She stepped back by supreme effort of will. “Psyche. Will I see you next week, Mr.—Michael?”
“You will. Archangels hurling thunderbolts would not keep me away. Until then.”
She passed him the food and stood grinning like a happy drunk long after his departure.
“Have a seat, Mr. Delancey,” Helmsley said. He’d perfected the hearty good cheer of the competent administrator, and yet, he was issuing a command rather than an invitation. He’d also perfected the appearance of a churchly man of business—trim, graying, with shrewd blue eyes and immaculate hands.
His smile was facile and sympathetic, while his devotion to his post was ruthless.
Helmsley’s calculated charm had a reptilian quality that Michael had first encountered in Rev. Hannibal Arbuckle up in Yorkshire, and that put Helmsley firmly in Michael’s do-not-trust category.
Michael took one of the legendarily uncomfortable seats before Helmsley’s desk. The fire roared in the hearth. Decanters full of good vintages were neatly arranged on the sideboard. The rendering of Canterbury Cathedral over the mantel was sunny, majestic, and hopelessly dull.
“I trust your family is well,” Michael said, by way of getting the conversation past the starting line. If Helmsley meant to offer him a congregation, Michael would decline. If Helmsley sought to parse some delicate bit of church politics, Michael would politely weigh in on the side of common sense and kindness.
“My mother thrives, and my sister endures,” Helmsley said, tossing half a scoop of coal onto the already blazing fire. “I’ve invited them to visit Town in the spring. We Londoners never see the sights unless we have company from the shires, do we?”
The sights being the pitiful specimens in the Menagerie, the ostentation of the Sunday carriage parade in Hyde Park, and streetwalkers without number outside the fashionable theaters?
“I do try to stop by St. Paul’s from time to time,” Michael said, “but you have a point. I grew up here and stopped seeing Town for the marvel it can be.” A few nights in the gaming hells would do that, if the plethora of beggars did not.
Helmsley watched the flames eat into the fresh fuel. “Did you miss London when you were up north?”
That question was not by way of awarding Michael his own pulpit, which was a relief. “I missed my family terribly. The Dales are beautiful, though they can also be lonely for a young man unfamiliar with the north.”
“Homesickness is a cross we bear at your stage in life. I’m still attached to the old place in Hampshire, but then I make my annual pilgrimage, and I see the oak in the courtyard has some dead limbs, the butler is hard of hearing, and Mama is as querulous as ever. My longing for London by about the third day of my rural visit astounds me.”
“And now you are back at your post and missing Hampshire?”
Helmsley smiled and moved to the seat behind his desk. “Oh, not yet. That will take at least until autumn. What am I do to with you, Mr. Delancey?”
Unease slithered through Michael’s gut. “I beg your pardon?”
“I doubt you’ve ever begged anybody for anything.” Helmsley regarded Michael across a leather blotter ornately tooled along the borders. The wax jack, pen tray, and standish were silver, and an elegant folding knife inlaid with nacre lay beside the white quills in the tray.
Mrs. Harris could teach Helmsley a great deal about economies.
“We’re preparing for the annual spring migration, Delancey. Curates looking to move up, the old guard ready to step aside. A younger son comes into an unexpected inheritance here, a parson goes astray there and must seek his fortune among the worldly. The bishops and the landed class call the tune to a significant extent, but Lambeth gets our oar in too. We know bailing against the tide of correspondence or delving into theological arcana isn’t everybody’s cup of tea, no matter how sincere his vocation.”
“I enjoy my work,” Michael said, which was somewhat true. Peace and quiet, warmth, the passing camaraderie of the other clerks were comforting. Then too, a regular pay packet made any amount of tedium worth bearing.
Helmsley sat back. “Your enthusiasm for hours of repetitive correspondence is a subtle thing, Delancey. Wouldn’t you rather be shepherding a flock, as your father has done so well for so long?”
The confiding tone of the question assumed an affirmative answer, and the allusion to following in Papa’s footsteps was calculated as well.
“No, actually,” Michael said. “I do not seek a congregation of my own at this time. I all but managed the parish in Yorkshire for five years, and I did so without a vicar’s authority or remuneration. The work is harder than the average congregant realizes, with irregular hours, much sorrow and sickness, and endless demands on one’s compassion and theological creativity. My vicar invariably disapproved of my sermons and instead forced me to read his tirades week after week while he tarried in York with his lady and claimed her health meant he could not leave her side.”
Arbuckle’s mistress of long standing had also had a commodious dwelling in York.
Helmsley opened the penknife and shaved a sharper point onto a long, white feather. “I take it the vicar’s wife enjoyed sound health?”
“Mrs. Arbuckle is blessed with the physical constitution of a Highland bullock.”
“I appreciate your candor, Delancey, and you’ve cleared up something of a mystery. I know you did not intend to seek a post at Lambeth when you traveled south, but the position came open, and Ophelia Oldbach recommended you. Mrs. Oldbach mostly confines her meddling to congregational politics, but she spoke up loudly on your behalf.”
“I believe she’s fond of my papa, sir, but she’s also known me since I was in leading strings.”
“She speaks highly of you, while Mr. Arbuckle, your former superior, does not. We sought his recommendation because, sooner or later, you will be on the list of former curates under consideration for a vicar’s post. Arbuckle damned you with faint praise.”
He would. Of course he would. Praise so faint as to be nearly inaudible.
“Our views of the Church’s role were at variance. Mr. Arbuckle believes in scolding, judging, and threatening the faithful into a godly life. I believe in compassion, a good example, and quiet reminders.”
“One need not choose, Delancey. One can set a good example and still scold the wayward.”
For God’s everlasting sake. The farmers and elders of Yorkshire were too busy tending their flocks and wresting a living from the land to be wayward. Tipsy from time to time, yes. Given to colorful speech, not always strictly faithful to their marriage vows, and more than skeptical of the divine rights of kings… but far from wayward.
“I was relieved,” Michael said, “when the challenge of trying to placate both my vicar and my conscience was taken from me.”
Helmsley swept the quill clippings into his palm and dumped them into a dustbin. “You young fellows forget how hard the Church has labored for the legitimacy it has, while the old fellows forget what zeal the newly ordained can bring to congregational life.”
Michael had left the best part of his youthful zeal on London’s seedier gaming tables and lost the rest of it toiling on behalf of an arrogant hypocrite claiming the status of clergy.