When a Duchess Says I Do - Grace Burrowes Page 0,71
would grow worse, which felt perilously like being exiled from home in winter with no means of support. Matilda was particularly grateful for the warmth and privacy of the bed, given the bitter tale Duncan told.
“What did you do?”
“I confronted the girl, offered her my pittance of a savings and an exquisitely written character in the event she wanted to flee. She was from a foundling home in York and knew nobody in the parish to whom she might have turned. I was not confident that she even understood the connection between copulation and conception.”
“You explained it to her.”
“Vicar had assured her that nobody conceived from a few little interludes of harmless sport. Vicar was a man of God, he would not lie. He would fornicate, exploit, and cite scripture for his own purposes, but she assured me emphatically that he would not lie about that.”
Duncan’s distaste for mendacity had been learned early and well.
“He got her with child,” Matilda said, “and you offered to marry her.”
Duncan rolled, so he was on his side, and Matilda lay facing him. “First, I went to the bishop, thinking that surely, surely the spiritual authority in a position to right this wrong would insist on intervening. If nothing else, the vicar’s eternal salvation was imperiled. The bishop laughed as well. At me. If anybody ever addresses me as ‘my boy’ again, I will not answer for the consequences.”
“I don’t understand. You reported a vicar committing adultery, a man breaking his marital vows and preying on an unwilling woman. What was there to laugh about?”
Duncan brushed a lock of hair back from Matilda’s brow. “Adultery is conjugal relations with another man’s wife. Rachel was unmarried, therefore, adultery did not occur. The bishop recited from the same primer the vicar had: Women tempt men on purpose, they entice us, they offer weak protests to heighten the pleasure of the chase, they hope to get with child so we’re bound to support them. Besides, the vicar was happy to manage a rural congregation in the godforsaken West Riding, and he excelled at coaxing funds from the local squires, barons, and wealthy yeomen.”
“That is vile.” Matilda was angry for the poor maid, but she was equally incensed for the young curate.
“That is the way of the world, I was told. David, whom God loved most dearly, had two hundred concubines and was a scheming murderer. Who was I to judge a good man for a few harmless pleasures?”
Another curate, one without a true vocation, might have withstood this collision of piety and evil, but not Duncan Wentworth. “Such a church did not deserve you.”
“The bishop agreed. I was instructed that if I failed to acquire a greater sense of tolerance for human failings, if I was unable to grasp that no man is perfect, then clearly, I lacked a true calling. The girl would be given a few coins if she conceived, and the appropriate charities would see to the rest.”
He spoke calmly, as if reciting the course of a battle fought long ago on foreign soil, though Matilda sensed that the conflict yet raged inside him.
“Which means,” she said, bringing Duncan’s knuckles to her lips, “the bishop had been confronted with the same situation previously, had a solution in place, and was complicit in the vicar’s knavery.”
“The bishop, the vicar’s wife, the church elders…a great joke was in progress, and nobody had warned the maid or the new curate. He was not the butt of the humor, though. By the time I returned from consulting my bishop, Rachel had conceived. She was past the stage where the herbwoman’s tisanes could be safely attempted.”
Those tisanes could kill a woman if used carelessly. “Was she given a few coins?”
“She was berated for enticing the vicar into sin. I came upon the lady of the house delivering this tongue-lashing, which proceeded unabated as I stood witness. I collected my things, left without a reference, and escorted Rachel to Leeds. A schoolteacher’s salary was inadequate to arrange regular meals, much less regular medical care. The child came early and preceded her mother into death by a handful of days.”
He fell silent, and Matilda waited for yet more sadness.
“I seriously considered joining them.” Spoken softly, wearily.
“You did not, because suicide is a sin.”
He drew his finger along Matilda’s lips. “I did not, because I am a Wentworth. We are cursed with tenacity. I failed Rachel, I failed her child, I failed my calling. She put her trust in me, and I