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He had discovered in the days since leaving London that his feelings had not changed.

The anger and disgust he had felt on the night he’d rescued her had faded, leaving only a still unfulfilled longing for her presence.

He remembered the times she’d seemed to return his feelings—at least feelings of regard. The afternoon at Kew, the time they had waltzed together, and a few others like that.

Would a handful of occasions when he’d felt her warmth suffice to build something more lasting?

22

J
essamine’s face felt warm by the time she returned home from a walk to a heath where she had spotted clumps of harebell in bloom on her last walk.

She carried a bouquet of the lavender-colored flowers in one hand when she turned onto the narrow lane lined with elms that led to the vicarage. A carriage stood before the front door.

She quickened her step, wondering who had come to visit. There were always visitors stopping by in the afternoon, but she didn’t recognize this fine-looking coach.

As she drew closer, she noticed a liveried servant by the horses’ heads. Except for the local squire, there were no great families in the vicinity. This was a traveling coach, its sides dusty from the roads.

Her heart began to thump as she realized the footman’s livery resembled that of the Marfleets’ footmen. But it couldn’t be the same.

Her fingers trembled as she struggled to untie the ribbons of her bonnet. She would need to go up to her room and change her old muslin gown before entering the parlor.

She stopped in front of the hallway mirror to remove her bonnet and arrange the curls framing her face.

“Jessamine, is that you?” her father asked through the parlor doorway, which stood open, voices audible through it.

Her heart sank. She wouldn’t have time to go to her room and freshen up. “Yes, I’ve just come in.” She smoothed down the last wayward wisps of hair, patted her shiny cheeks and forehead with her handkerchief, and straightened her ruffled collar. Squaring her shoulders, she headed to the parlor, then paused at the entrance to see who the visitors were.

Mr. Marfleet rose from his chair as soon as she appeared.

Her hand at her throat, her heart tripping, she could only stare at him.

Her father’s face was wreathed in smiles. “Look who’s come to visit you. Come in and have a seat. We’ve done our best to entertain your friend while you were out.”

Gathering her wits about her, she took a few steps into the room and tried to smile.

Mr. Marfleet came to meet her, his hand held out. “Hello, Miss Barry. I hope I am not intruding on you.”

She shook her head, allowing her hand to be engulfed in his, all the while feeling as if she were in a dream. “Not at all.” Reason began to return. “Your brother, how is he?”

She bit her lip at the shadow that crossed his features. “He is no longer with us.”

She drew in another breath. “I am so sorry,” she said, pressing his hand.

“Thank you. We—none of us—have accustomed ourselves to his absence.”

He relinquished her hand, and she clutched it with her other, embarrassed that she had held his so long.

“Please, be seated.” She moved forward, her gaze darting from her mother to her father, wondering how long they had been alone with him.

Her mother smiled in reassurance. “You must be parched after
your long walk. Come, let me pour you some tea. Mr. Marfleet has been with us nearly an hour and no sign of you.” She chuckled, lifting the cozy off the teapot and touching its sides to see if it was still warm.

“You’ve been here an hour?” she asked Mr. Marfleet after taking the cup her mother served her.

“Yes, an hour that has passed all too quickly with my tales of life in a country parsonage and Mr. Marfleet’s missionary journeys in India,” her father replied for him. “I can assure you we have only scratched the surface of the latter topic, of which I hope to hear much more.”

Mr. Marfleet smiled. “Nothing would give me greater pleasure, unless it be to hear more of your life as a village pastor.”

She sat down, flustered to think her father might have brought up her disgrace in his wish to thank Mr. Marfleet. What was he thinking of her? “How is your sister?” she asked.

“She is well, considering our loss. She told me only recently that she had written to you.”

Jessamine looked down at her cup. “Yes. I—I hadn’t realized till then that you had left London.”

“Yes. I received a summons from my father that my brother was gravely ill.”

“I see,” she said quietly. “I . . . hope he didn’t suffer.”

“He suffered some, but he was at peace at the end.”

She studied him as he spoke, wishing to know more.

