by Mary Balogh
But the people of Abbotsford and the surrounding countryside were not allowed to bask in the glory of such a sensational tragedy. They were faced with a very practical problem. Their rector had left behind him an unmarried sister. A destitute sister, as far as anyone knew. She had come with her brother five years before to live at the rectory as his housekeeper. Neither had ever spoken of any other family members. It was assumed that there were none. And the Reverend Howard had not been a wealthy man. He had been in the habit of giving away almost more than he possessed, so that Mrs. Courtney and Mrs. Cartwright were agreed that it was a wonder Miss Howard found anything in the rectory kitchen to cook. Perhaps like angels the two of them lived on air.
In the days following the death of her brother, Grace Howard seemed unaware of the unenviable position in which his heroism had placed her. Always quiet and dignified, she seemed now wholly turned to marble. Paul had been all she had left. Now she had nothing. No one. She could not think beyond that deadening fact to consider also that she now had nowhere to go and no means by which to live.
But the people about her were by no means so unaware or so apathetic. Miss Howard’s brother had died in order to save one of their children. Miss Howard must be looked after.
“She could come to live with us,” Miss Stanhope said to a small gathering of ladies in her parlor the day before the funeral. “Letitia and I are all alone here since Mama and Papa died and dear Bertie moved away. There is plenty of room for all three of us. But will she be willing to come? Or will she see our offer as charity?”
Most of the ladies nodded to indicate that, yes, indeed, Miss Howard might be too proud to accept such a generous offer.
“She is a dear lady,” Miss Letitia Stanhope added in support of her older sister, “and would not at all upset our routine, I am sure.”
“Mr. Courtney has said that I might ask her to be governess to our Susan,” Mrs. Courtney said. “But Susan is fifteen already and not much longer for the schoolroom. And what is to happen to Miss Howard then? The other four are all boys.” She added absently, “And they are all older than Susan anyway.”
The poorer people of the village, those who worked as laborers for the Earl of Amberley, took up a collection of food and money, which they planned to present to Miss Howard after the funeral. But they knew that such a gift, although a sacrifice to them, would not solve her problem for longer than a week or two at most.
The Countess of Amberley broached the subject to her son the earl as he sat with her in the conservatory at Amberley Court after they had returned from a visit to the rectory.
“The poor lady,” she said. “One can clearly see, Edmund, that she has not yet quite comprehended either what has happened or what her predicament now is. She is in a daze. And Doctor Hanson swears that she has not even cried yet. I am so glad, dear, that you thought to offer to send Mrs. Oats and a couple of the other servants over tomorrow to help when the bishop arrives for the funeral.”
The Earl of Amberley sighed. “We are very privileged, Mama, are we not?” he said. “We know very well that no matter what disaster befalls us, materially we may live still with great comfort. I shall have to find a situation for Miss Howard. I don’t suppose she will accept a pension from me, will she?”
“It is unlikely,” his mother replied. “Perhaps the bishop will have the inspiration to appoint a new rector who will need a housekeeper. But perhaps she would not choose to stay at the rectory, with her brother gone. I have been thinking of offering her the position of companion. What do you think, Edmund?”
“Companion?” he said with a frown. “You mean to you, Mama? You would hate to have such an employee, would you not?”
“Oh, dear,” the countess said, “I am afraid I would, Edmund. But what else is one to do? I feel very deeply for Miss Howard. I know just how it feels to lose someone who is everything to one. I ache with memories of Papa at a time like this.”
The Earl of Amberley reached out and touched his mother’s hand. “Let me talk to her first, Mama,” he said. “Perhaps she has some idea of what she would like to do. Perhaps you will not have to make the sacrifice of burdening yourself with a companion.”
“It would not be a burden, Edmund,” she said. “Miss Howard is a sensible lady.”
