The Heart of a Vicar Read online

  “Perhaps the stoning could be delayed until next week’s services. Everyone would stay awake for that.”

  Sarah pressed her palms together in a pose of pious solemnity. “And that would be a miracle worthy of recounting for generations to come.”

  Scott laughed deeply. Sarah turned to look at Uncle Sarvol, wondering if he had awoken. It was not her uncle, though, who seized her attention but Harold standing in the middle aisle only a few pews back, looking at her.

  Would the sight of him ever not send her heart into frantic spinning? She tucked it away, telling herself not to be overset. She could acknowledge that he was still quite handsome and that the young gentleman she had known had, with his kind heart and attentiveness, rightly captured her girlish heart. But she didn’t need to fall to bits over this transformed version of him.

  “Mr. Jonquil,” she said.

  “Miss Sarvol.” He offered a very stiff dip of his head. “Were you in need of something?”

  An explanation for the enormous change in him would be nice.

  She kept her expression unconcerned. “Our uncle has fallen asleep, and we are debating the best method of awakening him.”

  Harold eyed her uncle. In sober tones, he said, “Have you tried a gentle nudge?”

  “An excellent suggestion,” Scott said. “We will try that.”

  Harold nodded and walked toward the pulpit. Under his breath, he added, “It ought to work at least as well as Morris dancers.”

  Scott turned wide eyes on Sarah and whispered, “He heard.”

  “We’d best hurry home before the stoning begins.”

  Scott nodded. “I will fetch Uncle’s wheeled chair and think of a means of awakening him while you make good your escape. He’s not as likely to forgive you for disrupting his sleep.”

  That was truer than it ought to have been.

  She picked up her prayer book and slipped from the pew. She turned to face the back, intending to leave quickly. Her feet, however, refused to make the short journey. She stood rooted to the spot.

  Talk to him, her mind insisted, even as her heart shouted its objections.

  Apparently, her mind was in charge. She turned and faced the pulpit. Harold had collected some papers and was just then descending the steps. She moved slowly in that direction. He spotted her quickly but looked neither intrigued nor surprised. He wore the same expression he had throughout his sermon, throughout the dinner she’d taken at Lampton Park. She felt almost as if she were looking at a painting of a vicar rather than a living, breathing person.

  She stood at the end of the first pew, and he stopped in front of her.

  “You left so soon after dinner at the Park that I hadn’t the opportunity to speak with you.” It was something of a clumsy beginning to a conversation, but it was the best she could manage. She was not usually tongue-tied but certainly was in that moment.

  “I had not yet finalized my sermon,” he said. “I needed to return home to complete it.”

  She could accept that, though it struck her as not entirely true. “You did always hope to be granted this living. The timing proved better than you feared it would.”

  He gave a solemn nod. Did he ever strike any expression other than this bland emptiness? It just was not the Harold Jonquil she had known . . . and loved.

  “Are you happy in your situation?” she asked out of genuine curiosity. No matter that she’d had no lasting role in his happiness; she still wished it for him.

  His posture remained stiff and pious, his expression unchanged. “One is not made happy by one’s situation but by one’s choice.”

  He couldn’t even answer her simple question without a pious bit of preaching.

  “Are you happy?” she asked again.

  He raised an eyebrow whilst lowering the corners of his mouth. That was a new expression since last she’d seen him. It might have suited a stuffy old cleric, but it served only to make him appear more severe and less approachable, two things a shepherd of a flock ought not be.

  Harold didn’t seem inclined to answer.

  She chose a different topic. “Did Lady Lampton go to Shropshire with Philip? She was not here today.”

  Harold shook his head. “Her health does not always permit her to leave home.”

  Sarah had wondered if that was the culprit. The young Lady Lampton had spent the entirety of the dinner party with a vague look of discomfort, sometimes giving way to one of obvious pain. And though her gown hid it well, Sarah had not missed the fact that the countess was in expectation of a new arrival. “I do not know her well. Do you think she would object to me calling on her?”

  Harold adjusted his papers and prayer book. “She is all that is proper and will receive you graciously.”

  Sarah only just stopped herself from rolling her eyes. “I did not mean would she object socially. I was concerned that receiving visitors might have a negative impact on her health.”

  “That, I do not know.” Everything about him spoke of a desire to flee. Other than that final, fateful encounter on the banks of the stream of Lampton Park, he had never before seemed eager to be away from her.

  That hurt more than it should.

  She tried not to think on the change, so she returned to the topic at hand. “When you have called on your sister-in-law, has she seemed improved by the company or drained by it?”

  “I do not often call on her,” he said.

  That was unexpected. “But her health is fragile; you have said as much yourself. You are not only her brother-in-law but her vicar as well.”

  Somehow his demeanor grew even more austere. “I am not unwilling to do my duty. They have sent for me when I have been needed.”

  When I have been needed. It was a very distanced approach to serving a parish. “Provided you aren’t ‘needed’ when you have a sermon to complete, I suppose.”

  “Or when I am corralling Morris dancers,” he said dryly. It was the first bit of humor she’d seen in him, a rare sign of life in this stone-cast version of him.

