He seemed as surprised to see her as she was to see him, and for a few moments, their eyes locked together wordlessly, as if hailing one another with a greeting that could not be expressed by words. Inexplicably, Charity felt her heart flutter.
“I beg your pardon,” the young man said. “I feel certain that we have met before, yet I cannot recall ever having been introduced to you.”
Charity did not know how she best ought to respond. It seemed quite uncanny to her that the young man had articulated her own feelings so powerfully - that sense of recognition, that certainty that whoever this young man was, he was far from a stranger. There was a warmth in his eyes that she instinctively recognized, though she knew not how or why.
She curtsied and he bowed.
“It does me good,” the young man said, “having ranged so far and been away so long, to see a face like yours. It is a face that reminds me so powerfully of home.”
Charity felt herself blushing. She prided herself on not being the sort of girl who blushed, yet the blood rose unbidden to her cheeks. It was not precisely that the young man had paid her a compliment - and indeed, a very strange compliment it would have been.
Instead, it was the unguardedness with which he looked at her, the sense that he was eagerly absorbing every little aspect of her face. She sensed that this was a young man in some distress, though she knew not what the source of it could be.
“If you wish to compliment me in expressing yourself so, then I thank you most kindly for it,” she replied.
She scarcely knew what it was that she was saying, steering herself far more on instinct than the more concrete framework of social niceties. “For myself, I do not know how much I would wish to remind anyone of this place, dull and limited as it is.”
“Limited, indeed,” the young man replied spiritedly, glancing out across the hill and then back to Charity’s face, as though he could not bring himself to look away from it for too long. His eyes were a warm brown like the shining grain of polished wood.
“But dull, I could never allow. Not only is this place charming and beautiful but it has the immeasurable merit of being my home, and therefore I could never permit any slight upon it.”
Charity found herself a little taken aback at this. Anyone who she did not recognize at first glance in the village she presumed at once to be a stranger to these parts. And yet this man was clearly something in between a stranger and a friend.
He was someone who had gone from this place - and then returned again. He was, in short, all the things that Charity had wished to be and knew she would never be permitted to be, and she was immediately intrigued.
“I do not wish to suggest any slight upon this village,” Charity replied, “but it is, as they say, that familiarity breeds contempt. I believe that in this case, I must own the aphorism to be true.”
“You are familiar with it then,” the young man replied. His whole body moved then, with an impulsion that suggested he wanted to take a step toward Charity. Yet breeding, it seemed, overrode the instinct; he stood where he was, maintaining a gracious distance from an unknown lady.
“Of course,” Charity replied. “I have lived here all my life.”
The young man continued to survey her with a strange expression that Charity had never felt turned upon her before.
Yet the peculiarity of their encounter continued to linger in the air between them like woodsmoke. She felt prevented from making polite conversation — the form of dialogue to which she was most accustomed as the daughter of a clergyman. Yet she could not walk away. It had little to do with politeness and pertained far more to the sensation that she felt growing in her breast.
It was a sense of fascination, a feeling that this young man might perhaps have things to say that she had never heard before, things that might somehow break the stifling monotony of this small village, this small world.
“I fear I have taken up too much of your time,” the young man said abruptly. He, too, had appreciated the oddness of their encounter. “I thank you for your pleasant conversation and bid you a very good day.”
He lifted his hat to her in a jerking movement; he was not quite sure whether to pay such a conventional nicety at the end of such an unusual conversation. Charity in turn curtsied, but that, too, felt rushed and strange.
As the young man walked away down the hill in long, distracted strides, Charity understood abruptly that he had not given her his name, nor had she offered her own.
It was the sort of encounter where names scarcely seemed to matter, Charity reflected to herself. I cannot say that I have had another encounter quite like that one in all my life.
It was only once the young gentleman had almost disappeared from sight that Charity realized with a jolt where she had seen him before.
She recognized that face from when they had played together as children, long before the distinctions of rank had come between a clergyman’s daughter and a duke’s only son.
The Duke had always been an eccentric. He had thought nothing of the vicar’s daughter playing with his son, while the two men indulged in theological debate, always ending in the Duke vouching his support for the parish.
It had been a subject of gossip — indeed, perhaps the only subject of gossip that anyone cared about — when Adam Harding had disappeared from his father’s house.
Some reports claimed he had been disinherited. Moreover, some insisted he must have done something very wicked to incur his father’s bitter wrath. All were elevated with a tinge of scandal, a conviction that some unforgivable event had touched the life of the Duke of Mornington’s golden son.
Charity had scarcely formed any opinion of the matter one way or another. All she knew, looking at the figure of Adam Harding as it receded into the distance, was she had never before seen a young man who looked so haunted.