The earl smiled fleetingly. “Perry is taking this death hard,” he said. “He was a very close friend of Howard’s, you know. I was even somewhat jealous of the fact until I realized that being a friend of one person does not exclude one from being another’s too. Perry and I have been friends for as long as I can remember.”
Sir Peregrine Lampman did not consult with anyone on what should be done about his friend’s sister. He paid a call on her the morning after the funeral, after the bishop had left and before his neighbors and friends could put into effect any of their less-than-satisfactory suggestions for Miss Howard’s future. And he asked her to marry him.
SIR PEREGRINE LAMPMAN was the owner, since his father’s demise three years before, of Reardon Park, a modest estate when compared with the lands of Amberley that adjoined it, but nevertheless large enough and prosperous enough to set him in the forefront of social life in the county. He lived in a neat eighteenth-century house of gray stone, built by his grandfather; the house was unimposing when compared to Amberley Court, which was set in a picturesque valley close to the sea, but it nevertheless contained no fewer than ten guest bedchambers.
Sir Peregrine was a man of sunny nature and considerable charm, a man who seemed always to be smiling. He was not particularly tall, but he was slender and graceful. His friends and neighbors were in the habit of thinking him handsome. Yet there was nothing in his appearance to set him above the ordinary. His hair was neither dark nor blond, neither straight nor curly, neither short nor long. His eyes were neither blue, nor gray, nor green, but a mixture of all three. His clothes were fashionable, yet there was no suggestion of the dandy about his person.
It was his charm and his friendliness that probably gave the impression of handsomeness. Women especially were wont to admire him. He always had a teasing word, and even sometimes a wink, for the older ladies. Miss Stanhope was in the habit of calling his behavior “outrageous,” yet she was clearly pleased by his attention. Miss Letitia Stanhope frequently simpered when “dear Sir Perry” commented on how becoming her new cap looked on her. He always thought, or pretended to think, that her cap was new.
He liked to flirt with the younger ladies and girls, yet always in just the right way so that none of them would ever mistake his intentions and consider them serious. For Peregrine had never been in love, despite his five-and-twenty years, and had never thought to be. It was too enjoyable to be free to let one’s eye rove, to set a blush to glowing in this one’s cheek, a sparkle in that one’s eye. And as for his real needs, he could satisfy those with no trouble at all during his not infrequent though never lengthy visits to London.
He particularly liked to flirt with Lady Madeline Raine, the sister of the Earl of Amberley, who was five years his junior. He had teased her and indulged her all through her girlhood when she had tried desperately to keep up with the energetic and frequently dangerous exploits of Lord Eden, her twin brother. For the past two years, since she had made her come-out, he had flirted with her. She knew the game and played it as skillfully as he. One could smile very directly into Madeline’s dancing eyes, pay her the most outrageous compliments, kiss the tips of her fingers, and know that the next moment she would tap one sharply on the shoulder with her fan, laugh back into one’s eyes, and whisk herself off to some other admirer.
With men Peregrine was more serious. He looked for more than amusement and light conversation from his male friends. He read a great deal and thought a great deal and liked nothing more than to have another mind against which to sound his own ideas.
He had been friendly with Edmund Raine, the Earl of Amberley, for as far back as he could remember. And they were still close friends, despite Amberley’s increasing tenden
cy since inheriting the title to withdraw into himself. Amberley had been loaded down with responsibility too early, his own father having died when he was but nineteen, his twin brother and sister only twelve, and his mother close to nervous collapse for a year or more. And Amberley spent several months of each year with his family in London. The friendship of the two men was still firm, but they were not nearly as inseparable as they had been as boys.
The Reverend Paul Howard had filled the gap left in Peregrine’s life. Quiet, gentle, and saintly as he appeared to his parishioners, he was a man of fiery intellect when confronted by someone who could match him in knowledge and understanding. Together the two men explored the worlds of literature and art and science and religion and philosophy and politics, frequently disagreeing, often arguing with rising, excited voices, but never quarreling. They learned to respect each other’s minds.
