Emmeline bouncing sickeningly off the wall and then slipping, sliding over it. Her weight dragging Norah forward until she braced her boots on either side of the cracked doorframe, her fists tightened beyond pain, and only sheer will keeping a grip on Emmeline who now dangled out of sight over the wall.
Norah hadn’t dared move for fear the doorframe would give way, or her hands would, and her fingers were numb now and what if she lost her grip without realizing it and there was nothing left to do but scream—
“Shh. There is nothing to fear now.”
A deep voice came, warm and calm and soothing. Gentle hands lifted her from her terrified crouch in the snow. Her vision still focused on terror in the past, she staggered. Strong arms closed about her, giving her a warm solid chest to shiver against.
Her hands, fisted so tightly—don’t let go!—that her fingers ached. Her face was wet and freezing, tears feeling like crystals on her cheeks. The nightmare receded slowly, one sense at a time, until the wind across the snow replaced the screams of horses, the screams from her own throat.
Her gloved hands loosened, spreading across that solid chest by themselves, blindly seeking warmth and solidity. She gripped his coat, holding on as the careening world steadied, until her feet came back stand on the inevitable stone.
Norah’s breath steadied. Not sobs but the open-mouthed panting of something hopelessly terrified.
“Y—you c—came.”
John Barton rocked her gently as they stood there. “Yes, I’m here. You’re here. Lady Emmeline and Miss Higgins are here as well, safe at the manor. Everyone will be as good as new, just like before.”
Norah didn’t explain that she’d meant that awful day, when she’d seen the silk slipping through fingers that felt nothing at all. She didn’t tell him that by the time he called to her to release Emmeline, she already had. She shut her eyes tight against the vision of the hem of the silk dress sliding through her useless fingers, the flutter of it going over and out of sight—
“Hush. Be done. It is done. All is well, Norah.” Warm fingers caught at her chin. He’d taken off his gloves to touch her, to lift her face from where it still pressed to his coat. “Look. The day is bright. Can’t you feel the sun?”
She turned her head, eyes shut, seeking the touch of weak winter sun on her cheeks, the gleam of it beyond her closed eyelids.
Listen,” he murmured. “So peaceful here today, so quiet. Even the river is silent today. Have you ever heard the like?”
Norah rested her cheek against his chest and listened. Naught but far distant sounds from the manor and the steady beat of John Barton’s valiant heart beneath her ear, and the faint rustle of her skirts as he continued to sway with her in his arms.
No, I have never heard the like.
He is holding me. Me.
Close, so close. His clean masculine scent filled her every breath and she drank in his warmth, his strength and his kindness.
How I wish I were beautiful so I could make this man love me.
This man who looked at Emmeline with such fascination, who held her beautiful hand with such attentive care.
This strong, gentle, kind man who would be so good for Em, who would lend his steadiness and goodness to her flightiness and occasional self-centeredness.
The notion that Emmeline might not be so very good for John Barton tried to slide across Norah’s mind, but lifelong habits of love and family loyalty swept it aside before it could gain purchase.
Two more breaths, a few more powerful heartbeats—those she stole for herself before she straightened and stepped back out of his embrace.
JOHN WASN’T SURPRISED when Norah—Miss Grey—stepped out of his arms. He’d felt her gathering the strength to stand on her own and had known her need for him was passed.
What did surprise him was that he had wanted her to stay right where she was. Prickly, suspicious Miss Norah Grey, held as carefully as a wild thing in his hands.
Brave, forthright Miss Norah Grey. Secretive, too, for had she not hidden her own lingering fear and trauma until she stood on this bridge and faced it down alone?
Miss Grey took another step back and turned away to tug her bunched skirts aright. After brushing quickly at her cheeks, she retied her fallen bonnet back over the tawny hair wound and pinned tightly to her head.
Her posture returned to her customary poker-straight invincibility but she took one more deep breath, letting it out slowly before she turned back to face him.
