The Secret of Pembrooke Park

by Julie Klassen

  Chapter 11

  William glanced from the vestry into the nave, and his heart sank. Empty. Was no one coming? Would he be forced to read the annual prayers in honor of the King’s birthday to vacant pews? The ill monarch was still a popular figure—far more so than his son, the prince regent—though the regency and the weather had cast a pall over the day.

  William could usually count on his family to attend prayers during the week, if no one else, but his mother and sister were spending the day with their grandmother, who had taken a fall. And his father had been called out early that morning to help a tenant repair a fence before all of his livestock escaped. In the absence of his parish clerk, William went into the entry porch and rang the bell himself, then returned to the vestry.

  Resigned to the lonely task, William donned a white surplice, determined to do his duty—flock or not.

  He reentered the unoccupied church and stepped to the reader’s desk with a sigh.

  The outer door banged open, and a figure scuttled in beneath a dripping umbrella, slipping on the slick threshold. He glimpsed wet half boots and damp skirt hems. The umbrella lowered, revealing its bearer’s face.

  William’s heart rose. Miss Foster.

  He felt comingled relief and embarrassment to have her witness his failure to draw a crowd.

  She looked about her, uncertainty etched on her brow. “Did I mistake the time?”

  “No. I was just about to begin.”

  Shaking the rain from her umbrella, she said, “I am sorry I’m late. I thought if I waited, the rain might lessen. But quite the opposite, I’m afraid. No doubt that’s what has kept the others at home.”

  How kind of her. “Thank you for braving the weather, Miss Foster.”

  She shrugged, uncomfortable under his praise. “Easy for me. I live the closest. Save for you.” She hesitated. “My father . . . isn’t much of a churchgoer, I am afraid. I hope you aren’t offended.”

  “Not at all. Won’t you be seated?”

  “Oh yes, of course. Forgive me, I’m holding you up.” She left her wet umbrella and walked forward, her heels echoing across the nave.

  She straightened her bonnet and took her customary seat. She looked charming with coils of dark hair made springy by the dampness framing her glistening face.

  He cleared his throat and began, “Today we meet to honor our venerated sovereign, King George the Third. And to pray for divine healing and protection in his fragile state of health.”

  He looked down at the official prayer he was meant to read but hesitated. He glanced up once more.

  Miss Foster sat there, hands clasped in her lap in the posture of dutiful listener.

  He admitted, “I feel silly standing here, pretending to talk to a crowd.”

  Lips parted, she glanced to the side as though to verify he was talking to her. “You . . . don’t look silly.”

  He stepped from behind the desk and walked toward her. “Would you mind if we made this less formal, since it is only the two of us?”

  “Not at all.”

  He placed a hand on the low door of the enclosed box. “May I?”

  “Of course,” she said, but he did not miss the convulsion of her long white throat as she swallowed.

  William sat beside her, several feet of space between them on the pew.

  “Shall we pray?”

  She nodded and solemnly closed her eyes. For a moment he sat there, taking advantage of her closed eyes and proximity to look at her, allowing his gaze to linger on the fan of long, dark lashes against her fair cheek, her sweet upturned nose, and delicate pink lips. Then he cleared his throat and shut his own eyes—not that he felt closed eyes were required to commune with his creator, but he knew he needed to block out this particular feminine distraction.

  “Almighty God, we pray for King George, as you have instructed us to pray for the leaders you have placed in authority over us. We ask that you, Great Physician, touch his body and his mind and restore him to health. We pray for his son, the prince regent, who rules in his stead, and ask you to guide him. Oh, that he would seek to walk in your ways.

  “Father, we are grateful that you are our perfect eternal King, sovereign forever, and that you love us and forgive us and adopt us as son and daughter. We are in reality unworthy peasants, but you see us as prince and princess, children of the King, through the sacrifice of your Son, Jesus, our savior and deliverer, and it is in His name we pray. Amen.”

  “Amen,” she echoed.