That was why he was so pleased and so troubled to be home again…
Though she had not seen Adam Harding in ten years or more, she would have known those brown eyes anywhere.
Two questions struck her at precisely the same moment, both with a great deal of force.
What could it be that had brought Adam Harding back?
And what terrible deed could have driven him away from his father in the first place?
Chapter 4
“With the greatest of sincerity, I tell you that I wish to help you,” the Reverend Miller said, twisting his handkerchief in his lap as though he was hoping to extract some great secret from it. “But in truth, I do not know if there is anything that I can possibly do to be of assistance.”
Adam Harding wished to respond with something rather sharp, but he managed to stop himself.
When he left Lawley Hall, he had scarcely known where his feet were taking him, only that he wished most sincerely to be outside and breathing the free air of home. It was only once he had cleared the woods of his father’s estate that it had occurred to him to seek advice from the only wise and learned man he knew, besides his father.
The strange and somewhat dreamlike interlude with an unknown young lady had only contributed to Adam’s sense of disorientation and left him eager to seek guidance from one whose opinion he greatly esteemed.
The Reverend Miller had been a sort of tutor to Adam throughout many of his formative years. Being an intellectually rigorous man, the Duke of Mornington had been eager to engage a man of God in drilling his son in matters of theology and philosophy, and the Reverend Miller had been happy to oblige. Given his only child was a daughter, he had been eager to take on the task.
As such, Adam had always thought of the Reverend Miller as a profoundly moral man. The Duke of Mornington had occasionally asked the Reverend to dinner to discuss matters of scripture, and as such, Adam had grown to think of the clergyman as a kind of uncle.
It dismayed him, therefore, that the Reverend Miller looked so defeated by the request that Adam placed before him.
“But you were present that day,” Adam continued, pressing th
e point warmly. “You are therefore one of the few people who can attest to my innocence.”
“I do not know whether you were innocent,” Reverend Miller replied perhaps just a touch defensively. “Only God knows our hearts, after all.”
“But you can vouch for my character,” Adam rebutted. Though he was seated in a comfortable armchair in front of the fire, he felt as though he were sparring in a fencing ring. “You know that I am not capable of committing the unforgivable evil that my father has attributed to me. You can make him see sense, I have no doubt.”
“I am not sure that the Duke would listen to my opinion,” Reverend Miller replied, his voice growing more gentle as he intoned these painful words.
“That might be so,” Adam conceded, “But all I know at present is that my father will not even look me in the eye, and I know him well enough to know that when he is in this mind, there is no persuading him of anything.
“I understand that you are not sure that your intervention will help the matter. But please be assured that it certainly cannot cause any further harm, and it may soften him a little so that he might listen to what I have to say. The situation already appears to be beyond repair, yet I come to you because I have great faith in your counsel and in the grace of God.”
The Reverend Miller’s grey and rather desiccated features turned sympathetic at these words, and Adam perceived that what he had said had clearly touched the clergyman’s heart.
Adam strode down the stone steps from the vicarage and toward the rough wooden gate. So preoccupied was he with his thoughts — so overwhelmed with the sheer impact of all that had taken place that morning — he did not see the young lady until they had almost collided.
“Miss Miller,” he said at once, fumbling with his hat to greet her, for whom he assumed the young lady to be. The young lady who had once been the little girl who was his playmate, who had run about with him on the lawns of Lawley Hall in a state of perfect carefreeness.
It was, of course, Miss Miller. He recognized her at once, now that they were both in a more familiar context.
Before that morning, Adam had not seen Charity Miller in some years. Ever since she had changed from a girl into a young woman, her father seemed to have embraced every excuse to keep her cloistered from view. Even at church, their paths had scarcely crossed, and as far as Adam was concerned, the vicar’s daughter was characterized only by her shielding bonnet and her lowered gaze.
And, of course, there was the fact that he had not seen Charity at all in the past year, and at Charity’s time of life, a single year could work a great deal of change on the manner of a young woman.
Certainly, she was nothing like the lady he had met in the grove that morning. The girl of the flushed cheeks and bright eyes, her bonnet swinging from her hand as she walked with free and easy grace.
Yet the two young women were one and the same, and at that moment, Adam was entirely taken aback.
The first few moments were taken up with a flurry of apologies and niceties. But then, at once, Adam realized the young lady before him was the same as the one he had met in the grove, scarcely an hour before.
Her bonnet was reinstated in its rightful place, and her rosy cheeks had lost a little of their bloom after her demure walk back up the lane.
