“How dare you,” Marion ground out, heat creeping up her neck. “You should care for your congregants, not condemn them.”
The vicar spoke across her words, not hearing them in the least. “If you cannot bring this child in to some semblance of good behavior, I suggest you remove her at once.” He watched Marion with utter distaste. “Such an ill-behaved display is hardly welcome, Miss Wood.”
“She is Lady Marion Linwood, Mr. Throckmorten,” came a familiar voice that stopped every noise and every conversation in an instant. “It was my understanding that all people are welcome in a place of worship, even a ‘hopeless sinner.’”
“Bravo,” Marion heard Cousin Miles say under his breath.
But Marion was too busy staring to do much more than register it as a passing remark. Layton, pristinely turned out, stood beside Caroline. He looked decidedly uncomfortable but with a determined lift to his chin.
“Come, Caroline.” Layton held his hand out to his daughter. “It doesn’t do to keep the Almighty waiting.”
Caroline’s surprise gave way to a tremulous smile as she laid her tiny hand in his. “Will you sit by me, Papa?” she asked with obvious uncertainty.
“If you will share your prayer book with me,” Layton replied with an equally uneasy smile. “And nudge me if I forget something.”
Caroline nodded mutely.
“Perhaps if you had stepped inside a chapel even once in the past five years or more, you would not require the guidance of a child,” Mr. Throckmorten answered at his most top-lofty. He was enough to turn even the most devoted of believers into cynics. Marion herself had heard him humiliate members of the parish each Sunday for weeks. Those who toed his chosen line escaped the most scathing denunciations, but the rest were treated with such contempt that it often left worshipers in tears. It was little wonder Layton had stayed away so long. If he had lived in Mr. Martin’s parish during the past five years, the outcome might have been quite different.
“I seem to recall,” Mr. Harold Jonquil said—Holy Harry, as the brothers had dubbed him—watching Mr. Throckmorten with something like pity on his face, “reading somewhere . . .” His face turned in a look of mock confusion that brought the earl immediately to mind. “What was that phrase?”
Layton watched Harry, a smile nearly emerging. The earl grinned full out.
“Ah, yes. ‘And a little child shall lead them.’ And I do believe this was a pleasing turn of events.” The usually even-tempered future cleric skewered his would-be contemporary with a look of fierce accusation. “I wonder, sir, if you have ever read the book in which that particular passage is found. If you have, I doubt you have understood a word it contains.”
“Bravo,” came the same whispered observation from Cousin Miles.
Mr. Throckmorten sputtered and turned several shades of purple.
Layton had apparently had enough. Holding Caroline’s hand, he stepped around the gathered assembly and walked toward the church doors. He kept his eyes firmly fixed ahead, his hand clasping Caroline’s as if his survival depended on it. Behind him, the assembled churchgoers were entirely silent.
“Please continue inside,” Lord Lampton instructed the crowd in a voice that brooked no argument. They obliged, looks of smug satisfaction on each and every face. Mr. Throckmorten obviously hadn’t won many allies. Only the Jonquil family, the Kendrick sisters, Marion, Cousin Miles, and the Duke and Duchess of Hartley remained.
“I say, Throckmorten,” the earl said, swinging his quizzing glass, “you do not look at all well. Perhaps you should have a lie down.”
“I am to deliver a sermon this morning,” Mr. Throckmorten said, very much on his dignity.
“Oh, I believe your message has been most effectively delivered and far too many times at that. More than ought to have been allowed, in fact.” Lord Lampton drawled the observation, but his eyes were chilling. “And I have a message of my own I would like to relay to you.” He studied his fingernails with a casual air that didn’t fool a soul, Marion would wager. “But I suggest you not risk receiving it if your health is at all fragile.”
Miss Sorrel Kendrick seemed to barely hold back a spurt of laughter.
“A message, my lord?” Mr. Throckmorten looked at him warily.
“Perhaps it would do to remind you, Throckmorten,” Captain Stanley Jonquil jumped into the fray, “that Lord Lampton has the giving, and taking, of this living.”
The purple hue of Mr. Throckmorten’s face almost immediately turned ashen. “What about my sermon?”