The Heart of a Vicar

by Sarah M. Eden

  He stepped inside and sat beside her. Her gaze remained on the vista through the front window. A tear hung at the corner of her eye. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and slipped it into her hand. She didn’t dab at her eyes but simply sat with the square of linen in her grasp. She rested her head against him.

  “He cannot hurt anyone any longer,” Harold said. “And in the end, we managed to find positions for every one of the servants he so heartlessly dismissed.”

  That had been a struggle. Without references, they had needed to be very creative. Most of the servants were from this area and didn’t wish to leave their families and friends behind. But Sarah had been indefatigable, and they had proven themselves a very good team.

  Her eyes met his at last, regret and pain etched in their brown depths. “I wish he hadn’t caused you so much difficulty. You had enough on your plate as it was.”

  He cupped her face with his hands. “Helping people is a pleasure and an honor. And knowing you were free of this house relieved a crushing burden on my mind and heart.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I only hope that, in time, the pain he caused you will lessen.”

  She closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath. “I believe it will.”

  He dropped his hands to hers. “What can I do?”

  She opened her eyes. Though grief remained, some of the weight there had lifted. “Look in on Mater. I won’t be there with her for the next week or so.”

  “After that? Do you mean to return to the dower house or stay here as mistress of Sarvol House?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not going to worry about that yet.”

  Wise. “Please tell me if you or Scott need anything. I’ll visit either way, but . . .”

  She smiled, a tremulous expression, but genuine.

  “Mr. Jonquil.” Mrs. Tanner stood just inside the doorway, a folded missive in her hand. “This has just arrived for you.”

  He stood and crossed to her, accepting the letter with a brief word of gratitude. He unfolded it.

  Harold,

  Sorrel’s time has come. Scorseby’s been sent for.

  Please do not delay.

  Yrs,

  Philip

  No banter. No jesting. Not a single unneeded word. The situation, Harold surmised, was already perilous.

  He turned back to Sarah. “I have to go.”

  Her alarm was obvious, but she didn’t press for information, likely wishing to preserve the confidentiality between a vicar and a parishioner, not knowing from whom the letter had come.

  “Sorrel,” Harold said.

  Sarah took a sharp breath. She nodded, somber. “Have things only begun or . . . ?”

  “Only begun.”

  “Mater and Dr. Scorseby will look after Sorrel,” Sarah said. “Go be your brother’s sure foundation. He will need you. Desperately.”

  He did not wait even another moment. The last time Sorrel had come to the end of a pregnancy, the situation had grown dire extremely quickly. He would not leave Philip to endure that alone.

  Harold had visited Sorrel the morning before. It had been clear she’d had little time left before her body would simply be unequal to the enormous strain on it. She had been pale and weak and in such obvious pain. The next hours would bring her to whatever conclusion awaited. He pointedly ignored the fact that he had with him all he needed to perform the final rites, having brought it to Sarvol House for that purpose and having no other choice than to carry it to Lampton Park in his haste.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Harold had discovered a newfound bit of confidence in his ability as a vicar during his weeks of self-reflection. His new approach felt more natural, more fitting, and he had already begun to see the fruits of that change. He could believe, at last, that he was where he was meant to be, doing good in the way he’d always wanted to. But every ounce of assurance fled as he watched Philip’s tense pacing. His brother was facing the loss of yet another baby and, in a way too real and too probable to dismiss, the almost-inevitable loss of his beloved wife, his dearest friend, the person who meant most to him in all the world. All of Harold’s study, his admittedly limited experience, his soul-deep desire to touch lives felt entirely insufficient.

  “This will be agonizing,” Scorseby had told Harold. “Your brother is strong and stalwart, but the look in his eyes is one I’ve seen before. He’s nearing his breaking point, and were he to witness what his wife is about to endure, it would shatter him. I will be attempting to save two lives I am not certain can be saved, and your mother and Lady Cavratt need to be able to focus on helping Lady Lampton without worrying about him. Lord Lampton simply cannot be in the room until this is over.”

  Harold had understood, yet he worried. “If he loses her and he’s not there to make his goodbyes—”

  Dr. Scorseby had nodded a little impatiently. “I promise to send for him if we are reaching that point.”

  “And should the baby be born alive, they will both wish it to receive the baptismal rites as quickly as—”

  “I am fully aware of all that would need to happen and how quickly it would need to be seen to. I swear I will not neglect that.” Urgency had added frustration to Scorseby’s tone. “But I need you to take him away from here and keep him there. Somewhere near enough that he can return quickly, but far enough that he cannot hear her cries.”

  Harold had chosen the sitting room on the east end of the house. They couldn’t hear anything. Though Harold understood why Scorseby wished for the distance, the silence was proving deafening.

  “This didn’t take as long the last two times.” Philip turned back from the window where he’d been standing for all of five seconds. He crossed to the fireplace. “Taking longer—that’s a good sign, don’t you think?” He turned and moved across the room again, tapping the closed door as he passed. “It could also mean things are going badly. It could mean that.” He dropped onto the sofa opposite Harold’s chair. He slumped low. Wouldn’t London be shocked at the sight of their most famous dandy, the gentleman all of Society thought valued appearance above all else, dressed in wrinkled clothes, his jacket long discarded, slouched like a street urchin, his hair likely not even combed that morning, stubble rough on his face.

