“Please wait with the horses. I will join you shortly.” She attempted to turn Father Porter with a hand on his elbow, but he was raising his eyeline up, squinting against the sun, and slow recognition dawned.
Father Porter looked sharply back to the gravestone, and so did Will.
“Father Arlo Northcott,” Will read out loud, and the priest’s eyes rolled closed.
Angelika managed to catch him. “Oh, God. Oh, hell.” She lowered his head carefully onto the grass, then folded her shawl into a pillow. “Father, Father. Can you hear me?” She patted his cheek and saw his eyelids moving. “He’s not dead.”
Will croaked, “He recognized me.”
“Don’t you dare faint, too,” she threatened when Will stared back at the headstone with glassy eyes. “Keep your wits. Go into that side door there. Help, help!” She waved an arm at the sweeping staffer, who dropped his broom.
To the gravestone, Will asked, “Is that supposed to be me? Father Arlo Northcott? Father? I’m a priest? I’m a priest?” He was fast approaching hysteria.
Angelika had to shout to get through to him. “We know nothing until we have proof.”
He shouted back, “How? Angelika, how?”
“Go into that door and lock it behind you. Search the office as quickly as you can for anything bearing the name of Father Northcott. Files or letters. They may be locked in a drawer.”
She felt in Father Porter’s pockets, found a ring of keys, and tossed them up to Will. His hands did not grasp properly, and the way they landed in the grass reminded her of Victor’s wretched man, dropping the apple. She passed the keys back up, and compressed the feeling she had in her gut. “Will, go right now.”
Will backed away from the scene and managed to get inside before the aide from the front path sprinted up.
“What happened?”
She was truthful when she replied, “He looked like he saw a ghost.”
*
“So, let me get this straight,” Victor said, grinning. “You went to arrange my wedding but almost killed the priest? Typical Angelika.”
The members of the Frankenstein Secret Society had reconvened in the library of the manor that same evening. They were eating bowls of stew off their laps, dipping into it with crusty bread. Christopher was the only one who looked somewhat elegant doing it and showed no signs of having ridden in a forest full of spiderwebs for ten hours.
Victor, on the other hand, most certainly did.
Christopher was subdued and apologetic to have come home without his quarry and kept heaving sighs as he stared into the fire. It wasn’t his fault. He had no idea that he was essentially hunting a huge forest sprite.
Angelika addressed her brother haughtily. “Father Porter is ninety. A strong gust of wind could have killed him. And as a matter of fact, I saved him. He swooned into my arms like a lady.” She was lying on her back in front of the fire, with her bowl scraped clean and Edwin sitting astride her stomach. She bounced him up and down. “I caught that nasty old man, didn’t I, Winnie? Didn’t I catch that old bag of bones?”
Edwin let out a belly laugh.
Will leveled a flat look at Victor. “Typical brave, generous Angelika, cool under pressure, and saving people left and right.” It was a comment designed to defend her, but it also made Clara drop her gaze back to her stew.
“Sowwy, Jelly,” Victor said with his mouth full.
“Do you know why he fainted?” Lizzie asked. She was sitting on the floor, leaning on Victor’s leg, and patted the rug to get Edwin to crawl to her. He headed in her direction with cheerful determination. A competition was brewing between the two women. Lizzie looked up frequently to see Victor’s reaction to the little boy; he was too busy stuffing himself with stew to notice.
Hopeless, Angelika sighed to herself. To Lizzie, she replied, “He fainted almost certainly because he is ninety. He was roused after a few minutes, so we felt sure he would recover.” The moment his eyelids had fluttered, she’d left him in the arms of his aide, rushing to find a frazzled Will pacing near the horses.
Clara was happy to share her son and sat with her feet tucked underneath herself. Sitting beside Christopher, she looked like his relaxed wife, and a rather pretty one at that. It was amazing what a bath, and an afternoon nap, could achieve. It was the second time Angelika had noticed they looked like a well-matched pair. She stared at the distance on the chaise between them, and calculated the width of her own behind.
Angelika continued. “I have also considered the possibility that he grew light-headed from trying to wheedle some new marble from the Frankensteins.”