Someone to Love (Westcott #1)(89)
Avery turned his head toward the vicarage and could see that Anna and her grandmother were at an upstairs window looking out. He raised a hand, and Anna raised hers in return. He would bring her out here afterward. Though perhaps her grandparents would want to do that.
A short while later Avery sent his carriage back to the inn where he had taken rooms for the night and the rest of his entourage was already ensconced. He sent word that they were to remain there until further notice, including his valet and Anna’s maid, though each was to pack a bag of essentials and send the two bags—no more—back to the vicarage.
When two elderly people had looked at him with anxious, pleading eyes, and one young lady had gazed at him with eager trust in his answer, he had agreed they would stay for a few days. Those who knew the Duke of Netherby would have been filled with amazement bordering upon incredulity. But the duke himself was fast discovering that wherever his wife was or wished to be was where he chose to be too, even if it happened to be a vicarage surely no larger than the entrance hall at Morland.
The realization was somewhat alarming. It was also novelty enough to be explored. Perhaps being in love was what his soul had long yearned for.
Or perhaps he was merely mad.
*
They stayed for eight days. Anna weeded flower beds with her grandmother and cut off faded flowers and gathered bouquets for the house. She sat with her grandmother in the sitting room, talking endlessly, dusting all the little knickknacks and the surfaces under them, learning how to crochet, one form of needlework in which she had never before felt much interest. They spent time in the kitchen during the afternoons, baking cakes and tarts, mixing big jugs of lemonade, and brewing tea. They went visiting a few neighbors and wandered the churchyard together. On one hot afternoon they sat for a while on a stone bench inside the lych-gate and laughed over how Anna had been both fascinated and frightened by it as an infant.
She spent time with her grandfather too, but it was usually when all four of them were together. Avery spent most of the time with him. Even when Grampa was shut up in his study composing Sunday’s sermon, Avery sat in there with him, reading. The two men seemed really to enjoy each other’s company, to the wonder of Anna. Sometimes she looked at her husband and remembered him as she had first seen him. It was hard to believe he was the same man. He dressed similarly, except that his quizzing glass, his snuffbox, and most of his jewelry were lying neglected in a china bowl in the small bedchamber they shared. And his neckcloth was tied with a simple knot, she noticed, and his boots lost some of their sheen, and he seemed unconcerned about it. His manner too was more relaxed, less languidly affected. He treated both her grandparents with warm respect and no hint of condescension. He conversed openly and sensibly, with none of the verbal affectations that had half irritated, half amused her in London.
Her grandmother could not be shifted in her opinion that he was an angel.
“And he worships the ground you tread upon, Anna,” she said. “The good Lord has looked after you, my love, without any assistance from your gramma and grampa. That will keep me humble. However, I shall have a bone to pick with him over it when I come face-to-face with him in heaven. I assume that is where I am going. Indeed, I will not take no for an answer.”
She laughed heartily, and Anna was struck, as she was over and over again during those eight days, with a wave of . . . not memory exactly. She remembered precious little of the years she had spent here. But there were sometimes snatches and whiffs of familiarity, nothing definite enough to be captured by the mind, but real enough to prod at the heart and linger there. The only real memories were the lych-gate—though why that she did not know—and the window seat in what she learned had been her mother’s room, with its view down over the churchyard and the church. But there were Gramma’s laugh, the doilies, the big round china teapot with its faded painting of an idyllic rural scene and the small, triangular chip in its lid, Grampa’s way of always seeming to get the many small buttons of his waistcoats into the wrong buttonholes, and his quiet, affable smile. There was a feeling in church on Sunday too that she had once gazed upon her grandfather in his role as vicar and wondered if he was God. And the feeling—or was it a memory?—that she had asked Gramma once in the middle of the service and been shushed with a hand over her mouth and a whispered assurance that indeed he was not.
Her grandmother laughed heartily when Anna asked her about it after the service, as they were walking home, each of them with an arm linked through Avery’s.
“Indeed it did happen,” she said. “At the time I felt I could have died with embarrassment, for you chose the very quietest, most solemn moment in which to pipe up in your little voice, which must have carried right up into the bell tower. But I have held it as a fond memory since.”
“You thought perhaps your grandpapa was God, Anna?” Avery asked. “But how very foolish of you. God is far sterner, is he not?”
Gramma moved her arm sharply and caught him in the ribs with her elbow as she laughed.
It was an idyllic week in too many ways to count. Anna and Avery went for walks in the countryside, along lanes and cart tracks wherever they led, her arm drawn through his or sometimes hand in hand, their fingers laced, or sometimes, when there was absolutely no one in sight, with their arms about each other’s waist. Occasionally he stopped to kiss her and revert to his old manner.
“Anna,” he said once with a noticeable shudder, “you are acquiring the rosy complexion of a country wench. You actually look healthy. I am not sure I dare take you back to London. Perhaps rosier lips would be a slight improvement.” And, after kissing her thoroughly and regarding her with the old, lazy eyes, “Yes, that definitely helps. I shall have to keep on doing it.”