Like the fact beer was traditionally a woman’s drink.

Ale was made by women, for women—and kids, ahem—for the longest time until the church decided there was money to be made, therefore pushing women out of the ale-making business and into spinning instead.

Okay, so it didn’t happen overnight, but at this point in history, a few hundred years kind of was overnight, wasn’t it?

Either way, grouching over a history that was seven-hundred-years old served no purpose.

Not when there was a village of people right now who needed our help.

St. Peter’s Church was a stunning building. I’d spent an awful lot of time here as a child, both at Sunday School and for the St. Peter’s Primary School Christmas productions. The church dated back to the thirteenth century but was restored in the Victorian era. Due to that, it had lost a lot of its gothic-style architecture on the outside but retained some on the inside. Its spire reached up high into the sky, at least four stories. The tip of it was slightly bent after it was struck by lightning at some point in the twentieth century, and that remained today.

Nobody had ever bothered to correct it.

It gave the church a bit of extra character, if you asked me.

Caleb pulled into the carpark, right into a designated spot.

“Fancy,” I quipped.

He chuckled. “My grandmother’s. She’s been here since before the storm.”

I smiled. “Edith Scott?”

Caleb grimaced. “That’s her.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. Edith Scott was a God-fearing woman who was the first to show up at church every single Sunday morning.

She was also the first to sign up to a hen party.

She was a wonderful enigma.

The world needed more Ediths, in my not-so-humble opinion.

“Is she here now?”

“Of course she is. Why do you think I’m here? Do you think I woke up this morning and chose to come here?”

I laughed and got out of his car. The boot was filled with blankets, warm clothes, and whatever tinned goods we could spare.

Fortunately, we could spare a lot, given Aunt Cat’s endless apocalyptic prophecies. She did rather tend to spiral into the depths of the internet and come out wrapped in a very extensive conspiracy theory on a semi-regular basis.

All right, it was a regular basis.

She really needed to talk to somebody.

“Caleb! You’re late!”

I grinned as Edith Scott approached us, dressed in her Sunday best. She wore a grey, two-piece tweed skirt suit with a white blouse, and I had no doubt that she had a matching hat at home.

“Good morning, Mrs Scott.”

Edith perused me with beady eyes, then slid her glasses down over her nose. “Oh!”

I knew what was coming.

She dipped into a curtsey far lower than any woman should be doing, and that was before you considered the fact she didn’t need to curtsey to me at all.

“Mrs. Scott, I’ve told you—”

“And I’ve told you, Lady Gabriella, that I curtseyed to your great-grandmother, and I’ll do so to you. Some of us respect our ancestry.”