She’d misread who that judgment had been aimed at.
Not at her.
At himself.
Slowly, she shut the book.
She could not tell him that she had this. It was kinder, surely, to return it to Elena, who could say it had been found in some forgotten corner by a servant.
She would not read it again. She tucked the book into her satchel and forced her attention to the songbook Henry’d given her, to the musical notations in the book of hymns.
But all she could think were two words.
I burned.
Chapter 17
Henry stood outside Alice’s door, unable to shake the sense he’d ruined something.
She’d scarcely been able to look at him. The sight of him hurt her so severely she’d seemed like she might faint dead away.
He wanted to knock again.
Apologize.
Explain himself.
To say “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I simply don’t know what it would make me if I took your caress as freely as you offered it.”
(A hypocrite.)
But he could not knock again, because she’d so very clearly wanted him to leave. And, of course, he did not need to say the words aloud to her for her to know that there could be nothing between them.
But he hated the thought that he had wounded her.
(He wished it could be different. He wished he could knock and apologize by giving her the kiss he’d dodged last night. He wanted to. Oh, how he wanted to.)
He trudged miserably down the stairs to his father’s study, where he’d been summoned with a letter on his breakfast tray demanding “an audience to discuss your upcoming marriage” on his father’s formal stationery.
“Henry, there you are,” his father greeted him brusquely. “You’re late.”
Henry glanced at the clock. It was one minute past the appointed hour. “My apologies, sir.”
His father gestured at a hardback chair in front of his broad desk. “Have a seat.”
Ah, so he planned to address Henry from behind his desk, like an employer, rather than, say, deigning to sit on the sofa near the fire with the son he had not seen in half a decade. Splendid.
(Honor. Thy. Father.)
“I won’t waste time with niceties,” his father said, folding his hands on top of his desk. “I asked you here because I’m ruined.”
The muzzled thoughts in his head—guilt, Alice, want, pain, kissing—stopped swirling abruptly.
“Ruined, sir?”
His father leaned back in his chair, adjusted his silver wig and nodded curtly. “I had hoped to expand production—Jonathan is keen to enlarge the concern—and a few ventures proved riskier than we anticipated.”
Henry’s father was a cautious businessman and notoriously tight with money. Whatever this misadventure had been, it was almost certainly his brother’s doing. And yet his father acted brisk and unconcerned. He’d shown more rage when Henry had declined the lamb at supper.
“There are,” his father stated, “debts.” He leveled his eyes at Henry, piercing him.
Henry said nothing, waiting to hear what this might have to do with him.
“If I cannot raise twenty thousand pounds by quarter’s end, I shall have to sell the factory.”
Henry blinked. That number was a fortune.
“Perhaps you can sell this house,” he offered.
“Already mortgaged,” his father said crisply. “I have two options. I can sell to Bradley-Hough, who will give me half what the concern is worth and stamp his name on my legacy. Or my son can marry his daughter. Who, you see, has a dowry double what I need.”
His father rarely spoke to him so frankly. Some small, malnourished part of him awakened, flattered that he’d been asked to save the family business, even if it was at a cost to himself.
But even as the feeling stirred, he knew that it was pitiful.
He owed his father respect. Not this.
“Sir, I am troubled by your predicament,” he said slowly. “But my circumstances are such that I highly doubt Miss Bradley-Hough would view me as a welcome suitor. I live in rented rooms, keep no servants—”
“Miss Bradley-Hough can afford to keep the both of you. She is the sole heir to her father’s fortune, and has her dowry besides. And in return for lending me the capital, I’ll pay you a handsome dividend, plus interest. You’ll be a rich man, Henry. Richer than I ever was.”
He had never wanted to be rich. He cared little for money.
“And what if you sell to Bradley-Hough instead? Will it cover your debts?”
His father looked, for a brief minute, old. “Just. But I shall lose the enterprise I’ve spent my entire life building up from nothing. You, who have had everything given to you, would not understand.” His expression hardened. “And I shall know my son willed it.”
Henry closed his eyes. This was not fair. He was grateful for his education at the fine public schools his father had insisted he attend, but he hadn’t taken a penny from his family since he’d graduated Oxford. He had taken the position at Saints & Satyrs precisely because he knew his father would balk at supporting him after he’d refused to enter the clergy.
“Sir, I am not unsympathetic to your circumstances,” he said slowly. “But I cannot promise to enter an unsuitable marriage.”
Henry’s father slammed his fist down on the desk. “Unsuitable! You act as though marriage to a fine woman who will make you a wealthy man is a burden. If you don’t like the girl leave her in Bath and go about your ridiculous revivals. I am asking you to see sense, for once in your life. To do what this family requires of you.”
“Marriage is a sacred vow, made before God,” Henry said quietly. “I will not undertake it for venial reasons.”
His father closed his eyes, like this sentence gave him stomach pains.
It troubled Henry, to be the cause of this. He understood what his father would lose.
Was this what the Lord meant, when he commanded ‘honor thy father’? That if one’s parent suffered, one suffered too, however little warmth there was between you?