  She very nearly smiled. “You have to admit it would liven things up significantly.”

  He stepped past her. “Sermons aren’t meant to be ‘lively.’”

  “Then I would say today’s was bang up to the mark.”

  He turned back around. “Are you lodging a complaint, Miss Sarvol?”

  “I am expressing confusion,” she countered. “I expected . . .”

  “Expected what?” The question was the tiniest bit hesitant.

  “More,” she said. “More of the vicar you ought to be.”

  No one hearing him in the past could have felt anything but hopeful and eager in anticipation of the good he would do and the compassion he would show. And now, if his own telling was accurate, he did his duty when called on to do so but kept to himself otherwise. She hoped her impression was wrong.

  “I do not claim expertise,” she said, “but I do know what I would wish a vicar to be.”

  “I am not it?” His tone was unreadable. His expression looked almost confused.

  “I don’t know yet,” she admitted. “I’ve not seen anything that would indicate you are.” She surprised herself with the admission. Were he any other person, she would have kept her comments to herself. But Harold Jonquil—her sweet, kind Harold—ought to have been more than he had become. Did he not remember the weeks they had spent together? The dreams they had told each other of?

  “Perhaps, Miss Sarvol, you would—you would do better in this role than you feel I currently am.” The stiffness of his response added a degree of arrogance that pricked at her further.

  “I believe I could do a good job of vicaring,” she said.

  That golden brow pulled ever lower. “Are you issuing a challenge?”

  She hadn’t been, but seeing a bit of fire rise in him, she found herself unwillin
g to disabuse him of the assumption. “Are you accepting?”

  He returned to that infuriating calm that so ill-fit him. “A vicar’s duties can only be performed by one ordained—”

  “Not all of a vicar’s duties require ordination. I would go so far as to say some of the most important do not.”

  “And those are the matters on which you mean to challenge me?”

  She watched him, wanting to know how he truly felt beneath the veneer of solemnity. The Harold she had known would have laughed, then he would have accepted the rather absurd dare simply as a bit of fun and a chance to serve the people around them. This Harold seemed to consider it only as a matter of pride.

  Serving and helping her neighbors, coming to know them on a personal level, was the best way she knew to make a place for herself among them. She had intended to do that anyway. If she could ruffle Harold a little and be of help to her neighbors, it seemed a fine way to begin her time in Nottinghamshire.

  “Yes,” she said. “Those are the matters on which I mean to challenge you. Serving your flock. Seeing their struggles. Leading in matters of compassion. Filling the myriad needs in the area.”

  “You can do that better than I can?”

  She shrugged slightly. “That is what we intend to discover, is it not?”

  Her determination clearly caught him by surprise. Did he not remember her at all? She’d always been a bit too stubborn and energetic for her own good.

  “You do realize I will simply keep seeing to my duties. I am already filling the role you will be attempting to sort out.” He almost seemed to be warning her.

  “I don’t appear worried, do I?”

  His gaze narrowed. “You didn’t used to be this headstrong.”

  This time, she actually did laugh. “I was absolutely this headstrong. You were simply not this indifferent.”

  He quirked that eyebrow again. She suspected she was going to grow to either dislike that particular expression or find it endlessly amusing.

  “Very well,” he said as though it truly didn’t matter in the least.

  “Is there to be a forfeiture to the winner?” she asked.

  “Gambling is hardly in keeping with the dignity of a servant of the church.” His mouth twisted in disapproval.

  And there was another look that was new since last she’d seen him. She didn’t care for it either.

  She offered a dip of her head and an abbreviated curtsy. “I look forward to our competition, Mr. Jonquil.”

  “And I do not expect to particularly notice, Miss Sarvol.”

  The sally was well delivered, likely more so than he realized. He didn’t care enough to take notice, but she still cared deeply enough for him to wish to see him happy, fulfilled in his work, living a full life. It seemed things were nearly as lopsided between them as they’d been that long-ago day on the stream bank. She cared; he didn’t.

  She tipped her chin up and slipped past him, moving all the way to the door of the church and out into the churchyard without slowing or looking back. Uncle Sarvol was nowhere to be seen, no doubt having been taken home by one of the servants, but Scott had waited for her at the gate.

  By the time she reached him, she was fairly shaking. Years’ worth of trying not to think of the dreams she had once entertained were proving insufficient in that moment. She had, it seemed, been less than honest with herself. She didn’t love Harold any longer, at least not this new version of him, but her heart had not truly healed.

  She would take up the challenge she had not intended to issue. She would carve out a place for herself in this neighborhood and, perhaps in doing so, finally close the chapter in her life that had begun so many years earlier in this same corner of the world with a young gentleman who, she feared, no longer existed.

  Chapter Five

  At the top landing of the vicarage staircase, a portion of the banister doubled back on itself, creating a section that was twice as thick and twice as sturdy. It was tucked a bit behind a bend in the wall, making it inaccessible to anyone unable or unwilling to do a bit of climbing and balancing. Harold was more than capable of both. That corner had become his thinking spot over the past year, precarious though it was.

