Devotion (2 page)

Because of Maria's recalcitrance, Mary Ashton would be cannonaded by blame. Her mother would be reminded that it was because of her own beauty that Maria had been born an object of the devil, too beautiful by far. Had Mary's own sensuality and comeliness not caused the young vicar's temporary dalliance with the demon lust—which resulted in his marrying the girl, not out of love by any stretch of the imagination (God was his only love; God and the godly position He would grant Vicar Ashton upon his demise), but out of repentance.

And obviously, Maria had inherited her mother's penchant for factiousness. Did her tongue not continually challenge her father's authority? (
Which was tantamount to challenging God himself.
) Was the vicar not repeatedly forced to punish her, as he had Mary in those early years, before he broke her spirit completely, when she valiantly refused to bow to his twisted sense of authority?

Maria closed her eyes. What could she have been thinking to have responded to that advertisement? Dear Lord, who could have imagined that
royalty
would appear on her father's doorstep to interview her for a
position she had applied for on a whim—because she had listened too closely to newly married Sarah McCann's discourses on the amazing delights of the world outside this village (not to mention the marriage bed), and she had watched a little too long, and longingly, at the fine coaches and their ultra-fine passengers who passed through on their way to the city.

But mostly, because she had wanted desperately to save a certain young man—a very special young man—from making the grave mistake of falling in love with Vicar Ashton's
offspring of the demon lust.
But most of all, she had wanted, selfishly, to save herself from marrying into the same sort of life, and fate, as her mother. And she wanted to save her mother.

Maria smoothed her hands down over her skirt, and for a brief moment, before reminding herself of the sins of vanity, wished for something nicer to wear— something brighter than the grave simplicity of the black she was normally forced to don. Her brother, Paul, had often vowed to someday purchase her a blue dress (he would order it from one of those posh books he had once seen some fancy lady perusing in her fancy coach) the same blue as her eyes—"blue as spring skies"—that would accentuate her "breathtaking beauty."

Maria did not consider herself pretty at all, but very . . . plain. She had fair skin and flaxen hair that would always remain flaxen—never gray. She generally wore a sort of half-cap of black lace, which she considered the most becoming head attire for a young lady of her age and complexion. As far as intelligence was concerned, she had never been thought of as clever.

She could read, and write, mostly thanks to Paul, whose grandest dream had been to teach—not as their father taught the lads of the village—no hail of fire and brimstone—no espousing of Scriptures to punctuate the evils of modern literature or the ideas and ideals of philosophers—but to enrich the mind, heart, and soul with an appreciation of true, uncensored knowledge.

The door opened behind her.

Maria
turned,
her heart skipping and her breath catching. Her father filled up the doorway, eyes ablaze, his wide, wrinkled face aflame with anger, fists like ham hocks clenched at his sides. The air suddenly became
unbreathable
.

"Witch."
His voice rattled deep and low in his chest. She knew that voice, reserved for those wretchedly sinful individuals whose souls he would, without compunction, damn to eternal hell.

He closed the door gently—too gently to be menacing, and she backed away, coming up against the wall, pressing into it as if she could become one with the rectory's rich mahogany panels.

"You won't touch me again," she stated with a conviction she didn't feel in the pit of her stomach. He was her father, after all. He could treat her in any manner he so desired—or so he had always convinced her.
"I
'm not a child any longer.
I
'm a grown woman and if I desire to leave this place—"

"Wicked girl.
Rancorous and spiteful sinner that you would humiliate me in this manner."

Backing into a corner, she glanced toward the door, the window—no escape—to flee now would only
infuriate
him further, and there was her mother to think about . . .

Raising her chin and planting her small feet apart, she met the vicar's eyes, her look one of challenge and defiance that made his face turn a slow, burning red.

"I won't allow you to hurt me any longer, Father. I'm leaving this place and when I'm capable I'm returning for Mother—"

"Insolent fiend!
Satan's daughter! Just like her—Eve of temptation, despoiler of righteousness.
Destroyer of man's discipline and judgment."
His eyes raked her. Towering above her, his surplice shifting over his massive frame like a shroud of power and doom, he hissed through his teeth, "Succubus.
Worming your way into a man's dreams, despoiling his virtue, filling his mind with lustful appetites so he deviates from the dictates of moral and divine law."

She turned her face away. "I won't allow you to break me like you have Mama."

"Whore—"

"You won't rob me of my youth and spirit—"

"Wanton—"

"Of my dignity!
You're a wicked man masquerading as God's disciple and were it in my power I would see you defrocked and cast from the church. I would tell the people of this village who so fear and revere you just exactly what sort of man you are!"

"Silence!"

"I would tell them that the tithes you demand of them are exorbitant. That the miracles their precious monies buy are nothing more than false promises from a man whose own wealth is growing by extremes, who someday hopes to see himself bishop—"

"Blasphemer!"

