicious beginnings. And several more had been about the statue itself, which was still secluded in the basement.
“You may see it if you return on Sunday,” she had assured them, as further motivation to draw in a large crowd. “It will be on display on Sunday.”
Which led them to the next portion of their plan.
On Saturday evening, as final preparations were being made, the Beck siblings and their spouses had joined the Everlys at the parish house for dinner and a light bit of scheming, with Vix largely orchestrating the whats and hows of receiving the bishop in the morning.
“I’ve met him, of course,” Matthew had told them all. “A couple of times. He is not very forthcoming or chatty.”
“Not chatty?” Ambrose Aster had replied with a look of affront. “Then how on earth did he climb the ladder? I bet he is chatty with the right people.”
Hannah had sighed. “That is probably true.”
“The point is,” Thaddeus Beck had cut in with a frown, “that that damn statue of Reed has become a symbol of this entire mess.”
“Of Seth,” Rosalind corrected softly, making them all turn to shine their skepticism on her directly.
“He does still insist it isn’t him,” Thaddeus Beck said with a roll of his dark eyes. “As though that face is a common one in every crowd.”
“He is a liar,” Vix tutted, grinning. “Angelic-faced as he may be.”
“Regardless, I don’t want it in my parish for the rest of my life,” Matthew told them all with a great, heaving sigh. “Which is why I’ve decided …”
“Oh, God,” said Mr. Beck as Matthew fished around in his pocket and withdrew something small and glinting in silver.
Rosalind watched with curious fascination as he moved his empty dinner plate to the side and placed in the center of the table a tiny, shining thimble.
Vix immediately frowned. “Teddy will do it.”
“The devil I will,” Beck boomed, rounding on his sister. “We don’t even know what he’s asking yet.”
Hannah cleared her throat. “Would someone care to explain?”
“No,” said her husband.
“Of course,” said her sister-in-law at the same time.
Matthew only grinned.
Rosalind blinked at the thing, considering the way it caught the light. “It is a totem,” she guessed, “for action.”
Matthew turned his delight toward her and pulled her hand to his lips, giving her a smacking kiss. “Just so. I issue a dare, and whomever accepts the thimble has to execute it. The reward, of course, being that they now own the thimble.”
“Ask him how he got it in the first place,” Vix suggested, making Matthew turn toward her with a little glare.
“I propose,” he said, louder than necessary, perhaps to drown out Vix’s suggestion of questioning, “that one of you approach the bishop, insisting on purchasing the thing.”
“Purchasing it?” Beck barked, incredulous. “You want me to put that in my house?”
“Or your club,” Matthew said with a shrug.
“Oh, darling, we could install a fountain,” said Ambrose, giggling at the prospect. “Or prop it up in the foyer to frighten would-be intruders.”
“Ambrose, shut up,” Vix said fondly.
“Just get it out of my church,” Matthew said, raising his eyebrows. “And do it in a way that does not insult Keaton or the bishop, on pain of the thimble.”
“I don’t need the bloody thimble,” Beck told them, crossing his massive arms over his chest. “I can do my own dirty work, thank you very much.”
“Yes, I suppose you can,” Vix said, considering her brother. “But that has never been the point, has it? And you know who isn’t here to vie for it?”
“Roland,” Matthew and Vix said in unison, making Beck hesitate, his arms loosening a little bit.
Vix reached out, toying with the thimble’s edge. “I have been itching to make him do something about his fascination with Miss Casper, come to think of it.”
“Vix …” her brother said, glowering in disapproval.
“You could stop me, of course,” she said, batting her dark lashes. “If you took it.”
There was a tense beat of silence, with the two siblings facing off against one another, but as soon as Thaddeus Beck moved to uncross his arms, his sister snatched the thimble into her palm and lurched back into her seat, propping it neatly on the tip of her index finger.
“Oh,” she said in mock pity. “Too slow. As usual.”
The spouses were content to simply watch this play out.
“Well, then,” said Ambrose. “I suppose we’ve just bought a statue?”
Vix rolled her eyes at him. “Of course not. I don’t want that hideous thing. I’ll handle it tomorrow.”
It wasn’t until they left that Rosalind turned to her husband, plates stacked in her hands, and asked the question he had been avoiding. “Matthew,” she said sweetly. “How did you come into possession of that thimble?”
He took the plates from her, giving her a half smile. “Oh, many ways over the years. Many long, embarrassing, silly stories,” he said with a shrug, turning toward the kitchen.
She narrowed her eyes, following after him. “I am only asking about this last time,” she said. “How did you get it this last time?”
He sighed. “By doing a dare, of course.”
“Matthew!”
He chuckled, putting the dishes down on the counter and turning toward her with a resigned sigh, his hands open in front of him. “By asking you to dance last summer, at Vix’s scholarship ball.”
Rosalind blinked. “You had to be dared to ask me to dance?” she repeated, a little hurt to hear it.
“I had to be dared to grow a spine,” he clarified. “She put the thimble between me and Roland and told us to stop being idiots and go after the girls we wanted. I was the one who took the dare.”
“Oh,” she said, her heart giving a little lurch. “So Vix knew you were …”
“Watching you all night?” he guessed, chuckling. “Yes, she did.”
“And Mr. Reed was doing the same?” she asked, drawing nearer. “With Mae?”
He nodded, wrapping his hand around her waist and pulling her closer. “So you see,” he said, “maybe it’s a good thing that she’s back in control of the cursed thing. Because he certainly intends to drag his feet about it for the rest of his life.”
“You were going to drag yours too,” she reminded him, “if I hadn’t broken that statue.”
“Now, you can’t prove that,” he told her, dropping a kiss on her lips. “We don’t know that for sure.”
She sighed, looping her arms around his neck. “I suppose you’re right,” she allowed. “We can never know anything for sure. And to be frank with you, as long as it turned out this way in the end, I can’t be bothered about why.”