Henry decided to provide what little mercy he was able. “I will speak to Miss Bradley-Hough. Should I find that she and I might be compatible, I will consider what you ask.”
(We won’t be compatible, however, and I will not do what you ask.)
His father opened his eyes and looked at him. They looked colder than the snowy day outside. “Approach the girl however you like, Henry. But if you don’t leave this house betrothed to her, don’t bother coming back. Ever.”
Henry rose. Bowed. Left the room.
He walked to the great hall slowly, feeling drugged.
Alice and Josephine were waiting for him, ready to depart for the priory. He put his hand to his hair to smooth it, ran his tongue over his teeth. Tried to revive his faculties, which were dulled from lack of sleep, and Alice’s nearness, and his father’s severity, and what he’d just agreed to, however disingenuously.
Alice said nothing, keeping her eyes carefully on the floor. He desperately wished he knew what she thought of him.
“You look rather low,” Josephine said to him cheerfully.
“Just came from a meeting with our father.”
Jo winced. “Ah.”
He wondered if his sister knew why he’d been summoned here. Were all of them in on it? Had the baby’s christening simply been a pretext to get him home? Did his mother and sister also want him to marry Miss Bradley-Hough, to save their comfortable life in this grand house?
It was uncharitable to even think it, but he didn’t know who he could trust.
The only person he trusted here was Alice.
He was silent on the walk to the priory. He half-listened to Josephine chatter to Alice about the preparations for her season. Apparently, no expense was being spared. He could not begrudge his sister her excitement over balls and dresses, but he wondered at his father spending such a fortune to present his daughter as a lady on
money borrowed from God knew where.
“Ah, so many people out despite the snow!” Josephine said, looking at the crowd assembling in front of the priory. He smiled at the sight of his old friends, touched they had traveled through the snow to worship with him at short notice.
His spirits lifted instantly.
These people—many of them his father’s tenants, who he’d met at a revival when he’d been home from University—were some of the earliest fellow pilgrims in his journey toward a more evangelical faith. They were all older now. Some of them who’d once carried babies now stood with large broods of children. Some who’d come with husbands or wives now stood alone, their hair more gray, their faces lined.
All of them greeted him more happily than his own family had. And among them, he felt better than he had in days.
When everyone had settled onto the pews he walked up to the altar and glanced up at the organ. Alice was seated there, waiting for his signal.
“Ready?” he mouthed to her. She nodded.
He lifted his arms. “My brothers and sisters,” he said, projecting his voice so that he could be heard even at the back of the chapel. “Though ’tis icy out of doors, my heart is warm with your fellowship and the light of God’s love.”
He smiled at the murmurs of “Amen” and opened his hymnal. “Join me in a hymn.”
At his nod to Alice, the room swelled with music. She had not had time to practice, and could not know these songs, as most had been written by himself or his friends, but she played flawlessly. He smiled as the faces around him lit with surprise and joy. One by one, their voices rose and met his in harmony. He let the music lift his spirit up to God.
Among this chorus, he caught a beautiful alto, true and clear.
Alice’s voice.
She improvised a harmony of her own, delighting the better singers in the crowd, who began to add their own flourishes to her tune. There was a soulfulness in the way she sang the hymn that made him certain she had been faithful once. He wondered when she had become estranged from God. And why.
He itched for her to share the peace he could see in his fellow worshiper’s expressions. To remind her of God’s love for her. That it was there, even when one’s family’s was less steadfast.
The parable of the prodigal was on his mind, and he opened the Bible and read the story from the Book of Luke, about the father welcoming home his son.
“As a child, I used to think this story was about reconciliation of the family,” he told his friends. “It was not until I was older that I realized it was about faith. The truth is, one cannot always count on the people we love to welcome us home. But the infinite mercy of God is eternally renewable. No matter how we stray, how far we wander, how much we sin, he is always overjoyed to welcome us back into his grace.”
Several of his friends nodded in the nearest pews, their eyes shining. Perhaps this moment was all he needed from this place. Not the admiration of his family, but a reconnection with that joyous, wondrous feeling that he’d first experienced here, among these people: the boundless, miraculous ecstasy when one felt—truly felt—the radiant love of God.
He closed his Bible and looked out at the dear, familiar faces. “You here know what I know,” he continued. “Salvation cannot be taught. It must be asked for and accepted. It must be trusted, the way one trusts ours legs to hold us up after a fall. That is grace. It is the certainty in one’s body and one soul of the expansive measure of God’s infinite forgiveness.”
The room echoed with “Amens”.
And though, in the emotion that had come over him, he had forgotten to give Alice her cue to play the closing hymn—the room swelled again with music.
Chapter 18
The strangest feeling overtook Alice as she listened to Henry preach. She felt rather moved.
To her, faith had never seemed distinct from church, and church had never seemed much more than a ritual requiring boredom and uncomfortable shoes. It was a list of obligations and an even longer list of things you could not do. Another joyless, restrictive code dictated from male authorities who offered little beyond demands that she must follow or face egregious consequences.