  He sat there Sunday evening, unsure if he was more confused or upset. Sarah had been in the neighborhood less than a week. Mere days. Yet she had declared him a poor excuse for a vicar, insisting she could and would do better than he at the very duties to which he had dedicated his life. He’d made a study these past years of what a vicar did and was. He had learned to do and be precisely that. Now she was dismissing him as quickly as his brothers had.

  Only three people in all the world had ever expressed unfettered faith in him as a future man of the cloth. His father, who was no longer there to offer reassurance. Mater, who was temporarily too far away for one of her encouraging talks. And Sarah.

  Now even she has declared me a failure.

  He harbored so many doubts in himself. To his frustration, he needed reassurances. Being so utterly without them was undermining every bit of confidence he’d struggled to gain, amplifying every uncertainty.

  Mrs. Dalton came up the stairs, spotting him as she turned the corner at the first landing. “What’s happened to send you into your corner?”

  He rolled his shoulders, careful not to upset his precarious balance. “A difficult encounter with . . . a parishioner.”

  She remained on the landing below, placing her halfway between the ground floor and the one he was perched beside. She leaned back against the frame of the stained-glass window. “Someone suffering? Or someone complaining?”

  “Complaining,” he said. “According to this particular person, I am doing a poor job as vicar.”

  “And that matters to you, does it?”

  “Doing a good job matters to me very much.” If being a vicar was who he was and he was terrible at it . . .

  She shook her head. “I meant that this particular person thinks poorly of you.”

  It did matter. She had once laid claim to his heart. Truth be told, that organ was still not whole. Part of him doubted it ever would be. He had loved her too deeply to recover entirely.

  “I don’t know if I want to prove the assessment incorrect more as a means of producing evidence that I am a good vicar,” he said, “or because I really want to—” He stopped himself.

  With an almost wicked grin, Mrs. Dalton finished for him. “To have the satisfaction of hearing this person admit to being bacon-brained?”

  He winced at the accuracy of that. “Rather unbecoming for a vicar, isn’t it? Which makes me wonder if maybe I am as inept at this as I was told I am.”

  “C’mon, then.” She motioned him over. “I’ll lend you a mother’s ear since your mum ain’t here right now. Hop down.”

  A mischievous impulse seized him. “Hop down?” He twisted so his legs hung over the open area of the stairwell, his hands on either side of him.

  “I didn’t mean for you to do exactly that,” she insisted. “You’ll break your neck.”

  He wiggled his brows. “Prepare to be amazed.”

  He lowered himself slowly so he hung from the top of the banister. One hand at a time, he moved to the bottom of two adjoining rails, then, hand over hand, moved himself to where the stairs turned.

  Mrs. Dalton likely didn’t fully appreciate how hard climbing was when one couldn’t use one’s legs. If not for his regular clandestine trips to the nearby ruins of an old abbey, where he climbed the familiar rock walls to his heart’s content far from witnesses and prying eyes, or the abandoned chapel he’d climbed during his years at Cambridge, or even the exterior walls of Lampton Park when he was growing up, this wouldn’t have been as easy as it was.

  Only two rungs down the now-downward-sloping banister, he set his feet within an easy distance of the rising stairs below him. He released his grip
and dropped softly onto an obliging step.

  Mrs. Dalton swatted at him. “I think you enjoy giving me heart palpitations.”

  “Does not my singing voice manage that already? Palpitations of the most enjoyable variety, of course.”

  She shook her head. “You’re trouble, you are.” She often pretended to be annoyed with him, but her eyes gave her away. Mrs. Dalton enjoyed his company. He treasured her for that. Few people liked having him around.

  She motioned him to walk with her. He tucked his hands in his trouser pockets. He often went without a jacket in the house. It was more comfortable and far easier to climb about.

  “Now, what is it you’ve been accused of neglecting?” Mrs. Dalton motioned him into the kitchen. That was her domain and the place he most often went now for company and conversation. He hadn’t fully anticipated the loneliness of being a vicar. Though he was most at home in smaller groups and felt most comfortable when not required to speak, he still missed being around people. He still longed for company.

  “I was told I need to do better at serving my flock. Seeing their difficulties. Compassion. Meeting needs.”

  To her credit, Mrs. Dalton looked properly surprised. “That’s most of what a vicar does.”

  He nodded, dropping onto the stool by the fire. “Everything outside of the rituals and rites of the office. It was a blow, I tell you.”

  “I figured as much when I saw you in your corner.”

  He met her eyes, expecting laughter or mockery. He saw none. “Have I told you how much I appreciate that you don’t laugh at those parts of me that aren’t as refined as they ought to be?”

  “M’father was one of the best men I ever knew,” she said, “and no one would have described him as refined. I don’t need that in any person to see worth in him.”

  Her words helped. She, at least, would value him while he worked to be more of what he was supposed to be. He examined his upturned palms and the heavy calluses created by years of climbing. These were not the hands of a vicar. Did anyone else notice? Did it bother them?