His smile was slightly puzzled. “I’d say you rather took my postern gate off its hinges. Another game?”
“Of course.” Joy passed him the white king. “I played against my grandfather when I was a girl. I was the only child for years before Hiram came along, and Grandpapa made do with me as best he could.”
“Is your grandfather still among the living?”
“Alas, no. He went to his reward just as I was to make my come out, which meant I did not make my come out as scheduled.” Joy set up the black army, her preferred color. Better to lie in wait for the foe than to strike the first blow. “The litany of disasters since then is long and boring.” Mostly, that litany was expensive. Hopelessly, stupidly expensive.
“And yet, I see no evidence of disaster. I see a worthy opponent, who is about to be taught a lesson in locked postern gates.”
The second game absorbed Joy in a way she hadn’t felt since Grandpapa’s final illness. She and he had played for hours then, for she’d sensed that on the chessboard, Grandpapa was still hale and whole. In the person of his knights and rooks, he’d been nimble, powerful, and wily.
She lost track of time, she lost track of her queen’s rook, and she lost track of Hiram snoring on the couch. Her world came down to besting her opponent, though she had to content herself with a draw.
“My honor is not quite restored,” Mr. Sorenson said, “but my pride is slightly recovered. You truly are formidable, