At the inn, Eliza took a swift step sideways onto the little path that ran behind the establishment and down the way to a small cottage nestled between the trees at the edge of the Coln. It was a sweet enough spot, although a little run down and in need of repair. There were two little lambs in a pen out front, and the stoop had a yellow cat stretched out on it beneath a curling vine.
Before Mr Ashbrook had passed away the house had belonged to a young family just starting out in the village. The husband had moved on to the smithy shortly before Mr Ashbrook’s death, and it seemed only fair to give the Widow Ashbrook the house as a place to rest and recuperate. The fact that her own home had to be repossessed by the lender after Mr Ashbrook’s death was a fact that the rest of the village chose kindly to ignore.
Chapter 2
The Widow Ashbrook, as Baker Thompson had so coarsely pointed out, was still a very fine-looking woman. Though age had stolen a bit of lustre from her skin and replaced it with a wealth of wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, she still carried herself with more than average posture, had sparkling dark eyes with girlish youth, and had a wealth of auburn hair that looked bright red in the right light. There was a pale river of grey along the right side of that hair now—grey that had perhaps been there before Mr Ashbrook’s death, but was almost certainly established now that he’d been gone.
She opened the door on the first knock, and then, when Eliza looked surprised, blushed like a girl. “I was watching you from the window,” she said in sheepish explanation, as though eagerly awaiting guests was a character flaw. Eliza found it endearing.
“I’m glad,” she teased, “for I don’t know if I have the energy to raise my hand for another knock, not after bearing the weight of this sweet pasty all the way from the baker’s.” At this, she presented the pasty as though it were a grand prize and watched with amusement as the Widow Ashbrook put her fingers to her mouth like a little girl. There are some people that you can be over dramatic with in your presentation, and they are few and far between—Helen Ashbrook happened to be one of them. She treated everything with the weight that it deserved.
“Delightful!” she exclaimed. “I shall put the kettle on, and we may share it.”
“I meant for you to have it for yourself.” Eliza risked a glance around the room and saw that, as clean and tidy as it was, things were still fairly sparse. The cupboards on the wall alongside the fireplace looked even sparser than the last time she’d visited. She vowed quietly to bring preserves and vegetables from the larder next visit; perhaps a wheel of cheese, too.
“Nonsense. Things are always so much more delicious when you share them.” The older woman’s back was turned to Eliza, and Eliza saw her wrinkled hand shake for a moment on the handle of the kettle before she put it over the flame.
Eliza came and sat beside her on one of the low stools by the fire. “Are you thinking of Mr Ashbrook?”
“Henry always was one for splitting things, even when it was perfectly unnecessary. I told him once that the whole of the garden was overflowing with tomatoes, and yet he insisted that we cut each in half and eat it together before moving on to the next one. It was silly, for he took his with salt and I took mine with sugar.” She gave a weak little laugh and then fell silent.
Eliza reached out and took her hand. It was a motion that would have been considered scandalous in some high society circles, but here in the comfort of the little cottage it was kindness and kindness alone. “I know you miss him,” she said softly, hoping that Mr Thompson would hold his tongue just a bit longer.
“I do, but it gets easier.” The older woman sat up a bit and took the basket from Eliza. She forced a smile and a bit of uncalled for cheer and reached under the wicker lid. “Now, let’s see what delights you’ve found for me today.” She pulled out to two loaves of country French bread and the berries the cook had fetched from the back quarter the day before, followed closely by cinnamon buns and some of the shipment of oranges that had come in yesterday to the parsonage. “Beautiful!” she exclaimed, smelling one of the bread loaves with undisguised delight. “You spoil me.”
“It’s impossible to spoil someone of your temperament,” Eliza answered with a gentle smile. “Papa always says so.”
“Yes, how is your father?” The Widow Ashbrook looked up with a light of kindness in her eyes. She and the local parson had become fast friends in the last few months. “Tell him I’m sorry I haven’t yet finished the little book of sermons he gave me to read. I meant to, but I got distracted with a volume of poetry instead.” She leaned close and winked. “Don’t tell him that last bit.”
“Remember, I’m his daughter. I’ve grown up watching him get distracted by volumes of poetry,” Eliza answered with a grin. “If he was truly appalled by such behaviour, I could just as quickly cry hypocrite.”
In truth, Parson Steele had given his daughter instructions to ask after the widow’s health and children. He was worried about her, living out here by the river all by herself. The widow’s two sons were both now grown and had moved away out of the village to their own destinies. They’d left their mother behind, and though Eliza understood some lives were better lived free of parents, she couldn’t imagine how that could be the case in this instance.
“Actually,” she said, picking at the fringe of an afghan that adorned the chair upon which she sat, “Father did ask after the health of your sons. How are they doing?”
