He ought to know better than to want such a thing. But he did. He wanted to watch the trees lose their leaves. He wanted to watch his children and the changes each day wrought in them. He wanted to belong here, to belong to his children and to Ben.
He ought to know better, but he didn’t, and that was alarming.
He pushed his plate away and went outside, where he found Jamie and Peggy in the garden, gathering a haphazard selection of flowers that would either be used to adorn the dining table, or perhaps to festoon the dog, themselves, or possibly a sheep, if the children’s previous antics were any indication. “Your mother loved those dahlias,” he said, and both children looked up at him in mild astonishment. “She had the gardener order them specially.” Unbidden, a memory flashed in his mind. “She used to put dried tea leaves at the roots. The cook and housemaids didn’t know what to think.”
The children were looking at him expectantly, waiting to hear more about their mother. He had hardly spoken a word to them of Caroline since his return, assuming that their memories were more plentiful and recent than his own. But maybe that wasn’t so, and maybe it didn’t matter anyway. “When I met her, she lived in the city.” She had lived in Bristol, where her father had been an importer and warehouser. “And she had never had a garden that was more than a patch of green behind her house.” It had been a very grand house, and her mother had sufficient money to bring in hothouse flowers all twelve months of the year. “The first thing she did when moving here was to get to know the gardener.”
“We ought to take some dahlias to her grave,” said a wobbly voice, and Phillip turned to see that it was Ned, looking serious and sounding much older than his thirteen years.
“We’ve brought wildflowers,” Peggy said.
“And rosemary,” added Ned.
“But those weren’t her favorite.” Jamie’s eyes were shiny with unshed tears.
“I’m sure she would have liked those.” Phillip was in desperate danger of choking up, thinking of motherless children who would soon be as good as fatherless. And if he died, he wouldn’t have a grave; he’d have the same watery ending that McCarthy did. Even if he were buried at Barton Hall, the children wouldn’t know or care what flowers to put on it.
“Let’s gather these dahlias and take them to her grave now, then,” he suggested. But before they could leave, a footman appeared with a letter for Phillip.
“That’s Mr. Sedgwick’s writing,” said Ned. “What can he be writing for when we’ll only see him at supper?”
Phillip knew a moment of wild panic. What if something was wrong, and Ben needed him? How would he know?
Perhaps Ned had the same thought. “I think we need three more blooms to make this posy perfect,” Ned told the twins. “I can read it, if you like,” he said when he was alone with his father.
There was no real chance Ben would have committed anything to paper that couldn’t be read publicly, but Phillip couldn’t risk it. “That would be . . . thank you. But that won’t be necessary.” He already knew what the letter would say, because at that moment a servant was loading Ben’s valise and box of books into a cart. Ben was leaving him. He had known all along that they’d be parted, that whatever he had to offer wasn’t enough for Ben. It hadn’t ever been enough, he didn’t deserve—
“Father?” It was Ned. “You’re in what Mr. Sedgwick calls a brown study. Melancholy,” he added a moment later, when Phillip hadn’t responded. “I can tell by the line on your forehead.”
“What does Mr. Sedgwick know about melancholy? I’ve never met a less melancholic person in my life.”
“I know,” Ned said, and his face—so very like Caroline’s—broke out into a smile. “But he’s wise.”
“He is, isn’t he? Well, what wisdom has Mr. Sedgwick imparted to you about brown studies?”
“He says that sometimes our minds tell us all the ugliest things. That everything we do is useless, that everyone we know is better off without us.” He hesitated. “After Mother died I had a number of brown studies.”
“Yes,” Phillip said. He put his hand on Ned’s shoulder and the boy did not flinch away. “As did I.”
“The important thing, Mr. Sedgwick says, is to remember that during brown studies our minds are not particularly honest. That if you want to know the truth, you need to wait.”
Phillip took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Your mother would be exceptionally proud of you,” he said. “I know I am.”