  They sat there a few moments in silence, William looking straight ahead, knowing he should move away but not wishing to.

  She asked quietly, “Is that what you’d planned to say?”

  He shrugged. “I prayed what was in my heart. If you would prefer I read the formal prayer, I will happily oblige. . . .”

  “That’s not necessary. I was only curious. I like that you are less formal in your prayers and sermons. Less practiced.”

  “Less practiced,” he repeated with a quick grin. “Now you sound like the parishioners who admonish me to practice more to make up for the deficiencies of my delivery.”

  He felt her gaze on his profile and wondered what she saw.

  She said, “I can hardly conceive of a more difficult profession. People can be nearly impossible to please, but you have to be polite and react with Christian forbearance and pretend to care about each and every grievance.”

  “I hope I do more than pretend to care.”

  “Yes, I think you do. I see that you care about your parishioners. In word and deed. You have my sincere admiration—you and your sister both.”

  He looked at her, taken aback by her praise. His heart warmed, and he sat taller against the hard wooden pew. She gazed at the altar, with no coy or flirtatious looks or apparent awareness of the deep compliment she had paid him, nor her effect on him.

  The candle on the reader’s desk guttered and swayed in the draughty nave. The rain tapped against the roof, and in the distance, thunder rumbled. His stomach grumbled in reply, and William felt his neck heat in mild embarrassment. He braved a sideways glance at her.

  She grinned. “Hungry?”

  “Very.”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to invite her into the parsonage for something to eat, only a few feet beyond the vestry door. But he knew he should not. Not just the two of them alone in his rooms.

  As if reading his mind, she said, “Would you like to come over to the manor and join me for tea? Do you think that would be all right, since my father is there?” She added, “I suppose you have to be very careful.”

  Very careful indeed, he thought. The eyes of God—and Mrs. Peterman—are everywhere.

  “I have another idea,” he said. “We were to have cider today after the service, in honor of the occasion. Why don’t I fetch us two glasses?”

  “If you like.”

  He rose. “I’ll be right back.” Making haste into the vestry, he replaced white gown with coat and hat and dashed across the rain-slashed path to the parsonage. He returned a few minutes later with a basket.

  She met him in the vestry. “You’re dripping wet!”

  “Not too bad.” He handed her the basket and shed his long coat and hat.

  “You might have borrowed my umbrella.”

  “Now you offer,” he teased. He pulled a chair from the corner of the room toward the small desk and chair against the office wall. He wished for the hundredth time the old place had heating—a simple hearth or even a stove.

  He poured two glasses of cider and prised up the lid from a tin of biscuits his mother had brought over the day before.

  He handed Miss Foster a glass and lifted his own. “Will you drink King George’s health with me?”

  “I shall indeed.” She lifted her glass, and they both sipped.

  He offered her the tin.

  She eyed the biscuits in surprise. “Don’t tell me you made these.”

  “What do you take me for—useful?” he quipped. “No, Mamm
a is the baker in the family.”

  Miss Foster took a bite. “And very accomplished she is.”

  But William’s mind was not on cider or biscuits. He found his gaze lingering on Miss Foster’s beguiling mouth and lovely white teeth as she nibbled dainty bites of ginger biscuit. He swallowed.

  In the small room, she sat very near, their knees only inches apart, and he could smell something flowery and feminine—perfume or floral soap. He noticed a crumb on her lower lip, and watched in fascination as her pink tongue licked it away. He felt a stab of longing and took a deep, shaky breath. Steady on, Parson. Steady on.

  “Miss Foster,” he said, his voice low and not perfectly even. “I am very glad you came.”

  “To church?” she asked.

  “To Pembrooke.”

  She smiled. “So am I.”

  The damp weather persisted. From the morning-room window, Abigail looked out across the drive toward the church, remembering fondly her time there with Mr. Chapman. She had seen him again during the second dance class, which Abigail thought went even better than the first. She had been so pleased to see Leah looking relaxed—and enjoying Mr. Morgan’s company.