Her father, as if sensing Mr. Marfleet’s reluctance to repeat what he’d already told them, spoke for him. “The Lord gave Mr. Marfleet the ineffable privilege of ministering to his brother in his final days, and of being assured of his eternal salvation.”

Jessamine stared at Mr. Marfleet as her father spoke. He had told her father all these things at their first meeting?

As if reading her thoughts, he said, “Your father is a very easy man to unburden oneself to. You were right when you said he is
a true shepherd to his flock and would thus not want to leave his post here for a larger parish.”

Her gaze went from one man to the other, her amazement growing. “I see,” was all she could think to say.

“Perhaps when you finish your tea, you would like to show Mr. Marfleet the garden,” her mother put in, a hopeful look on her face.

“I promised him a tour of our modest greenhouse,” her father added, “but perhaps that can wait another day.”

As she was nodding to her mother’s suggestion, and draining her cup, her father’s words penetrated. Another day? How long would Mr. Marfleet be staying? What had brought him? She peeked at him over the rim of her cup, all her questions hinging upon this last one.

Despite finishing her cup, her throat felt parched.

Realizing her parents were waiting for her to initiate the walk in the garden, she set her cup down and addressed him. “Would you like to . . . to take a turn about the garden?” Feeling acutely embarrassed at the ploy so many hopeful parents used to allow a suitor to be alone with their daughter, she cringed at how her question must sound. Her cheeks flushed as she thought of the last time she had taken a turn about the garden with a gentleman. The day Rees had come to tell her not to pin her hopes on him.

She pushed aside the memory. As Mr. Marfleet met her gaze, she wished she could tell him she didn’t mean it like
that
. She was only inviting him because he came from so far away, and he was her acquaintance.

He stood at once and nodded. “I should like that very much.”

If she didn’t know better, she would say he exhibited relief and eagerness. Perhaps he was only bored with her parents’ company and had been waiting for this moment to see her, dispatch whatever message he had come to give her, and be gone.

She rose and smoothed down her gown, wishing once again that she had had a moment to wash her face and brush her hair before having to face him. “Very well. Won’t you come with me then?”

Mr. Marfleet followed her down the corridor and into the breakfast room at the back of the house, which had a door leading into the garden. He held the door open for her, and she murmured her thanks, conscious of his arm so close to hers as she passed through.

Glad that the garden showed to such advantage in late June, she proceeded to lead him down a graveled path, not bothering to identify anything since she knew he could easily name all the flowers, which were common ones to be found in any English garden: foxglove, Canterbury bells, pinks, peonies, larkspur, iris, forget-me-nots, and roses, roses everywhere. Lattices with climbing ones, small bushes with miniature ones, bushes with large, cabbage-like heads too heavy to support on their stems, their fragrance filling the walled space like vapor in an enclosed room.

“It’s beautiful. Do you have a gardener or is it just you and your father?”

“Just my father and I. He does employ a couple of men to cultivate the glebe, but he reserves our own private gardens within these brick walls for ourselves. Gardening and his botanical experimenting are his passions—aside from ministry, of course.”

“He is a very wise man in ministerial matters, thus I’m sure he is also in botanical things.”

She looked sidelong at him, but his gaze was fixed on a bed of lavender that was beginning to blossom. “I’m glad that he was able to offer you some comfort in your recent loss.”

He swallowed.

She longed to reach out and touch him, but she curled her fingers into her palms. “I’m so sorry. I only met your brother but a few times, but I can scarcely believe he is gone.”

He turned to her then, his slate-blue eyes looking intently into hers. “Yes, I am having the same difficulty no matter how much I believe that someday we shall be together again in eternity. But by rights it should have been I to depart prematurely. I was the one who hurried off to India and was struck down with more than
one kind of pestilence.” His tone turned bitter as he looked away again. “I should have died, not he.”

She couldn’t help reaching out then and touching his forearm. “Don’t say that! Neither of you should have been struck down. We don’t know why the Lord takes some before their time. We can only trust in His infinite wisdom, and in eternity.”

His throat worked as if finding it hard to speak. She tightened her hold on him, wishing she could say or do more.

