Indecently Daring by Emma V Leech
Chapter 1
Dearest Harry,
Have you finally come to your senses and realised a clergyman’s life is wasted upon such a fine specimen of manhood? I pray nightly for such an occurrence, though I know it is a hopeless endeavour. You ever were stubborn as a mule. I only hope you do it for your own reasons and not to please your Papa, the pompous old twit that he is. Still, even he must be proud of the steps you have taken to become the man you are. I am, should you be in any doubt. Only I do worry for you, Harry, my boy. I fear you have become too serious, that you have forgotten that life is for living and ought to be brim full of joy. You spend a deal too much time with the sick and the dying and I believe it is depressing your spirits. The last time I saw you, the change in you shocked me. Where was the mischievous, laughing boy I knew and loved so dearly? So, it is entirely for your own good that I am coming to stay.
Now, fear not. I have no intention of putting up at that draughty old vicarage and catching pneumonia. No, I shall call upon Lady St Clair. She’s a sweet creature. Dorcas is a distant relative of the earl by marriage, so he won’t hesitate to invite her, and everyone knows we come as a matched set these days.
So, gird your loins, dearest nephew. I will arrive in three days.
―Excerpt of a letter to the Reverend Harry Martin, from his Great Aunt, Mrs Cora Dankworth.
2ndJanuary 1845, Holbrook House, Sussex.
“More tea, Vicar?”
“No, thank you, Lady St Clair.” Harry shook his head, setting down his cup and saucer and trying not to stare too longingly at the delicious fruit cake on the table. He’d had three large slices already and was well on his way to gluttony. He really must replace his housekeeper before hunger reduced him to cleaning every tea tray within his parish.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, take another slice,” the lady said with a snort, cutting a ridiculously large slice and handing it to him. “I could hear your stomach grumbling when you came in. Have you still not found a housekeeper?”
Harry accepted the plate with a rueful expression. “No. I keep meaning to, but the problem seems insurmountable.”
“Nonsense,” Lady St Clair said in her usual brisk manner. “It just needs a little attention and thought. You are running hither and yon like a headless chicken, precisely because you do not have a suitable housekeeper to help you. The correct choice will see off people inclined to waste your precious time on flirtation and nonsense, make you regular meals so you do not arrive with the look of a starving hound, and keep your robes in order.”
Harry winced and tugged self-consciously at his fraying cuff. He had the greatest admiration and respect for Lady St Clair. She was a bundle of energy with a mind he found frankly rather intimidating, but her forthright manner, whilst refreshing, could be a little brutal.
“I have tried,” he ventured, wishing he did not feel quite so thoroughly like a scolded boy. “But it’s complicated.”
Lady St Clair returned a dry expression. “No, Reverend, it is not. The problem is abundantly clear. All the best applicants for the job have daughters of a marriageable age.”
“Er….” Harry said awkwardly, and then let out a sigh of relief. If the lady understood the problem, perhaps she could advise him on how to proceed without offending the female half of his parish. “In a nutshell.”
With a thoughtful nod, the countess sipped her tea before setting the empty cup down. She pushed her spectacles up her nose and turned the full force of her attention upon him. “Leave it with me. I shall compile a list and engage someone suitable for you.”
“My lady, you are too kind, but I ought not to impose upon your time, and—”
“Piffle. You are clearly running yourself ragged, and that is no good for anyone. Where shall we be if you have a nervous collapse?”
“I don’t think things are really that—”
“In the suds, that’s where we shall be, and I shall be tasked with finding a new vicar, I don’t doubt. Oh-ho, not likely.”
“My lady, I can assure you, I am in perfect health. Just because—”
The lady carried on, disregarding his protestations with an impatient wave of her hand. “It won’t do. I shall help you find a housekeeper, and then you will be fed and watered at regular intervals and my mind shall be easy. If I do not, you’ll end up with someone who is unequal to keeping the marriage-minded mamas and some of the less modest young women of the parish out of your hair. I could not bear to see you forced to marry to some frivolous chit who fell in love with only that pretty face of yours, and has no notion of the man beneath it.”
“Yes, my lady,” Harry said, feeling suddenly quite serene and not the least offended by her words. Why women acted so oddly around him was a mystery he’d never understood, but why things had become worse since he’d entered the church was quite beyond him.
Did they believe just because he was a man of God, he was perfect? For that was so far from the truth, it was laughable. If they saw the real man, knew all the things he had done in his life, all the mistakes and… but he would not dwell on that. After all, Lady St Clair had set her mind to the task of getting him a housekeeper. Now no power on earth would keep her from her objective, which meant he was saved.
Harry felt a weight lift from his shoulders and sent thanks to his heavenly father for arranging things so nicely. He might actually be able to sleep peacefully at night. He might even be able to get up in the morning without having to peer out of the windows and check for young women lurking in his garden, bearing freshly baked loaves, cakes, biscuits, or whatever they had turned their fair hands to on his behalf. Little did they know that, since his housekeeper had left to take care of her ailing sister and a daunting number of nieces and nephews, it was the contents of those covered baskets that tempted Henry the most.
Lady St Clair smiled with satisfaction. “Well, I’m glad that’s settled. So, onto the next matter. We need ideas for a charity event to raise funds for your school. You give generously of your time but, really, we shall need a full-time teacher if it is going to work. There aren’t enough hours in the day for you to keep up this rather gruelling timetable.”
