“The Lord’s work in Rosecroft village was not urgent,” Hadrian answered truthfully. “Not to me and not to my parishioners.”
“You had unhappy memories there.” Avis draped a cloth over her flute and closed the case. “One can understand this.”
She referred to Rue’s death, and her solicitude left him feeling like a fraud. He fell back on small talk—a vicar’s handiest weapon.
“I have happy memories too,” he said. “But tell me how you go on, Lady Avis. Harold was a fine correspondent regarding crops yields and pounds of fleece, but not much for passing along the neighborhood news.”
She slipped her arm through his, as if they hadn’t walked home from church together for the last time more than twelve years ago.
“Harold was so happy when you took a post here in the North. It’s all we heard about for months. He’s very proud of you.”
Which made one of them. “He’s the best of brothers. Overlooking my flaws goes with the description.”
Hadrian admonished himself to work on his sincerity. Hal was the best of brothers, regardless of his travel plans or preferred company, and Hadrian was nobody to judge him.
Hadrian was out of the judgment business, and glad of it.
“Will you join me for breakfast?” Avis asked as they made their way through the pines. “I rarely have company at Blessings, much less company I’m so glad to see.”
“I would be pleased to join you.” The church imbued a man with surpassing manners, though sooner or later, the past must intrude on Hadrian’s dealings with Lady Avis. That moment would make all of his awkward discussions with Harold pale in comparison. “Riding in this air gives a man an appetite.”
“You always could put away a decent meal, and your gelding looks like a horse who enjoys a good gallop.”
“Caesar is a St. Just horse,” Hadrian said, taking the reins in his free hand. “He’s fit as the devil without being hot-tempered.” Rather like Harold.
“And handsome,” Avis added as they turned onto the track down the hill. “St. Just is the new Earl of Rosecroft?”
“He is,” Hadrian replied, pushing a pine branch aside for her. “Former cavalry, as well as a friend.”
“I’m glad you had some friends in Yorkshire. I imagine leading a flock can be a lonely business.”
All manner of well-polished scriptural allusions begged to come bleating into the conversation. Hadrian pushed those aside too.
“Some flocks engender loneliness, for the congregation as well as its leader,” Hadrian allowed, though it had taken him two years to put that label on the emotion his pastoral duties had inspired. “I hope that’s not the case here?”
He was done with church business, utterly, absolutely, and that meant he didn’t have to listen to griping about the vicar’s sermons or the curate’s inability to patch together a church without funds. Nonetheless, he hoped Avis found consolation in the company to be had at services.
“I do not attend,” she said, dropping his arm.
Silence descended as they made their way down the hill, with Hadrian resenting the need to say something. He wasn’t her spiritual authority, not her vicar, not even officially a fellow parishioner that she should burden him with this.
“I’m sorry,” Avis said when they reached the bottom of the hill. “It will be like this for us, won’t it? I’ll understand if you want to decline breakfast, and you’re welcome to as many pigeons as Harold can stow on his yacht.”
They had been doing so well with the platitudes and small talk. Hadrian made a doomed attempt to regain that false, friendly footing. “Be like what?”
“We will try for cordiality and succeed swimmingly until something slips out amiss, and then all will be awkwardness until somebody tosses out another social nicety. While I cannot expect you to forget, I’m so very—”
She broke off and patted Caesar’s neck.
“So very what, Lady Avis?”
She kept her back to him and leaned her forehead against Caesar’s shaggy mane. “I used to be plain Avis to you, or even Avie, and now I’m this Lady Avis creature, whom I hardly know, and don’t think I’d enjoy. I’ll hush now and thank you for your escort.”
She reached around him to retrieve her flute case from where he’d tied it to his saddle, but he reached it first, keeping possession.
Hadrian had left the clergy, and thus the only status remaining status to him was that of gentleman. A gentleman would admit that his past with Lady Avis included far more than the scandal she’d endured.