The twins returned with their posy and they all walked together to Caroline’s grave. They weren’t happy, but they were together, and maybe this was truer than the dark whisperings of his mind. He folded Ben’s letter and put it safely in his coat pocket.
Chapter Twenty
It wasn’t the first funeral Ben had officiated, nor even the first funeral for someone he had been fond of. He shouldn’t have stumbled over phrases he had uttered dozens of times before. Perhaps the sense of unfamiliarity was because he knew this to be his last.
He looked out over his congregation. It was small on the best of weeks, but sadly diminished in the summer months when there was work to do and weather to enjoy. Ben had never faulted them; his God was in the hills and out on the lake as much as he was in the pews of St. Aelred’s. But there were even fewer people present today than he could have expected. He wondered if word had gotten round of his broken engagement; perhaps people weren’t eager to attend services that were presided over by a dishonorable man. It twisted his stomach to see a bare dozen people gathered together to mark the loss of a man who had been among them since his birth, and to suspect that it was Ben’s own doing.
The church door cracked open, and two late arrivals slid in. Ben lost his place in the reading when he saw that it was Phillip, and by his side, Ned, looking almost grown in his neatest suit of clothes.
Ben’s eyes hadn’t been quite thoroughly dry since the beginning of the service; the death of a man, the sorrow of a widow, the sparseness of the bodies gathered in somber rows, and his own plight accumulated to present quite enough to cry over. But at the sight of Phillip and Ned, he had to stop and collect himself. They weren’t here for Mr. Farleigh, or for the religious ritual; they were here for Ben himself, and it was enough to make Ben almost weep with gratitude. He smoothed the front of his cassock and dragged his mind back to where it belonged.
After the burial, he lingered in the vestry longer than he needed to, hoping to avoid any straggling parishioners. He wasn’t in the mood to answer questions about Alice or really to talk about anything at all. When he returned to the vicarage, he found that Mrs. Winston had left a covered dish in the kitchen, likely cold meats and bread. He could add Mrs. Winston to the list of people he’d miss in his new life, whatever that might be. He took off the lid to peek at the contents of the plate, when he heard the sound of polite throat clearing. The dish’s lid fell to the floor with a crash. Spinning around, Ben found Phillip leaning against the hearth.
“You almost scared me half to death,” Ben said, hand pressed against his chest. “How did you get in?”
“Your housekeeper said I was welcome to wait for you. She likely meant someplace grander than the kitchens, but I smelled cooking and wasn’t going to be put off. I ate a full third of a cherry tart and I don’t regret it. Jamie would likely be able to calculate the precise percentage, but you and I can approximate to one-third, I think. I stowed the remnants out of sight in the larder so I wouldn’t be tempted to eat the rest.” He was babbling. That was new and strange.
“There’s some ham over there.” Ben indicated the now-uncovered dish.
Phillip pushed off the stones of the hearth and stepped towards Ben. “I didn’t come for food.”
“No?” Ben’s hands went automatically to Phillip’s lapels, and he felt one of Phillip’s hands settle on his hip.
“No,” he murmured, already bending his head to Ben’s. He tasted of cherries and smelled like a warm summer day. Ben knew he’d never enjoy either of those without thinking of
Phillip, and winced at the future pain. “Ben,” Phillip said, kissing the corner of Ben’s eye. “I heard you broke off your engagement with Miss Crawford. Gossip travels fast.”
“Did you hear that I resigned?”
“What? My God. Are you all right?”
“Yes,” Ben lied. He almost always told the truth, but there wasn’t even a truth to be told right now, standing in the arms of the man he loved, in the kitchen of a house he’d soon leave, the sounds of a summer day whispering outside the windows.
“Why the devil didn’t you tell me any of this? I thought you knew you could talk to me about anything. Instead you left me that blasted note.”
“The resignation is . . . hard to explain.” He didn’t want to tell Hartley’s secrets. “As for Alice, I couldn’t marry her after what happened with us.”
“Why not?”
