Hadrian (6 page)

“You need not.” Harold scratched Hamlet’s ears lazily. “I know this will be hard for you, which is why I’d rather you not accompany me to Harwich on Monday.”

Hadrian cast sand on his unfinished letter, which he’d been filling with drivel about the beauty of spring and the pleasure of renewing old acquaintances.

“Monday is less than a week off.”

“You’ve spent half this year scampering over the mountains and back on this bishop’s or that friend’s errand, and while I appreciate that you want to spend time with me, Hay, you’re also putting off settling in here.”

“I was raised here. I don’t need a map to the breakfast parlor.”

“You’ll be Landover in all but name,” Harold replied gently. “Your first priority is the estate, and spring is no time to be waving your handkerchief at your brother on the other side of England.”

“If I’m to be Landover, then my first priority is the well-being of my family, and that would be you, you and only you.”

“You can address that too.” Harold left off petting his beast. “Take another wife, get you some babies. I’d adore my nieces and nephews, Hay. Spoil them rotten.”

“And come visit them, bringing their Uncle Hal’s dear friend James as well?”

“If he’s welcome, then yes, occasionally.”

The words were offered with a thread of steel, Harold rarely showed. Hadrian rose from the desk, needing to pace, or scream, or hit something, but preferably not his brother.

He hoped.

“James Finch will not be an uncle to my children,” Hadrian said. “He cannot be, nor will I allow the fiction that he’s some sort of informal cousin. His brother’s the heir to a bloody marquessate, for God’s sake.”

Harold unfolded himself from the sofa and assessed Hadrian in silence while the dog rose as well.

“What?”

“Pitch all the tantrums you need to, Hay,” Harold said. “I cannot stay here for another thirty-seven years, so that you can be a martyr to the church, and I can be a martyr to duty. If you’re not happy, then you need to fix that. I can’t fix it for you, though God knows I would if I could.”

At least when Harold left, the dog would go with him
. The sheer petulance of thought shamed Hadrian as fraternal lectures could not.

“When you announced your decision to join the church,” Harold went on evenly, “my advice and outright bribery meant nothing to you.”

Joining the Church of England hardly equated with sailing off to Denmark.

“I made the right decision at the time,” Hadrian replied. “For me, at least. You would have immured me here as some kind of glorified steward, or bought me a seat in the Commons, and I’ve neither vocation.”

“And your vocation for the church?”

How deftly Harold could twist a knife, and with what good intentions. “Was adequate for a time.”

“That is horse shite,” Harold retorted. “You were so damned rattled after the Portmaines’ troubles that you scrambled into the arms of the church like a frightened boy, and you couldn’t hear my suggestions that you consider other options or simply wait to take holy orders.”

Something inside Hadrian snapped, something violent, and frighteningly appealing.

“You,” he said in lethally soft tones, “wanted me to avoid the church, because it made your eventual plans for me and your choice of companions all that much more dangerous and uncomfortable. A brother in Parliament far to the south might overlook his rusticating elder’s felonious eccentricities, but a man of the cloth could not.”

Silence hung, while the dog looked back and forth between the two brothers, his expression worried.

Harold’s hand dropped to the dog’s ears. “You’re missing St. Michael’s, are you? Missing your pastoral committee’s guidance, composing brilliant sermons in your head even as you ride the land here, pausing in your day to pray every few hours?”

Hadrian was silent, Harold’s blows too well placed to parry.

“Come to Harwich if you like,” Harold said. “That will leave Fen and Avis to see to Landover’s shearing, to get our flocks up the hills, to make the decisions should the plowing and planting get behind schedule with rain or damage to the equipment or injury to the teams. I’ve done the same for Blessings, but if we say our good-byes here, Hay, we’ll have privacy when we part.”

Harold left the room, taking his idiot dog with him, while Hadrian resumed tending to his correspondence, and all the cheerful, false sentiments it contained.

“Master Hadrian.” Tiny old Mrs. Carruthers beamed up at Hadrian, smaller and more wizened than any adult human had a right to be. “We are so happy to have you back among us. The Lord can wait His turn to get His hands on you, if you ask me. We’ve need of you here.”

“I’m happy to be here.” Hadrian had been spouting platitudes and civilities all morning, while that traitor, Lady Avis, had slipped away from him at the first opportunity. She was no doubt sitting in the coach right now, laughing heartily.

