The Dowry of Miss Lydia Clark (68 page)

Harold, who had just finished telling Mrs. Meeks about the chiff-chaff, angled his head to hear the girl better. “The what?”

“Vicar Phelps’s new pulpit.”

“It’s not just the vicar’s, Trudy,” Mark said from behind.

That made it a little clearer. Harold reckoned they were talking about something the vicar wore, like a new suit. Maybe his clothes belonged to the church, just like the vicarage did. He twisted his head around to wink at Trudy. “I don’t care what he wears, as long as he preaches those good sermons.”

The children laughed, which told him he had given the right answer. But when he tried to help Mrs. Meeks from the wagon in front of the cottage, she shook her head and sent the children on inside. They did so quietly, each turning back to look at him before disappearing through the doorway. Only when the door closed did Mrs. Meeks turn to him. Her brown eyes wore a look that Harold didn’t understand.

“Is there something wrong?” he asked.

But instead of answering, she said in a quiet voice, “You’ve been pretending to go to church, haven’t you?”

“I go to church.”

“Inside, I mean.”

A lie rose to his lips, but he was unable to force it out. “Well, not
inside
.”

“Why, Mr. Sanders?”

He tried to say Miss Clark’s name. However, just like the lie, it wouldn’t form on his tongue. So in all truthfulness he said, “I like helping you and the children.”

A sad smile drained the brightness from her face. “You’re not a believer, are you?”

It was a question, but she said it like she already knew the answer. And Mercy had preached religion to him enough so that he understood what she was talking about.

“I’m aiming to be one day, Mrs. Meeks,” he told her.

“I see.” Again he saw the sad smile as she folded her work-worn hands over the cloth reticule in her lap. “You’ve been kind to us, Mr. Sanders, and I thank you for that. But we can’t ride with you anymore. And please don’t offer my children rides or come to visit.”

“But why? The children are fond of me.”

“And that’s why, Mr. Sanders.”

“I don’t understand. Ain’t it good for them to have a man about once in a while, with their papa being taken from them and all?”

She shook her head and stared down at her folded hands. “Not if he’s someone their mother can’t consider marryin’. They talk about you all the time. If you come around too much, they’re going to get attached to you, and it’s going to break their hearts.”

This didn’t make any sense. Who said anything about marrying Mrs. Meeks? Then it dawned upon Harold that she was thinking that all the attention he was giving her family was because he wanted to court her.
Of course!

“But why wouldn’t you want to marry me?” he asked. Not that he wanted her to, because his heart belonged to Miss Clark. He just needed to know. “Because I don’t go to church?”

“Because you’re not a believer
and
don’t go to church,” she said softly, then looked up at him again. Tears were gathered in her eyelashes. “You’re a good man, Mr. Sanders. But the Scriptures say a believer shouldn’t marry a person who isn’t a believer. God’s been so good to my family. The least I can do is obey. And my children should have a father who’ll set a good example by goin’ to church.”

With that, she picked up her reticule. Harold had no choice but to help her down from the wagon. He glanced toward the cottage and saw three heads duck from a window. An odd thickness came to the back of his throat. “Well…I…uh…h-hope you’ll tell me…if you ever need anything,” he stammered, shifting his weight on his feet.

“Thank you, Mr. Sanders.”

Then to his surprise, she came toward him and planted a quick kiss upon his cheek. “I’ll pray for you every day,” she said as she stepped backward, tears still shining in her eyes.

“Uh, thank you.”

And there was nothing left to do but leave. He swung back into the wagon and picked up the reins. His heart was so heavy that he whistled a tune to try to cheer himself up, but it only made him feel worse. It was the first time a woman had ever kissed him, and he could still feel her lips softly upon his cheek as he neared home.

“Wasn’t that a moving sermon?” Mrs. Durwin asked at the
Larkspur
’s dining table that same afternoon as the lodgers sat down to a lunch of boiled mutton with caper sauce, roast parsnips, and rhubarb dumplings.

“It was,” Miss Somerville agreed.

Mr. Clay, cutting his mutton with a knife, said, “Sermon? My eyes were so drawn by the pulpit that I forgot to listen.”

“Oh, Mr. Clay,” Mrs. Durwin said with an affectionate smile. “You did no such thing.”

Jacob tore off a piece of his bread and wished the conversation would change to something else. The sermon had indeed been moving, but it moved his conscience in a painful direction. For the subject was hypocrisy. As an illustration, the vicar used Ananias and his wife Sapphira’s pretending to give to God all of the money they had received for a piece of land, when actually they kept some back. Their sin was not in holding some back—for as Saint Peter told them, the land was theirs to do with as they wished—but in lying about it so that others would think well of them.

He looked across at Eugenia and winced inwardly while returning her smile. It was ironic that Vicar Phelps had chosen that particular subject, for Jacob had been in torment over his own hypocrisy ever since Friday evening, when Miss Somerville made her stunning confession in the hall. How serene the newest lodger looked now!

You have to tell Eugenia
, went through his mind for the hundredth time. Panic quickened his pulse.
What if she despises you for it?
But surely that wouldn’t happen. He had won her heart. Weren’t they close enough so that he could say anything to her? Often he thought of the two of them spending the future together. Did he really want a marriage built upon a foundation of lies?