  “Scorseby said he’d send for me before—” Philip cut himself off. They’d had this exact abbreviated conversation many times already. “He’ll make certain I’m there before she—”

  “You chose well when you recruited Scorseby to take Dr. Habbersham’s place here in Collingham.” Harold knew Philip had invested untold hours and a significant sum of money in convincing the doctor, who had established a successful practice elsewhere, to relocate to this corner of the kingdom when their resident physician had decided to retire to Tunbridge Wells. Knowing Sorrel’s health would never be great and would, at times like this, be dangerously poor, Philip had left no stone unturned finding the very best man of medicine available. “Scorseby is thorough and thoughtful, competent, compassionate. He’ll not neglect either of you. Worth every penny you paid to bring him here.”

  “I’ll give him every penny I have left if he can save her.” Emotion broke Philip’s whispered words.

  “I have every confidence in him,” Harold said. “And though the past weeks have taken a toll on her, Sorrel is the strongest person I think I have ever known. That gives me hope.”

  Philip eyed him, not with reassurance, not with relief, but with pain. “Don’t think I am unaware of what is in your leather case, Harold. I saw you come in with it.”

  “I came here directly from Sarvol House. There was not time for returning the case to the vicarage.”

  “Would you have?”

  Harold felt certain honesty was best, no matter how uncomforting it might be. “I still would have brought it.”

  Philip leaned forward, his elbows on his legs. He set his head in
his upturned hands. “She’s going to die, Harold.”

  “She has survived this twice before,” Harold reminded him.

  But he shook his head without looking up. “Not like this. She was less frail, less fragile. She started the other deliveries stronger than she is now. She was not so broken already, so worn down. She had to fight with every ounce of strength she had, and it was very nearly not enough. She doesn’t have that reserve this time.” Philip’s breath trembled even as his body shook. “I’m going to lose her; I know I am.”

  Harold left his chair and sat instead beside his brother.

  “Do not offer me empty platitudes,” Philip muttered. “This pain is not a lack of faith or something that can be erased if I just believe more.”

  “I hadn’t intended to say anything remotely resembling that.”

  Philip didn’t sit taller, didn’t look up. He sat with his head in his hands. “Throckmorten would have lectured me. He apparently did that to Layton over and over again.”

  “Throckmorten was a bell swagger of the worst sort.”

  Philip appeared utterly shocked. “I didn’t think I’d ever hear you use cant like that.”

  Harold waved that off. “I’m a vicar, not a saint.”

  “You’re a blasted good vicar. I don’t think we tell you that often enough.”

  Harold allowed a small smile, quick but sincere. “I don’t think I’ve deserved it often enough.”

  Philip’s gaze shifted to the cherrywood clock on the mantel. “This is taking too long.” He stood and paced away. “Something’s gone wrong, and I’m not there with her.”

  “Scorseby will send for you.”

  “Once it’s too late,” Philip said. “Once there’s nothing more to be done. I ought to be there now. She shouldn’t be alone.”

  This was why Scorseby had told Harold to stay with Philip. The worry, the panic, the anticipatory grief would override his judgment, and Scorseby knew he’d not be able to do all that needed to be done to give Sorrel her best chance of survival if Philip’s panic sent the sickroom into chaos.

  “Mater and Catherine will not leave her,” Harold reminded him. “She will not ever be alone or neglected or left comfortless.”

  Philip pressed his forehead to the wall. He tapped the wall with the side of his fist.

  Harold had no words of comfort, no reassurances. There were none to be offered. He had seen Sorrel’s deterioration for himself, and he had been in the room after the last delivery and had known how close she had come to not surviving. Philip’s assessment—that he was about to lose his wife—was Harold’s as well.

  “She is my whole world, Harold. Every bit of it. Everything that matters. If she leaves me . . . I can’t recover from that.”

  “I am sorry, Philip. I truly am. Life asks too much of us sometimes. It leaves us broken. No matter how we put those pieces together again, we are never the same.”

  Philip turned to face him, his back against the wall. “What if I can’t put those pieces back together? What if everything is simply broken forever?”

  “Then you let us help you.” Harold crossed to him. “You let Mater and Layton, Corbin, Jason, Stanley, Charlie, and I hold you together for as long as you need. We’re family, Philip; we love you.” He set his hand on Philip’s shoulder. “No one is abandoned. No one is forgotten. We find our strength in each other.”

  Philip’s chest rose and fell with a trembling breath. “Fortitudo per Fidem. Strength through loyalty.”

  “Fidem is not exclusively interpreted as ‘loyalty.’ It also refers to ‘faith.’”

  “Faith in what?” Such pain filled his eyes.

  “In this moment, faith in your own endurance, faith in your family.”

  Philip closed his eyes and breathed, slowly, deliberately.

  The door to the sitting room opened. Philip’s stiff posture and almost unnerving stillness spoke volumes of his bone-deep worry.

  Sorrel’s lady’s maid peeked inside. “You’re being asked for. Both of you.”

