“They’re fine, thank you,” Arlo replied. He could pick the exact moment Victor made a mental note to question his diet during his next examination. It would make a change from the same questions over and over: Are you still fatigued? Are you healing? Is your pain any less? Can I trouble you for a sample of your seed?
Yes, no, no—and absolutely not.
“Well, I want to know what’s been going on. Tell me later,” Lizzie told Angelika on a whisper, and the table fell silent.
Arlo scraped his knife and fork on his plate to keep up appearances. When the big green eyes opposite turned back to him, he forked up a hearty mouthful and chewed. Satisfied, Angelika wrinkled her nose at him fondly. Arlo imagined her questions later: Was your dinner nice? Are your hands all right? Are you feeling so much better?
He answered now, in his mind. I will lie to your beautiful face and tell you what you want to hear, because I would die to make you happy.
Perhaps I should rephrase that thought.
He didn’t think himself so clever that he could guess her every question, because in bed she’d asked him things that had left him floundering for a reply.
（When you do that, can you put your fingers in me . . . here? If I touch you there, would that be all right? What about if I suck you while you lick—）
“They’ve both gone glassy-eyed again,” Lizzie complained. “It’s like sitting with a pair of corpses. No offense, Will.”
Arlo laughed. “None taken. Eat a little more,” he encouraged Angelika, and felt a new glow in his chest as she took a bite. Who looked after her, really? With Mary gone, it was up to him now. “Are you cold?”
Angelika shook her head, and pointed her fork at Lizzie, then her brother. “Now you can see what you pair have been like to live with.” （They were suitably contrite.） “I am perfectly entitled to sit here in an exhausted puddle and replenish my strength. I’m surprised that Ar—my love doesn’t need a second plate.”
Nobody noticed the slipup with his name. She’d made Arlo swear to keep his news to himself, but it felt like a pressure in his chest. How could he transition from I’m your blank-page houseguest to I’m a missing, presumed-dead priest? Would he even live long enough to deal with the consequences of it? Some days he felt like he’d live to see his sixtieth birthday. Other days, next Sunday seemed optimistic.
He knew one thing: he was an asset that the church would seek to recover.
“Will, you know what I told you that very first day,” Victor said in a warning tone, and Arlo’s stomach made a nervous flip. Then he grinned. “If you deflowered my sister, you would be stuck with her.”
“Oh, he’s stuck with me all right.” Angelika rolled her gaze over to Arlo, and with her second blink, her eyes were full of remembering. She’d done just as much deflowering as he had.
She occupied her exhausted puddle in the most delightful way, with her blouse slipping off her satin shoulder. He fancied he could see the lines his fingers had made when he ran them through her hair; and right there, at the nape of her neck, he’d wrapped it around his fist like a honey-red rope. It made her gasp and shiver. What audacity to put a wealthy girl on her knees.
“Corpses again,” Lizzie said in a dark tone.
Angelika looked around, preparing to make an effort, then jolted with surprise as she remembered something. “Where is Clara?”
“She is very tired, and perhaps a bit unwell,” Lizzie replied. “She is eating in her cottage. Don’t worry, the cook mashed up something for our little friend. He’s a big eater, apparently.”
“Smashing lad,” Victor chipped in quickly. Lizzie passed a hand down her stomach and smiled.
“He’ll be asleep by now,” Angelika replied on a sigh. Her appetite was abandoned and she put her napkin on her plate. She was fighting her way out of their bedroom fog. “What a fine host I’ve been. And Christopher? When did he leave?”
The man’s name had always given Arlo’s stomach a pinch, because Angelika’s voice had a throaty catch whenever she said it.
Never mind his own fate amongst the earthworms; if those two had met a month earlier at some country dance, she would now be Mrs. Angelika Keatings, and she would be dining in a post-sex stupor beside Christopher’s fireplace, with a swelling belly.
“I really should have said goodbye to him,” Angelika added, staring into the fire. “Was he very angry with me?”
“His heart and pride are very injured,” Lizzie said. “But all is not lost.”