In dire need of divine guidance, he prayed silently,
Father, if I should confess all to her today, would you please have her ask me to sit with her after lunch?
Then deciding he should be more specific, so there would be no question in his mind from where the answer came, he prayed,
Outside, if you please
. And just because
outside
wasn’t really that specific after all, he added,
In the courtyard
.

After lunch she approached him. “Would you care to sit out in the courtyard for a little while?”

“That would be nice,” Jacob replied with mingled feelings of awe that his prayer was answered, and dread over what he had to do.

Soft summer breezes met them as they walked out into the courtyard to take a seat upon one of the benches. Eugenia arranged her plisse wrap about her shoulders and let out a contented sigh. “Isn’t the weather just heavenly?”

He sighed as well, but for different reasons. “I suppose so.”

“What’s wrong, Jacob? Did you not find any artifacts yesterday?”

So seldom did she ask about his work that he hoped her question meant that her fondness for him was increasing. “We found some,” he replied, then cleared his throat. “But there is something you should know.”

“Yes?” she said with an unsuspecting smile.

“I’ve been a hypocrite, Eugenia. Just like Ananias and Sapphira.”

She actually giggled. “I beg your pardon?”

Nerves as taut as fiddle strings, Jacob confessed how frustration over his own ineptness at reading drove him to hire Miss Clark. He could not look at the woman beside him but stared down at his interwoven fingers, his thumbs circling each other as if they had wills of their own. And then he admitted he had not the soul of a poet, did not even particularly care for poetry, and that it was a labor to learn every stanza. When he had no more to tell, he finally forced himself to look at her. “Will you ever forgive me, Eugenia?”

The anger in her gray eyes caused his stomach to knot. Still, with a voice as calm as if she were discussing the weather, she replied, “I would prefer you address me as Miss Rawlins…Mr. Pitney.”

“Please…if you could just understand how desperately I wanted you to notice me—”

“You led me to believe you were a true romantic, Mr. Pitney.”

“I’ll do anything to make it up to you,” he pleaded.

She shook her head, lips pressed tightly together, before speaking again. “I have to fault myself for turning a blind eye to the cracks I’ve noticed lately in your facade.”

“Cracks—?”

“Glaring ones, Mr. Pitney. And so it doesn’t surprise me to learn that you possess the same bland soul as most Englishmen, with their umbrellas and bowler hats and pocket watches.”

He didn’t understand what that meant and was just about to point out that he did not even own a pocket watch when she rose to her feet.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Pitney.”

The remainder of the week passed by as if they had never sat in the garden or courtyard or in the library together, never held hands, never discussed her stories or poetry. If anything, it was worse than the former days, for now instead of treating him with polite disinterest, she simply ignored him.

That was painful enough, but the worst blow came the following Monday evening. He and Mrs. Dearing happened to meet coming from opposite directions on the stairs, and he gathered the nerve to ask her why Miss Rawlins had been absent from meals the whole weekend. “I do hope she’s not ill,” he said.

Mrs. Dearing gave him a sympathetic look. “Didn’t she tell you?”

She would actually have to speak with me then
, he thought sadly. “Tell me what?”

“She left for London on Saturday to meet with her publisher. She’ll be away most of the week.”

“I see.”

The elderly woman touched his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Jacob.”

It was the first time she had addressed him by his given name, and he was reminded so much of his mother that a lump came to his throat.

“I feel responsible for encouraging you to pursue her,” Mrs. Dearing went on.

He shook his head. “You were just trying to help. Besides, you didn’t encourage me to do anything I didn’t want to do.”

“Perhaps,” she said with a little frown, studying his face. “Will you be all right?”

“Absolutely,” he replied, even giving her a smile. Then he went upstairs to his room, dropped down upon his bed, and wept between prayers that Eugenia’s affection for him would return.

Some time later, when his candle had snuffed itself out in the holder, a passage of scripture roused him out of restless sleep…
the truth shall make you free
. He rubbed his burning eyes with the hem of his sleeve. By pretending to be something he was not, he had won Eugenia’s heart. But it was at the cost of slipping into a miserable bondage, its chains made up of such links as fear of discovery, selfloathing for his duplicity, and exhaustion from trying to keep the pretense going.

Father
, he prayed under his breath.
I’ll never be anything but honest from now on
. As an afterthought, he added,
Even if you never make Eugenia love me again
.

Chapter 43

Tuesday, July second was a significant day for Noelle, for she had spent one whole week in the first gainful employment of her life. She was relieved and even delighted to discover that she enjoyed every detail having to do with it. The half-timbered, two-room cottage that housed the lending library dated back to the fourteenth century, the squire had told her, and was one of the first homes in the village. He explained that most of the populace were shorter in those days, which was why people like the schoolmistress Miss Clark had to stoop to pass through the doorway.

By the third day, Noelle had even convinced the squire and Mrs. Bartley that her tiny desk should be moved from the back room to a corner in the front so that she could be accessible at all times to the patrons. And since the Bartleys were so open to that suggestion, Noelle went further and talked them into some chairs and a rug so that the back could be turned into a reading room.

“I’ve noticed that sometimes people stand by the shelves and read several pages before deciding whether to take a book home,” she had told them. While the half-farthing subscription fee was nominal, it still represented a fair portion of poor folks’ wages, and they wanted to spend it wisely. They might as well be comfortable at it.