Page 80 of Miss Devoted
The man who asked that his coworkers have a half day was dangerous.
The fellow Mrs. Ophelia Oldbach regarded as a paragon of young manhood was dangerous.
Old Tom Delancey’s pride and joy…
“Why did you keep Delancey underfoot for five years if you suspected he’d stolen your ward?” Helmsley asked. And if your missus is desperate for little darlings underfoot, why not offer to take in both children?
But then, why had Delancey stolen a second child? Helmsley had nieces and nephews. Children were loud, expensive, and demanding, at best. At worst, they fell ill, got into scrapes, and broke a parent’s heart. Delancey had no wife to bear the brunt of the child-rearing challenges, and he had precious little coin. Why add to the household?
“I kept Delancey underfoot,” Arbuckle said, “because I could not resign myself to admitting the iniquity in his soul. The clergy is a refuge for many a restless young man, and I owed him the benefit of the doubt. He left at the first opportunity nonetheless. Some thanks for my misplaced trust.”
For a man soon to be reunited with a long-lost ward, Arbuckle was almost exclusively focused on causing Michael Delancey suffering, when Delancey had lasted ten times longer than Arbuckle’s previous curates.
“I trust you have the original of the will naming you as the girl’s guardian?”
Arbuckle paused, the right glove on, the left grasped in his fist. “Do you think me daft? I wasn’t about to risk losing such an important document while traveling two hundred miles over indifferent roads. Mrs. Arbuckle has it. She will guard it with her life.”
A glimmer of possibility winked to life in Helmsley’s mind. “Have you put the matter before the magistrates yet?”
“I’d thought to go to Bow Street this afternoon.”
Spare me from provincial bumblers.“Best not. You haven’t the necessary documents to lay information, and Bow Street is an infernally busy shop. Your first priority, I’m sure, is retrieving the girl, and when you’ve attended to that, we can seek guidance from my superiors regarding how best to deal with Delancey.”
Arbuckle drew himself up. “I know my duty, Helmsley. Lambeth would doubtless like to keep the whole thing quiet, but how many more children will Delancey steal if you turn the other cheek this time? What other crimes will he get up to if he thinks the Church is blind to his sins?”
Nobody liked Arbuckle. He came from a modestly wealthy family in the north, but he was tolerated, mostly because in years past, a few well-heeled widows had added to the church coffers at Arbuckle’s prompting.
Nobody at Lambeth liked scandal either, and Michael Delancey was owed a chance to tell his side of the situation. Then too, there was that second child. Why take in two? There was a will—critical evidence—which Arbuckle had either lost, made up, or left two hundred miles away.
The whole situation had Very Great Mess written all over it, and the best way to keep that mess from landing in Helmsley’s lap was to keep as close an eye on developments as possible.
“I will accompany you to St. Mildred’s, Arbuckle, and while you are free to notify the authorities in any manner your conscience requires, you have no proof of your allegations. If you lay information now, without the will, and then conveniently produce the document some weeks hence, the appearances will not weigh in your favor. The Church can hardly support your claims when they amount to little more than speculation and hearsay.”
Arbuckle pulled on his second glove. “Delancey stole that child from me, and that he’d turn her over to me without a qualm should be all the proof anybody needs of his guilt. He knows he’s done wrong and hopes for clemency now that he’s been caught. You here at Lambeth are divorced from congregational life, but I know how the lower orders think. Delancey is simply angling for mercy, and we must stand firm against his manipulations.”
Must we?And since when was fellow clergy, to the vicarage born, a member of the lower orders? “Present yourself here at one of the clock tomorrow, and I will accompany you to St. Mildred’s.”
Arbuckle looked unhappy with that decision, which was just too perishing bad. The penny press would have a field day with one clergyman accusing another of kidnapping, and the whole business could see Helmsley sent to some pulpit in Cornwall, where he’d be surrounded by Dissenters, smugglers, and sheep.
His sister would delight in his disgrace, an untenable recompense for a life of devoted service. For that reason, Helmsley would attend this little exchange at St. Mildred’s and decide for himself whether to intervene on Michael Delancey’s behalf or to be among the first and loudest to condemn him.
“Would Mr. Delancey tell you he was coming and then light out for Portsmouth?” Hazel asked.
Psyche pushed the coach’s curtain aside and, for the fourteenth time, saw nobody and nothing on the steps of St. Mildred’s. A few fat, lazy snowflakes drifted on a chilly breeze, but Michael and Bea were nowhere to be seen.
“He has five minutes yet,” she said.
“In other words, yes. He would tell you one thing and do another, the better to keep you out of this whole business.”
Psyche wanted to believe Michael had moved past trying to protect everybody but himself, but one could not know another’s heart, not truly.
“He might send Bea to safety, but he would not lie to me. He told me of this meeting and gave me permission to be here.”
Hazel slanted her a look.
“Don’t scold, Hazel. I’m doing what I think best, and you—thank heavens—have abetted me. Michael deserves—there he is, and Bea is with him.” The sight of him brought no relief, but rather, a different kind of worry.
The girl was warmly dressed, with a green plaid scarf about her neck that Psyche had seen on Michael. She wore a little bonnet and clung to her father’s hand, while a nursemaid of some sort trundled along a few paces back. No Miss Feathers, no traveling satchel, just a forlorn, bewildered child and a heartbroken man.