“Oh fine, fine.” The older woman busied herself with the whistling teapot, pulling it off from its hook and pouring the warm water over some loose leaves of tea. “I just had a letter a fortnight ago from William. He’s got two little boys of his own now, up Hereford way. He says they’re fine, strong lads. The eldest is already learning to read, I hear, and the youngest is toddling about quite well and happy.”
“And Elliot?”
“Married, actually.” A shadow of sadness crossed the widow’s face. “I was sorry to have missed that event, but they’re both such big city people now in Northampton that they couldn’t move the whole wedding party out to the country for the sake of a silly old woman.”
“Married! Elliot?” Eliza couldn’t help smiling. She’d never much liked the boy when they’d grown up together along the River Coln. Elliot Ashbrook was not fond of any of the pastimes that Parson Steele considered good and healthy for a young girl—running and playing in the fields behind the primary school; hiding in the river reeds, or sneaking into the back of one of the bakeries and licking sweeties in return for helping the baker carry in his sacks of flour. All such activities meant getting dirty, and Elliot Ashbrook was a fastidious little boy who grew into a fastidious young man who always had his shirts ironed just so and his hair swept back from his face in fine dark coils.
“Yes, he found a girl during his studies at university, and word is that she’s a pretty little thing with a fine family and a reputable background. I’m glad to hear of it. Other than you, dear, there just aren’t many other girls in these parts. I wasn’t sure that he’d find anyone when at last he decided not to go after you.”
“At last he decided” made it sound as if Elliot had ever considered Eliza a worthy prospect—which he had not. Once he told her, when they were in that youthful age between childhood and adulthood, that to marry her would be to shackle himself to Bibury forever, and all he ever wanted was to be free. Eliza didn’t share this feeling at all. The community at Bibury was freedom to her, and she would have sooner gone across the channel to France than leave the busybodies in town square for a marriage in Northampton.
“Well, I’m glad they’re happy,” she said quietly. “I’m sure a wedding between two such sophisticated people was a sight to behold.”
“That’s what I heard. I read of it in the Northampton papers. It came about only a month after my Henry’s death, though, and it wouldn’t have been proper for me to attend.”
So that’s why Eliza was only just hearing about it now. Not only was it improper for a widow to attend a we
dding so soon after her husband’s death, but it was even more improper for a son to have his wedding during the time of mourning. Eliza could see the shame in the widow’s face, however, and she kept these thoughts to herself.
“I’ve thought of going to Northampton for a bit of shopping,” she said, though it was a good deal further than London. “Perhaps you would accompany me one of these days. I would need a chaperone, as you can well imagine.”
The widow leaned forward and patted Eliza’s hand again, smiling. “You’re a good little lass—do you know that? Kind and thoughtful and careful of a woman’s dignity. Perhaps we can make such a trip one day, but in the meantime, I’m at peace. My boys are healthy lads, and I know that when they miss me, they will come back to Bibury to visit the little cottage by the river.”
She handed Eliza a little cup of steaming tea with milk, and for a time the two women sat side by side and sipped in silence. When a spade of time had passed, the widow spoke again.
“Have you thought about your own prospects, my dear? I don’t mean to be a busy-body—I know half the town thinks of you as their personal project—but I’ve been curious about it ever since you came to see me after my Henry’s death. You’re a kind little lass, and a pretty thing as well. I would have thought to see you turning away suitors right and left, but it seems that Bibury has no one that will yet catch your eye.”
Eliza blushed at the widow’s direct question, and had it been from Mrs Brown or Mrs Partridge, she would have waved it away with some diverting comment; a joke or a tender kindness that would make the question disappear in a wave of teasing and laughter. As it was, she could only be honest with the widow, who sat across from her with wise, quiet eyes, and the kind of heart that you couldn’t help being vulnerable with.
“Bibury is a small place,” she said simply, “and as you well know, we don’t get a lot of new people in these parts. Father suggested I go to London for the season, but I don’t care for such things. And besides, what am I to tell some young lad who asks me to dance? That I’m the daughter of a clergyman and I desire nothing more than to return to my backwater little town and live out my days in peace? No, there isn’t a man in England who would find that attractive—a man that wasn’t already taken, that is.”
For that was the truth of it. In these parts, the people that wanted to get married and stay in Bibury fell in love early, and they fell in love young. Girls were fourteen or fifteen years old when the young boys in their school pulled over from the harvest and expressed an interest.
As the parson’s daughter, Eliza had managed to stay above such youthful flirtations, but now that she was nineteen years old, all the young men her age had already found their little dutiful wives and hurried off to country cottages to start their families.
“So, you’ve no suitors?”
