Page 1 of Lady Willa's Divinely Wicked Vicar
Chapter 1
Friday, April 28, 1815
St. Andrew’s in the Field
Courtland Green
Wiltshire
The gifts that the Good Lord had granted to Charles Everhart Blyth Compton, younger son of the Duke of Southbourne, had been many. Sound body, quick mind, kind father, loving mother, formidable education, stout-heart friends and few…if any, foes. He counted these regularly. One should, one would if one were the vicar of a parish with a congregation of one hundred and two souls who were, usually, moderate in their passions and hard-working for their master. Charlie—for he had always thought of himself in that informal way which was the address his mother had used—had come to his calling easily, at his father’s encouragement and at a young age.
Thus when he had chosen to leave his first parish in Sussex and gone off to fight the wars in Spain and France, he’d done it out of as big a love, this time for Country and Crown. His service abroad had been long—six years in fact. That it had also opened his eyes to the inhumanity of man to man was a dastardly result. Hard to swallow, really, for one who had a strong belief in the goodness of mankind. So when he left the chaplaincy of the Army and returned home nine months ago, his displeasure with the failings of the human spirit had tempted him to leave the clergy altogether. Yet a man must be practical, eh?
Soon he was in search of his next assignment and a month ago took the offer of the Viscount Courtland. St. Andrew’s was a lovely chapel on the periphery of the man’s estate. And the living he offered Charlie was extraordinarily generous, given the penury that most Anglican clergymen were thrust into upon taking a parish to themselves. That good fortune (not to put too much glory to five hundred pounds a year) was added to Charlie’s daily list.
Proud of himself for this morning’s good work to counsel a man who loved his drink far too much, Charlie tapped the top of his hat as he left the tumbledown cottage of his parishioner, George Billoughby, that man’s wife Eunice and four children. The little Billoughbys—ages four years old through four months—were thinner than Charlie’s father’s old ivory walking stick—and just as pale.
“Vicar! Vicar!” George hailed him along the stone path to the chapel.
Charlie swung round, a smile on his face he did not feel. This was the third time he and George had had heart-to-hearts about liquor. “Yes, Mister Billoughby?”
“I told my missus you’d not shame us by sending us clothes from the Poor basket.”
“Sir, no one need ever know where they came from. And your baby Jim is nigh unto naked.” His little doodle and two whirlygigs swung freely in threadbare cotton. But that was not much different than the rest of the family because George Billoughby refused not merely a few old clothes, but vegetables, flour…and work. “He’ll catch his death.”
“For him, aye.” He wiped a trembling hand over his dry lips. “A gown or two. But no charity for the others. I ken work, I ken.”
Charlie scowled at him. He’d recommended work on the country road gang for which Viscount Courtland paid handsomely. “If you are committed this time—?”
“Aye, sir.” His hunched back and spindly legs bore signs that his bones would break with one misstep. “I’ll be there. I will.”
“Come to the vicarage tomorrow morning. I will give you work.” God knew what. But he’d find it.
“Aye. Aye, Thank ye.”
As he strode away, Charlie cursed to himself. Oh, not such a fine idea, but he hadn’t taken the Lord’s name in vain. Just lambasted the work of the devil. “That should keep me in Heaven’s good graces while I figure how the hell to spread my living among those who eat only gruel.”
He kicked a stone down the path. His anger was a comfort as well as his curses. That shouldn’t be. “But it is.”
It also gave him cause to wonder if he had made the right decision to return to serving the believers. He couldn’t save frail Mabel Cummings from her wasting disease. Nor could he stop Tom Stockdon from picking fights with his neighbor.
He entered his tidy little chapel and sat down to count his blessings for this morning. The surprise visit of Eunice Billoughby to the front door of his cottage earlier had delayed his regular practice to go first thing to his church, sit in the peace of an old pew and engage in his morning practice of counting his blessings. But now as he sat, the vision that popped before him was the wan face of Eunice Billoughby. Worn by baring and caring for four children in four years, Eunice had begged him to talk to her husband about his drunkenness. But talk was merely a temporary salve over a wound neither George nor Eunice or even Charlie could see. Charlie had dealt with men in their cups while he served in the army, and had promised each one a better day once the war was done. How could he promise finer days to George Billoughby if he knew not the cause of his need for drink?
He sighed, put his hat to the pew and stared up at the sun’s rays streaming into his little church. They sparkled, dappled by the swaying tree leaves, arcing in the colors of the rainbow bathing the altar in the beauties of the universe. Would that all on earth could shimmer and dance in joyous abandon. But the despair in Eunice Billoughby’s eyes declared that was not so.
He folded his hands together in a renewed attempt to devote himself to prayer. The usual list of his gifts came to his lips…and so did the one that had not yet come.
Among those blessings he praised heaven for, no woman had ever appeared. Oh, he had enjoyed his early years as a young buck in London. His social status what it was, he had similarly well-bred friends and family whose invitations to balls and house parties he always accepted. He knew The One Hundred well. A duke’s son never lacked for acquaintances or opportunities. His friends and those who were not among the elite had marveled that he had decided to take his papa’s suggestion and enter the Church.
“Trade?” asked one of his second cousins. “Join me. Sugar from the Indies. I need help.”
But Charlie had declined adventure in the jungles of the New World in favor of the church.
“How can you get on?” his friend, Winston Fullerton had pressed him. “You’ll never have a penny to call your own.”
Money had never been lacking in Charlie’s life so at that point, he easily answered Fullerton that coin was not what made people happy.
“And marriage? Children?” Fullerton had continued. “What if you fall in love?”