She had not considered that faith might fill you up, instead of limiting you. That God could lift, rather than confine. But as she watched Henry and his friends bow their heads in prayer, she could see the tranquility on their faces.
How moving, to watch Henry Evesham lead them to this state of peace.
She’d misunderstood what he believed—or perhaps just wrongly assumed she knew it, drawing inferences from his writings in Saints & Satyrs. The fiery, holier-than-thou tone of those essays and verses had almost nothing in common with the words he’d spoken here, to this small group. They were also different from the worries of the diarist, who longed to perfect himself and railed at himself for failing.
She wondered how often Henry allowed himself to be this man, who insisted sin could be forgiven, whose eyes filled with tears as he spoke of mercy.
But then, had she not seen glimpses of him? Had he not marveled at a woman playing music in an abandoned chapel? Whispered prayers to her through a wall? Bowed his head in the desire for her affection in a snowy garden, in the middle of the night?
Alice watched him saying farewell to his fellow worshipers. A group of children with their mother were among the final people to approach him. He bent down attentively, speaking to the littlest worshipers with solemnity and good humor. So kind. So gentle.
“He’s good with children,” Josephine remarked, walking up beside her. “He’ll make a lovely father.”
“No doubt,” Alice agreed.
“We hope he’ll marry soon. I don’t suppose you know if he’s courting anyone in London? Perhaps a member of your congregation?”
Josephine asked the question casually, but something about it struck Alice as odd. What could she say? Would he want her to repeat what he’d told her in the carriage? She knew so little about him, and yet so much. She knew his horror at the accidental touching of a woman’s breast, his stirring at Solomon’s poem for his bride. The way he tore the page underlining those telling words, I burned.
Evidently mistaking her fluster for hesitation, Josephine blushed. “I’m sorry, I should not press for gossip. Mama and I are always so desperate for news of Henry’s life in London, since he writes of personal things so rarely. He knows Papa does not approve of him, and I suspect it makes him reluctant to tell us much about his life.”
Oh, how she could relate to that. Her letters to her mother were a kind of symphony of saying nothing, of quotidian details that added up to a picture so opaque she may as well have sent a dirty window.
“I don’t know if he intends to marry,” Alice said, not wishing to reveal anything he’d rather they not know. “But I’m not aware of any courtship.”
Josephine looked at her intently. “My father is hoping his visit might produce some happy news between himself and Miss Bradley-Hough.”
Oh dear. Was that why Henry had been so uncomfortable when she’d almost kissed him? She had not considered he might have feelings for another. A fresh wave of mortification clenched through her.
Henry walked towards them, looking happy and refreshed. “Thank you for coming, ladies. And for playing, Alice. My friends were so pleased.”
“It was a pleasure,” Alice said, fully meeting his eye for the first time since the night before.
He held her gaze and smiled. She tried not to wonder what it meant.
“Shall we go back for supper?” he asked.
Outside, the snow had stopped. It was a calm, cold, winter evening, the ground blanketed in white.
“It’s clearing,” Henry observed, smiling at her again, as though the previous night had never happened. “If it holds I’ll drive you home in the morning.”
“Thank you,” she said.
She did not know what else to say.
She was grateful when Josephine changed the subject to speak of local nei
ghbors, and she could walk ahead in silence. At the house, Josephine asked if she wished to borrow another dress, and she declined.
“I am quite tired. I think I will skip the evening meal. Would you make my apologies to your mother?”
It was absurd of her, but she did not wish to watch Henry speaking to Miss Bradley-Hough, wondering if he planned to marry her. She felt sad enough as it was.
She set off for her rooms, longing for the escape of sleep.
“Mrs. Hull,” Henry called, just as she reached the staircase. She stopped and turned. He was striding quickly to catch up with her.
He smiled when he reached her. “I just wanted to say to meet me in the breakfast room at seven. We’ll take off early.”
She nodded.
He looked like he might say more, then hesitated, and turned to go.
“I wanted to say how much I enjoyed that,” she blurted to his back.
He turned around, his face a question. “Enjoyed what?”
Oh dear, she hoped he didn’t think she meant the night before. The garden.
“Your fellowship,” she said quickly. “Thank you for inviting me. It’s been ages since I’ve been in church. I never knew that it could feel like that. So peaceful.”
His entire face lit up. “I’m so very, very glad.” He paused for a moment, bit his lip, which of course made him seem younger and sweeter and … he was likely about to be engaged and he was a minister and she was wicked and she had to look away.
“I hope you don’t mind if I repeat myself,” he continued, “but you’d truly be welcome at my congregation when you return to London.”
She laughed, without thinking.
She instantly wished she hadn’t, disliking the note of bitterness she could hear in her own voice. But she was unsure how to say that she would likely not be returning to London.
“Thank you. But as I’ve said, I’m long past saving.”
Henry looked at her for a long moment without speaking. “Alice, God’s mercy is not conditional. Your profession is no hindrance, if you wish to be saved.”
She shook her head. “It has little to do with my profession.”
The Lord I Left Page 12