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“The door is stuck,” she confirmed, adding her shoulder to it, although the lie only forestalled the inevitable.

“Did your father put you up to this?” asked Sir Hugh. “The committee has voted to move ahead with the repairs to the chancel arch. We will not be delayed.”

“My father is opening barrows in the Peak.” This was the truth, but her false brightness made it sound like a lie.

“I asked Miss Marsden to show me the church.” Georgie piped up. “I’m only lately returned to the neighborhood and was keen to admire all that had previously been lost to decay.”

“There is much to admire.” Sir Hugh spoke like a man who’d just inflated his chest.

“Indeed,” said Georgie.

“I was sorry to hear about your father.”

“Thank you,” said Georgie.

“And when should we expect your brother’s return?”

Elfreda crept to the font and dropped into a crouch. She grabbed onto the basin. Hopeless. It was utterly hopeless. She and Georgie couldn’t lift the thing, not with all the time in the world.

“…sometimes swells after a rain,” Sir Hugh was saying. “I believe it has jammed. Stand back, my dear.”

Elfreda scurried to the door, bracing herself alongside Georgie. The door jolted and began to leap in its frame.

“Sir Hugh!” A shrill salutation made the leaping cease. “You’re behaving like a March hare. What’s come over you?”

“Mrs. Alderwalsey.” Sir Hugh’s voice became muffled. Presumably, he’d moved away from the church to address her.

Elfreda sagged. Was the entire restoration committee convening? Would the vicar turn up next? Lord Fawcett? Her forehead felt damp.

“Can you hear what they’re saying?” whispered Georgie, ear pressed to the door.

She shook her head.

“We can tell them we found it like that.”

She shook her head.

“Should we try to move the pedestal too? Seeing as we’re in a pickle regardless.”

She shook her head. “The pedestal isn’t Saxon. If the hoard was beneath the font, someone else discovered it centuries ago.”

“I’m sorry.” They looked pained. “I’ve gotten us into a scrape.”

“I got us into one too,” she admitted. “Let’s consider it even.”

“ Even? You think this compares with live burial?”

There came a sharp rap on the door.

“Sir Hugh has gone for help,” announced Mrs. Alderwalsey.

“I gave him explicit instructions, so there is every probability of success. Left to his own devices, he is indecisive and dawdles. It is very vexatious. Never play chess with Sir Hugh. You might as well watch the grass grow.” A pause.

Then another sharp rap. “Say ‘How do you do, Mrs. Alderwalsey,’ so I know I am not speaking to a door.”

“How do you do, Mrs. Alderwalsey,” chorused Elfreda and Georgie.

“How do you do,” said Mrs. Alderwalsey.

“What sort of help is coming?” asked Georgie.

“Charles Peach,” said Mrs. Alderwalsey. “I passed him on my drive. He was pulling that rascally Mr. Hawthorne out of the ferns by the packhorse bridge. I believe they’d had an altercation. Both were disordered in their dress, red in the face, and panting furiously.”

Georgie made a strangled sound.

“You would rather not hear of him,” said Mrs. Alderwalsey, sagely. “But see the consolation: our Peach is the doughtiest fellow in the parish. Mr. Hawthorne won’t be making quite so bold after the encounter.”

“Mmm,” managed Georgie.

“What’s keeping Sir Hugh?” Mrs. Alderwalsey rapped a third time. “I should drive after him. If Mrs. Roberts arrives before I’ve returned, tell her to go home, there’s been an emergency, but you’re not privy to the details.”

“Aren’t we the emergency?” asked Georgie, but Mrs. Alderwalsey’s chuckle had already faded.

Elfreda stepped away from the door.

“In the ferns,” murmured Georgie. “I say, Phipps.”

Elfreda blushed. “Are you sure? It might have been an altercation.”

“Sometimes love is war.” Their grin was wicked. “Hearts are breaking in the House of Commons.”

She shook herself. “Quickly.”

The moment she knelt again at the basin the futility struck her anew. She and Georgie grappled with it, panting. It lay on its side, and they managed to tip it upright, but that was all.

“We can’t lift it.” She put her face in her hands.

“We can’t,” agreed Georgie. “But perhaps…”

“What?” She looked up.

“Perhaps we can levitate it.”

“Are you joking?”

“I once saw four debutantes levitate a drunk duke to the ceiling using just their pinkies. He wasn’t a small duke either.”

“You are joking.” She gnawed at her lip with frustrated hurt.

This wasn’t a joke to her. “My father won’t see the humor.

He’ll see that I’ve done something detrimental, to the church, and to his reputation with the committee, and that I’m foolish, unfit for a fellowship.

It’s bad enough when I seem like a silly daughter, but one day he might not own me as his daughter at all. ”

“What a loss that would be,” said Georgie softly, hands palm up on their knees. “For him.”

Her laugh was short and depreciatory.

“All these conditions on his love and aid,” continued Georgie, “they’re not fair to you. I recognize that you depend on him for many things. I hope your self-worth isn’t one of those things. Your sense of who you are. And what you deserve.”

She inhaled and realized she’d unwittingly mimicked their posture, hands palm up on her knees. Suddenly, gazing at them, in the dim church, she felt peace welling in her chest, clear and refreshing as water.

“And I’m not joking,” they said. “Will you try?”

Levitation. She looked at the basin, a heavy tub of gray stone, immovable.

“I will try,” she said.

Georgie sidled over so they were crouching directly opposite, the basin between. “Lay your palms on the side, like so.”

She laid her palms on the stone.

“Light as a spirit,” they began, holding her gaze. “Light as the air. Light as a spirit. Light as the air.”

“Truly?” She removed her hands.

“It’s a chant.”

“I could tell.”

“Chants are powerful. We have to chant in unison.”

She laid her palms on the font. “Do you think this is going to work?”

Their gaze was steady.

“Light as a spirit,” they said. “Light as the air.”

She joined the chant. “Light as a spirit. Light as the air.”

It didn’t seem that something powerful was happening, but rather the reverse.

Her muscles relaxed, and her voice and her breathing found a slow rhythm, a rhythm that blended with Georgie’s rhythm.

Their voice was in her ears, in her head, in her lungs, in her mouth.

Light as a spirit. Light as the air. She was chanting, and so were they, and then she was exhaling, and so were they, and they were both of them lifting—levitating—the font, up and up and up, with no effort at all, guiding it as it sailed onto the pedestal.

The crunch it made as it landed belied the featherlight transit.

“By Jove, he’s strong,” said Sir Hugh as the door swung open, Charles Peach blocking the daylight. “Barely laid a finger on it!”

—

“ Did you think it would work?” asked Elfreda when she and Georgie were rolling along the lane again, the bay horse at a gentle trot.

“No.” Georgie laughed. “Absolutely not.”

Elfreda leaned into their side, enjoying the feel of them and the way the wind played with her hair.

“Charles Peach seemed happy,” she said.

Georgie tipped back their head, sending their laughter up into the air like birdsong. “Happy? My God, he has dimples . Who would have imagined?” A few moments later, they sobered. “His present happiness doesn’t absolve me of my responsibility, of course. As a landowner.”

She angled them a look. “Maybe it’s not all bad, that you don’t have your chalices yet and can’t race back to London.”

They nodded. “There are things I should attend to here.”

She nodded.

They looked at her full-on. “And things I want to attend to.”

The glint in their eyes made her stomach flip.

They could tell. A smirk edged their lips as they turned back to the lane. “Not all bad. Not bad at all.”