“You don’t mean to say that you stood before the assembled parishioners and recounted your exploits?” she asked with horror.
“How are they to know sin if totally ignorant of its many alluring permutations?” he replied, brushing a piece of thread from his superfine trousers.
“As a mere tradeswoman, I am unable to intervene on your behalf with the bishop, but I’m sure you’ll find some sympathetic soul to help,” she said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I was heading to bed.”
“I too was heading to bed this evening, attempting to put the Great Snoring debacle behind me, when the real trouble started,” he said.
“And I wish you luck with the completion of that. In some other location,” she said, gesturing to the door.
He looked up, his arresting eyes pinning her to the floor with their intensity. As befit his name, he really was beautiful.
“I was heading to bed in a molly house. With a man. As it was being raided by the Night Watch,” he said.
“Oh,” she said, gracelessly landing on the seat beside him.
He wrapped an arm around her trim waist companionably.
“So, you see, I’m in something of a bind and could use your help,” he said.
“They execute for sodomy,” she said in a daze.
“Sometimes,” he said, checking the polish on his boots. “Adult men going about their business at a molly house with other adult men tend to evade the law, but that’s only if they happen to have coin as a tip for the ever so kind Night Watch. Given that I happened upon a cutpurse on the way there, I had no recourse.”
“How were you to pay your bedmate without coin in hand?” she asked suspiciously. “Surely you don’t make mollies send demand letters, too?”
“When did I state that I was to be the one paying for the encounter?” he asked.
“Oh,” she said, slumping lower as the gravity of the situation settled on her shoulders.
“But you’re correct: I do have a line of credit there. Sadly, I am in arrears with the molly house as well, and between the unanswered demand letters and my father’s latest crusade against sodomy in our fair city, the owner was only too willing to give me up to the Watch to protect his operation. I narrowly escaped out a window and had to leave the rest of my vicar togs behind,” he said while petting the eye-catching scarf he’d been wearing.
“Lord…” she said, unsure of what to call him. She’d only written his name dozens of times in her requests for payment, but feared that he had one of those old, aristocratic names that looked far longer and more complicated than it ended up being on the tongue.
“Bonnie is fine,” he said, waving his beringed hand and planting a kiss on her cheek. “Since we’re going to be the best of friends very shortly.”
“Bonnie, I understand that you’re in a very bad spot, but I’m a mere tradeswoman. One who is currently more solvent than you, I admit, but even with pockets to let, you wield far more power than me.”
He wiggled closer to her on the seat. “Yes, but you have a special feature that I don’t have,” he said.
Molly raised her brows at that.
“Your name,” he said. “The only plausible solution to my woes became clear as I was heading out the window: I was nowhere near a molly house tonight. I was engaged in a tryst at Molly’s house. They heard information and simply misunderstood the substance.”
“You mean to convince the Night Watch that you were not engaging in sodomy at a house of prostitution, and instead spent the night canoodling with me?” she asked in disbelief.
“Yes,” he said. “Not my finest escape, but needs must when the gallows loom.”
“I suppose I have no choice but to offer aid,” she said drily.
“That’s the spirit!” he said, shaking her forefingers in his kidskin-leather-gloved hand.
“How did you know that my Christian name is Molly?” she asked.
“I must have made note of it during some previous visit to the shop,” he said.
“And how did you know that my husband wouldn’t answer the door?” she asked suspiciously.
“Is he not recently deceased?” he asked. “Had he opened the door to me today that would have been a superior distraction for the Watch anyway. A man raised from the dead? Surely they’d let me live if I made that discovery! Though it might mean a warm reception in Great Snoring, perish the thought.”
