“Miss Campbell,” he said, almost too distracted to touch his hat and bow to her, but not quite. “I hope you are well.”
“Quite well, sir, although I fear from your countenance that I do not find you in a tranquil state?” Miss Campbell was frowning up into his face as if trying to read it, in a way that reminded Adam distantly of the way that his nurse had looked at him when he was a child, and she was trying to discern some childish ailment.
Adam thought about concealing how he really felt but sensed that there was no point in doing so. Furthermore, Miss Campbell had thus far proved to be a kind and resourceful ally to him so there could be no harm in confessing his concerns to her.
“I fear that I have been too hasty, Miss Campbell,” he said. “I called upon the Reverend and Miss Miller, and I believe the Reverend believed that I was there only to speak to him. The fact that I wished to see his daughter put him a great deal out of humor, and he has just asked me to leave.”
Out of humor is something of an understatement, he thought grimly to himself, yet I have no desire to make Miss Miller’s friend believe me to be a self-pitying sort of fellow.
Miss Campbell gave a little laugh, but it was a laugh of sympathy rather than derision.
“I am afraid that Miss Miller’s father has always been a rather severe man,” she said. “Perhaps you did not see it that way when he was in your father’s house, but in his own home he is rather like a lion guarding its den, I am sorry to say.”
“It is understandable that he wishes to protect his daughter,” Adam added hastily.
“Protect, yes,” Miss Campbell replied. Her almond-shaped eyes grew serious, and Adam was struck once again by the feeling that he had seen this young woman somewhere before, somewhere that his mind could not account for. “But what her father undertakes is more akin to suffocation, I am afraid.”
“I have a very good opinion of the Reverend Miller,” Adam said, doing his best to be fair. “I have always considered him to be a just and sensible man.”
“That is because you have never courted his daughter before,” Esther replied.
Adam opened his mouth to reply and then shut it again. The point was irrefutable.
“You will never win him over by trying to become his friend,” Miss Campbell said decidedly. “Such behavior would only anger him, and convince him that you were trying to manipulate him in some way.”
“To be truthful, I am not sure that it will be possible for you to win him over, at all. I fear that it may, in fact, be wiser to clear your name and make your peace with society. I fancy that he will come around when he knows that public opinion is no longer on his side.”
Adam was surprised to hear such shrewd words coming from this small, smiling woman, and realized that perhaps he had somewhat misjudged Miss Campbell. Clearly, as allies went, she was a valuable one.
“And in the meantime,” Miss Campbell continued, “I do not expect that the Reverend would wish to stop his daughter from taking a little exercise, particularly if she is in the company of her friend. The woods and groves are so lovely at this time of year, do you not think?”
She was still smiling, and her meaning was crystal clear. Adam nodded.
Perhaps there would be more conversations in that magical space, the place where it seemed the usual rules did not matter.
Chapter 20
Charity waited in the parlor for a long time before her father returned. She kept her eyes downcast and waited a long time for him to speak. But when he did, his tone surprised her with its gentleness.
“I suppose you think me very unkind,” he said, after a long silence.
Normally, Charity would have been sufficiently cautious about keeping the peace that she would have replied with a hasty, ‘Not at all, Father.’
But somehow that day she had lost her humor for being kind to one who was unkind to her, and so when her reply came, in a low voice, it was instead, “I do not think that you are an unkind man. But yes, Father, I do believe that you have behaved unkindly. Very unkindly indeed.”
“I am sorry to have grieved you in this way, my child,” he began.
Then he coughed.
“Ah, no, that will not do.”
“You will recall, perhaps, that I told you that I believed Mr. Harding to be guilty because there was an eyewitness to the crime. But what you do not know, what I thought you did not need to know, was that the eyewitness was, in fact, myself.”
Charity did not speak. The only sound in the room was the crackle of the fire.
“The Duke does not believe his son to be guilty simply from a whim. He believes it because I told him that it was so and that he trusts me, as a man of God, to speak the truth. He does not go to the authorities because he has no wish to see his son go to the scaffold. As he is my patron, I have acted in accordance with that decision.”
Charity sat in still silence for a while. At first, there seemed nothing to do but to absorb the impact of his words. But when she did speak, her tone was calm, rational, questioning, although it shook a little with distress and shock.
“But Father, that still does not answer the question of what the motive could possibly have been. You said when we spoke previously that you believed it to have been caused by some inexplicable passion. I cannot be satisfied by that.”
“I have a theory,” the Reverend Miller said quietly, “I did not share it with you at the time because I did not want to expose you, my young and delicate daughter, to such an unseemly side of life as my theory would require. But perhaps it is the only way.”
