“Oh, yes, Him.” Micha fell back against the pillows, dizzy, tired, and, as he was beginning to notice, laudanum-deprived. There was no pleasure in tormenting this man. He took everything so seriously and seemed disposed to give even Micha’s weakest, most unjust barbs fair consideration.
“My brother,” offered Thomas weakly, “calls me Thom. Or, you know, ‘prig’ or ‘arse’ or things along similar lines, as brothers are wont to do.”
“And what do you call him?”
“Er . . . George.”
Micha turned his head. His voice was little more than a whisper now. “That’s the best you can manage? Pathetic.”
The Reverend Thomas Mandeville smiled suddenly, a wicked, gleaming smile. “On the contrary. George absolutely hates it when I turn the other cheek.”
“Does Our Lord and Saviour mind you using His teachings to piss off your brother?”
“Our Lord and Saviour had brothers too.”
Micha gave a sputter of weak but genuine laughter.
“You need to rest.” Thomas’s hand moved as if to touch Micha’s, but then he clearly thought better of it. “You are far from well.”
Micha closed his eyes. “I was an only child. Still am, I suppose.”
His body wanted rest, but his mind would not lie still. Images of entwined bodies and twisted flesh swirled sickeningly through the darkness until he had half-convinced himself he was seeing visions of hell. And Isidore, like a revenant angel who would not leave him alone.
A hand touched his brow, and he knocked it away.
“I’m sorry.” Thomas. Of course. “I thought you were feverish.”
“Talk to me.” The words escaped Micha’s lips before he could seal them in.
“Of course.” He heard the hint of a smile in Thomas’s voice. “I will lull you to sleep with my tedious reminiscences of childhood.”
There was a brief pause.
“Get on with it, then. Start lulling.”
“I was gathering my thoughts,” returned Thomas, calmly. “Perhaps I could tell you something of my brothers?”
“Don’t ask,” Micha growled. “Just talk.”Please.
“Well, um, my eldest brother—Edward—used to call George ‘Topper’ because he said he was like a spinning top. I can remember once, rather cruelly, explaining to Nurse that it was because George was always running in circles, but Edward meant it kindly. George never stopped moving, you see. He had endless energy and was—as I am sure you can imagine—endlessly in trouble.”
“What,” slurred Micha, “did Edward call you?”
“‘Skittle.’ Because George was always pushing me over, one way or another. We were born just minutes apart, you see. Edward said it was probably because I waited politely for George to go first.”
Thomas’s words seemed to come more easily the more he spoke, and it was frighteningly easy to listen to him. To let another man’s remembrances serve as distraction from his own. And how sweetly they were offered up, these gifts of the self. Then again, Micha reflected bitterly, it was easy enough to be generous when you knew nothing of lack.
“I don’t think the marquess ever forgave our mother,” Thomas was saying. “He had ordered two sons, you see, not three, and she died before she could give him a daughter.” The gas lamp was turned too low to reveal much of his expression, and Micha was too weary to try, but the shadows seemed to soften him. Sadness and secrets revealed by the dark. “I don’t remember her very well at all. I think I only saw her once or twice. I remember having to wear my very best clothes and recite the Lord’s Prayer to her, so I was naturally quite resentful. And—this may seem a peculiar confession for a priest—but when I was very young, I found it almost impossible to memorise the Lord’s Prayer correctly. Nobody had ever tried to explain it to me, so it was nothing but obscure and meaningless sounds. Once I think I said, ‘Give us this day our daily trespasses,’ and His Lordship thought I was being wilful and had the butler beat me for it.”
Thomas’s voice rolled over him like velvet until, at last, Micha slept.
Chapter 4
7th September, 1864
Oh God. Michael Dashwood sees right through me and knows me for a hypocrite and a fool. He has practically called me such and I could not deny it. I do not understand how a piece of kindness, enacted in good faith, could have become twisted into something ...else. What have I done? Is my heart so corrupt?
I am lost and I cannot even begin to fathom how I came to be lost. Less than a week ago my path was as straight and clear as a bridge across calm waters. But nothing is as it was before, and I cannot trust my footing or what my eyes perceive. It is as though I have worn blinkers my whole life, but now they are gone and all I understand is how close I am to a sin from which I believed myself remote.