“I told you.” Ben felt his face flush. Words that were easy to say while naked and sated with one’s lover were rather harder to articulate fully dressed in the vicarage kitchen. “I couldn’t say the marriage vows. Not after what we did.”
“What we did.” Phillip’s voice was faint, incredulous even. He held Ben’s chin so he couldn’t look away.
“I don’t know if I can explain.”
“Try. For me?” Phillip whispered.
“Until we were together, I hadn’t really understood what it meant to love a person, to worship someone with your body,” Ben said. “That’s what you have to swear to do in the marriage vows, and I can’t make that promise.”
“Is that what happened between us?” Phillip’s voice wasn’t skeptical, only curious, but Ben felt put on the spot, called to explain something he didn’t quite understand.
“I’m fairly sure that’s what I was doing, but I can only speak for myself. All I meant was that it meant something to me to be with you. And—” he took a deep breath “—I know I mean something to you, and I felt that when we were together.”
The next thing he knew he was pushed up against the kitchen wall and being kissed within an inch of his life.
“How long do we have?” Ben asked, only lifting his mouth from Phillip’s enough to speak.
“I’ll be missed if I don’t return for dinner,” Phillip said before kissing the spot below Ben’s ear.
Phillip needed to be leaving soon, then. Ben stepped back and straightened his collar, waited for his breathing to return to normal.
“Have you decided what you’re going to do after you leave St. Aelred’s? Would you consider staying at the hall as the children’s tutor? I know it would be a step down in the world for you, and I’m not a rich man, but I could pay you a fair salary.”
“I wish I could.” He couldn’t stay at Barton Hall as the recipient of Phillip’s charity while Phillip was far away. He didn’t hate himself enough to embrace that fate. “But it’s out of the question.”
Phillip knew he could spend the rest of his life memorizing the ways Ben responded to his touch, charting the way his strong frame went supple when Phillip pushed close. Now, pressed against the wall, he seemed to almost melt against Phillip’s body.
“Come back to the hall with me,” Phillip murmured into Ben’s ear. “Even if it’s just for dinner.” He’d take whatever hours and minutes he could get.
“I can’t,” Ben said. “I need to write this week’s sermon. It’ll be my last.”
“The children miss you.” Phillip was not above this naked attempt at manipulation. He felt as much as heard Ben’s answering laughter.
“They’d have to go without seeing me to actually miss me. Jamie was here at first light today, knocking on the kitchen door to beg sweet buns off Mrs. Winston.”
“Did she give them any?” A fortnight ago, Phillip would have been outraged at the idea of his children roaming the village unattended and unauthorized. Now he was amused and rather touched that his children felt happy and welcomed everywhere they went.
“Of course she did. He acted like he had never been fed before in his life. And he took two back for Peggy.”
“They’ll miss you if you leave Kirkby Barton.”
Ben was silent for a moment. “That’s a low blow.”
“I know.” He would use every unsporting trick if it kept Ben near. “Stay at the hall.”
“I can’t be there without you. It would break my heart, Phillip.”
“I’d like to know that you were there.” Oh God, it would be such a relief to imagine all the people he cared about safe under one roof.
He felt Ben go rigid. “And would we know where you were?”
“No, but—”
“We wouldn’t know if you were alive or dead. You’d come back every year or two, maybe even longer, and expect to take up exactly where you had left off.”
Well, yes, that was exactly what he had in mind.
“That’s not enough,” Ben said. “It’s not being a father or a . . . whatever this is between us. It’s being a visitor.”
Phillip wanted to protest that it was all he could manage, that he wasn’t capable of more and didn’t even know if he wanted to be. “I need to return to my ship,” he said instead.
They stood together, Phillip’s forearm braced on the wall behind Ben’s head, their mouths almost touching. Ben tipped Phillip’s chin so their lips were nearly touching, then leaned forward to close the gap. Their lips brushed together, achingly familiar.
“Come back to dinner with me,” Phillip whispered. He was willing to beg for scraps at this point.