“None, but being a single woman in Bibury is not so bad,” Eliza said quietly. It was mostly true. She’d been happy in the small town for many years, and she rarely felt the sting of loneliness. It was only on very dark, clear nights, when the moon was so high above that it burst through her casement and woke her, that she thought about how dearly she would like to share that moon with somebody, or occasionally when she attended the little weddings in the villages in and around Bibury, dancing with brides and grooms a few years younger than herself, that she wondered if life had passed her by.
She’d tried not to dwell on it, for her father always said that there was more to life than marriage. He’d lived out his words, too. When her mother had died years ago, Eliza was only nine years old, and the parson resisted every attempt to marry him off to some other woman in town who could raise the poor, motherless child.
“Eliza and I are quite alright,” he’d said. “She’s a good sensible girl, and I’m not afraid to ask for advice if I stumble upon something I don’t understand in the raising.”
For the most part, he’d been right. They’d got along well enough in the small stone parsonage with their cook and the maid that tended to the house during the week. They even had a driver on part-time hire from the livery in town, and all in all found themselves very well situated. Eliza knew she could stay with her father as long as she needed, and she tried to think of this as only a good thing; she tried not to wish too much for what the other married women in town had.
“Besides,” she said to the widow now, “I would feel badly for any potential suitor who would have to wade through my father’s strict opinions on morals and justice to get at my hand. You know Papa: his standards are high for any young man seeking a wife—imagine what they would be for the suitor in the case of his own daughter! I can only imagine what he would wish the man to be: a scholar and a student, but strong enough to keep me safe; a kind man, but a firm one; a humble man, but a confident one. And you know how strict he is about adhering to the codes of God and man.”
“It is because of those morals and standards that your father’s parish is so successful in bringing God’s love and harmony to every last person in the village,” the widow said with a smile. “Everyone attends church and hears what is spoken from the pulpit, and thus when disputes happen in town, there is a mutual knowledge and benefit to draw from.”
“I’m glad to hear you speak so of him,” Eliza said. She loved her father dearly, and she truly did enjoy hearing other people praise him, but secretly she wondered if it wouldn’t be better if he let down his guard just a bit. As it lay in the tiny village of Bibury, she was free to go where she pleased, but she knew that was because she was always under the watchful eye of the villagers and therefore a representative responsible for upholding her father’s holy virtues. At the moment, it made little difference, but she could only imagine what would happen if matters of the heart really did come into fruition at last.
Chapter 3
Eliza was preparing to leave when the widow brought up a rather surprising turn of conversation.
“Have you heard anything about the new tenants at the Rosewood estate?” the older woman asked.
Eliza, who had been completing the unloading of the food so she could take her basket back home empty and return with it another day, paused with her hand on one of the oranges and looked up.
“Is that the empty estate nearby, off the drive on the way out of town? I’ve never been on that property except to pick apples from their orchard, and it’s enough away from the estate itself that I’ve only seen glimpses.” She blushed. “I didn’t know it was occupied.”
“It wasn’t until recently,” the widow said quickly, chasing her earlier comments with a disarming smile. “And you needn’t look so guilty and ashamed. Everyone in the town has used that orchard for years, and if it weren’t for us, it would have been overrun years ago. As it is, the pilfering villagers have kept the trees pruned and ready for the harvest every year—I’m certain the new tenants won’t have minded the input.”
“Was the person who lived there before a recluse of sorts?” Eliza thought, reaching back into her mind to pull up some of the gossip she’d heard long ago about the place.
“I heard that little bit of rumour as well,” the Widow Ashbrook said with a dismissive wave of her hand, “but if I were you, I wouldn’t put much stock in it. The truth is that the estate has lain empty and uninhabited ever since I can remember, and that was long before you were born. I think when I was a girl a man from the city bought it to be his country home, but alas he never made trips this far from London and didn’t even keep staff on the property other than a groundskeeper. I shiver to think what the new tenants will have to clean out of those corners.”
“Is it a very fine place?” Eliza asked.
“I’ve never been inside,” the widow said, her eyes getting a faraway look in them. “But Henry was there once, fixing a casement that had cracked under the strain of the weather. He said it was very fine, but very stricken by dust and neglect.”
“I wonder who is living there now,” Eliza mused with a smile. “Perhaps the man from the city has retur
ned at last.”
“No, nothing so exciting as all that.” The widow raised her own eyebrows. “I believe it is a family, but they’re keeping very much to themselves at present. I don’t blame them. You know that the minute they make their way down the lane in the centre of town there will be tongues wagging all over Bibury with questions and opinions about the poor people. I don’t know where they came from, but I met their housekeeper in the village yesterday buying a few supplies from the grocer and setting up a delivery route with the fellow. She didn’t share much at all, but she did imply that they have a full staff out there—a butler, a footman, two maids, and a cook in addition to herself.”
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