To Love and to Cherish (5 page)

“I hadn’t forgotten for a second.”

The blush deepened. She leaned a little closer. “I’m afraid there might be a tiny problem.” Christy raised his eyebrows. “My mother and I paid a call on Lady D’Aubrey last week, to welcome her to the neighborhood and so forth. We were just going to leave our cards and go away, but she invited us in, and we had quite the most wonderful chat. And then—I don’t quite know what came over her, but Mother invited Lady D’Aubrey to tea. And—she said yes!” Christy said that was interesting news. “Yes, yes,” she agreed distractedly, “it was very kind and condescending of her, I’m sure. Mother actually invited
Lord
D’Aubrey as well, but he can’t come. He says he has business to conduct.”

“On the Sabbath?” Christy exclaimed, making a shocked face. “I’m joking,” he assured her when her eyes went wide as saucers; he’d forgotten that Miss Weedie took every word he said—or anyone else said, for that matter—in complete earnest. She smiled with embarrassed relief. “But I don’t understand,” he confessed. “What exactly is the problem?”

She moved an inch closer; her soft voice dropped a note lower. “Mother”—she made an infinitesimal movement of her head—“has just invited Mayor Vanstone and Miss Vanstone to join us!”

“Oh?”

“Now I’m not sure what to do. Miss Pine and Mrs. Thoroughgood would stay away if I asked them, but I don’t like to.”

“No, of course not.” Miss Pine and Mrs. Thoroughgood were her two best friends. Christy frowned, at a loss. He bent over her solicitously. “And so—?”

“It’s just—it’s just that—oh, I’m afraid there’s not going to be enough to eat,” she blurted out in a rush.

He had to stop himself from smiling; he’d expected a much worse catastrophe than this. “I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.”

“If it were anyone but Miss Vanstone, I wouldn’t be concerned. But you know what she’s like, she’s always—” She broke off, mortified. “Oh, goodness—I didn’t mean that unkindly, I do assure you! Why, I’ve nothing but the highest regard for Miss Vanstone, a woman of great substance and rectitude, really quite an asset to any gathering, and certainly a most honored guest in my mother’s house at any time—”

He took pity on her and interrupted, even though he was interested in knowing how many more virtues the good Miss Weedie, given her head, would have attributed to Honoria Vanstone. “Set your mind at rest,” he said consolingly. “I promise I won’t eat a thing—”

“Oh,
no
—”

“—because Mrs. Ludd will make me a nice sandwich while I’m changing clothes. I’ll have it just before I leave for your house.”

“Oh, dear, oh, dear . . .”

“And if things get really sticky, we’ll tell Lady D’Aubrey to lay off the sponge cake. A
joke
,” he said hastily when Miss Weedie went white. “Don’t worry,” he repeated, patting her arm, “your party will be a great success, I’m sure. How could it fail to be with two such kind and cordial hostesses?”

She smiled with pleasure—it was pathetically easy to please Miss Weedie—and pressed her fingers over his in a quick, grateful squeeze. “Bless you, Reverend. I know I’m a silly old woman.” He opened his mouth to deny it, but she said, “I’d better go,” and started to turn away. “Before Mother invites anyone else,” she threw over her shoulder softly. Christy looked for a sign that she was teasing, but couldn’t see one.

***

Residents of Wyckerley liked to boast that no two houses in the village looked alike. Certainly the cottages in Hobby Lane, where the Weedies lived, bore only a passing resemblance to each other. Some were granite, a few were brick; some had slate roofs, others were colorfully thatched with Dartmoor heather. Many were of sturdy Devon cob but varied widely—some might say wildly—in the color the householder had chosen: buff-washed, blinding white, pink, pale green, gray-blue. Primrose Cottage, the Weedies’ little house, had been painted crocus yellow in 1834, the last year of the late Mr. Weedie’s life. In the intervening twenty years it had dimmed and mellowed through stages of saffron, lemon, and flax, and now it glowed a soft, creamy shade of dusty gold, as faded and gentle as the two ladies who lived inside its flaking walls.

Christy turned in at the gap in the trim hedges and started up the cinder path to the door. Bees buzzed among the columbine and blue forget-me-nots in the carefully tended garden, and the mild air was sweet with the odor of wallflowers. Violets and primroses tumbled from window boxes and clay pots set back from the path. The old thatch on the gables and jutting eaves of the cottage roof sprouted reeds and emerald-green mosses, and draped the upstairs dormer windows in graceful curves, like a woman’s bonnet. Christy heard voices through the open front door; they broke off when he entered, ducking his head in the low doorway.