  From beyond the rain-spotted glass, movement caught her eye. It was the woman in the dark blue cape and veiled hat again, walking into the churchyard, something bright yellow in her hands. Was it Eliza Smith? She had seen a small veiled hat on a peg in Mrs. Hayes’s cottage, though it hadn’t been a full, heavy veil like this one. And there was something about the woman’s posture that suggested wealth and breeding.

  Molly came in with fresh coffee and the newspaper.

  “Molly, do you know who that is . . . in the churchyard?”

  The lower housemaid walked over to stand beside her at the window. “No, miss. Don’t recall seeing a woman in a veil like that round here before.”

  Abigail thanked the girl. She sat back down, took a sip of coffee, and read the headlines, but she soon found her attention returning to the churchyard. She went to the hall cupboard, pulled on a hooded mantle and gloves, and stepped outside. But by the time she crossed the drive, the woman was gone.

  Abigail entered the churchyard anyway, and walked to the spot where she thought the woman had stood—if she was not mistaken, also very near the place Eliza Smith had stood not so long ago. She saw no fresh graves, no temporary crosses or sparse grass yet to grow in. By appearances this plot of graves had lain undisturbed for decades. She looked closer at the trio of headstones and read the names: Robert Pembrooke, Elizabeth Pembrooke, and Eleanor Pembrooke, Beloved Daughter, surrounded by many other Pembrookes of generations past. She supposed it wasn’t so surprising that the grave of the well-liked lord of the manor should receive visits from not one but two women in as many weeks. Though this time flowers—a bouquet of yellow daffodils—had been left on Eleanor Pembrooke’s grave rather than Robert’s.

  She looked at the death dates. Robert Pembrooke died twenty years ago, as Mr. Chapman had said. Killed in London, she now knew from the newspaper clipping. His wife and daughter had died only a few days apart the year before. Typhus, Mac had said. Poor Mr. Pembrooke, to lose his wife and child at the same time like that. How sad. His final year could not have been a happy one. And then to die so violently himself. . . .

  She stood there a moment longer, missing her own mother and sister, and then returned to the house. Her father would be coming down to breakfast soon and she wanted to be there to greet him.

  Another letter arrived three days later, and when Abigail read its first line, hair rose on the back of her neck, and she experienced that prickly sensation one sometimes feels when being watched. She looked at the date—the letter had been sent the day after she had visited the churchyard. How eerie and fascinating that she should receive this particular journal page after so recently visiting those particular graves.

  I visited their graves today. Robert Pembrooke. Elizabeth Pembrooke. Eleanor Pembrooke. As well as my grandparents and great-grandparents. But I felt little connection to them. Only guilt. I don’t feel I have any right to claim kinship with these people, nor any right to live in their house.

  I put flowers on Eleanor Pembrooke’s grave. After all, it is her bedchamber I occupy. Her canopied bed I sleep in. Her dolls’ house I amuse myself with. She and her mother died in an epidemic that swept the parish last year. Although she was younger than I, I wish I had known her.

  Father was keen to see the birth and death dates for his brother’s wife and offspring, so he looked for the family Bible but could not find it. He then went and spoke to the rector, asking to see the parish records. He says familial feeling drives him. A longing for communion and closure. But I know better. He wanted to see the proof with his own eyes that his brother’s family are all dead. He found the proof he was looking for, but I wished he had not.

  I admit I sometimes wonder who put Robert Pembrooke in his grave. They say some nameless thief killed him. But as I listen to my father rant and hear the scurrilous things he says about his brother, I have to wonder if the thief has a name after all. A name I know all too well.

  Heart pounding, Abigail read the final paragraph again. Did it imply what she thought it did? Then she remembered Mac’s warning about Clive Pembrooke.

  Perhaps it meant exactly that.

  William called on ailing Mr. Ford. Afterward, he thought he might stop by and see Mrs. Hayes. He had not visited the woman in some time but knew his father often did so. He glanced up at the ominous sky, hoping the rain would hold off a little longer.

