The Book of Hours (23 page)

“Alex's secret study.”

“Alex, as in Heather's long-dead husband?”

“He had a study hidden underneath the attic stairs. Or at least he used this secret room for his collection of Victorian glassware.” Swiftly Cecilia recounted their visit to the antique shop. “Now may I please see to my patients?”

Maureen pried herself away from the door. “This just keeps getting better, doesn't it?”

“I'm not so sure,” Cecilia replied, only to be halted in the process of opening the door by Maureen's hand. “Now what?”

The older woman gave her a careful inspection, then opined, “You're falling for him, aren't you?”

“Will you please let me get to work?”

“I can certainly see why,” Maureen went on, staying right where she was. “From all accounts, he's not only handsome, but sweet and caring and eccentric enough to make for an interesting time.”

“There's something else about him you forgot to mention.” Cecilia managed to pry open the door. “He's also leaving.”

Cecilia's first patient of the week was the tense businesswoman, who paraded in and declared, “I am not accustomed to being kept waiting for over an hour.”

“I am very sorry.”

“I was forced to cancel two appointments, and this was after having my secretary call twice to make sure I would be seen first.”

“Something unexpected came up. I do apologize,” Cecilia said. “How are you?”

“Busy.” She planted herself in the chair opposite Cecilia's desk and set her briefcase in her lap, using it as a shield. “You said you wanted to see me again this week.”

“That's right. Are you over your initial case of nerves?”

“Oh, absolutely. This is a grand job. Almost as though it was tailor-made. I'm so happy.”

But the woman did not look happy at all. “So you don't need a refill of the tablets I prescribed?”

“Well, yes, I suppose . . .” The woman's hands clutched the top of her case. “Perhaps it would be best if I could have them just a bit longer. For insurance.”

“I see.” Cecilia inspected the taut features, the gray tint ringing her lips and eyes. She leaned across her desk and asked quietly, “How are you really?”

The woman's lips were pressed so tightly together they barely emitted the word, “Terrible.”

“Why is that?”

“I don't know!” The internal struggle sent tremors through her entire frame. “It's absurd, really. I've fought all my life to get precisely where I am now. I should be ecstatic.”

“But you're not.”

The tremors rose to shake her head. “There's so much riding on my every act. I had no idea it would be so intense. And everybody is waiting for me to fail. They watch me like vultures.”

Although they had nothing in common, and Cecilia could not even recall the woman's name without glancing at the chart, she still felt a sudden bonding. “Everybody expects you to have all the answers, and you can't show any weakness.”

“Not for an instant.”

“And you're so alone.”

The tremors formed a nod.

“I'm afraid I can't help you. Not in my role as a doctor,” Cecilia said, as inwardly she listed all the problems she faced herself. The impossibility of treating a child whose illness she could not diagnose. The threat of losing her home. The utter shambles she was making of her private life. Even so, she felt a strong inner urging to continue, “But I can offer you some advice, woman to woman, if you're interested.”

“Yes. That is, of course.”

“Accept that you are not perfect, that you don't have all the answers, and that you can't make it on your own.” She trod carefully forward, glad indeed her own sense of rightness was strong enough to overcome the sense of sudden vulnerability. “I am finding God to be a very good friend to have at times just like this.”

She waited for the woman to condemn her for meddling, but she said nothing at all. Instead, the tension seemed to ease slightly.

Cecilia took the silence as a signal to go on. “I am constantly being faced with my own inadequacies. There is nothing I can possibly do to correct so many problems in my world. I am finding more and more that I must have a source of support who is both more powerful and far wiser than I can ever be.”

The woman stilled entirely, sat for a long moment, then said quietly, “I shall think upon what you have said.”

“Fine.” Cecilia scribbled on her prescription pad, tore off the sheet, and handed it over with a smile. “And this is just in case you need something else.”

“Thank you.” She rose to her feet, and when Cecilia rose with her, the businesswoman offered her hand. “I appreciate . . . well, that you care.”