“Reverend Morrell!” Miss Weedie hurried toward him, both hands extended in welcome—as if they hadn’t spoken barely an hour ago. He saw relief in her face, and deduced that entertaining the Vanstones single-handedly had become something of a strain.

But she wasn’t alone, he saw at a glance: her mother was sitting in her usual place in the inglenook, peering shortsightedly and smiling at him; and Miss Pine and Mrs. Thoroughgood, the Weedies’ constant companions, were puttering around the tea table, trying to make themselves useful. They stopped puttering long enough to greet him. Eustace Vanstone was standing beside the window, looking dignified and mayoral with his legs spread, hands clasped behind his back. He greeted Christy with one of his hearty professional handshakes, but his first words sounded peevish. “I heard D’Aubrey’s not coming.”

“No, he had some business to attend to, I gather,” Christy confirmed. The mayor scowled, and Christy suspected he was feeling duped. Instead of a golden opportunity to ingratiate himself with the new heir, his new patron, the man to whom he would now be in debt for every political favor that came his way, he was obliged to waste an entire afternoon being polite to a roomful of women (Christy excepted), with no one worth trying to impress except Lady D’Aubrey, a poor substitute for her now powerful husband.

“Yes, I believe he had business to discuss with Mr. Deene,” Miss Weedie said helpfully. That reminded her— “Your niece did a wonderful job with the children’s choir today, Mayor. They sounded like angels, everyone said—”

“Geoffrey’s talking to Tolliver?” Vanstone interrupted sharply. “What about?”

“Why, I have no idea,” she faltered, realizing belatedly that she’d added insult to injury by revealing that the absent viscount was at this moment conducting business with the mayor’s brother-in-law. Deene and Vanstone might be friends, but it was no secret that they were also rivals.

“Miss Vanstone, you’re looking well,” Christy put in for a diversion, taking the mayor’s daughter’s limp hand and bowing over it. Honoria didn’t get up from her padded wing chair, the seat of honor in the small, cramped parlor, and he wondered whether she would relinquish it when the real guest of honor arrived. He doubted that she had ever set foot in the Weedies’ modest cottage before, or that she would have now if the new viscountess weren’t coming.

“Good afternoon, Vicar,” she said, batting her dark eyelashes. At twenty-six, Honoria was skating perilously close to the thin ice of permanent spinsterhood, and the knowledge didn’t agree with her. Lately a look of discontent had begun to settle in her sharp features, souring an aspect that before had merely seemed tart. Close in age, they had been “Honoria” and “Christy” in their careless youth, acquaintances and schoolmates if not friends. Sometime between his departure for theological college and his appointment to the benefice of All Saints Church, though, they’d retreated from first-name familiarity and grown formal with each other. Which was ironic, Christy thought, considering that Honoria, unless he was grossly mistaken, had romantic designs on him.

He sat down in a rush-bottomed chair that looked familiar—he thought it belonged to Mrs. Thoroughgood, who lived across the street—and set about making himself agreeable to the decidedly mixed group the Weedies had invited, out of innocent good faith, to their home. Once Lady D’Aubrey arrived, it would undoubtedly become even
more
mixed, but everyone stole glances at the noisy eight-day clock on the mantelshelf anyway, impatient for her arrival.

At three o’clock she still hadn’t come, and the brilliance of the conversation had definitely dimmed. Christy had exhausted his store of ministerial chitchat and listened to all the opinions Mayor Vanstone had about the war with Russia to which a man ought to have to listen on Easter Sunday. Miss Weedie was in an agony of indecision over whether to pour the tea now, out of deference to the important guests she already had, or continue waiting for the most important guest and risk offending all the others. It didn’t help that her mother, whose mind wasn’t as sharp as it had been, kept asking from the inglenook, “Is it time, Jessie? Why don’t you pour out now, dear?”

At half past three, quick footsteps sounded on the cinder path, and seven heads turned as one toward the door. Pink-cheeked and windblown, carrying her hat in her hand, Lady D’Aubrey stepped over the threshold, giving the open door a humorous little rap with her knuckles. “I beg your pardon,” she said breathlessly to the group at large, “I’m most terribly sorry for being late. You’ll think me extremely foolish, but the truth is—I’ve been lost!”

Everyone stood up and exclaimed in astonishment and concern; Miss Weedie apologized, as if her ladyship’s misfortune were her fault.

“I was ready to come at half past one—much too early—and so I decided to go for a walk. I’m still not quite sure how I did it, but somehow I ended up at a sort of canal, I think, only it was abandoned, the water stagnant and weed-choked. A most melancholy place, but—beautiful, you know, with reeds and wildflowers and—” She broke off with a little grimace, as if telling herself to stop talking. Christy had never heard her say so much at one go before, and realized she was flustered. She looked very young and almost carefree, for once, with her reddish hair awry, her fringed black shawl dangling rakishly from one shoulder.

Honoria took it upon herself to explain that she must have walked south and stumbled upon the northern tributary of the Plym, used for barge traffic to and from Devonport years ago, but silted over now and abandoned. Her ladyship said she thought that was very likely it, and then Miss Weedie, with an air of fearful bravery, plunged into the formidable social task of introducing her to everyone.

She accomplished it flawlessly, and everybody sat down, Anne in Honoria’s old chair at Miss Weedie’s insistence. An awkward silence ensued. Eustace Vanstone, who had met Lady D’Aubrey at her father-in-law’s funeral, began to say grave and ponderous things about the honor her presence brought to their humble little community, the regrettably long time it had been since a lady had graced the manorial hall, particularly one as charming as she, and so on and so forth. Her ladyship murmured suitable things back.

Honoria said it was wonderful to have Geoffrey home again. “Oh—I mean Lord D’Aubrey,” she corrected herself with a self-conscious simper. “
That
will take a bit of getting used to, won’t it?”

“You and Geoffrey were friends, then, before he went away?” Anne inquired politely.

“Oh, yes, certainly. I was a little younger than he, of course, but one never forgets the friends of one’s childhood.”

This was news. Honoria had been about thirteen when Geoffrey had run away for good, and Christy knew for a fact that they’d never been anything at all to each other, much less friends. He recalled a conversation with Honoria a few weeks ago, when she’d pressed him for information on Geoffrey’s whereabouts. Naturally he hadn’t told her about his unanswered letters to the London address, but Honoria had learned a great deal about Wyckerley’s prodigal son via the uncannily accurate village grapevine. “I hear he’s cavorting in London without a care in the world,” she’d tsked, “while his father lies at death’s door. I for one think it’s absolutely shocking.” Today she seemed to have gotten over the shock, and the new viscount, notwithstanding a great
cavorter
, was clearly an acquaintance she was ready to acknowledge.

“Do tell us what Geoffrey’s been doing for the last twelve years,” she invited, leaning toward Anne confidentially. “We hear such
odd
things.”

“Well, you know, he’s been active in the military.”

“Oh, yes. As a captain, I believe?”

“Yes, until he gave up his commission last year due to an illness.”

Honoria waited for her to elaborate. She didn’t. “I believe I heard that he served in Africa,” she went on alter a pause.

“Yes, although that was before we met.”

“And in Burma, I think?”

“Yes. And India, and New Zealand,” she added in a dry tone.

“My goodness! How fortunate we are to have such a
patriotic
Englishman for our new lord,” Honoria smirked. “Do you have family in England, my lady?” she inquired next.

“No, I’ve no family. My father died shortly after Geoffrey and I were married.”

“I’m so sorry. And that was—?”

“Four years ago.”

“Ah, I see. And so, when Geoffrey—his lordship; I
do
beg your pardon—when his lordship was away in India or Africa or wherever it might have been, you stayed in England quite alone?”

The other ladies shifted and cleared their throats, uncomfortable with Honoria’s bold prying. “Quite,” Anne answered, looking at her directly. “I lived in London, by myself, in our house.” The arch of one sleek eyebrow asked as eloquently as words,
Is there anything else you’d like to know?

Honoria colored slightly and closed her lips.

Tea was served. Miss Weedie poured while Tabby, the housemaid the Weedies shared with Miss Pine, passed cups and saucers. “She’s not what you might call a
treasure
,” Christy recalled Miss Weedie confiding in him once, “but she does try.” Lady D’Aubrey was given a tiny table from which to take her tea, while the others made do with plates on their laps. The cream toasts and green pea pie occupied everyone for a few minutes, so that the lulls in the conversation weren’t uncomfortable, but soon afterward the silences grew awkward again. The Weedies and Miss Pine were clearly overwhelmed by the eminence of their guest, and even Mrs. Thoroughgood, normally a hard woman to dissuade from sharing her voluble opinions, seemed too intimidated to initiate a subject. Christy was about to introduce some innocuous topic when Anne herself broke another nerve-wracking pause.