“Whatever mistakes I have made, they have been mistakes born of my being too eager to know and understand you, and in no way reflect my estimation of your character. Whatever I intend to do with you, I intend to do it honorably.”
“How can you have any intentions toward me when you know nothing about me?”
“Who says that I know nothing about you?”
“Why, I do!” Charity replied. Her eyes flashed in genuine anger. “You presume to speak to me in the language that a lover would use, yet you lack the lover’s knowledge of the beloved’s interior life.”
“Then tell me!” he cried passionately. He softened his voice and looked at her with gentle eyes. He took her hand again and held it as though it were precious beyond measure.
“Tell me,” he said once more. “Tell me about yourself. Tell me what you want from life, what you love, what makes you joyful and what makes you angry. Tell me, and I would love to listen to you.”
Charity stayed very still while he took her hand. If one had been looking at her, they might have thought only her eyes seemed really alive, only they showed a sign that she was moved by the man’s words. They glittered with the hope that he was what she longed for, and with the fear that if she exposed herself, she risked the feeling of having her heart broken, and broken far worse than it had been before.
“What do I want from life?” she replied, her reply inflected softly with the intonation of a question. “Why, how can I answer a question when nobody has ever asked it of me before, and so I have never thought to formulate an answer?”
Mr. Harding leaned forward, capturing her eyes with his with such strong compulsion that she felt it would be impossible to look away.
“You have answers,” he said simply. “You have passions, you have joys and fears, and I wish to know them all.”
Part of Charity wanted to draw her hand away, to tell him that it would not be appropriate for her to answer, that it was unseemly for a gentleman to ask.
Even as the thought crossed her mind, she wondered precisely when it was that she had grown afraid.
When they had spoken before, in the grove, everything had been so simple. It had not occurred to her to not speak her mind.
And she had liked that feeling. Even more than liking it, she had felt freed by it.
“I wish to be at liberty,” she said, at last, speaking simply and as swiftly as the words moved from her heart to her lips. “I know that you were displeased by your father sending you away, and I am certain that it cannot have been easy for you. It is never easy for us to be rejected by those that we love, and upon whom we believed we could depend.
“But if your father turns you out of his house, then you may go wherever you wish. Paris, Rome, Vienna, anything is possible. If my own father turns me away, then I have no better place to go than Mrs. Warwick’s kitchen. Not that I am not grateful to her,” she added. “If there is anyone who I had to turn to in my hour of need, then I am grateful that it should be Mrs. Warwick.”
“But it is not the same,” Mr. Harding said. He was looking at her intently, as though he were drinking up every word.
“It is not the same,” she agreed.
“But I must confess that even I do not know precisely what I mean when I say that I wish for liberty. I am not sure that it is even that I wish to travel to Paris or Rome or Vienna — only that I should like the opportunity to do so. I should like the chance to roam the grove according to my fancy if I should wish to do so. I should like to be able to choose whom I speak to, and the terms on which I speak to them.
"I would wish to be able to walk with my friend or on my own at leisure, without fear of censure, without concern that my smallest movement might be the source of gossip that I will then expend a great deal of time and effort escaping.”
Mr. Harding was listening intently to all that she said. He left a considerable pause before he replied as if to ensure that she had completed the expression of her thoughts.
“But, if I may point it out, I believe that everything that you say — although true, and reasonable, and perhaps the argument of any rational creature — it seems a great pity that the only thing you wish for in life, the only thing that you crave, is to be free from the constraints that you find unpleasant. Do you not wish for anything in itself? Surely there is something else that your heart longs for, beyond the ability to roam freely?”
Charity thought about the question for several moments, bending her head in concentration before she replied.
“I fancy that I should like to write,” she said at last. “Whenever I think of the places that you have traveled to, the things you must have seen, my mind is occupied by considerations of the characters you must have encountered while you were there. I long to take pen-portraits of all the peculiar people and places, and to render them such that they will be preserved for all time, even though what is recorded is over within moments.”
“Ah!” Mr. Harding exclaimed warmly. “So you are a writer! Perhaps I should have suspected it all along!”
Charity colored at his words. She had never thought of herself as being anything much beyond the daughter of a clergyman. The idea that she might be a writer — aspiring or otherwise — brought her such a peculiar mixture of pain and pleasure, that she scarcely knew whether to laugh or weep at his words.
“But you must not confine yourself,” Mr. Harding continued, his voice low and rich with feeling. “I would not have you think that you could only exercise your talents if you were in some place or the other. No, Miss Miller. I have seen your gift of perception. I have heard you speak and marveled at your way with words, the way that they seem to bypass cliche and reach straight for my heart.