“Come on, Granna.” Mrs. Carruthers’s son, Young Deal, linked his arm through his mother’s. The man was sixty if he was a day, but his father, Old Deal, had passed away only eight years ago. “You mustn’t stand about in this breeze or you’ll regret it tomorrow. Mr. Bothwell, we’ll see you at shearing, if not before.”

They left Hadrian an opening to depart for the safety of his equipage, and before any more neighbors, former retainers, local shopkeepers, or the tinkers coming up from the south could accost him, Hadrian made his escape. He was surprised Avis wasn’t in the coach, but did find Lily Prentiss waiting patiently.

“Lady Avis isn’t with you?” Hadrian asked.

“She is not,” Lily said, tugging at pristine white gloves. “She gets out so seldom, and then has a hard time tearing herself away. She can’t help it. Her nature is friendly, but not everyone understands that.”

An odd observation—Avis was not a garrulous girl at her first assembly. Hadrian attributed Lily’s worry to the protectiveness of a longtime employee toward her employer.

“I’ll find her.” Hadrian withdrew from the coach and closed the door. His height gave him an advantage, but he did not see his quarry among the faithful gossiping in the churchyard.

“In the graveyard, most like,” said Mr. Chadwick, at Hadrian’s elbow. With sandy hair starting to thin, a liberal complement of freckles, and friendly blue eyes, Chadwick was the picture of the country vicar. The
contented
country vicar.

“Chadwick.” Hadrian extended a hand. “Excellent sermon.” Though Hadrian could not recall a word of it.

Chadwick smiled the perfect, complaisant smile appropriate to post-service pleasantries. “Had I some warning you’d join us, I’d have got out some of my heavy artillery, but we’re all so glad to see winter retreating, weighty thoughts of any kind are an effort.”

“Don’t waste your powder on my account. One of the aspects of your position I do not miss is the need to be either witty or profound for twenty minutes every week.” Preferably both.

“Witty generally garners more listeners than weighty,” Chadwick said. “If you ever want to talk about what else you don’t miss, or even some of the things you do, you know you’re welcome at the vicarage.”

“You must call on us at Landover,” Hadrian said, trying to mean it, though who was
us
? “Did you suggest Lady Avis is in the graveyard?”

“I saw her slip off that way. I’ve invited her to services more times than I can count, but she rarely comes, and when she does, it’s like this. The last hymn concludes, and she vanishes.”

“Shall we walk?”

Chadwick had the instincts of a churchman, and he no doubt sensed the flock circling closer the longer he and Hadrian chatted.

“Lovely morning for a stroll,” Chadwick said, moving off with Hadrian. “The children you sent us continue to thrive.”

“They’re well and happy, then?”

“There,” Chadwick said quietly. “The boy patting your off-side wheeler.”

“That’s a Carruthers, isn’t it?”

“Deal’s youngest grandchild. They tried and tried, and the Lord didn’t bless them with a baby. It’s a wonder the lad learned to walk, so constantly did his parents hug and fuss him.”

“And the girl?”

“Her parents have three boys. The last lying-in didn’t go well, and they’re not to have more. The girl was explained as a cousin’s child, and too many at the cousin’s table. She is well loved and well protected.”

“Happy endings, then,” Hadrian said. He’d underestimated Chadwick.

“Will we be a party to any more such happy endings?”

“I cannot say. Foundlings have a way of turning up when they’re least expected, and I’d hope my successor at Rosecroft would feel free to call on us if the need arose.”

Chadwick let Hadrian precede him through the lych-gate. “If that should be the case, there are more families here who would open their hearts to a child.”

“Good to know,” Hadrian murmured, as he spotted Lady Avis on a bench at the far side of the graveyard.

“I’ll leave you,” Chadwick said, touching Hadrian’s arm, as if Hadrian sought to commune with the dead rather than one pretty lady. “Please let Lady Avis know how happy we are to have her company.”

“I’ll do that.” Why wouldn’t Chadwick extend his welcome in person? He was the vicar, the moral compass of the community and leader of the faithful.

Who doubtless had his own pastoral committee to placate.

Hadrian ambled across the graveyard where he’d played as a child and attended a few burials as he’d matured. He trespassed on long association and took a seat beside the lady uninvited.

