Epilogue
One Year Later
“Do we have enough?” Rosalind was fretting, counting the pies as she lined them up on the long table set out on the parish lawn. “I’ve made two and Mrs. Lazarus brought two. Ought I have made more?”
“There is plenty of pie,” Matthew assured her, gesturing toward another parishioner carrying a conspicuously shaped tray across the green. “Look, I think there’s another coming.”
“Oh, but that one is savory,” Rosalind tutted. “It’s not the same. Matthew, the sweets always go first.”
“The sweets always do go first,” he agreed with a little sigh, scanning the table himself. “Did you happen to keep a third pie just for us in the house?”
She spun around and gave him her best frown, which she was very well aware was nothing more than a suggestion of mild and charming pique, so far as Matthew was concerned. “Of course not! If there was a third, I’d go get it!”
“Of course you would,” he said, dropping a kiss on her head. “Look, there’s an entire court of babies over there under the fig tree. Why don’t you go enjoy the gurgling instead of standing here, fretting about crusts and sugar?”
“Oh,” said Rosalind, looking longingly over at the tree where Vix, Hannah, and Millie were all sat in a circle with their new arrivals. “Oh, yes, I probably should,” she confessed. “You do not mind?”
“I do not mind,” he assured her. “Go on.”
He watched her go, softening at the way she clutched her hands under her chin and did a little skip of glee en route to the tree, her pink skirts fluttering around her ankles at the motion, then he turned quickly and swiped a cheeky fingerful of lemon curd from the pie nearest to the edge of the table before anyone could stop him.
“I saw that,” said Mae Casper, appearing so suddenly at his elbow that he yelped and whipped around like a naughty child caught with his hand in the candy dish.
“No, you didn’t,” he told her, swallowing the lemon. “The heat creates mirages.”
She laughed, shaking her head, and turned to cut loose the piece he’d defiled with his finger and dropped it onto a plate, which she held out to him. “You have to eat it all now.”
“Oh, do I?” he said, raising his eyebrows and accepting the offering. “What a pity.”
“Hm,” she said, and swiped her own fingerful first, before he could retrieve a fork, flashing a dimpled grin at the noise of protest he made. “I wanted to come over here and thank you for still hosting this event this year, despite all the trouble.”
“Oh,” he said, sinking his fork into the end of the pie slice. “There are no statues this year. I made absolutely certain.”
She tittered but shook her head, crossing her arms over her dress.
“No, not just that. Everything. You know the clinic has gotten a lot of … well, a lot of attention since the Miss Manners incident, and not all of it has been good. The hospitals are not fond of us, Matthew, and aligning yourself with our cause now that they are openly speaking out in criticism of our very existence could put you back into danger again.”
He frowned. “What else is the Church good for?” he asked. “We are supposed to defend the needy and worthy.”
“Ah, well,” she said, shrugging. “Someone ought to tell the powers that be. Though I suspect the messenger would be shot.”
“The Church does sometimes shoot messengers,” he allowed with a wince. “All the same, for as long as you need it, you have my support.”
She smiled, turning her head as the ladies called her over to the fig tree, beckoning with the temptation of three chubby-cheeked infants and the siren’s call of feminine company. “Thank you, Matthew,” she said. “For everything.”
And then Mae was gone too, hurrying over to join the others while he was left alone with his crust of lemon curd.
The picnic filled quickly, with the Quakers bringing their customary assortment of fine braised meats and roasted vegetables and the Jewish congregation delivering an assortment of pickles, jellies, and breads that Matthew felt a stone heavier just looking at.
Whatever Miss Casper’s concerns, they did not taint the mood of the day, which remained festive and hopeful as the gathering went about the business of raising funds for this year’s undertakings in Clerkenwell, including the expansion of Rosalind’s tally classes to go beyond just servicing those who had suffered life-altering injury.
The press around her work in the education of poor adults, offering them the possibility of better-paid vocation, had garnered a significant amount of interest and flooded the clinic with many people either pretending to be more hurt than they were or outright demanding entry to the training just on merit of wanting it.
Now they offered extra classes. Tallies remained the clinic’s undertaking for the injured, with an additional night class at the church itself for those seeking vocational expansion.
Mr. Barnett had also proposed literacy lessons, which were now offered in both locations as well, and were picking up students at such a pace that they might soon need to find additional instructors for that too.
Especially, thought Matthew with a little smile, now that Mr. Green was on his sabbatical at Oxford, by recommendation of the esteemed Abigail Murphy.
He would be trying his hand at professorial pursuits, lecturing and writing, for the coming year before deciding if he wished to return to the curate position here at Holy Comfort.
Every letter he sent made Matthew a little more certain that he needed to find a new curate permanently.
Last week, he had even expressed the intention to send for his cats, both of whom had been living with Matthew and Rosalind since his departure some two months prior.
The cats were settling in just fine in the parish house, and provided the additional entertainment of deeply upsetting Abraham Murphy every time they hosted a family dinner.
“I just don’t like them,” he’d said more than once. “And they don’t like me. Grimalkins.”