He sighed, as though bracing himself to speak a terrible truth, before continuing, “I believe that Mary Warwick may have been Mr. Harding’s mistress, and her bastard child his natural son.”
Charity sat there, stunned. She felt as though a sunny day had suddenly morphed into a violent storm.
“I do not have any evidence for this belief, and I may be wrong in it,” her father added hastily, “but to me, it seems like the only possibility that would make any sense.”
“I cannot believe it,” she said aloud. “Mr. Harding seems like such a sensible and scrupulous young man. I cannot believe that he is not only a blackguard but a libertine too.”
“Perhaps he is not now,” her father said, “But the boy was born when he was only eighteen or seventeen. Is it not possible that he might have been a more foolish youth? I know not whether the lady was virtuous and he took advantage of her, or if she was herself the seducer. It scarcely matters.”
To Charity it felt like it mattered a great deal, but she did not say anything to that effect.
“What does matter,” her father continued, “is that as Mr. Harding got older, he wanted to conceal the existence of his former mistress and her son. After all, he was coming to an age when many young men wish to marry. And, while having such a past is scarcely unheard of among young men, it is certainly expected that he will keep the matter ‘discreet’.
“I do not know why Mary Warwick came back. Perhaps she wanted money from Mr. Harding, or perhaps she wanted him to marry her. Who knows what these foolish young women hope for when they find themselves in a predicament such as hers? But my guess is that Mr. Harding wanted her to stay quiet, and she had no wish of doing so. So he killed her and the boy.”
“Why should any man kill his child or the woman that he once loved?” Charity wondered.
“It does seem extraordinary,” her father agreed, then continued softly, “but it is not unheard of.”
Charity had heard stories, of course. Desperate young women killing themselves with their babies in their arms. Drunken men beating their wretched wives to death.
But not Mr. Harding. Surely not Mr. Harding.
Charity was suddenly struck by the feeling that she knew very little of the world or any of the people in it, that there were some things — in fact, most things — that lay far beyond what she was capable of understanding.
She could not conceive why anyone would want to kill a
woman and child, yet a woman and child were dead. That in itself was such a terrible indictment of the world in general that perhaps she would have to admit her own judgement counted for little, that it could have been Mr. Harding who was responsible after all.
The thought made her feel as though she might swoon, but she took a steadying breath and kept her composure.
“I am sorry about all this, my child.” For the first time, her father met her with his eyes, and his voice was loaded with a powerful sincerity. “I wish that there was a better world for you and that I did not have to protect you from all this pain and suffering.”
“You will understand, therefore, my child, why I cannot allow Mr. Harding under my roof. I am grieved that this may cause you to suffer, but I will not change my mind.”
Charity remained where she sat. She was slightly dazed by all that had taken place — all that had changed in her inner life — in the space of a few short minutes.
“No…” she managed to say. “No, of course, you cannot. I quite understand, Father.”
“I am glad.” The Reverend reached down and placed a comforting hand upon her shoulder. “You are a good girl, and I am glad that you generally try to think the best of others.”
Charity nodded mutely.
“We shall say no more about it,” the Reverend continued. “Please place your trust in me to protect you, and I shall never allow Mr. Harding to bother you again, about this matter or any other.”
Charity nodded again, and then rose to her feet mechanically.
“Forgive me, Father,” she said, her voice a little faint. “I am very tired from all the excitement, and I think it best if I take a little time to rest.”
“Of course, my child,” the Reverend said, his brows knitting together in an expression of concern. “Please, take the time to recuperate.”
For a few seconds, Charity looked up into her father’s face, searching it for some clue as to what he might be thinking. Part of her longed to believe that he was lying to her, that there was no cause to believe that Mr. Harding was anything but an honorable young man.
But her father would not lie to her, she believed this as strongly as she believed anything. Despite all his faults, despite his difficult temperament and occasional unkindness, she knew, beneath her father’s crotchety exterior, there was a sincere desire to protect his daughter.
Perhaps he was overzealous in that desire, but she had never doubted his sincerity. The only reason he would warn her away from Mr. Harding was if he believed it to be for her own good. Of this, she was certain.
That made her anguish all the greater.
* * *
Charity had no memory of ascending the stairs to her bedchamber, nor of lying down and burying her face in the pillow. Who knows how long passed before she realized that she was weeping and had been doing so for some time.
Her heart was broken by all that her father had said, all the distress manifesting in her body in acute and physical pain.
And every time she managed to draw breath and calm herself down, she remembered that never again would she look into Mr. Harding’s eyes and feel that exquisite sense of understanding and acceptance, and then the tears began again.
