The Vicar's Widow

“My daughter joins us today!” her mother announced proudly, and the two ladies exclaimed gleefully at that. Emily smiled and clasped her hands behind her back as she wandered deeper into the room.

She heard a bit of a clatter and turned toward a door at the opposite end of the room as Widow Becket came through it with a tea service. Her gold-red hair was pulled back and knotted at the nape of her neck, and she wore a heavy canvas apron over her drab brown day gown. “Miss Forsythe!” she called happily as she carried the heavy tea service to the table and set it down. “What a pleasure to have you join us!”

Emily gave her a demure nod.

“My daughter is taking her first steps toward charity,” her mother exclaimed for at least the tenth time that day, and beamed at Emily.

“Well! We are very pleased to have you,” Widow Becket averred, and reached out, touched Emily’s arm.

Emily immediately stiffened; Widow Becket seemed to feel that she did and withdrew her hand, pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, and with a small, self-conscious smile, busied herself with the tea service. “The vicar has sent tea for our meeting this morning,” she announced to them all. “He avows it is the finest tea yet to reach England’s shores.”

The ladies tittered at that; Widow Becket wiped her hands on her apron. “I’ve some biscuits in the oven. I’ll just fetch them—”

“May I help you, Mrs. Becket?” Emily quickly interjected, trying very hard to ignore her mother’s proud smile.

The widow glanced up from the tea service, eyed her suspiciously. But in the next moment, she said, “I should appreciate all the help that is offered.” She flashed another warm smile—one that made Emily shiver. “Come, Miss Forsythe, and I will show you our kitchen.”

Emily put her hand into the widow’s and walked stiffly beside her through the door and down a long row of stairs into the church’s kitchen. Emily had not known before today that the church even had a kitchen, but as Widow Becket explained, upon seeing her look of confusion, the very large churches usually had one tucked away to assist in such activities as charities and wedding breakfasts and so forth.

Widow Becket walked to the oven and pulled it open, and with a thick towel, she removed a tin of biscuits and put them on the wooden table that stretched almost the entire length of the kitchen. She returned to the oven and removed a second tin and placed it beside the first. With an iron spatula, she began to remove the biscuits from the tin and put them on the table to cool, and smilingly gestured for Emily to do the same with the first tin.

“Have you ever been to the Malthorpe Orphanage?” Widow Becket asked as they worked.

“No, mu’um.”

“We thought to pay a call after we finish our work here. I think you will find the children delightful.”

Emily had not given any thought at all to what they actually might do at this meeting, and really, it hardly mattered at the moment, as she was deeply racking her mind for a way to broach the subject she so desperately wanted to broach. “Where do the children come from?” she asked idly, more in an attempt to hide the fact that her mind was elsewhere.

“I’m not entirely certain,” Widow Becket said thoughtfully. “Some of them have lost their parents. Others are wards of the church . . .” Her hand stilled; she looked up, as if she was seeing something far away. “I suppose their mothers have chosen a life not suitable for children,” she said softly and resumed her work with the biscuits. “They are women who must, for whatever reason, indulge in the most ignoble of human conduct.”

Upon hearing that, Emily inadvertently broke a biscuit in two. “Ah,” she said, nodding slowly. “You mean the sort of woman Lord Montgomery consorts with.”

Her remark certainly had the desired effect; Widow Becket’s head snapped up, and she looked at her in astonishment. “I beg your pardon?”

Emily quickly lowered her gaze and continued to carefully slide the biscuits from her tin onto the wooden table. “I don’t mean to be uncouth, Mrs. Becket, truly I don’t. But . . .” She let her voice trail away, a trick she had learned from her mother, who often left the most important part of her speech dangling when she wanted her husband’s full attention.

“But?” Mrs. Becket asked.

Emily looked up and winced as if she were pained by something so vile. “It’s true. I daresay I had the misfortune one night, returning from the theater with my cousin, of seeing him on the street in their company. And once, I overheard my father speaking with a gentleman friend,” she said, lowering her voice to a coarse whisper, “and he said that Lord Montgomery would do well to keep his lady friends in the alleys where they belonged.”