“Phillip.” Ben sighed. He took Phillip’s hand and pressed it against his chest. Phillip could feel Ben’s heart pounding, knew he wasn’t unaffected. “Don’t you see that I can’t? I love you, and it will kill a part of me to sit at your table as your guest, knowing we’ll be parted in weeks.”
Phillip took Ben’s hand and kissed it. “I love you too. But I have to go. You know this.”
“Do you really? I feel disingenuous invoking your children when I’ve already said that I want you here. But, Phillip, you’re abandoning them. It was one thing for you to be at sea when your children had a mother. But for you to leave them now, effectively orphaned, for months and years at a time when you’re all they have? That seems cruel.”
Phillip stepped back, away from Ben. “I’ve spent most of my life at sea. That’s what my life is.”
“Would you even write? Ned told me you wrote maybe one letter a year.”
He had a dozen excuses at the ready, any of which would serve to deflect Ben’s question. But instead he tried honesty, tried for once not to put any distance between him and someone he loved. He tried to ignore the insidious whispers and listen to the truth, which was that Ben cared for him, and that he trusted Ben. “I have no more use for letters than Jamie does. I can only read a little and writing is quite impossible. I gather it’s a family failing.”
He watched as realization dawned in Ben’s eyes. “I hadn’t realized,” he said weakly. “Phillip, I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have thrown it in your face just now if I had known.”
“I know.” He lifted Ben’s hand to his lips and kissed it. “I’m very good at concealing it.”
“You were so long at sea. You must have sent and received letters and kept records.”
“My lieutenants read and write for me. I know how to get by on a ship. I’m a good captain and I know how to work around the one task I can’t perform. Here, life is an endless parade of things I’m not equipped to manage.”
“Oh, Phillip.” Ben sighed. But then he drew himself up and put some distance between the two of them. “If that’s your decision, fine. But you’re leaving behind everyone who loves you.”
Phillip gave him a tight smile. Yes, yes, that was exactly what he was doing, damn it. He was also leaving behind everyone he loved.
Chapter Twenty-One
When the clock struck noon and the paper on his desk was still blank, Ben cast down his pen and gave up trying to write his sermon. The day was almost obnoxiously lovel
y and he wished he had someone to share it with. He could go to Barton Hall, he supposed, but he knew perfectly well how that would end: he’d stay for dinner, or the night, or indefinitely, and then he’d fritter away his time with no purpose, no income, nothing to separate him from those who had drifted in and out of his father’s house.
He didn’t dare call on the Crawfords, not until some more time had passed. If he knew Alice as well as he thought he did, she was likely insisting to all her visitors that she had broken the engagement herself. Mrs. Crawford, however, had no doubt told her tale of woe to enough talkative confidantes. He knew enough of village gossip to understand that it would blow over as soon as something more interesting happened; his broken engagement would only be mentioned in whispered asides. For heaven’s sake, his father had lived openly with two women, and he had managed to ride out the scandal. Ben could weather a broken engagement.
But he wouldn’t be here to weather it, and that was the crux of the issue. He couldn’t envision a future in which he wasn’t a part of Kirkby Barton. But he needed to find a way to earn a living, and there were no prospects in a village this small.
He opened the cupboard and took out his stoutest boots and oldest, most faded coat and went to the kitchen to tell Mrs. Winston that he meant to take a walk. But the kitchen was empty and cold, the fire banked, as if this was already not his home. So he stepped outside into blinding sunlight. He picked up a fallen branch to use as a walking stick and set off on the path around the lake he had taken so many times.
He had been born in the shadow of this crag and had only left sporadically for school and briefly for university. This was his home and he felt rooted to it. His brothers had all left, he was cordially distant from his father, Phillip was leaving, and he didn’t know if he’d ever repair things with Alice, but he belonged here. Frustrated, he slapped his walking stick into the earth.
“Slow down for God’s sake!”
Ben spun to see Hartley walking briskly to catch up with him.
It Takes Two to Tumble Page 18
