The Heart of a Vicar

by Sarah M. Eden

  Marion tipped her head to one side, gaze a bit narrowed. “Why do you think we would object to your gift?”

  “Not object. Not exactly.” She looked to Harold, having asked him to join them in this small sitting room, away from all the rest of the family. He knew better than she what Layton had passed through the past years. She wanted him there to help her gauge how his brother was responding. Layton was special to her; she wouldn’t cause him grief for all the world.

  “I think you will understand better Sarah’s concern if she shows you what she has for Caroline.”

  Layton and Marion exchanged glances but didn’t object.

  She took up the painting she’d leaned against the wall, its subject facing away from Layton and Marion. “This once hung in my uncle’s house, but when I returned here from America, I found it relegated to the attics. It ought to belong to Caroline, though I leave it to you to determine the how and the when.”

  She turned it around so they could see it.

  Layton took in a sharp breath. “Oh, merciful heavens.” His next breath shuddered from him. “Oh, heavens.” His was not an expression of pleasure but of grief.

  Sarah looked to Harold. This was what she had worried about.

  Harold set an arm around her waist, keeping close to her side. “He is strong enough for this,” Harold whispered. “And he is not alone.”

  Sarah took a deep breath. Layton wasn’t alone, and neither was she. “This is how I remember Bridget,” she said. “Smiling. Happy. Lovely. I want Caroline to know the Bridget I knew, and this will help.” She blinked back the emotion rising in her. “I want you to give it to her when you are ready for her to have it. And I will help any way I can. I love Caroline, not only for my cousin’s sake but for hers. She is a dear and kindhearted and loving child.”

  Layton’s pained gaze did not leave the portrait.

  “Caroline loves so freely because she has been loved so fully,” Sarah continued. “Thank you. Both of you.”

  Layton met her eyes for the first time since she’d shown him the painting. “I have been a bit cold to you since you returned. I hope you know I wasn’t unhappy to see you. It’s only that . . . you . . . you look so much like her.”

  Sarah nodded through the tears she couldn’t entirely hold back.

  “Seeing you tore at wounds I didn’t realize hadn’t healed.” A tear fell from the corner of his eye. “I miss her. The grief is sometimes terribly close to the surface.”

  “I miss her too,” Sarah said. “And so does Caroline, though she never knew her. Please give her the portrait when the time is right.”

  Layton nodded silently.

  Marion took his hands in hers and led him to the nearby sofa, silently urging him to sit. He did, and she kissed the top of his head. She turned back to Sarah and accepted the painting. “This will help,” she whispered. “I promise you, he is grateful for it. We both are.”

  This was the very reason she’d wanted to give them the picture away from the others. She had suspected it would be an emotional thing for Layton.

  Giving Layton the privacy he needed when seeing it for the first time was the only gift Sarah had to give him.

  She looked up at Harold. “We should probably leave them.”

  Harold agreed silently, walking with her from the room. As they slipped into the corridor, he took her hand in his. “Thank you for doing that for Layton and Caroline. They have grieved for so long. Having a bit of Bridget to keep will do them both a world of good.”

  She leaned her head against him. “It can be difficult to know how to help when someone is hurting that much.”

  “I know.” He stopped. So did she. “Not knowing the right way to help stopped me from trying for far too long. But you showed me the importance of doing what I can in whatever way I can. Have I thanked you for that?”

  She could feel a little warmth creep over her face. “You haven’t.”

  “Thank you for finding me when I was lost,” he said quietly, tenderly.

  “Thank you for coming back to us. To me.”

  His arm moved tentatively around her. Warmth spread through her at his touch. “That day at the stream—”

  She swallowed, trying to keep her breathing steady.

  “I shouldn’t have—I didn’t mean to—” His gaze dropped. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

  “I know.”

  He might have said more. She might have as well, but a shout of excitement sounded from the drawing room, one too loud and enthusiastic to be ignored.

  Harold stepped back, his arm falling away. “We should see . . .”

  “We should.”

  An awkwardness settled between them as they walked slowly to the drawing room.

  The Jonquils were decidedly in a celebratory mood. Harold dipped his head to her, face still a little flushed with embarrassment, and moved away. She sat on the chair beside Sorrel’s sofa. “What have I missed?”

  “Word has come from Norfolk.” Sorrel’s weakening state became more obvious every time Sarah interacted with her. It showed in the gauntness of her face, the weakness of her voice.

  Sarah did her best to hide her worries. “Who is in Norfolk?”

  “Jason.”

  “And what was so important that he sent word at Christmas? Well, a few days before Christmas, I suppose.” With the weather being what it had been, the messenger had likely needed quite some time to make the journey.

  “He is a new father.”

  The smiles and excitement around the room indicated the delivery in Norfolk had a happier conclusion than was anticipated here. “And is Jason father to a son or a daughter?”

  “A daughter,” Sorrel said. “They’ve named her Isabella. Philip had teased him that it would be twins. Mater is a twin herself and has twins of her own.”

  “One of whom is Jason.” Sarah laughed lightly. “I can see how Philip would enjoy pestering him a bit over that.”