He made his rounds, noting that the turnout this year was at least double what it had been the last. Despite the passage of time, there were still people who showed up at the parish every now and then, asking to meet Miss Manners.
Today there were several of them, and she was happy to oblige, so long as they were willing to give to a worthy cause.
“Is the pie already gone?” Roland Reed asked, appearing from behind a hedge like he’d been there for three days, just waiting to spring the question on Matthew when he happened to walk past. “It isn’t even an hour in and the pie is gone?!”
Matthew glanced over his shoulder at the table and chuckled. “It appears so,” he said, clutching his friend’s shoulder. “Next year, perhaps be on time.”
“Next year,” mimicked Reed with a sneer. “I can’t believe you gave Vix that thimble. You’re ruining my life.”
“Ah,” said Matthew, brightening. “So that’s going well, then? Miss Casper is just over there by the tree.”
“I know very bloody well where she is,” he snapped back, scowling and crossing his arms over his chest. “I am stuck at that clinic at all hours now, and it’s your fault in more ways than one. I ought to make you come too and bat off the pests.”
“Oh, poor Reed,” Matthew murmured sarcastically. “Do you need help with the big, scary ogres from St. Bartholomew’s and their furrowed brows? I thought you were the dangerous one.”
Reed cut his eyes to him. “Oh, I am. Shall I demonstrate?”
There was a sigh from behind them as Thaddeus Beck approached, heard what was being said, and changed direction, all in one smooth motion.
“Look at that,” Matthew chided, grinning. “You’ve scared away Tod.”
It at least got a begrudging chuckle out of Reed, which was an accomplishment worth noting when the man was mid-strop.
“It’s not just the saboteurs," Reed mumbled. “It’s the new doctor too. He’s always sniffing after her.”
Matthew blinked, surprised by this admission. “Is he? And how does Miss Casper react to being sniffed?”
Reed narrowed his eyes but did not reply.
“Hm,” said Matthew. “Perhaps you ought to do something about it, at long last?”
Again, he said nothing.
Matthew sighed and shook his head but did not push further. Instead, he said, “Did you know that your likeness in marble ended up in Kew Gardens?” which was enough to make Roland stalk away, mumbling to himself, unlikely to return for at least an hour or so.
In the end, the tables were completely cleared, with not even so much as a stale, half-eaten roll left behind for Matthew’s private larder after the picnic. Sadly, if he wanted a jar of Jewish pickles or a rack of Quaker ribs, he was going to have to go purchase them like everyone else.
He made sure to whine about it to his wife, who patted his arm sympathetically but did not offer to go run halfway across London to perform the errand herself. She did, however, promise to make another pie.
Someday.
And Rabbi Hirsch did suggest that he might be able to smuggle a jar of the cucumber pickles over next week, if conditions were just right.
Once they had cleaned the lawn and stowed the tables and washed the plates and counted the donations, there was little more to do than collapse in the dark of the night and groan half-heartedly to one another about the fact that they’d have to get up at dawn for tomorrow’s service like none of this had happened at all.
“Perhaps,” said Matthew, “I shall sermonize on the merits of digestion.”
“Perhaps,” said Rosalind, “I shall fall asleep in the pew. Would they hold that against me?”
“Not if you wear a large enough bonnet,” he suggested. “How did we do? With the donations?”
She gave a sleepy smile, turning her head on the pillow to look at him and blinking those big hazel eyes. “Enough to build a new wing onto the clinic if we wanted to.”
“Is that so?” he asked, stifling a yawn. “And do we want to?”
“We might,” she said. “The important thing is that we could. I keep thinking that if I could go back in time a year and whisper to myself, downstairs asleep on the couch, how it would all turn out in the end, I’d likely call myself a liar and burst into tears.”
Matthew gave a tired chuckle. “I’d probably call the bishop myself and request we ask the Catholics to exorcise the house.”
“He might enjoy that,” she said with a titter.
Matthew reached across the mattress for her hand but paused, a smile creeping over his face as he noticed the wooden buttons that climbed across the nightgown she wore, from the hip to the ankle.
His fingers diverted from their original destination to toy with one, flicking its smooth edges between his fingers.
“A year ago,” he said, “I thought you might agree to marry me. So if I had descended from the future to tell myself all would be well, I probably would have believed it.”
She gave him a soft half smile, reaching out to run a few of his messy curls through her fingers. “Is that so? Even though you thought you were going to lose your livelihood and that Keaton was telling half the parish that you were a lecher?”
“Even so,” he assured her, raising his eyes to meet hers, “if it meant I got to have you. Besides, I think we’ve learned very well that we can’t do much about what other people think of us, no matter how we try.”
She considered him, her lashes drooping sleepily. “Are you saying Miss Manners should no longer give a fig?” she asked, still playful, even as she began to drift off.
“Perhaps only as many figs as she can spare,” he replied warmly. “And perhaps, if she’s feeling generous, she’ll save one for me.”
“Always,” she promised, moving to snuggle into his chest. “Always at least one fig for my husband.”
He held her as he felt his own eyes drift shut, sighing contentedly into the night. “That’s all I’ll ever want,” he told her. “Good night, my love.”