Peregrine was a frequent visitor at the rectory. Almost daily he was in Grace Howard’s company for at least a few minutes. He rarely spoke with her at any length, as she was contained and always busy about some task. She seemed content to fade into the background behind her brother, never putting herself forward. Her large gray eyes looked on the world with great calm. Yet there was about her lovely face a certain tautness, most noticeable in the set of her lips, that occasionally made Peregrine wonder about her, about her life, about what went on behind the quiet, neat exterior that was Miss Howard.
Certainly she was capable of creating extraordinary beauty. He liked to watch her as she embroidered, the flowers and other designs creating themselves beneath her fingers so that one almost felt that if one held the linen close one would be able to smell their fragrance. And the flower garden behind the rectory over which she toiled sometimes for hours rioted with color and heady perfumes from early spring to late autumn.
Peregrine was shocked and numbed by the sudden and seemingly pointless death of his brilliant friend. For a whole day he could think of nothing but his own loss and that empty ache left inside. It was only when he went to the rectory to pay his respects to Miss Howard that he became suddenly aware of her plight. There were six other visitors crowded into the little parlor, all talking in muted voices, as if afraid of wakening the rector, who lay in his coffin in the dining room next door.
Miss Howard sat in the middle of them, no different from usual, except that to the eyes of Peregrine, who had seen her almost daily for the past five years, there was perhaps a little more tautness about her mouth and a little more emptiness in her eyes than usual. She sat straight and serene in her black mourning dress, her hands, usually so busy, folded quietly in her lap, her eyes moving from speaker to speaker, her control never for one moment slipping.
What would she do? Where would she go? Strangely, despite the closeness of the friendship that had existed between Peregrine and the rector, they had never talked about personal matters. Peregrine had been very familiar indeed with the Reverend Howard’s mind. He knew almost nothing about him as a person. He knew even less about his sister.
She would not be able to stay at the rectory. She would be destitute. As far as Peregrine knew, brother and sister had had no income apart from his pay as rector. And the rector had been generous, even careless, with his money. There would be no more money for Miss Howard.
He sat looking at her as the other callers talked and commiserated with her. And he saw a brave and a lonely woman, one whose face and bearing denoted dignity and depth of character. He saw the quiet, attractive woman who had made his friend’s life comfortable and his home a place of some beauty. He saw a woman he had admired for years almost without realizing it. He saw a mysterious woman, one he had known for five years without knowing her at all.
He saw someone whom, belatedly, he wished to know.
Yet she would surely now disappear from Abbotsford to some unknown destination and to a life of dreariness or drudgery. Perhaps with her brother dead no one would ever again know Grace Howard.
Peregrine wanted to know her.
Even before he rose to his feet at the end of twenty minutes, took her cold hand in his and bowed over it, and left the stuffy, oppressive atmosphere of death and stunned grief, he knew what he must do. He returned to the rectory the morning after the funeral, before it was likely that there would be any other visitors, and asked Miss Grace Howard to marry him.
GRACE MOVED ACROSS the parlor to stand at the window that looked out on her flower garden. She stood very straight, her hands clasped in front of her. Her black mourning dress, with its unfashionable natural waistline and full skirt, its plain, high-necked bodice, and its straight long sleeves, accentuated her slimness. Her dark hair was dressed in its usual style, parted at the center, looped smoothly over her ears, and coiled at the back. She wore a small black lace cap.
“I cannot,” she said, “though I must be sensible of the extreme kindness of your offer, sir. Paul would be pleased by your thoughtfulness. He valued your friendship more than I can say. But, then, you must know that.”
“I wish you would reconsider, Miss Howard,” Sir Peregrine said, standing in the middle of the parlor, his hands clasped behind him, watching her face in profile. It was, he realized for perhaps the first time, a rather handsome profile. “I believe you are in need of a home, and I am both free and willing to offer you one. But I will make it more secure than this one has been for you. I will make sure that an independence will be settled upon you in the event of my predeceasing you.”
