Page 54 of It Takes Two to Tumble
“I’m very grateful you did that. Truly. Why don’t you sit, Easterbrook?”
Easterbrook sat, and the dog promptly leapt into his lap. “Reminded me so much of that time Will Sedgwick ran off,” he said, holding the dog at arm’s length to dodge a kiss. “There was always a Sedgwick on the loose, making mischief and having adventures while I was stuck in the schoolroom.”
“I believe the vicar mentioned something of the kind,” Phillip said.
“The whole thing,” Easterbrook said, gesturing around him vaguely, “reminds me of when we were children. Chaos. I don’t like it. But I see that Ben Sedgwick is trying to make sense of it. Trying to make it less of a catastrophe. Anyway. I’ll be going.”
“No. Wait,” Phillip said. “Don’t leave yet.”
“If this is about Hartley, save your breath. Tell your vicar that I’m not going to drag his brother to court to contest my father’s will. I can’t afford the fees, and I can’t figure out how to do the thing without exposing my father for what he was, even though I have the letters to prove it. And that would quite ruin me, as well as getting Hartley put in the pillory, which would make me look a proper arse. Everyone would know I was ruined, to have kicked up such a fuss over so small a matter. My problems are greater than one London townhouse.”
Phillip had no idea what Hartley Sedgwick, wills, or letters had to do with it, but he had met Hartley, and he could make an educated guess. “About that,” Phillip mused. “I think there might be a way to keep you above water. Would you be open to letting Lindley Priory?”
“I’d be open to burning it to the ground, to be frank. But I sold most of the furniture and I don’t know what kind of price I could get for an unfurnished house miles away from any civilization.”
“Well, I’d be your tenant. My steward would take over the running of your land,” he added, thinking aloud. That would mean he and Smythe would no longer have to undo the damage done by Easterbrook’s bloodthirsty steward. “But you would still get the rents.”
“I could leave,” Easterbrook said, looking as Jamie did when faced with an entire jar of greengage jam. “I could go live someplace cheap on the Continent,” he mused. In his distraction he forgot to keep the dog at bay, and was currently being accosted with kisses.
“I don’t think this part of the world has many happy memories for you,” Phillip said, feeling a kinship with this young man who had caused so much trouble.
Easterbrook’s expression shuttered. “You’re wrong there, Dacre. But no matter. I’ll take you up on your offer.”
“Write to—who’s the solicitor in the village—Crawford. Ask him to come up now to draft an agreement.”
Three hours later, Phillip—or rather an entity called The Sedgwick School for Wayward Children—was the tenant of Lindley Priory, and Easterbrook was riding south.
“This ought to cover your wages through Michaelmas,” Ben said the next morning, pushing coins across the vicarage kitchen table where Mrs. Winston sliced damsons for a pie.
The housekeeper only spared the coins the briefest glance before turning back to her plums. “I don’t need wages through Michaelmas but I’m getting married in about two hours, so I’ll accept it as a wedding present.” She deftly ran the knife through another plum and tossed the pit aside. “I heard Sir Martin is letting the Priory and going abroad. I had the news from Lottie Bannister whose young man is the gardener at the Priory. She said he left in the dead of night, giving orders for his solicitor to manage the lease without him. Apparently you made him leave.”
“I did nothing of the sort! Captain Dacre arranged it.”
“That’s not what I’ve heard. Everybody thinks you’re some kind of Robin Hood. You’re in danger of having ballads written about you.”
“I’m a man of the cloth,” he protested.
“A daft one.” She sprinkled sugar over the fruit. “Being as Sir Martin is running off to France or wherever, I doubt he’ll find time to appoint a new vicar. There’ll be nobody to give a sermon tomorrow.”
Ben nodded. “I’ll write to the bishop and see what’s to be done.”
“He won’t get your letter in time,” Mrs. Winston said. She was now thwacking and slapping a ball of pastry dough in a way that Ben found positively menacing. “You resigned, you weren’t defrocked.”
He shook his head. “I can’t.” The truth was that he didn’t want to stand before his congregation. He had always been their affable, amiable, utterly conventional vicar. The last two weeks had exposed him—not only to the good people of Kirkby Barton but also to himself—as something more complicated than that. He didn’t know yet how to live as that person, let alone how to be that person in the pulpit. Worse, he had begun to think Hartley had the right of it, and he couldn’t stand in front of a congregation and align himself with people who thought he committed a crime every time he went to bed with the person he loved.
She made a frustrated sound. “It’s not like you’re going to steal from the poor box. You’re an ordained clergyman and you ought to do what God requires of you.”
“I have some doubts about precisely what God requires of me and how it lines up with what the Church of England requires,” he said carefully, keeping his eyes on the dough rather than on Mrs. Winston’s face.
She paused, her hands still on her rolling pin. “It’s like that, is it? You’ve gone the way of your heathen father?”
“No,” he said quickly, not pausing to wonder what kind of lively debates would take place in his father’s household after this morning’s marriage. “More like... Unitarianism.”
She waved a floury hand and got back to rolling out her dough. The intricacies of the church didn’t interest her. “I daresay you could do it once. Preach your heart out on whatever you want. Go out in a blaze of glory.”
He stole a slice of plum. “That would cause quite a bit more of a stir than you’re envisioning.”
“Brotherly love.”