  “He enjoys teasing all his brothers. Laughter is a tonic to his worries.”

  “Is there any tonic I might offer for your worries?” Sarah pressed.

  Sorrel met her eye. The weight she saw there nearly stole her breath. “You have helped Harold find himself and his strength. Philip will need that from him. For that, I will always be grateful to you.”

  Not too far distant, Philip had Henry in one arm and Phrobert in the other while Alice sat on his foot, her arms and legs wrapped around his leg. Caroline might have joined in the game, but she was in the corner, talking ceaselessly to Corbin’s boy Edmund.

  “My foot has grown oddly heavy, Mater,” Philip said in a theatrical voice of confusion. “What could possibly be the cause?”

  Alice giggled and giggled. Philip tromped about, jiggling her as he went. The silly faces he made at the two tiny boys made them laugh as well.

  “It is some comfort, however thin, to know that someday down the road, long after—” Sorrel paused, though whether she was out of breath, out of strength, or pushing down her emotions once more was not clear. “After I—He may yet one day be a father, as he was always meant to be. He’ll be happy.”

  Though Sorrel hadn’t said as much directly, Sarah understood the tragic possibility the dear, suffering lady had, it seemed, accepted as probable: that she would not survive the coming delivery and that Philip would eventually marry again. What could Sarah say? She could not offer words of reassurance that all would end in the best possible way, that Sorrel had nothing to worry about, that she and Philip would have a long, happy life together with all the children they could hope for. Sorrel would know that for the empty platitude it was.

  “He really does love you,” Sarah said. “It is obvious to anyone who sees him so much as look at you.”

  “I know, and his love is the greatest blessing of my life. His love is a light in my darkest moments, ho
pe when all other hope is gone.” Sorrel watched Philip playing with the children. Her eyelids grew heavy, and her weak smile faded. After a brief moment, she was dozing, though likely not deeply, considering her pain and discomfort.

  Layton was struggling in a distant room. His daughter was grieving a mother she’d never known. Stanley and Marjie had not entirely sorted their difficulties. Philip and Sorrel had all but resigned themselves to a near future of sorrow and pain.

  Sarah desperately hoped Harold was equal to what was coming, and she prayed she could find a way to help him help his beloved family.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Harold felt a little ridiculous sitting at the top of the vicarage stairwell in his “thinking place,” but he no longer saw it as proof of his failure to be the person he’d tried to be. He was odd, yes. He had more than his fair share of quirks, but in the week he’d been back in the neighborhood, he’d embraced the changes he meant to make and had received acceptance, support, and approval, though not without a good amount of wariness. He felt hopeful.

  After receiving an unexpected letter that morning, however, he was also feeling torn. How was it that after finally setting himself on a course toward a future he could be excited about, that future suddenly became far less certain?

  Mrs. Dalton took the stairs to the midfloor landing and looked up at him. “Still thinking, are you?”

  “Always.”

  “Do you ever worry you’ll think so hard you’ll fall?”

  He smiled a little at that. “I’ll be careful. I promise you.”

  Sarah stepped up beside Mrs. Dalton, eying him with curiosity. “Do you promise me as well?”

  He probably should have been more embarrassed than he was. Instead, he felt mostly relieved. Sarah had done that for him all those years ago and was now doing it again. When she had been with him, he’d worried less and hoped more. Heaven knew he needed a dose of that now.

  He turned enough to hang his legs over the ledge. “Have you any commitments for the next hour?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’m trying to sort through something,” he said, “and I could use a listening ear.”

  “That is very convenient because I am here for the same reason.”

  She’d come to him with a concern, to talk through and sort things. What a change from their earliest interactions a few months earlier when she’d found him to be so utterly lacking. He lowered himself over the banister and hand-crawled along the ledge.

  “Does he always get down this way?” Sarah asked Mrs. Dalton.

  “He does. And I have heart palpitations every time.”

  Harold dropped onto the step just a few below them. He tossed Mrs. Dalton a grin. “My goal is to get you to swoon over how very strong and agile I am.”

  Sarah shook her head and offered an exaggerated look of disapproval. “If you keep torturing this woman, she’ll spread it about the neighborhood that our bachelor vicar and the dowager’s very unmarried houseguest spent an afternoon alone, spilling their worries into each other’s ears, and then we’ll both be in the suds.”

  “Mrs. Dalton is discreet as a statue.”

  Sarah smiled kindly at Mrs. Dalton. “You have been good to our vicar and good for him.”

  “He’s a good lad, though I say it. Cares about everyone but doesn’t know how to show it. And he knows every drinking song ever written, which is a fine thing, if you ask me.”

  Sarah looked at him once more, wide-eyed. His heart lurched, waiting for the condemnation, the disapproval.

  “Do you know ‘Down among the Dead Men’?” she asked. “I learned that one onboard ship during our journey here.”

  Harold was momentarily too shocked to respond.

  Mrs. Dalton snorted a laugh. “Well, if you aren’t two peas in a pod.” She slipped past him. “Have a good gab.”

  “How long have you had an interest in drinking chanteys?” Harold asked.

  Sarah shrugged. “They make me laugh. They always have.”

