They looked at him disdainfully in the Chapter House, and no wonder. Sweat was pouring off him as he stood before them in running kit. Mention of the Bishop and Miss Flynt gained him admittance but did not elicit welcome. He was made to wait in a stony corridor, cooling off too quickly, while someone located Miss Flynt. She burst from a dark-paneled door carrying a pile of paperwork.
She was not an old woman. She was not old at all. She filled her smart little frock with a most appealing figure. Her hem hung modestly low, her décolletage remained concealed, but her lips were full and red as if stung by bees. He longed to put them in his mouth and suck the hurt away.
—Wilberforce? she inquired.
He extended a hand, which she ignored.
—This way.
Without having looked at him long enough to appraise him, she slipped back through the door. He hurried after her, wondering whether she was wearing any scent, and if so, what.
—What’s your position here, Miss Flynt? Morgan asked.
She located a piece of paper on one of the desks in the room, rang for the operator, and announced her readiness for the call she had booked. After some moments, she replaced the handset. Clearing a space at the desk, she indicated that he should sit in the chair beside the telephone receiver.
He couldn’t stop looking at her. Her accent revealed a decent background. Her position indicated an education. Everything else about her appearance and manner testified to a perfect ripeness. How he would enjoy loosening her hair from its pins, relieving her of her cardigan, and investigating her stockings and the skin just above them. It was one of his favorite parts of the female anatomy, that span of inches above the stockings and below the rest. If he could only be allowed to run his fingers and his lips across it, regularly and at leisure, he felt sure something profound inside him would be soothed.
—Miss Flynt, he tried again, I wonder if you might be able to assist me once this is all done.
He waved at the telephone as if gestures could erase it. She looked at him with a trace of mirth. He decided it was encouraging.
—I’m new to the area, he said, and I know I look a fright, but I was wondering if later this afternoon, when I’m dressed, you might do me the kindness of showing me round the cathedral.
The mirth grew around her lips, those plump, vivid—
—Have you an especial interest in cathedrals?
—Oh, yes, Morgan said. They enthrall me.
The apparatus on the desk interrupted with an offensive blare. She put the receiver to her ear:
—Deanery … yes, I’ll hold.
—If not this afternoon, perhaps tomorrow, Morgan persisted. When’s your day off?
The door opened, revealing a middle-aged man in a cassock. Miss Flynt raised a hand as she spoke into the phone:
—Yes. Hold, please.
The cassock-wearing man spoke urgently:
—Mrs. Flynt, chapter meeting.
—Coming, she snapped.
Morgan gaped at her:
—Mrs.? But, the Bishop said …
She pressed her lips in exasperation.
—My father is really very stubborn about my marriage.
She put the receiver in his hand and pushed him into the chair.
—Morgan?
His name from the receiver, crackly connection, but the voice, unmistakable.
—Good morning, Father, Morgan said.