“Thank you, Victor Barton,” she said simply.
John liked that she’d not insulted him or herself with exclamations of embarrassment or regret or gushing appreciation. After all, it took some doing to get normal civility from this woman. Such brief and sincere thanks from her meant more than hours of effusive gratitude from any dozen ladies.
“You’re very welcome, Miss Grey.” He bowed and then held out an elbow. “Shall we walk together into the village? I am due there very soon.”
She hesitated. Then with a familiar touch of defiance, she lifted her chin. “I am quite able to walk down a country lane without assistance, sir.” Yet she fell into step beside him.
John felt rather ludicrously as if he’d received an award. Miss Grey reminded him of a fox he befriended as a boy. The wild thing was never a pet, oh no. Yet John had felt honored by the way it came to tolerate his presence and sometimes even warily snatch a treat from his extended hand.
Striving to entice guarded Miss Norah Grey to tolerate me is clearly the desperate goal of a friendless man.
So why did he feel so cheerful as he stomped down a snowy lane with her at his side?
AS NORAH AND Vicar Barton marched along the lane together, Norah felt her spirits lifting with the cheeriness of the bright day.
Winters at Kewell Abbey were darker and colder somehow, or perhaps that had been because of the leaky old walls and the scarcity of coal for any but the main rooms. It wasn’t poverty, or at least the elderly grandeur of the place didn’t quite permit that word. It was simply long cold seasons of not-quite-enough.
That was all in the past now, due to Lady Emmeline’s inheritance. No more chilled ankles or weak extended soups, or nights of Emmeline climbing into bed with her, Em’s fashionable thinness having cost her the ability to keep warm.
Nothing, not even eating bread and watered soup all winter, could carve Norah down to such willowy elegance.
Thinking back to the bridge, Norah thanked the heavens the vital tug of war had not been reversed. She would have pulled Emmeline right over with her.
For Emmeline would never have let go.
Norah shivered.
Done. It was done, just as John Barton had said to her. She turned to look through her bonnet at the vicar.
“You have not cursed even once this morning, Vicar Barton. Are you feeling quite yourself?”
Why did such things come out of her mouth? At least, why did they come out the way they came out, so snappish and awkward? She could only hope he would take it well. She could not have been more surprised when he burst into laughter and then grinned ruefully at her.
“Tis true enough! You must think the worst of me, a man of the church with such a—a—”
“Picturesque vocabulary?”
He chuckled again, rubbing one palm over his face. “I am accurately skewered.”
“Yet you seem... relieved somehow. Happier perhaps?” Happy to have met the beautiful Lady Emmeline? Happy to have fallen headlong in love with said lady, just as every man who ever encountered Emmeline seemed to do?
He shrugged at that and looked away. “‘Relieved’ is perhaps a good enough word. I have been relieved of my own tendency to clutch on too long.”
“Ah.” Norah nodded sagely. “Lady Bernadette.”
John Barton whipped his head around to stare at her. “You’ve been here for only a few days! How could you possibly—” His expression fell. “Oh drat. Everyone must know what
a fool I’ve been, if even you have discerned it so quickly.”
Norah shrugged. She wasn’t one to be patient with self-flagellation. It was, in her opinion, simply another symptom of being overly concerned with oneself. “I’m glad to hear that you’ve grown past it. Awkward, being sweet on your benefactor’s wife. Must make for some deeply embarrassing moments.”
“I was too busy wallowing to be embarrassed,” he muttered, sticking his hands into his coat and walking with his head hanging.
Norah rolled her eyes, and she turned her head to be sure he saw it. “I meant ‘embarrassing for her ladyship,’ you mooncalf.”
He stopped walking and just stared at her, his lips parted in astonishment. “The things you say.” He shook his head and started to chuckle. “Mooncalf!”
He was laughing again. At himself, moreover, not at her.
Norah, who had always found her own company to be highly diverting, had never before met someone who agreed with her. His rich laugh at his own expense tugged an answering smile to her lips. Daft man.
