Did you get somebody with child? Michael had no good answer. If he said no, then turning up with two children in some parish in Hampshire a few years hence would raise questions. If he said yes, then there would be no parish for him in Hampshire or anywhere else.
“I suspect Helmsley is concerned that I’m gambling again.”
Bright red brows rose high on a pale forehead. “You told him about that?”
“He had another party in mind for the post I now hold, and my wicked past wasn’t that long ago or nearly far enough away.” Also more stupid than wicked. “He’d hear of it from Mrs. Oldbach or some other at-large guardian of clerical morality, and she would have been right to tell him.”
“I’ve met Ophelia Oldbach. If there are avenging angels, they have white hair and don’t suffer fools. Even Helmsley gives the formidable Mrs. O a wide berth. If she has ten cousins, nine of them are bishops.”
“Only two bishops and a subdean on her family tree at present, as best I recall. She and my father are friends, and I am fond of her. I told Helmsley that I’d gone in debt at the gaming hells when I came down from university. I also told him I’d paid off the debts in due course and didn’t intend to make that mistake again.”
Ingram slanted Michael a half-hopeful, half-dubious look. “Have you? Made that mistake again?”
Michael thought of the household on Circle Lane and thought of a hot breakfast shared in a sunny parlor on the other side of the Thames. He doubtless had put some mistakes in train, and he’d fret about that later.
“I err as often as the next man, but gambling and brothels no longer make the list. You do know I have family across the river?”
“Your papa and your sister. By marriage, Mrs. MacKay is awash in cousins of the local variety. One of those cousins-by-marriage-and-mishap owns the Coventry.”
“Two of them do, actually. Colonel Sir Orion Goddard has a minor share, while Sycamore Dorning has the larger portion for now. Dorning is married to Goddard’s sister, and both siblings are cousins to Dorcas’s husband.”
“Begats and begottens… What has this to do with you spending a night… oh. You were visiting family? The snow dissuaded you from crossing the river at a late hour?”
Michael would not involve his family in any deceptions, no matter how expedient. “I don’t owe you or Helmsley an explanation for my whereabouts, Natty, but I will tell you that when I first returned to London, I made myself walk past all the gaming hells where I’d come to grief years before. I walked past them late at night, when they were at their merriest and most tempting, and I did it until I knew I was free of their allure. I still make an occasional pass when my mind is troubled.”
This was true, though it was far from the whole truth.
Ingram regarded him owlishly. “I hadn’t taken you for the martyred sort. Abstemious, yes. Detached, reserved, cerebral… But not one to wallow in a former misdeed. Let it go, Delancey. Forgive yourself and find new sins to flagellate yourself for. Next on my list is gluttony. I long to commit the sin of gluttony. Please, if I must burn in hell, let it be for gluttony and a dash of intemperance.”
“You are not destined for hell, Natty. You are too sweet.”
“What do I tell Helmsley?”
Ingram was asking, in his delicate, direct way, if Michael needed him to propound a lie. “What do you want to tell him?”
“That grown men do not spy on one another like Headmaster’s little minions, and Helmsley is a wretched fiend for resorting to such tactics. I betray my friendship with you when I bear tales to him, and any church that asks me to behave in such a scurrilous manner…”
“Yes?”
Ingram plucked at his cuffs again. “There I go, blaspheming again. I must be getting peckish. I’m always peckish in this dratted place. I don’t want to lie for you, and I don’t want to spy on you.”
“Then don’t.”
Ingram rose and gazed down at Michael, none of his usual bonhomie or good cheer in evidence. “You told Helmsley I deserve a pulpit. Twillinger overheard you.”
Michael took up his pen and dipped it into the ink bottle. “You do deserve a congregation. You do not deserve to be tested like some junior officer with dubious antecedents. I expect I will be out most of tomorrow night, and if you like, you can meet me at the royal theater in Haymarket at midnight to see what I’m about.”
“The Haymarket? That’s not a mere fleshpot, Delancey. At midnight, the Haymarket is a veritable cauldron of vice. What on earth would you be doing at the perishing Haymarket?”
“Meet me there and find out. Dress warmly, and wear your most comfortable boots.”
Ingram put a hand on the door latch. “I don’t suppose any deadly sins will be involved?”
“Not a one. Sorry. Carry no coin if you do come, and I won’t wait around if you don’t.”
“The Haymarket at midnight. Sounds dashing. I’ll be there.” He slipped through the doorway and left Michael to stare at a blank page begging to be filled with pontifical tripe.
What had just transpired? Helmsley was trying to spy on him—what in blazes had old Arbuckle really said in his epistle to Helmsley?—and Helmsley’s prying meant more than an occasional stop at Circle Lane was out of the question.
Damn. He’d taken Bea and Thad to the park on half day exactly once. More half days in the park as spring approached would have been heaven.
Michael would still make his occasional stops, though, come fire, flood, or famine. Sunday night would remain inviolate. Even a saint was allowed to call on old friends, and Mrs. Harris met that definition. Then too, he’d made Bea a forever promise.
The modeling for Berthold might also come to light, which wasn’t sinful, exactly, but neither would Helmsley approve. Michael could give it up, though the extra coin would be missed.
What most worried Michael was the notion that he could be followed to Psyche Fremont’s home and that his Thursday evenings in her studio would somehow become known. That would be unfortunate for him, but for her, gossip about clandestine nights with a bachelor would be the monarch of all misfortunes.
Psyche loved her art, even if she failed to see that her flower girls were a greater achievement than any life-size rendering of the Regent would ever be. From one shop window after another, those pretty little prints reproached the greedy and commiserated with the downtrodden. Dorcas had several in her private parlor, and Papa had two hanging in his office at St. Mildred’s.
Psyche loved her art, and Michael… cared for her. He would not glorify his sentiments with the label love—he’d spent more time asleep in her studio than awake—but he did care for her. She was fierce, determined, and no stranger to heartache, and he was loath to visit more unhappiness upon her.
He was also loath to give up his Thursday evenings with her, and that was a problem. A serious, bewildering problem.
He scribbled something on the page about unlikely friendships being one of the clergy’s best weapons against the dark forces afoot in the world—whatever that meant—and wished the lonely curate and the spinster best of luck as he sealed up the letter.
Helmsley nosing around among the other clerks was probably to be expected, given the bile Arbuckle had spewed on Michael’s character. That somebody would actually follow Michael about at all hours in frigid weather was extremely unlikely.