  Harold motioned her down the stairs. “Why did you never tell me?”

  “I can’t say it ever occurred to me to tell you. And in my defense, you never mentioned your interest either.”

  They stopped in the entryway. “Do you have any objection to a walk around the Park? It’s not far from here, and we’d have a bit of privacy without pushing the bounds of propriety too far.”

  “That would be lovely, provided there are a few paths clear of snow.”

  “The formal gardens are cleared. I walked out along the edge of the east field yesterday; the pathway is clear there as well.”

  He helped her put her coat on. It was such a commonplace gesture, something that happened dozens of times over in every house throughout the kingdom, yet it struck him in that moment. His mind filled with the image of the two of them in this exact arrangement day after day. A simple, quiet, but happy domesticity.

  Harold shook it off. He was hardly in a position to be entertaining those thoughts. Too much was yet uncertain, both between them and in his own life.

  Beyond a few off-hand remarks on the weather and the Christmas season, they said very little as they wound their way toward the back entrance to the Park.

  A few steps out into the east field, Sarah spoke. “What is it you hoped to talk with me about? You seem very pensive, whatever it is.”

  “I received a letter this morning.”

  Her attention was fully on him. He would need to keep an eye on their path so she wouldn’t stumble.

  “Was the letter unsettling? Something worrisome?” she asked.

  “No. Far from it, actually. It was an offer.”

  “What sort of offer?”

  He still hardly believed what he’d read. “The Duke of Hartley anticipates a vacancy in the living he has the advowson of. It is possible the living will be vacant in the next few months.”

  She squeezed his arm. “He offered it to you, didn’t he?”

  “I am as amazed as you are.”

  She rubbed his arm. “I am not the least amazed, Harold Jonquil. I always knew you would be a fine vicar.”

  “His Grace, apparently, has faith in me as well.” Harold couldn’t explain it. He’d done nothing to garner the duke’s notice, and he had only just begun making important improvements in his approach to his duties. “The duke has offered me three parishes, all of which have been overseen by the current vicar via the employment of curates.”

  “Three parishes? That seems a great deal to be in charge of. Are they near each other?”

  Harold shook his head. “Not terribly near, but that is not unusual for vicars with multiple livings. It is the main employment of curates to see to parishes the vicar cannot or, sadly, will not.”

  “You were a curate in this parish for a time, I believe.”

  “I was,” he said. “Philip convinced Mr. Throckmorten to give over the running of this parish to me.”

  Sarah looked ahead once more. Her expression had hardened. “Though it is likely uncharitable of me to say as much, I am grateful Philip talked him into stepping aside. He was hard and unfeeling in a way I am certain hurt people.”

  That was precisely what had happened. Throckmorten had told Layton he was not welcome in the church because, in his grief after Bridget’s death, Layton had drifted from the faith he had once embraced, the horrid man ignoring pointedly the role he had played in pushing Layton away. Removing a vicar was not an easy thing to do, nearly impossible in fact, but Philip had found a way to rid the neighborhood of the man, something for which Harold was grateful.

  Sarah’s brow pulled. “You are the vicar now though.”

  “Throckmorten’s passing allowed Philip to bestow the living on me, which gave me a livable income, provided I have only myself to support.” He had worried over that. “Adding this new living would
give me income enough to live with a degree of ease I could not know otherwise, enough to begin thinking of a future beyond the lonely one I have now.”

  “That is a good thing,” she said. “Why, then, do you seem so concerned?”

  Though he was concerned, speaking with her calmed him. It always had before. How had he managed in the years since she’d left? “One of the parishes is quite large and could not be run by a curate alone. The vicar would need to be there, reside there.”

  “You would have to leave Collingham.” How quickly she had sorted his dilemma.

  “I, of course, would select a curate who would care for this parish in the best possible way. I would never allow the people here to suffer in my absence—”

  “But you care about them and don’t know that you would be happy away from them.” She leaned a little more toward him as they walked on. “I’ve watched you, especially since your return from your holiday. You love the people of this neighborhood. You grew up among them. You know them in a way you don’t any other parish. And your family is here. Taking charge of a different parish would mean leaving them behind and leaving the care of them to someone else.”

  “You always did understand me better than anyone. I suppose that is why your criticism of me when you first returned stung as much as it did. From anyone else, I could have dismissed it. But not from you.”

  She rested her head against his upper arm, he being too tall for her head to reach his shoulder. “Seeing you broke my heart. I felt as though every hint of the Harold I had known was gone.”

  “He wasn’t gone. He was simply adrift.” He chuckled a little. “Do you know, Sorrel once told me precisely that.”

  “That you were adrift?”

  He nodded. “I scoffed at the time, but I knew she wasn’t wrong.”

  “I visited her this morning.” Sarah spoke too quietly for his comfort. “She looks awful, truly and honestly awful. I don’t imagine it will be much longer before her time comes. I am praying for a happy outcome, but my hope is all but gone.”

  “They lost another child this time last year. Sorrel was not nearly as far along then as she is now. There is a greater possibility of the baby surviving, though that is still quite slim without more time.”