He looked a little startled at her expression. Then his handsome face split in such a delighted grin that she blinked under the brilliance of it.
“Aha! I’ve caught you out!” he announced gleefully. “You have a lovely smile, Miss Grey.” He leaned close to whisper conspiratorially. “I advise caution in its overuse. You wouldn’t want everyone to know.”
Then, having absolutely no notion of how he’d spun her very world around, he marched onward toward the village.
Norah followed automatically, her feet taking action while her mind was caught in a spinning maelstrom of disbelief.
You have a lovely smile.
Her. Miss Norah Grey, plain but useful poor relation.
Oh blast. How was she ever supposed to recover from something like that? Said by someone like him? Alone together in a snow-swept landscape yet, under a glittering winter sun?
It was one thing to admire someone in the privacy of one’s own mind, someone far away and unattainable. That made it feel safe, like a riveting story that nevertheless, one might someday forget. It was quite another when that person looked at you—truly looked at you!—and liked what he saw.
I’m in such a pickle now.
Chapter 8
N
ORAH AND VICAR Barton walked into the village, which consisted of several cottages surrounding a square that might be a bustling place on a summer market day, but now lay peaceful beneath a covering of snow. Trails of bootprints crisscrossed the open square, leading from the inn to the milliner’s, from the blacksmith’s to the sweet shop.
Cheerful windows wore their holiday finery and a handwritten sign in the sweet shop read “Roasting chestnuts to-day!”
The few people passing bobbed their heads at John Barton and herself. “Vicar. Miss.” They looked as if they knew her, and some turned to watch them pass.
“Miss Grey, I believe you are quite the sensation in Haven.” Vicar Barton’s murmur was amused.
Norah cast a wary eye on a man standing in the doorway of the inn. The short, stocky fellow smiled and nodded approvingly at her. “Whyever for?” she whispered.
“Oh, the Higgins family is very popular in Haven. They’ve been here for generations. You saved a Higgins, so you practically saved Haven itself.” He shook his head. “It took me nearly a year to win over the Higgins family. Only by vastly overpaying Mrs. Higgins to care for the vicarage did I make any headway.” He smiled. “Although she does a fearsomely fine job. I hardly dare drop a crumb in my kitchen.”
Norah smiled to think of handsome young Vicar Barton having to prove himself to his own housekeeper. She cast him an arch glance. “Perhaps if you are very nice to me, I shall put in a good word with Mrs. Higgins.”
He smiled back. “I’d very much appreciate it. Those crumbs, they do keep dropping.” He stopped walking. “I’m afraid I must leave you here. Unless you’d like to come in?”
“Come in?” Norah realized that they stood before a very pretty church, set just on the far side of the square. “Goodness, how fine! And so large for such a small village!”
He nodded with quiet pride. “The village, the surrounding farms and all of Havensbeck’s staff and tenant farmers too. And its lord and lady of course.”
“Ah. Lord Matthias must be a good landlord. Everyone looks very prosperous.”
“His lordship is a very good man, and Lady Bernadette is passionate about the village. Most of the local people are.” He smiled. “There is a local legend, of sorts, that everyone who comes to Haven falls in love.”
Norah’s smile became a bit stiff but Vicar Barton didn’t seem to notice. “Do tell?”
“I suppose that every village wants to have their own story,” he replied. “But it is true that everyone in Haven is a dyed-in-the-wool romantic. They’ve been openly trying to wed me off for two years.”
Norah looked out across the square so that her bonnet shielded her expression. “How terrible for you.” She knew her voice dripped with irony but she couldn’t help it. Never in her life had anyone lifted a finger to wed her off. The entire world assumed that no man would ever find her acceptable, and wasn’t she lucky that her pretty cousin would surely marry well and take care of her forever?
The bell above them tolled the hour. Suddenly, the square became awash with running children, all of them storming toward the vicar and Norah like the hordes of Genghis Khan invading China.
“Eep.” Norah didn’t know anything about children and there really were so very many of them!
The vicar took her elbow in support and leaned close to speak into her ear. “Show no fear! They’ll eat you alive!”
The flood of small persons parted around them where they stood. Little shoes and boots pounded up the steps of the church and burst the doors apart to flow inside. It was over in seconds. It had only seemed like hours.
“Now I really must go. If I leave them alone for too long, dire things happen.”
She could imagine. “Go! Please!”
He bowed and ran lightly up the steps. As he opened one side of the double doors, he turned. “You are very welcome to watch, if you have time. We’ve been working very hard.”
As Norah had nowhere else to be and she didn’t much care for the idea of exploring a village that knew everything about her while she felt a stranger, she climbed the steps and preceded the vicar into the church.
There was no one there. Norah looked around but didn’t see a single child. Then a wave of giggles rose somewhere over her head and she stepped forward to see the invading multitudes had taken position in the choir loft. Bright eyes and cheerful smudged faces peered down at her.
Norah had to smile in turn. They were so endearing, like fearless baby monkeys in a tree. One curly haired lassie wiggled her fingers at Norah. Norah waved to her.
Beside her, the vicar sighed. “And she wins over yet another Higgins.”
“It’s a children’s choir! Oh, Emmeline would love to hear them!” Norah tried to think of some way to bring them together, but Vicar Barton beat her to it.
“She will hear them perform at the Christmas Eve Ball at the manor. ‘Tis a new tradition.” He stepped forward and clapped his hands. “Places, please!”
He was clearly an experienced director, for the little monkeys all hurried into more or less straight rows, tallest in the back. He pointed out a good seat for Norah and she took it, folding her hands in her lap and sitting forward eagerly.
First, the vicar took them through a series of rhyming exercises to warm up their voices. Then he had the different sections hum together to create a chord that surprised Norah with its power. Goodness, they were very well-schooled!
Then, with a wave of his hands, the vicar led his singers in a lovely Christmas carol. The piercing sweetness of the small voices flowed through the church like the scent of caramel on a stove. The vault ceiling and the delicate stone ribs supporting it seemed to ring t
he music back at them, augmenting and clarifying the sound.
“God rest ye, merry gentlemen
Let nothing you dismay...”
Norah could hardly pay attention to the familiar words, so swept away was she by the high lilting voices. Nothing could disrupt the sweet ache rising within her in response to the beauty of it, not the occasional lisp, or slightly sharp note, or the poor lad in the back who might not end the year with the same voice he’d began it.
Don’t worry, Emmeline will have children.
Yes, and that would be lovely. Yet Norah was beginning to realize that her own contentment with that plan had been a canny bit of self-delusion. After all, why bother dream of something that would never happen?
Yet dream she did. Whole pieces of her felt fit to shatter at the hopelessness of that dream. Basic human instinct or maternal higher calling, it didn’t matter. I want a child. Actually, I want several, boys and girls of varying sizes—
There was just one tiny hitch in the plan that bloomed joyfully in her soul at that moment.
“Which brings tidings of comfort and joy,
Comfort and joy...”
She was weeping again, for the second time today.
The song faltered. Norah dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief and looked curiously up into the choral loft.
A little dark-haired boy had stepped out in front of the rest. All the other children were looking at him. Norah saw that even John Barton looked at the little fellow expectantly.
The boy was staring downward in terror.
At her.
Norah did her best to look harmless. She couldn’t begin to think what about her could have inspired such alarm in the child.
The vicar cleared his throat. “Let’s try that again from the chorus...”
The child hunched his shoulders and looked ashamed.
“...tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy!
Oh-oh, tidings of co-omfort and joy.”
The next part should have been the verse of “In Bethlehem, in Israel” and Norah leaned forward, for it was her favorite part. She imagined the sweet voice of the little boy singing it out to fall upon the graceful church and a smile readied itself on her lips.
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