wasn’t looking for you,” Dominic replied guardedly.
“I would have thought you’d be seeing what you could do to help Father. After this, he’s barely going to be able to carry on with his pastoral care. Isn’t that what your duty is supposed to be?” The criticism was sharp and brittle in his voice.
“My first care is in this house,” Dominic replied. “As yours is. I was speaking to Mrs. Parmenter, trying to reassure her that we would all support one another during this time …”
“Support one another?” Mallory’s dark eyebrows rose, filling his face with sarcasm. “Isn’t that rather absurd, considering that the highly objectionable young woman who was assisting my father has just met a violent death in this house? One of my sisters is all but implying that my father is responsible, and the other is as busy defending him and making irresponsible remarks she imagines are amusing. We have the police on the doorstep, and no doubt it will all only get worse.” The dislike sharpened still further in his voice. “The best you can do is take the pastoral care off Father’s shoulders so he doesn’t have to leave the house. Then at least you will give us a little privacy to deal with our shock and grief, and those people Father is responsible for will have someone to minister to them.”
Dominic felt his temper rising. All the differences of opinion he had had with Mallory over the months he had been in the Parmenters’ home welled up in his memory, and the suppressed anger flashed to the surface. He was too raw with shock to control it.
“Perhaps if you were to set aside your studies for Rome for a few days and comfort your mother, reassure her of your loyalty, then I would not need to,” he snapped back. “And I should feel free to perform my usual duties. As it was, you went off to read more books, which may be very enlightening, but it is hardly helpful!”
Mallory’s face flushed pink. “I don’t know what you found to say to her that could possibly help and still be even remotely true. Unity was a Godless woman who insisted on parading her immoral and blasphemous views in our house. My father was wrong to employ her in the first place. He should have investigated what kind of woman she was before he took her on.” He drew breath. A maid scurried across the back of the hall and disappeared along the passage to the side door.
“A little time and effort, a few enquiries,” Mallory went on, “and he could have known what she was like. Whatever her academic abilities, they were overwhelmed by her radical moral and political views. Look what she has done to Tryphena! That alone should be enough to condemn her.” His lips tightened and his chin came up a little, showing the clenched muscles of his throat. “I know you have very liberal views in your church, allowing people to do more or less as they please, but perhaps now you can see the folly of that. We cannot help but be influenced by the wrong ideas around us. Mr. Darwin is accountable for more misery in the world than all the poverty and disease imaginable.”
“Because he raised doubt?” Dominic said incredulously. “Does he make you doubt, Mallory?”
“Of course not!” And indeed there was no doubt in his eyes. They blazed with certainty. “But then I am of a faith which does not equivocate and hedge and trim its creed to suit the climate of the day. Father was not so fortunate. He had already committed himself, his life, his time and all his energy. He could not go back upon it, sacrifice it all.”
“That’s a piece of sophistry,” Dominic said angrily. “If a faith is true, it ought to be able to withstand all the arguments thrown at it, and if it is not, how much you have invested in it is irrelevant. No human being can make God one thing or another.”
“Perhaps you should go upstairs and comfort Father with that thought?” Mallory suggested. “You seem to have taken it upon yourself to lead the family, although I cannot imagine who asked you.”
“Your mother. But if you had been there, no doubt she would have asked you,” Dominic rejoined. “I did not know you disliked Unity so much. You always seemed very civil to her.”
Mallory’s eyebrows rose. “What did you expect, that I should be rude to her under