She turned her head to look fully at him with her large, calm eyes. “How very kind you are,” she said in some wonder. “I have always liked you, Sir Peregrine. You have been the friend that Paul always needed and never had before we moved here. Now I can respect you for my own sake too. But my answer must remain no. There are far too many reasons for our not marrying.”
Peregrine hesitated. “You refer to our age difference?” he asked.
A fleeting smile crossed her face before she turned back to the window. “I am five-and-thirty years old,” she said. “Did you know that? I have never gone to any pains to make myself seem younger than I am. Paul was my younger brother.”
“And yet,” he said, “ten years is not seen as such an insurmountable gap when the man is the older.”
“Men do not bear children,” she said quietly.
“I have never considered children essential to the fulfillment of my happiness,” he said. “If that is your only concern, Miss Howard, I beg you again to reconsider. I truly wish to have you as my wife.”
“For Paul’s sake?” she asked. “You wish to look after the sister he left behind? It is a kind gesture, sir, but hardly one that will carry you through a lifetime. I am more grateful than I can say, but no. You would quickly tire of a wife ten years your senior, and one who is no match for you in either charm or intellect.”
“No,” he said, “it is not just on account of my friendship with Paul that I offer you marriage. It is on your account. It is true that we have scarcely conversed together in the five years since you have been living here. But I have seen a great deal of you in that time and have absorbed impressions of you that I was largely unaware of myself until I have given them deliberate thought in the last few days. I like you, Miss Howard, and believe I could be happy married to you.”
She turned fully to face him. Her face, he saw, was paler and more tense than usual, though she looked at him with eyes whose calm was undisturbed. “Oh,” she said, “you know nothing about me, Sir Peregrine. Nothing whatsoever. I have lived for thirty-five years. And despite the tranquillity of the life you have seen me lead here, they have not been uneventful years. Not by any means. If you knew but half of what there is to know about me, you would be thankful for my refusal, sir, believe me.”
Peregrine shifted the weight on his feet but did not move or withdraw his eyes from hers. “Tell me, then,” he said, smiling slowly at her. “Tell me what is so dreadful in your past.”
She looked away from him suddenly, up to one corner of the c
eiling behind his head. “Do you know?” she said. “Did Paul ever tell you that our father is Lord Pawley? Baron Pawley of Leicestershire. Prosperous and well-respected. No, I can see that he did not tell you. Paul quarreled with our father, broke with him, on my account. And took me with him wherever he went after that. For four years while he was a curate and for five years here—nine years during which there has been no communication between our father and our older brother and us. I was sitting in here before you came, wrestling with the question I have pondered for the last several days. Should I inform my father of the death of his youngest child? The one I took away from him.”
She was still gazing upward at the ceiling behind his head, but Peregrine could see even so that her eyes were bright with unshed tears. And her lips began to tremble. He took a couple of steps forward and stretched out a hand to her.
“Ma’am?” he said. “Has my question caused you pain? Forgive me, please.”
She did not move or respond to his words. “I have not cried,” she said, “since … I have not cried for more than nine years. I did not expect to do so ever again. I did not think any tears were left inside me.”
But she was clearly crying now. Her facial muscles were working beyond her control. Two tears spilled from her eyes, rolled down her upturned face, and dripped onto her dress. “Paul,” she said as Peregrine took one more step toward her and gripped her shoulder with one strong hand. “Paul. Oh, Paul.”
And then she was crying with racking sobs that seemed to be tearing her in two, her forehead on Peregrine’s shoulder, his two arms about her, holding her loosely and comfortingly.
“Do you believe in heaven?” she asked a few minutes later, having dried her eyes and blown her nose on Peregrine’s handkerchief. “Do you believe Paul is in heaven? I used to believe in such a place. But how can I continue to do so when I cannot believe in God, or at least not in a good God? Do you think he is in heaven? Has something good come out of all this?”