“I am very grateful to you for sharing these dreams with me. I fancy that you have never expressed them to anyone before. Is that the case?”
Charity could think of very little beyond the warmth of his hand, the deep amber of his eyes, the way that he looked at her as though he were drinking her in. She nodded.
“Thank you.” He reached a hand across the kitchen table and rising a little from the rough wooden bench where he sat, he leaned forward and placed one large, gentle hand underneath her delicate chin.
“It is a great pleasure to get to know you a little better,” he said, his eyes so close to her, exerting such a gravitational force upon her, that she felt she might simply fall into them and become lost.
“And I expect you to return the compliment,” she replied, her voice so soft that it threaded into a whisper. “I have shown you my heart, now will you show me yours?”
At that, he leaned forward, enveloping her with the warmth in his eyes, and softly kissed her.
Chapter 33
Perhaps Adam was behaving recklessly in kissing her. Perhaps it was precisely the opposite of what he ought to be doing, having decided that he was going to discard this pursuit of his own selfish desires in favor of clearing his name and restoring his father’s peace of mind.
But it seemed that there was some insistence of fate that demanded he be with Miss Miller. Perhaps it was only through that guiding hand of Providence that he would be able to get to wherever it was that he needed to be.
Who knew? One could only do what seemed to be the best thing at the time.
“I ask your forgiveness, Miss Miller,” he said. He realized that his mouth had gone quite dry, and it was a struggle to speak. “I must have forgotten myself.”
Much to his surprise, Miss Miller smiled at him. It was the same playful smile that she had given in those first times that they had spoken to each other, in those precious memories of the morning conversations in the grove.
“If you have forgotten that,” she said, “I do hope that you will remember this, at least.”
With that, she kissed him.
It was unlike any kiss that Adam had ever received before. It conveyed affection and tenderness as well as pain and passion and everything in between. Adam could not have said how long it lasted. It ma
de him realize, in the space of a few seconds, that there had long been a wound inside him, and that it was only through the touch of Miss Miller’s lips on his that the wound might ever have a hope of healing.
When the two of them broke apart, Miss Miller was flushed and smiling, more girlish than he had ever seen her.
She laughed at his astonished expression.
“What?” she said. “Do you believe that it is only you who may express themselves boldly? Women have feelings too, you know, and we are just as driven to act upon those feelings as you are, though perhaps we hide the impulses rather better.”
“Miss Miller...” he said. There was nothing more that he needed to say; he only wanted to pronounce her name and see the softness in her eyes when she looked back at him.
“I think perhaps it is time for you to start calling me Charity again,” she said. “Just as you did when we were children.”
“And so I will,” Adam replied fervently, “if you will also do me the honor of addressing me by my Christian name.”
“Adam,” she said, pronouncing the syllables carefully, as though she were testing them out upon her tongue. He smiled in response — it was a joy just to hear her speak his name.
“Charity and Adam,” she said and laughed. “Me a Christian virtue, you the father of mankind. It seems that we have a great deal of work to do if we are to be virtuous when there are so many dreadful things in the world.”
“Not just in the world,” he said warmly, “but in our very village. Miss Miller… Charity… I am sorry to say that I cannot linger with you longer here, no matter how pleasant a prospect that would seem to me.”
“Why not?” Charity’s dark eyes seemed saddened by what he said, but not exactly hurt. It was as though she understood in the course of this long conversation, and it was very long, indeed, for the sky had grown dark in the time that they had sat there talking — something in her had changed.
Or rather, perhaps it had changed back. She was now the young woman who had so captivated Adam from the moment that they met in the grove before the demands and constraints of society and expectation had been imposed upon the pair of them.
“There has been a terrible evil, which has been allowed to go unpunished for a whole year,” Adam said frankly. “Since most others seem more preoccupied with finding a scapegoat than with seeking out the true villain, I fear that the task of doing so falls upon my shoulders.”
“I suppose that you refer to the deaths of Mary and Freddie,” Charity said, sighing heavily. She glanced over to the fireplace, and Adam realized for the first time that two miniatures hung there. The first was of Mary Warwick, with her large quantities of russet hair and wide blue eyes.
The other was of little Freddie with the round pink cheeks, the blond curls, the picture of cherubic innocence that would never have an opportunity to be marred by sin or experience.
“I do,” Adam said. “I am not the perpetrator of their deaths, but nonetheless, I feel a certain responsibility toward them. Tell me—” He reached forward to take her hand, entreating her with his eyes to speak to him plainly, “did you truly believe that my relations with Mary were unseemly? That Freddie was my child? Could you really have believed that of me?”
