Seven Minutes in Heaven(54)
Chatty marched to his velvet-cushioned seat looking neither left nor right. He’d just realized that he’d never found his flask after the distraction of putting on the cross, and brandy was the only thing that might make these proceedings bearable.
Before he got his bottom settled on the cushion, Howson leapt in front, blocking his view of the pews.
The vicar looked lean and greasy and full of zeal. Chatty would be the first to admit that he himself had a chin or two too many, but he disliked men who were as thin as pencils on principle. It was indicative of an inadequate diet, and that sort of thing was bad for the brain.
“What did you have for breakfast, Howson?” he asked.
“Cabbage,” Howson replied, and started babbling on about witchcraft.
Cabbage. That explained a lot. Probably gave the man wind, which made it particularly objectionable that he was standing so close.
Unless Chatty was mistaken, Howson was starting to hint at satanic possession. Pretentious ass. As if the devil didn’t have better things to do than run around dressed like a nine-year-old.
If he were the devil, he’d possess a nubile young woman with buxom thighs.
“Stand aside, Vicar,” Chatty said, cutting him off. “I suppose I’d better speak to the girl’s brother, but I’ll tell you freely that I don’t believe there is such a thing as magic in Oxford. Or in England.”
Howson’s eyes bulged with fermented zeal. He was the sort of man who never changed his ideas about anything, no matter the evidence.
“I am servant to a higher truth,” he gasped.
“So am I, and a higher servant than you,” Chatty retorted, silently cursing his brandy-less state.
“In this head,” Mr. Howson said, raising his voice, “is a compendium of knowledge related to terrible matters such as these. There is no cure for this situation!”
Decapitation would cure Howson all right, Chatty reflected. It would solve a lot of problems.
“Move aside,” he said irritably. “I expect you’ve made a double ass of yourself this time.”
“I am a hammer of the Lord,” Howson said, demonstrating an adroit avoidance of the topic.
“I wish you were a bloody glass hammer,” Chatty said. “I’d open the sessions with a bang, I would.”
At last Howson moved so that Chatty could see. His heart sank. The vicar had outdone himself.
That man with his arms crossed over his chest, managing to resemble both a hungry wolf and a duke? That was surely the Earl of Gryffyn’s son. The little spell-caster looked like an angel. And . . .
“Holy Bejabbers!” he burst out, “Eugenia Strange, is that you?”
Chapter Twenty-two
The moment she saw the resplendent bishop deposit his generous bottom onto a red velvet cushion, Eugenia started smiling so widely that Ward gave her a puzzled look over Lizzie’s head.
She shook her head at him and waited impatiently while the vicar ranted about being a servant to a higher truth and a hammer of the Lord.
Mr. Howson was a withered man who looked as if he considered personal cleanliness—its proximity to godliness notwithstanding—to be a waste of time. When he started holding forth on the devil, she squeezed Lizzie’s hand to reassure her, but the girl’s blue eyes were entirely unafraid.
Though there was an odd expression in them. A distinct hint of drama.
Eugenia bent down. “Lizzie, I’m very good friends with the bishop, and we shall be out of here in the shake of a lamb’s tail.”
“Without speaking to the vicar at all?”
“There will be no need,” Eugenia assured her.
“That’s not fair,” Lizzie whispered. “Everyone has the right to face their accuser.”
“Well, if you would like to,” Eugenia said, taken aback.
“Yes, I would! I memorized my speech last night.” And with that, a look of tragic innocence settled back onto Lizzie’s face.
“This isn’t theatricals, you little donkey.”
Lizzie gave Eugenia an uncannily mature look. “That vicar would love to send me off to a nunnery, you know the way Hamlet said. I have the exact expression my mother had when she played Ophelia.”
Just then, the vicar moved to the side, allowing the bishop—or Chatty as he’d always been known to Eugenia’s family—to recognize her. A moment later, Eugenia was close in the incense-perfumed embrace of one of her father’s oldest friends.
“What the deuce are you doing here?” Chatty demanded. “I know you’re not married again, because I’d be very hurt if I hadn’t officiated. Very hurt, indeed. But poor Andrew has been gone nearly a decade, hasn’t he? Time to think of marriage.”