Mrs. Tierney glowered up at him. Shriveled and bent, she leaned heavily on a cane while three of her five daughters towered around her. They were pink cheeked and neat but uncomfortable as their mother prodded him with her cane.
“I’ll tell you how I’m doing,” she growled. “My Mary finally wrote. She’s settled in Glenwhistle, did you know? She eloped with the Cameron boy.”
“Congratulations to her,” Charlotte said dismissively. Arthur flinched. “Please excuse us, Mrs. Tierney. You’re blocking our seats.”
“Congratulations indeed!” Mrs. Tierney’s nostrils flared. She stood firmly in their way. “Married to the bastard son of a drunk. He’s not even employed! You were no catch,” she said to Arthur, which might’ve stung if he hadn’t been well aware, “but at least you work for your living, even if it is to tinker with rich people’s baubles instead of doing something useful. And lucky for you that doctor stepfather of yours legitimized you when he married your mother, God knows why he did it.”
“Ma,” one of her daughters said in embarrassment, but Charlotte intervened.
“Forgive me, Mrs. Tierney, but I don’t see how it’s any of our business whom Miss Tierney has married, unless you mean to apologize for her breaking off her courtship with my brother without a word.”
“I assure you that’s not necessary,” Arthur said hastily.
Mrs. Tierney let out a bark of laughter. The nearest villagers turned, more interested in this conversation than their own.
“Apologize tohim? Do you know, Mrs. Prentice, who funded her elopement? Your brother himself! Oh yes,” she said, and leered at Arthur, who wished he had stayed in bed, “she wrote and told me everything. Asked me tothank you, if you can believe it. Thank you! For allowing her to—”
“With what money?”
Turning to Arthur, Charlotte didn’t look angry, just exasperated—an expression not unfamiliar to him, but he quailed.
“I had a little saved up.”
His sister sighed. “Arthur...”
“She gave him some sob story,” Mrs. Tierney continued, “about already being courted, by someone her cruel old mother wouldn’t let her marry. Did she even tell you who it was? Or did you give her the money without considering what such a match might do to her?”
Arthur wanted to sink into the floor. “She told me, yes.”
“You see!” Mrs. Tierney sounded triumphant, though she had clearly expected him not to know. “Good God, what a fool you are. Giving a silly young girl the money to run away and elope with a boy with no family, no money, no standing! She’ll be ruined thanks to you.”
She might have sounded upset about the ruination of her eldest daughter, which would surely reflect poorly on her four younger daughters—or would have, before Seacliff had suffered the loss of so many eligible young people to far-off cities—but her voice was filled with savage delight.
“Andnow,”she said, “my youngest has run off, too, and I want to know what you know about it.”
“Nothing.”
“A likely story!”
It was true, however. During their courtship—such as it was—Arthur had struck up a sort of friendship with Mary. It had culminated in her tearful confession that her mother was less afraid of her becoming a spinster and more afraid of her marrying Alasdair Cameron. But he knew the missing girl, her sister Brigid, only by sight.
Mrs. Tierney’s ire might’ve made him regret giving her oldest daughter his savings, but Mary’s tale had been dreadfully romantic. The chance meeting between the girl from a goodfamily and the boy from a bad one. The discovery of unlikely similarities in their hopes and dreams. The love letters. The anguished confession. It had been so like something from one of Arthur’s books that he’d immediately retrieved the cash from the sock at the bottom of his dresser and pressed it into Mary’s hands, urging her to elope with Alasdair like she’d hoped to.
Only afterward did Arthur realize he’d have to start saving all over. But he’d been strangely relieved. He had the uncomfortable feeling that, as much as he hoped to relocate to Port Lorne one day, he was afraid of doing so, too.
In the choir loft, the organ started up. The villagers closest, who had ceased all gossip to better listen to Mrs. Tierney’s accusations, settled into their pews. Cormac Young, his wife, and three of their children slipped into the pew behind the Throckmorton-Prentices. Rosie, his youngest, coughed intermittently, but she hummed along with the organ. Arthur flushed, not wanting Cormac to witness the ridiculousness taking place in front of him.
“If you please, Mrs. Tierney,” Charlotte said coolly, “Mass is about to start. You had better find your seat.”
The old woman wasn’t done with Arthur, but one of her daughters said, “Heaven’s sakes, Ma,” and headed for the Tierneys’ pew without waiting for her.
Mrs. Tierney cast a final, withering glance at Arthur and said to Charlotte, “If your brother has spurred another of my children into an ill-fated love match, Mrs. Prentice, you best believe I’ll do something about it.”
Charlotte sighed, but Mrs. Tierney had moved off.
Usually, Arthur sat on the far end of the pew, with Sasha and Jonas between him and their mother so he could keep Sasha (more or less) quiet during the service. This morning, however, Charlotte nudged the children into their seats first, sat beside them, leaned her cane against the back of the nextpew, and gestured Arthur in after her. Sasha slumped against her older sibling, on the verge of falling asleep.
Arthur’s skin prickled. He was very aware of the Youngs behind him, and Mrs. Tierney glaring at him from her pew farther up. Her daughters kept trying to make her turn around but gave up as the processional started.