“I enjoy teaching the boys,” Harry protested. It was only a few hours in the mornings, and only three days a week, though he wished he could do more.
Lady St Clair nodded. “I know that, and they adore you, but we need money to ensure the school is doing what it ought, and you don’t drive yourself to exhaustion. Not only that, but there’s so much the lads need. I was delighted all the boys got new boots before the winter this year, but the little devils grow like weeds, and they shall need replacing before we know it. Also, I very much agree with your idea of giving the boys a hot meal. I know the Board of Guardians balked at the notion, but that’s only because they’re terrified they’ll be expected to put their hands in their pockets.”
“It will be expensive, I suppose,” Harry said anxiously.
The lady rolled her eyes. “Nonsense. St Clair will make a weekly contribution of whatever is in season from the home farm, naturally, but we shall need a cook and a place for her to do so. I’m not finding you the perfect housekeeper only to have her leave a day later when she realises her kitchen is invaded every morning to prepare the school dinners. So we must create a kitchen and storeroom.”
“There are the stables,” Harry said, ignoring the stab of disappointment in the vicinity of his heart.
The countess gave him a sharp look. “No, that won’t do. You really ought to have a horse, you know. St Clair would lend you one until you have the time to arrange your own. I’m sure I’ve offered you the pick of the stables three times now. But anyway, I shall come and visit tomorrow, and we shall put our heads together.”
“Very good, my lady,” Harry said, hoping she would drop the subject now.
“Why don’t you have a horse?” Intelligent brown eyes, enlarged by the thickness of her spectacles, bore into him. “From what I hear, you were an exceptional horseman. And didn’t you have some magnificent animal that everyone was so impressed by? A black stallion, wasn’t it? What was his name now? Prince, no that wasn’t it. Ah, yes… Pirate. That was it, I think? I remember St Clair waxing lyrical about the animal. Finest horse he ever saw, apparently.”
Harry flinched inwardly as the name of his old friend made his chest ache with regret. He swallowed hard and nodded, telling himself not to be so foolish, not to keep dwelling in the past, for no good could come of it.
“And yet a man with such a reputation for horsemanship, who owned such an animal, goes everywhere on foot? What has happened? Is the living not sufficient to—”
“Oh, yes, my lady,” Harry said quickly, appalled that she or the earl could think him the least bit dissatisfied with his lot when they had been so astonishingly generous. Far more than he deserved or was worthy of, though he intended to be worthy, no matter how long it took. “It is more than ample.”
“Then is it a form of martyrdom?”
Lady St Clair’s keen eyes narrowed, and Harry felt his neck grow hot. Before he could stammer out a reply, a knock came at the door. Harry let out a sigh of relief and sent another thank you heavenwards.
A butler appeared and carried a silver salver to the countess. She took the letter laid upon it, opened it deftly with a pretty mother-of-pearl knife, then scanned the letter and smiled.
“Marvellous!” she said, setting the letter down and dismissing the butler with her thanks. “Well, it seems we shall have more help with our fundraising efforts. I don’t think I mentioned before, but my niece, Miss Alana Cadogan, and her friend Lady Catherine Barrington, are arriving this afternoon. They’ll be staying until we go to town for the season, and that letter informs me we have more guests who I am certain will be eager to help, but you know that already, I suppose?”
She looked expectantly at Harry. He stared back, at a loss.
“Your aunt,” Lady St Clair said, frowning at him. “Mrs Dankworth.”
“Er….” Harry replied with an impending sense of doom.
“Well, she said she had written to tell you she was coming?”
“Coming?” he repeated in horror. “Here?”
Harry's heart plummeted as the countess nodded. And the morning had been going so well.
“Yes, with Lady Beauchamp.”
Somehow, Harry refrained from groaning and putting his head in his hands and instead affixed a polite smile to his face. “I see. I must have missed the letter.”
“Because you need a housekeeper,” the countess said, throwing up her hands. “Well, in any case, they are due to arrive tomorrow. They’re staying here, naturally. So with them and the young ladies, we shall be in fine form to take on the world. Alana has energy enough for three people. A pity her mama could not come, but then Bonnie Cadogan and Cora and Dorcas together might be a little too much. We want to take on the world, not blow it up.”
The lady gave an amused snort of laughter and then caught the horrified look on Harry’s face.
“Oh, really, Harry,” she said, lapsing into informality as she did with him sometimes because she remembered him as a friend of her son, Cassius, the two of them running wild about Holbrook like grubby little savages. She tried very hard to treat him respectfully, as was due to his position, but now and then she lapsed and scolded him like she would her own son, even though they were both grown men. “I admit my brother-in-law’s branch of the Cadogan family can be a little overwhelming, but they’re certainly no worse than Cora and Dorcas, and you handle them well enough. I promise you my niece is a delightful young lady.”
“Handle them?” he repeated, appalled. “You don’t handle my aunt and Lady Beauchamp, you just run for cover and hope the devastation isn’t too far-reaching.”
“And you a Christian, Harry,” she said reproachfully. “They’re full of fun and merry as grigs.”
“They’re wicked old women who love to cause mischief,” he retorted, which was a bit strong but, really, they were frightful creatures who never failed to cause a ruckus wherever they went.
“Well, that too,” she admitted, her eyes twinkling merrily. “But dreadfully entertaining.”
“Dreadfully,” he echoed darkly, and wondered just how awful it would be.