“Visiting the departed?”

“Hiding from those yet to depart.”

“You abandoned me, Avis Portmaine. I suffered all manner of fawning, cooing, and teasing.”

“Teasing?”

“Wandering back into the fold. Napping through the sermon for a change, the usual lame jokes.”

“They are coping too, Hadrian.”

“With?”

“Harold is a good neighbor to one and all. Anybody in need could prevail on him, and he’d lend a hand. Your neighbors are worried you’ll not continue that tradition and with reason, when times have been difficult.”

“I wasn’t off in Peru. I know what the past few winters have been like. I know how many widows the Corsican’s armies created. I read the
Times
, the same as Harold no doubt does.”

Why was it every bench in every churchyard had the same hard, damp, chilly, uncomfortable quality?

“You’ve been gone for twelve years,” Avis said. “People change.”

“People also run off and leave unsuspecting friends at the mercy of Gran Carruthers. That woman has claws, so tightly did she pinch my forearm.”

Avis rose, all unassisted. “She cut a dash, back in the day. You mustn’t begrudge her a moment on the arm of a handsome fellow.”

“Back in German George’s day.”

“Is there any part of you that’s glad to be back, Hadrian?”

He was about to say no. He felt that out of sorts, and that honest, but Avis was regarding him with such patience, such concern, he surprised himself.

“I am glad to see you again. Glad to see that you are thriving and your life has meaning, and you still have the kindest smile a man ever beheld.”

“You say that so seriously.” That smile he’d mentioned graced her features, conjured by his compliment, and inside him, something eased. He could still make a solitary lady smile.

Hadrian winged his arm. “Your companion awaits us in the coach. If we make a dash for it, we might elude capture by the enemy.”

“Or we could take the path around the outer hedge, then there’d be no dashing needed.”

Hadrian acceded to that suggestion because it would give them more privacy, and Avis apparently craved solitude, despite Lily Prentiss’s comments to the contrary.

“When did you acquire Miss Prentiss’s services?”

“She was Vim’s idea, seven years ago or so, when it became clear my future lay at Blessings. She’s mostly my companion and a little bit my secretary, and eyes and ears belowstairs. Her papa was a churchman, who, like you, stepped down from his pulpit, though I’m not entirely sure of the circumstances.”

“Lily’s your curate.” A thankless post and a handy ecclesiastical cupboard for storing unmarried clergy. “I never had a curate. The livings I took were too humble.”

Hadrian had surprised her. His determination to minister without a curate had surprised him too.

“Your brother holds an old title, you’ve family wealth, and you’re astute. Why the modest livings, Hadrian?”

Rue had asked the same thing, repeatedly, suggesting she’d aspired to be the wife of a bishop, not a garden variety rural vicar.

“I had no need of coin, and the church is full of worthy men dependent on their flocks. Those fellows were motivated to take on the more ambitious parishes, and then too, Rue wanted to remain close to her sisters.”

They reached the coach, sparing Hadrian further interrogation. Lily Prentiss’s relief was palpable, though Hadrian was forced to leave the ladies to pry Harold away from a discussion with one of the local squires.

“He wanted Hamlet.” Harold settled in beside Hadrian on the backward-facing seat. “Can you believe such nonsense?”

“What could he have been thinking?” Hadrian did not roll his eyes, while Avis took an inordinate time to adjust her skirts.

“Exactly.” Harold thumped his cane on the roof, and the coach moved off. “That dog hasn’t left my care since he was a pup, and God willing, I’ll be the one to plant him. Did Chadwick grill you terribly?”

“He’s a smart fellow. He has the vocation.” A relief, that. To find a true churchman contentedly ministering to the flock in Hadrian’s back yard.

“Chadwich knows the only good sermon is a short sermon,” Harold said. “Miss Prentiss, you are blessed with a particularly pretty soprano.”

The rest of the journey to Blessings continued in that vein, while Hadrian watched the greening countryside go by and wondered if next Sunday, he could skip services without causing a storm of gossip.

Though—novel thought—what would the gossip matter when Hadrian was no longer a vicar?

Lunch was a pleasant meal, which Fenwick joined. He queried Harold regarding plans for plowing and planting, the progress made thus far with foaling, lambing and calving, and Harold’s schedule for the rest of the spring and summer.