His gaze fixed on her hand, and she realized what she was doing. Quickly she let go of his arm.

His gaze lifted to hers, and for a moment they only gazed at each other. Her heartbeat threatened to drown out the sounds of buzzing bees around the lavender.

“Do you believe that?”

She swallowed, sensing he was asking her, not because of any lack of belief on his part, but to ascertain hers. “Yes, I do.”

He seemed to relax and resumed walking. “My brother had not been living an exemplary life for many years, ever since he came of age. He was a typical young man of the ton, living for his own pleasure.”

She didn’t know what to say. The little she’d observed of Sir Harold showed her a carefree gentleman of society.

Mr. Marfleet shook his head. “But he was no longer a young blade. He was a married man of one-and-thirty, whom my father was grooming to take over the reins of his estates. I had spoken to Harold on more than one occasion about his gambling, drinking, and generally dissipated life. Excuse me for mentioning these things, especially to a young lady. I do not wish to speak ill of the dead—”

“Of course you don’t. Please tell me. I shan’t repeat any of what you are telling me.” She bowed her head. “Believe me, I have nothing to reproach anyone for. I know too well the consequences of sin.”

To her surprise he touched her chin with his forefinger and nudged it upward. Too stunned to speak, she could only stare at
him. “Whatever you did was done out of innocence. My brother had long lived the life of a reprobate, unmindful of my parents, of his wife, or of his good name.”

He let her chin go, and she felt bereft. “I only mention these things to explain God’s grace to him in the end. He—Harold, that is—truly repented and received Jesus as his Lord and Savior right before the end. He departed in peace. I didn’t want to . . . to . . .” Mr. Marfleet had difficulty continuing for a few minutes and turned away from her.

She remained still, giving him time to compose himself.

He drew a breath. “At first, I didn’t want to accept his end, when it became clear Harold was not getting better. I railed at God, pleaded with Him, spent hours on my knees at Harold’s bedside.”

He bowed his head. “Then it occurred to me—or perhaps the Lord revealed it to me—that I was praying more for my own sake than Harold’s.”

She drew in a breath. “What do you mean?”

His blue eyes met hers again. “Isn’t it clear? I didn’t wish to step into Harold’s shoes. I never have. It is the last thing I wished, to be heir to Kendicott Park.”

Her hand came to her mouth to stifle a gasp. Of course—someday he would be the baronet and inherit the family seat.

His lips twisted up. “Didn’t you realize?”

She shook her head. “No—it was stupid of me. I was just so shocked over your brother’s death—and how you must feel . . . I hadn’t thought about that.” Her gaze rose to his once more. “Oh, I’m so sorry—you have only ever wanted to be a minister of the gospel. How awful for you!”

He looked at her as if he had never seen her before. A second later he shook his head as if waking up. “You know, you are the first to express such a sentiment.”

“I didn’t mean—” She stopped, confused, not sure what she wanted to say.

“No one has said anything directly. My family is still too full of grief. And no one expected Harold not to continue the line. He has always been so healthy, escaping most childhood diseases that afflicted me. Still less has anyone expected me to fill Harold’s shoes. I have never had the distinction of knowing how to carry on in society.”

He smiled without mirth. “But the unthinkable has happened. Harold is gone without leaving an heir, and underlying everyone’s grief is the sense of relief that my father has another son to inherit. It never occurs to anyone that I never wished—nor wish it now—this title and all it implies for my life.”

He let out a breath. “That sounds very selfish of me, I know. I shouldn’t be thinking such things, not now. My father is hale and hearty and will live many decades still, I expect.”

Jessamine chose her words carefully, groping for something that would comfort him. “Yet you will never be a simple vicar again. Even if you are able to continue as a clergyman, it will surely be in some exalted position befitting a baronet’s son.” She swallowed on the last words, still unable to conceive of such titles for Mr. Marfleet. “And not as my father, a simple country vicar.”

He nodded slowly at each word, his gaze not wavering from hers.

As if by mutual accord, they continued walking. At the end of the brick path, she motioned to a wooden bench under the beech tree, and they sat down.