Yet her eyes were as bright and as intriguing as those eyes that had so thrown him off balance earlier that very morning. Adam was not usually particularly susceptible to the superficial charms of a pretty young woman, but Miss Miller struck him as a great deal more than pretty. She had the sort of grace and poise that seemed to exert a magnetic quality, and he found that he could not look away from her.
“Apologies, Miss Miller,” he said. “I did not mean to block your way.”
He made no allusion to their earlier meeting in the grove. After all, what was there to say?
“There is no apology required,” she replied. Despite the keenness of her gaze, she seemed to hesitate. Adam instantly remembered, since he had left his father’s house a year ago, he had been stripped of his honorary titles. Presumably, Miss Miller did not know how she ought to address him and for that reason was remaining silent.
“I offer it anyway,” Adam replied. I apologize for not recognizing you earlier, he thought but did not say.
Last time he had seen her she had been a little child, dark-haired and scrawny. Now she was tall and slender and graceful, though still with the same dark hair and eyes
“We should not apologize for things that are not our fault,” she said. “It sets a dangerous precedent, and stops us and those around us from knowing what is real and what is not.”
Her words, spoken seemingly on a whim, had a prophetic quality that caught Adam off guard. We should not apologize for things that are not our fault… its stops us from knowing what is real and what is not.
He thought immediately of his father, and wondered whether Miss Miller was possessed of some strange intuition that allowed her to read him as easily as a book.
He allowed his eyes to search her face, taking in every detail, her beauty striking him more strongly with every passing second.
The expression on her face gave way to a smile.
It was a smile that Adam recognized from a far simpler time, the smile of one playmate greeting another. That smile drew them both down the years and into an old intimacy, despite the many changes and obstacles that now stood between them.
Despite himself, and despite the strangeness and sorrow of that morning, Adam found himself smiling back. A smile of greeting and recognition. He felt a leaping in his chest, like the stirring of spring. His heart felt lighter all at once.
“Good morning, Mr. Harding,” Miss Miller said and passed by him up the path with a small curtsey, leaving Adam with the last remnants of a smile.
“Good morning, Miss Miller.” He stood to watch her disappear up the path and into the vicarage.
He had to own, even if only to himself, that the sight of her face again filled him with a sense of bodily lightness, a lightness that contrasted powerfully with the weight of his previous sorrows.
And yet, he reminded himself, it is of no consequence whether your head is turned by the charms of the Reverend Miller’s daughter. For the matter at hand is this: two people are dead and your own father believes you to be guilty of their murder.
He had not been able to bring himself to say the words, even in the company of the Reverend Miller. And yet now, having laid eyes once again on Charity Miller and recognizing her for who she was — a lovely young woman, not some strange spirit of the grove — he felt that it was time to face reality.
To face it, he thought a little wryly, and with a little luck, to resolve it.
A little way off from the vicarage, the church clock began to chime midday.
Adam set off back toward Lawley Hall, observing that he had experienced elation and despair and every manner of emotion in between already, and the day was only half-done.
Chapter 5
“Mr. Harding has returned? I scarcely believe it. I did not expect to see him in these parts again.”
Miss Esther Campbell, Charity’s oldest and dearest friend, had arrived at the vicarage only moments after Mr. Harding had left it, and found Charity in a mood of dreamy disorientation such that she had never seen in her friend before.
“In these parts,” Charity agreed, pouring the tea as a means of occupying her hands and mind, “and still less in our garden.”
“Well, he pays your father a great compliment in calling upon him so soon after his return to the village,” Esther observed placidly. If she had noted the distractedness of Charity’s manner, she had the tact to refrain from commenting on it.
Charity stole a glance toward the door to the parlor to confirm it was shut fast and leaned closer to Esther to speak in lowered tones. “I believe it must pertain in some way to the reason for his banishment, for I can find no other way of accounting for it.”
“Could it not merely be a matter of a
former pupil seeking wisdom and solace from a former teacher and a man of God?” Esther inquired. “I hear that the Duke is very ill and that they fear for his life. Is that in itself not a reason for a son — even an estranged son — to seek comfort and advice?”
Charity hesitated. When Esther expressed the matter like that, it seemed reasonable enough as an explanation. Yet she found it hard to understand herself.
“It is,” she agreed. But it does not account for the fact that, of all people, he chose to seek comfort and advice from a man as unfeeling as my father.
Though Charity felt all the love and respect that was due her father, she found it a little hard to believe that anyone would turn to him as a source of wisdom and guidance in their hour of need. The Reverend Miller was an intelligent man and an intellectually rigorous scholar, but he lacked the ready sympathy and compassion that might be desired in a clergyman and still more in a parent.
Charity Falls for the Rejected Duke: A Historical Regency Romance Novel Page 2