"I fully intend to return here and take Mama away from your cruel and insensitive abuse before she ends up like Paul."

"How dare you mention that heathen's foul name to
me!
"

"Because of you he's dead—my only brother is dead—"

"Falsifying slut."

"You stood aside and allowed that evil man to raise his fists against your own son. Because of you my brother spent the last two years of his life in unbearable pain—"

"Vengeance is mine,
sayeth
the Lord!"

"Yet he continued to love you the entire time he lay there dying little by little. With his last breath he begged you for forgiveness—"

"'Tis God's
judgment not mine
."

"He
was your son!
Your own flesh and blood and you refused to speak to him for two years because he fell in love with a woman—"

"A harlot!
An adulteress.
Branding her and casting her from my village was mild punishment. I should have burned her at the stake."

"Cruel, vindictive man.
I'll save myself and my mother from you if it's the last thing I do."

He raised his hand to hit her. In that moment the door opened.

James
Thackley
, the duchess's assistant, a tall, gray-haired man wearing wire-rimmed spectacles and a somber but smartly (and expensive) tailored suit, entered the room and paused, his expression one of surprise at the vision of the vicar with his fist raised and shaking, his brow beaded with sweat, and Maria backed into a corner, chin thrust outward, feet planted, and tears streaming down her cheeks. At last, he smiled—not smiled, exactly; the occasion did not lend itself to such lightness. His expression was one of pleasantness, which was obviously meant to assure Maria that all would be fine.

With a last speaking glance at her trembling parent, she dashed for the room where the Duchess of Salterdon was waiting, a hovering portly and balding physician named Ethan
Edgcumbe
at her side.

The steely, all-condemning gaze of Vicar Ashton fixed on Maria as she somewhat clumsily curtsied to the frail Duchess of Salterdon, a matriarch in her eighties with jeweled fingers and silver hair and a countenance severe enough to stop a clock. Such a look would have made most young women of Maria's age, having just turned nineteen, tremble in trepidation (certainly respect)—and obviously the duchess knew it—practiced it—prided herself in it—which was no doubt why the old woman's silver brows drew together when Maria responded, not with the anticipated cowering of the typical timid ninny, but with a lift of her chin and a narrowing of her eyes—the same obstinacy which her father termed "nerve of Satan" and which would invite a thorough lashing with a thin leather strap.

"So, we finally meet," the duchess said in
a surpris
ingly
strong voice, considering her age and obvious illness. Her unsteady hand lifted Maria's letter from her lap and she appeared to peruse it before looking up at Maria again. "Tell me, Miss Ashton, why you applied for this position when I clearly stated I wished to fill the position with a male."

Maria swallowed, cleared her throat, and did her best not to look at her mother, who sat on a milk stool near the wall, shrunken inside her clothes and her eyes, like dark, lifeless hollows, staring into space. Once— according to whispered gossip—Mary Swift had been beautiful, full of fire and energy, not unlike Maria, and desired by every unmarried man in the village. But that was before the Vicar Ashton arrived to win her over with promises of a heavenly paradise that awaited any woman who companioned him on his trek to save every damned-to-hell soul in England.
Poor Mary.
Poor Mother.
Her beauty, her youth, her dreams, all wasted; now she had passed the age where she cared. Oh, yes, it was not age alone that had produced the dull severity of expression that Mary wore, the eradication of all of youth's restless emotions, but disappointment, disillusionment, and the loss of hope. Her eyes were constantly dull, her face blank and immovable, like a landscape from which the sun had faded away, leaving it all gray and dark.

"Miss Ashton," the duchess prodded.

Drawing back her shoulders, Maria met the dowager's sharp gray eyes. "I fail to see what difference gender makes; if a female is equally as qualified for the position—"

"Are you qualified for the position, Miss Ashton? I need someone physically strong, mentally capable,
emotionally
rigid. Your charge, should I decide to employ you, can be occasionally difficult."

The statement appeared to cause the duchess a certain outward pang; her close-set lips quivered once or twice then she resumed her bearing, which seemed habitual to her. She looked Maria up and down and with a dismissive flip of her thin hand, added, "You're little more than a whiff of a child. An infant! I find it impossible to believe you could adequately handle the . . . situation. What makes you think you are physically and emotionally mature enough to work with the . . . infirm?"

"My brother was an invalid," she blurted, cursing the desperation she heard in her own voice. "He was beaten unmercifully by a man who was thrice his size, and who had no
regard
whatsoever for human compassion. My brother's back was broken in three places. For two years I was at his side, day and night. I fed him.
Clothed him.
Bathed him.
For hours I read to him, encouraged him,
pleaded
with him not to die. I watched him rally at times, and then sink. I exercised his legs and arms because he couldn't. He could do nothing, Your Grace, but lie there with his ever-sharp and clear mind and watch his body deteriorate.
'
Twasn't
his injuries that ultimately killed him.
Your
Grace, but his broken heart."