  As he approached the house, he was surprised to see his father dropping an armload of chopped firewood near the door with a hollow clunk.

  “Papa. I could have done that. Or Jacob.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “I was just going to call in. How is she?”

  “About the same, physically. Though her mind is slipping.” His father wiped a handkerchief over his brow and said, “You know, Will, I think it best if you leave the visiting to me.”

  “Oh, why?”

  Mac shrugged. “We’re old friends, she and I. Worked together at Pembrooke Park. Unless . . .” He glanced at the house and lowered his voice, asking, “Or is it Eliza you were hoping to see?”

  “Not especially, no.”

  Eliza was a pleasant, pretty woman, whom William had known since childhood. In fact, one of his earliest memories was playing hide-and-seek with her belowstairs in Pembrooke Park. He might once have considered courting her—before Rebekah had turned his head and broken his heart. Before Miss Foster . . .

  “Good.” His father continued, “You don’t want to encourage a girl like Eliza, or give others the impression you are courting her.”

  “What do you mean, ‘a girl like Eliza,’” William asked. “An orphan?”

  “No, that’s not what I mean.” Mac grimaced. “Never mind. I would simply prefer to call on her and her aunt myself. All right?”

  There was more going on than his father wanted to tell him, William realized, but he decided not to push the matter.

  “Very well, Papa. I shall leave you to it.”

  On his way home, a heavy rain began to fall. William put up his umbrella and braced himself for a damp walk. A short while later, he drew up short at the sight of Abigail Foster standing huddled beneath a mulberry tree on the edge of the Millers’ farm.

  “Miss Foster?” He diverted from the road, stepping over a puddle to reach her. As he neared, he noticed the rain had curled the hair around her face into spirals. She looked both miserable and charming. His eyes were drawn to her lips, stained dark red. The sight of those unusually red lips, in such contrast with her fair skin, captivated him. He found himself staring at her mouth. Wishing he might kiss her.

  Instead he asked, “Are you all right?”

  She nodded. “I went out for a walk and wasn’t paying attention to the sky. This tree doesn’t offer much protection, I fear, but some.”

  “But it does offer refreshment, I see.
”

  “Oh. Yes.” She ducked her head and tucked stained fingers behind her back. “I did eat a few mulberries. Well, more than a few. I’m wet and cold but at least not hungry.” She glanced down at a stained hand. “I didn’t want to spoil my gloves. This will come out, won’t it?”

  “Eventually.”

  “I must look ridiculous.”

  “On the contrary. You look charming. I confess I’ve never eaten mulberries. But on you they look delicious.” Good heavens, had he just said that aloud? He felt his ears heat. Just what he needed—to draw more attention to his prominent ears.

  He collected himself. “Would you care to share my umbrella, Miss Foster? I hate to see you catch your death. We have a ball tonight, remember.”

  “Thank you.” She took a step nearer, and he positioned his umbrella over the both of them.

  “And what are you doing out in the rain?” she asked.

  “Calling on Mr. Ford. Recovering from an apoplexy, poor soul.”

  “I am sorry to hear it.”

  “It appears he’ll be all right in time. Thank God.”

  “Do you pay calls in all weather?”

  “When the need arises, yes, my trusty umbrella and I venture bravely forth.” He smiled, hoping to make light of the comment, not wishing to boast.

  “You are very kind, Mr. Chapman. Very good.”

  “Kind, perhaps, but only God is truly good. I am all too aware of my failings to allow you to saint me just yet.”

  A gust of wind blew the rain at a sharp angle, down Miss Foster’s neck. She shivered.

  “Here.” He repositioned the umbrella directly over her head.

  “But now you are getting wet,” she protested. “Stand closer,” she insisted, and he was only too happy to comply.

  He should have simply given her his umbrella, or walked her directly home. But he was enjoying her company too much to do the practical thing. The rain fell around them like a curtain, blurring out the landscape around them.