For a while, Charity hesitated, before replying carefully, “I have long been accustomed to believing that which my father tells me. You see, when one has very little opportunity to assess the world for oneself, as I have, one is obliged to believe what one is told by others. I believed my father as a matter of course, but now I am not so sure that he spoke to me truthfully.”
“But why should your father lie?” Adam asked. A cloud was beginning to form in his mind — an idea that was too distressing to him to even entertain, yet he could not shake. He had been fond of the Reverend Miller for so many years now — seen him as quite a mentor. How could it be possible that this same man might have thought so poorly of him?
“I do not believe that he lied,” Charity replied slowly. “I believe that he spoke what he truly believes to be the truth, but that he is mistaken.” She looked appealingly at Adam, and he could see that, regardless of whether or not there was reason to suspect her father’s motives, she was not able to allow herself that suspicion.
“He is a man of God,” she added. Adam nodded, though he knew full well that there were as many scoundrels in the Church of England as were proportionate to the rest of society, and there was no special absolution from sin which came from taking the cloth.
Perhaps what Charity was saying was true. Perhaps there was an innocent explanation for the Reverend’s misleading — whether knowing or unknowing — of his daughter.
“I must confess that when your father was my tutor, he would have had reason to believe that I had a great deal of affection for Mary Warwick,” he said. It was difficult for him to express himself so frankly to Charity, when he wanted so much for her to think well of him, but he knew that there was a great deal to be lost if he should be foolish enough to lie to her.
“Affection?” Her eyes narrowed in confusion. “What precisely is it that you mean?”
“It was an affection of a boyish kind,” Adam clarified.
“The kind of awe and respect that a young boy feels for a beautiful woman whom he sees often, and whose character he greatly admires. There was nothing significant in it, and it faded away as such youthful fancies always do. But perhaps your father saw it, and perhaps that is the reason that he drew such an extreme conclusion about my relationship to Mary Warwick.”
What he did not say — what there seemed to be no sense in saying — was that he had another good reason to seek an innocent explanation for the Reverend Miller’s actions.
He kept thinking over and over, of the lady standing by the side of the lake. In the evening mist, there had been something ghostly in her appearance, such that he could well imagine her standing by the side of the lake in a torn black dress, exacting her crime upon two innocents for no reason that could be understood on earth.
He had grown more and more certain that the piece of cloth belonged to a woman’s dress and had gone so far as to show it to Mrs. Reynolds to gain her opinion on the matter. She had told him that she believed the piece to be from ‘a gown of some sort — it’s the right kind of fabric’.
The idea of a female killer — a murderess — had lodged so firmly in his mind that he instinctively felt there was no reason to question the Reverend Miller’s motives too closely. After all, there were plenty of men in England, and in every other country on earth, who were prepared to embellish the truth a little in order to protect their daughters from what they perceived as harmful.
Adam could not blame any father for perceiving him as harmful. Indeed, when his own father thought so, why should the Reverend Miller be any different?
Having introduced this heavy theme into their conversation, Adam took his leave of Charity soon afterward, bidding her goodbye in Mrs. Warwick’s kitchen.
No specific words had been spoken between them, none of the usual promises that pass between a man and a woman who have entered into a new stage of intimacy. Perhaps it was because their relationship had begun in such an unorthodox manner, where so much had remained unspoken.
In the same fashion, neither of them expressed what he was certain they both felt in their hearts. That Adam needed to go away, to prove himself and clear his name. Because when he had done so, when the skies were blue again, and the sun shone, there was no doubt in his mind that he would marry Charity.
Chapter 34
“My dearest Charity!”
Charity, who had previously been lost in a cacophony of thought, turned around at the sudden sound of a familiar voice.
She was walking along the lane, weighed down with great armfuls of firewood for Mrs. Warwick. Though the burden in her arms was very heavy, her step felt the lightest it ever had. She had been distracted by gazing into the woods about her, recalling with a joy-tinged clarity how she and Adam — her Adam — had share
d those first heady conversations under those same treetops.
The voice hailing her with such friendly affection snatched her out of her reverie, and she turned around to see Esther hurrying up the lane after her, her hand clutched to her bonnet to prevent it from falling off, her face flushed from hastening.
Charity was not sure how she ought best to greet her friend, given that the mode of her dress and the manual nature of her employment betrayed the fact of her presently reduced circumstances.
But, she thought to herself, the fact of her father’s cruel behavior was no reason why she should not smile at her friend, and so she did, allowing the happiness that she felt inside to shine through her face.
Charity Falls for the Rejected Duke: A Historical Regency Romance Novel Page 19