Chapter 21
Adam rode away from the vicarage filled with a peculiar sense of light disembodiedness. His brief encounter with Miss Campbell had lit a spark of hope in his chest, but once he had a chance to think, that hope seemed rather overwhelmed by the enormity of what had just taken place.
Of course, he told himself, he ought to have expected that it would have been like this. What father would allow his daughter to be associated with a disgraced and disinherited young man, even if he was the son of a duke? The word ‘son’ meant nothing like a blood tie if it was not accompanied by the legal status and trappings of privilege.
As far as the Reverend Miller was concerned, Adam was no better a suitor for his daughter than any common bastard. And Adam could hardly blame him for that.
The rejection from the Reverend stung, of course, it did, and it would have stung a great deal more if Adam did not presently feel the only thing that truly mattered to him was Miss Miller. The good opinion of her father was a pragmatic necessity, of course, but it was not of much consequence one way or another in terms of Adam’s own happiness.
He was daring to believe that Miss Miller loved him. Nothing else really mattered. Any obstacle could be overcome as long as Adam could hold on to the memory of the affection blooming in Miss Miller’s lovely dark eyes.
He could have wandered about the woods all day, thinking of Miss Miller. That was all he wanted to do. What he might have done if he hadn’t been so intent on learning to take better responsibility for himself and his duties.
But the fact of the matter was that Adam had business to attend to, and he had been neglecting other issues to stride about the countryside with his head full of thoughts of Miss Miller.
He recalled that there was a matter that he needed to look into, the question of the empty cottage standing on Farmer Roberts’ land.
He was relieved that he had something with which he might occupy himself. Without a task to complete, it would have been far too easy to set off for the grove in the hopes that, by some act of serendipity, he might find Miss Miller there, or else to walk by the vicarage with the desire of catching a glimpse of her through the parlor window.
It was the sort of behavior that Adam had always disliked when he witnessed it in other people and had no wish of enacting it now, even though his state of mind was so changed from its usual state.
The cottage was several miles away from the house, too far to walk, so Adam decided he would go on horseback. The Duke of Mornington’s land was very extensive; Adam knew many people in the village who had lived their whole lives without ever leaving his father’s land. He wondered in passing if Miss Miller might be one of them. Such thoughts drifted in and out of his mind during the pleasant ride to the cottage.
It was raining, but only very lightly. Lightly enough that it merely felt refreshing, and seemed to enhance the green beauty of the English countryside. It occurred to Adam, as it had periodically over the recent days, how glad he was to be home, and how much he had missed this place while he had been abroad.
* * *
Adam was amazed that he had never seen the place before, despite having ranged freely over his father’s land all his life. Yet, it occurred to him that it was the sort of place that was unlikely to be found unless one knew precisely where it was.
The cottage was unusually pretty, set in a small copse of trees some distance from the road. It was framed with a number of oak trees, and the place looked like it had been maintained well in recent years.
It was easy to tell at a glance that it was not a laborer’s cottage — it was too large for that. It might be the sort of place where a genteel personage who had fallen on hard times might live, and Adam knew that his father housed various such people on his land, and had always been very generous to them.
The evidence that he saw everywhere of his father’s generosity to others made the sense of separation all the more sharp.
Adam knocked on the door, more out of habit than because he really expected anyone to answer. When his knock fell on silence, he used the key to the front door that Farmer Roberts had provided him earlier that day.
The house had the sort of chill that betrayed a long time without any fires being lit. All the furniture was covered in dust sheets, but Adam was surprised to see there was furniture at all. Either the furnishings belonged to his father, or the tenant had left the place in a hurry leaving all their possessions behind.
He started to move around the house without any direct purpose. He distantly wondered whether he might be intruding on someone else’s privacy, but the derelict quality of the little dwelling was so strong that it was clear to Adam, even as the thought crossed his mind, that there was no domestic intimacy alive here for him to infringe upon.
He mounted t
he stairs, noting the pretty watercolors that hung framed on the wall, the pleasant curtains, the carpet that was very comfortable and attractive without being luxurious.
He pushed a door open almost at random, and found himself standing in a small and modestly decorated, but very cozy, nursery.
At a guess, based on the size of the little bed and the sorts of toys that still littered the floor, Adam thought that the child who had lived here must have been five or six years of age. A boy, judging from the tin soldiers that lay all over the floor and the wooden sword that hung at the end of the little iron bedstead like a trophy.
Something about the sight of the room filled Adam with an aching sense of sadness, and not many moments passed before he shut the door to the nursery and hurried back down the stairs. He did not wish to look into any of the bedrooms. If they were as preserved as the nursery had been, such an investigation would certainly have felt like an intrusion.
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