“When a neighbor extends a hungry fellow an invitation to share a meal, that fellow does not expect the invitation to be retracted.” He winged his arm at her and kept his smile genial.
Her expression went from puzzled to briefly mutinous, but she took his arm.
“Your gardens are impressive for so early in the season,” Hadrian said as they approached the grounds behind Blessings. “You must tell me about them.”
She accepted that challenge, pausing in her recitation only long enough for Hadrian to hand Caesar off to a groom. Then she fell silent, apparently content to stroll with him up to the stately expanse of the Blessings residence proper. The family seat was a huge old place, befitting a wealthy earldom, and yet to Hadrian, it had never seemed cold or lifeless, particularly not when the grounds were bursting with daffodils, tulips and all manner of flowering trees.
“Blessings looks to be thriving. Your landscaping is sumptuous.”
“Winter is so long and cold here, I’m usually desperate for color and beauty by spring, and each year, I grow a little more ambitious.”
These beautiful gardens were her passion, then, so he kept to that topic. “Those beds look similar to some we have at Landover. Did you do ours as well as your own?”
“I gave Harold my designs, because he complimented the patterns. Harold is the only man I know who isn’t too proud to admire a pretty flower.” She went on, describing what species went well together and why, while Hadrian was still trying to puzzle out their little exchange at the foot of the hill. He hadn’t precisely been avoiding Blessings, but he had been reluctant to see Avis.
A bond still stretched between them, intimate, precious, and intensely private, but not altogether comfortable for either of them. Or maybe, he thought as she chattered on, there had been a bond, obliterated now, worn away by time, maturation, and the experiences that made up their separate lives.
“What is your favorite flower?” Hadrian asked, because he wasn’t quite ready to closet himself with her over kedgeree and toast.
“I love them all,” Avis said easily. “From the first crocus to the last chrysanthemum, and everything in between. What about you?”
“I like purple flowers. Purple and blue. Irises, pansies, bluebells, violets and so on. We can’t quite replicate that palette of blues, lavenders, and purples God has given to the flowers, and I never tire of admiring it.”
She plucked a pansy of a soft periwinkle shade and tucked it into the pin securing his cravat. “I wonder: Would the flowers appeal to us as strongly if the blooms never faded?”
Hadrian let her natter on and occasionally stop to pull off a spent bloom. The morning air was warming up, and wandering around her garden allowed him time to adjust.
This Avis Portmaine was pretty, vital, and confident. In some ways, Hadrian resented her, for she’d replaced a quiet, withdrawn young woman who’d needed him when he’d never been needed before. But that young woman hadn’t entirely faded, either, for it had been she, the victim of an unspeakable crime, who’d made that comment about it being “like this” for them before she’d invited him to depart.
Hadrian was no longer eighteen and clueless about how to go on—a vicar also dealt with tragedy and ill fortune in quantity. Nor was he willing to give up a decent breakfast, when it would appease the convention that said he should call upon his closest neighbor now that he was home.
“Did you get my letter?” Avis asked.
&n
bsp; Hadrian had to cast back to recover the sense of her words. “I did. Your condolences were much appreciated.”
“You miss her?”
“I do,” he said, because that was expected, then, “It’s been two years, and one adjusts.” Because that was honest.
“One does. I will miss Harold sorely; he’s been a dear friend.”
“Also a wonderful caretaker of our lands. He’s leaving Landover in my hands when I’ve never had responsibility for more than a vegetable garden.” The tending of which had been enjoyable only when compared to chairing pastoral committee meetings.
Another spike of gratuitous irritation shot through Hadrian’s morning, along with a wave of weary bewilderment.
When would he settle? When would he let his old life go and come to terms with whatever this new life would be? When would he stop whining like a boy deprived of his sweet?
Lady Avis bent to snap off a daffodil gone brown and wrinkled. “Your brother loves Landover, so we must conclude he doesn’t simply want to travel, he needs to.”