  Philip took an audible breath but didn’t move. The maid turned a pleading gaze on Harold.

  He nodded. “We will be there directly.”

  She slipped back out. Philip pushed a breath through his tense lips. “Best bring your leather case, Harold,” he whispered.

  Harold fetched it quickly, catching up to Philip in the corridor. Neither of them spoke. Philip kept his gaze ahead of them, his brow furrowed and his mouth tight. His pace picked up steadily.

  He had made this walk before but never with so little hope. If Harold was being asked for specifically, Philip was likely about to lose his wife and child. Being a vicar had always been about helping people, but Harold felt helpless in that moment.

  The door to Sorrel’s sitting room was open when they reached it. They stepped inside. Not far distant was the door to her bedchamber, also ajar. Philip paused. Breathed. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “Sorrel needs you to.”

  Philip nodded. He took only a moment longer, then squared his shoulders and rid his expression of his panic and worry.

  Harold’s oldest brother’s ability to slip on a mask had often bothered Harold. He saw in that moment, however, the gift it actually was. Philip would present to his wife a calm and strong façade. It might ease some of her suffering.

  The bedchamber was lit by a small scattering of candles, with one very near the head of Sorrel’s bed. She lay there, propped up a bit by a stack of pillows. She had been brought low by her condition before this day’s work; she looked far worse now.

  Philip must have noticed as well. Every ounce of bravado fled his expression. He simply crumbled, kneeling on the floor at her bedside. Philip, who, despite his theatrical prancing and preening, had always been, at his core, a solid and unshakeable presence in the family, dropped his head against the blanket.

  “Sorrel.” Misery filled the whispered name.

  Her hand, shaking a bit, brushed over his hair. “Do not fall apart now, Philip.” Sorrel’s voice was weak. Her expression spoke of tremendous pain.

  “You can’t leave me, Sorrel.” He didn’t move; he simply knelt with his head buried on the bed beside her. “Please don’t leave me.”

  An ache filled Harold’s heart at the pain in his brother’s voice and posture.

  “If you give up on me now, Philip Jonquil, I will never forgive you.” Sorrel spoke firmly but quietly.

  He raised his head enough to press a kiss on her hand, offering for the first time a view of his teary, broken expression. “Harold told me to have faith.”

  “You really ought to listen to him more often.” She pulled in a tense breath, pain tugging at her features.

  Philip looked to Scorseby.

  “She will need time to heal, but I have more confidence than I did before today.”

  A painful hope touched Philip’s face. “Then you do have some confidence?”

  “I do, now that I have a better understanding of what was making this so very difficult.” He pulled a tin from his bag. “Her best chance of recovery lies in rest, which she will not be able to do without powders to ease her agony. Taking them means she will sleep most of the time and be more or less insensible when she is awake. And still, there is no guarantee she will recover.”

  “But there is a chance?” Philip pressed.

  “There is a chance.”

  Sorrel brushed a tear from Philip’s face. “Do not cry, dear.”

  He turned enough to press a kiss to her palm. “I love you, you know.”

  “I know.” She took a sharp, tense breath. “This doctor you brought here means to render me insensible for days on end. I need you to hold me before I fall asleep.”

  “You don’t even have to ask, my love.”

  A trembling smile tipped the corners of her mouth. “But first,
your mother wishes to make some very crucial introductions.”

  Mater? Harold’s attention had been so focused on the scene before him he’d not even stopped to think that his mother had to have been somewhere nearby. The room was too dark for easily spotting anyone else. But in the far corner, a silhouette moved closer, slipping into the spill of light from a candle on the bureau.

  She held a baby in her arms.

  Philip’s face froze. His entire frame did. “Alive?” The whispered question was almost silent.

  Mater nodded.

  “Healthy?”

  “Quite,” she said.

  Philip rubbed at his upper lip before wrapping his hand around his mouth and chin. Tears spilled unchecked from his eyes, which remained firmly focused on the child Mater held. He kept his other hand in Sorrel’s.

  Mater motioned to someone else in the dim corner of room. Harold had forgotten Catherine, though he’d known perfectly well that she’d been present for the delivery. She stepped into the same spill of light that illuminated Mater. In her arms was another blanketed bundle.

  “Oh, blessed heavens,” Harold whispered. Twins.

  Sarah’s voice echoed in Harold’s mind from across the years and one of their many conversations about the life he meant to live as a vicar. “You will be part of people’s joys and sorrows. You will walk with them through the most difficult and beautiful moments of their lives.”

  This was one of those moments. Powerful. Heartbreaking. Hope affirming. And he, as Sarah had said, was blessed to be part of it. This was what had drawn him to the church. This was the reason he served.

  “Both healthy?” Philip asked the same question again but slightly modified.

  Mater nodded. “They are tiny but nearly the healthiest little boy and girl I have ever seen.” Tears clogged the declaration. Not tears shed in grief but in joy.

  Sorrel set her free hand atop her other, squeezing Philip’s hand between hers. “Go greet your children, darling. They have wanted to meet you all their lives.”

  Gaze heavy, he looked at her once more. “But you are—”