“To be honest,” Cecilia replied, “I feel like I was talking as much to me as to you.”

She waited until the door closed behind the departing patient, then returned to her chair, bowed her head, and offered a few silent words for the both of them. And felt the turning grow stronger still.

“Trevor? I say,Trevor!”

The vicar's face appeared at his living room window. “Most people find it more polite to knock on the door.”

“Never mind that,” Arthur snapped. “Open the door, will you? We have an injured man out here.”

A moment later the vicar appeared in the doorway. He inspected Brian's forehead and said, “It really is as bad as they say.”

“Of course it is. And here you are, making your gift-bearers stand out here in the freezing wind.”

“How are you, lad?” Trevor stepped forward. “And what on earth is in the wheelbarrow?”

“A replacement for the dollhouse,” Brian replied. “And I'm doing okay. My head hurts.”

“A replacement?” Trevor's gaze flittered from the blanket-covered object in the wheelbarrow to Brian and back. “My dear chap, you've given too much already.”

“Which is exactly what I told him,” Arthur cried. “But would he listen to common sense? No, he would not. ‘Load up the heaviest thing we can find,' he ordered.‘And cart it right down to Trevor's for the raffle.'”

“But—”

“None of that,” Arthur interrupted. “Brian's mind is made up. What's left of it, that is. And the item is far too heavy for us to take back.”

“I can't believe we got it down the stairs without dropping it,” Brian agreed, grinning through his thumping pain. He had never seen the old man so happy. “Not to mention Arthur's puffing like an old steam engine.”

“Cost me a few years, this trip. And I don't have that many left.” Arthur gripped one edge of the blanket and bellowed, “Prepare to be amazed!”

He flipped back the cover, and Trevor gawked at what lay revealed. “What on earth is it?”

“We don't have the foggiest idea!” Arthur declared proudly.

“But it's heavy,” Brian added.

“And old. And there's something written in what looks like Latin down there on the brass plate at the bottom. See that?”

The apparatus was a good four feet high, and made up of a variety of components. Thick handblown glass grew within a series of brass rings as broad as Brian's waist. Brian said, “I took some of the smaller ones by the antique store this morning. He said they were Crookes' tubes. They connect to something called a Catherine wheel.”

“Victorian—of course, I remember seeing one in a museum.” Trevor straightened and protested weakly, “It's too much, really. I can't accept this.”

Arthur menaced the vicar with a ferocious frown and a clenched fist. “Don't you dare try your humble nonsense around me today! I've had just about all I can take, having this lad wake me at one in the morning to go hunting down secret compartments!”

“You were the one who woke me,” Brian pointed out.

The mock anger was instantly forgotten. “Oh, I say, that's right, isn't it.” Arthur dropped his fist and revealed the smile once more. “Take the gift,Trevor; that's a good chap.”

“But . . .”

“It's like this,” Brian said. “I feel indebted to all of you. Arthur, Gladys, Cecilia, you, the church, the village, I can't tell you how much it's meant to be here.” He searched for the proper words to say, then sighed his defeat and confessed, “I've spent two years either running away or running toward, I never could figure that out. And then I came here, and now it feels like Knightsbridge is where I was headed all along.”

“My dear chap,” Arthur murmured.

“I'll probably be forced to leave in a few days, but while I'm here I want to help out with your troubles, just like you've helped me with mine.” Brian sighed with the relief of finishing. “So please take it and raffle it in place of the dollhouse.”

Trevor dropped his gaze to the huge device, spent a long moment searching for something to say, and could only manage, “What on earth do we call it?”

It was Arthur who swept a hand over the wheelbarrow and its load and announced in a grand voice, “Aladdin's lamp! That should set the village hens to clucking, wouldn't you say?”