Oh, delightful. Harold had not merely a friend in Lady Avis, but an advocate for his damned schemes. Hadrian trudged back into the conversation, trying not to let the effort of making idle talk show in his tone.
“What do you hear from your brothers?”
“Benjamin is in London, keeping a discreet eye on Alex, who has threatened to leave her post in Sussex. Wilhelm is off in Sweden, I think, or Norway by now, and will no doubt wander the north until the end of summer.”
“What does he find to do up there?” What would Harold find to do in Denmark—other than make sheep’s eyes at Finch?
“Who knows? It’s time and past Vim took a wife and settled down, but we’ve Viking blood in our veins, and Vim must wander and call it trading in various goods.”
Hadrian was perversely cheered to realize Avis had also been orphaned by excesses of familial wanderlust. “Lady Alexandra is in the south as well?”
Avis paused on the bottom step of a side entrance to the manor house, near a pot of roses still mostly leaves and thorns.
“Alexandra hides, Hadrian. She is an heiress and pretty, and yet she has wasted years governessing at some medieval hall on the southern coast. Her charge’s mother has remarried, though, and this means Alex will soon be off again, like a tinker without a home or coin of her own.”
The past abruptly swooped close to the conversation again, a raptor hungry to pounce on any stray comment, any veiled allusion.
“Lady Alexandra might enjoy being a governess.” Though Hadrian couldn’t reconcile that calling with the outspoken, bookish young lady he’d known.
Avis led the way into the house, which was cool and dark compared to the sunny outdoors. “Spare me your manners, Hadrian. Alex needs children of her own, a place to set down roots and to build a life.”
Hadrian followed her inside in silence, for Avis was likely the one hiding, the one lacking roots, the one…. Maybe she would not want children, would not be able to endure conceiving them.
“How does Hazelton stay out of trouble when he’s not keeping an eye on Lady Alex?” The question seemed safe enough, though Hadrian’s store of safe topics was running perilously low.
“Benjamin is close-mouthed about it. I suspect he’s an expensive snooper.”
“A what?”
She opened the door to a small parlor, one Hadrian didn’t recall from his youth. The room was defined by the French doors running the length of its outside wall. Sunlight flooded in, bounced off pale hardwood floors, ricocheted into a long mirror on the opposite wall, and vaulted to the high arched ceiling. A half-dozen glazed crocks sported forced bulbs—lemony daffodils, periwinkle blue hyacinths, blushing pink tulips. The furniture was cozy and upholstered in pale colors, and the sense of the entire space was of warmth, light and comfort.
“Benjamin is an investigator for hire,” Avis clarified. “You like my parlor?”
“I’ve never seen a room quite like it.” Different wasn’t the right word, wasn’t a positive enough word.
“When I’m not designing my gardens, I’m turning my sights on the house itself. I spend many of my mornings here or out on the adjoining terrace.”
“It’s peaceful,” Hadrian replied, but peaceful wasn’t quite right, either. To step into this room was a relief. Darkness would find no purchase in such a chamber, neither would loneliness. Light poured in and came to stay, bringing with it warmth and cheer.
“The tea trolley should be along soon.” Avis took a rocking chair, leaving Hadrian to choose an end of the cushioned sofa. “Tell me about leaving the church. Taking off your collar must be quite an adjustment.”
“I haven’t really left yet. I’m still nominally entangled with my last congregation.” Though why was that?
“Over near York? St. Michael’s of the Something.”
“Sword, though nobody’s quite sure where the appellation came from in a county of sheep farmers. The valley is pretty, not that different from our terrain here.”
“Not as dramatic,” Avis suggested. “The hills don’t range quite as high, and they haven’t the lakes.”
She was reported to remain close to Blessings—very close. “Have you traveled over that way?”
“I have not, though Harold described it to me. He said it’s lovely.”
“The winters are no better than ours,” Hadrian said, wishing the tea tray would arrive so he could dispense with his two polite cups, have a nibble of toast, then be done with this obligation. “The summers are quite fine.”
“The summers are too short. You’ve avoided my question.”
Apparently without success. “About?”
“Leaving the church, Hadrian. You’ve been ordained eight years, and now you must leave it behind.”
Why was she the first person to ask him about this?
“I choose to leave it behind,” Hadrian said, though it hadn’t felt like much of a choice, not when Harold and his Finch had been growing desperate. “I’ll miss some aspects of it.”
“Such as?”
He was spared an immediate reply by the arrival of the tea trolley, and it was a trolley, of a size that tracks in the hallway wouldn’t have been amiss.
“Shall we serve ourselves?” Avis asked, suiting actions to words. She passed Hadrian a cup of tea fixed with a healthy tot of cream and dash of sugar, as he’d always preferred it. “I’ll smile graciously, while you make yourself up a plate and concoct a suitably polite, mendacious answer to my question.”
The tea was ambrosially strong for even a spring morning in Cumberland could be brisk, while Avis’s smile was more welcoming and mischievous than gracious. For the first time that morning, for the first time since coming home, Hadrian’s smile was welcoming and mischievous too.
“What I miss about the church,” Hadrian said, as if announcing a sermon topic. He chose a slice of buttered toast, a portion of omelet, a thick slice of ham, and—why the deuce not?—another slice of toast while arranging acceptable and honest thoughts into mental categories.
“I make mine into a sandwich,” Avis said, as he assembled his meal. “We’re not at table, so feel free to do the same.”
Hadrian took a bite of his sandwich. “I haven’t done this since university—it’s a fine way to consume breakfast.”
“We have plenty and you’ve been riding, so eat up.” Avis took a nibble of her sandwich. “What do you miss?”
An astute, tenacious woman.
“A few people,” Hadrian said, taking another bite of excellent fare. “Not many. I do miss the sense of rhythm about the life of a vicar.”
“What sort of rhythm?”
“The days have a rhythm, as one prays at certain times, and visits, and has visitors, and works on the sermon, and prays some more.” Or one was supposed to.
“Comfortable but boring?”
“At times, as with anything.” How bored was Harold, watching the seasons change year after year at Landover, while feig
ning contentment? “The weeks have a rhythm, too, punctuated by the service on Sunday, then a day or two to regroup, and then the next service looms. The liturgical year has a rhythm, with high holy days, and conferences with the bishop and so forth at regular intervals. I could see my life unfolding in a certain sequence, and it wasn’t unbearable.”
Nor was it meaningful, though, and that—the sense of empty rhythm—had begun to wear on him.
“What did you do for enjoyment?” She passed him another sandwich, his first having somehow disappeared.
“I enjoyed…” He fell silent, staring at the second sandwich.
Another bog but less treacherous, for he’d had time to ponder this.
“I enjoyed the sense of being useful,” Hadrian said. “Of offering some comfort and solace to those in greatest need, and of making remarkable some particular moments of joy.”
“Weddings?” Avis guessed.
“And christenings. Those even more than weddings.”
“I’d forgotten you’d be involved in those.” Avis topped up their tea cups, but of course, babies might be something she’d want to forget. “Have some fruit.”
Oranges sat in a blue crockery bowl along with hothouse strawberries.
Hadrian plucked a succulent red berry from the bowl. “You raise these?”
“I do. I’ve grown self-indulgent in many regards, Hadrian, the gardens and greenhouses being only one example.”
Self-indulgent, and isolated. Though maybe an excess of privacy was another indulgence. “Your music being another?”
She grinned at him over her tea cup, and the grin lightened everything—the mood, her face, the room, Hadrian’s mood.
“I love my music. I will also ask that you leave me at least three of those strawberries, though I’ve been enjoying them all week and likely will for another week at least.”
“Three.” Hadrian selected the largest trinity of berries and set them on her plate, then made free with the rest. “These are delicious. I haven’t had any since last year.”
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