Twenty-four

B
RIAN ENJOYED A MERRY LUNCH WITH
T
REVOR,
M
OLLY
, Gladys, and Arthur. They were the object of attention from every other table in the market restaurant. One villager after another stopped by to shake his hand and discuss the latest find. He talked little and in the middle of the meal found it necessary to take another half tablet for his thundering head. Even so, he found the atmosphere melting barriers he did not know even existed, opening him to a group and a way of life he had thought lost to him forever. Not even the glares cast by the table in the far corner, where Hardy Seade sat with the woman from the village offices, could dispel the moment's glow.

He returned home to sleep much of the afternoon, waking to an improved head and a day more gold and soft than he would have ever thought possible for a winter's afternoon. He dressed and left the manor. In the late afternoon light, the vicar's cottage looked drawn from a Renaissance painting, the ancient stone splashed with a light too pure to exist on this earth. The noise, however, was very real. The market square was filled not only with Christmas stalls but also argument, as people talked about the bells. Everyone seemed to have an opinion, and all of them were loud. Brian felt eyes upon him from every quarter. Some of the faces offered friendly greetings, others glared and muttered before turning away. As he started down the tiny lane leading beside the church, a dozen bell ringers passed him walking in the other direction, chiming a merry tune on handbells and wearing placards begging all to turn out and vote that evening for the sake of their village and their heritage.

Trevor's house was a hive of activity. Brian was greeted and ushered inside like a conquering hero, everyone either sympathizing over the break-in and the knock on his head, or blessing him for the second gift and speculating over its original purpose.

When Trevor opened the doors to his study, Brian offered, “I could come back another time.”

“Not at all.” He pulled Brian into the room, started to shut the door, then called loudly, “Mr. Blackstone and I are not to be disturbed.”

A woman protested, “But Vicar, there's the pamphlets to be proofed and distributed.”

“See to it yourself, will you, Agnes? And no calls, please. Take all messages down on the pad by the phone.” He shut the door, and in the sudden quiet continued, “As if these last-minute gyrations will solve a thing. There is not a single soul within a hundred miles who hasn't already heard about these bells and formed an opinion.”

“I really should come back another time.”

“Your visit is a blessing,” Trevor replied firmly. “I've been worried sick over this coming vote. I've spent far too much time agonizing over the might-becomes, and not paying any attention whatsoever to the here and now.”

“I don't think I've ever been called a blessing before.”

“You have earned that accolade a dozen times and more.” He pointed Brian into a seat by the empty fireplace, settled himself, then continued, “Now tell me what's on your mind.”

Brian had hoped for a chance to ease himself into the act of confessing, but the tumult filtering through the closed door pressed him to launch straight in. “There has been a lot pressing down on me lately. Cecilia's talk the other night, gaining the manor only to lose it again, Heather's letters, your sermon, a lot. Everything seems to be forcing me to look at how I've drifted away from God since Sarah died.”

He watched as Trevor settled deeper into the sofa, and saw how the tight furrows around the vicar's eyes and mouth and across his forehead began to ease. It was the greatest sign of rightness Brian could have found. “Sarah came to faith in college. I think . . . No, that's not right. I know I became involved with faith because of my love for her. After she died, I ran away. From my job, my life, my world, everything. Including my God.” Brian released a breath he had not even been aware he had been holding. “Now I don't know if I can find my way back.”

Trevor nodded slowly, back and forth, waiting patiently to ensure that Brian had finished speaking. Then he said softly, “And in her illness, she drove you to prayer.”

“So hard I could feel the blood dripping from my forehead,” Brian agreed, remembering those harrowing times, yet feeling safe in the here and now. “So hard I could carve my prayers on stone by thought alone.”

“White-hot prayer. Desperate prayer. Fervent prayer,” Trevor continued quietly. “And your Sarah came, and your Sarah went. And you are the better for it.”

Brian felt the doors of his heart creak open, the disused portion of his life flicker with a light he had forgotten had ever been kindled. “So much,” he murmured.

“And now the season for mourning is over,” Trevor went on. “You won't forget her. She is a part of you always. But the question you face now is, what will come next?”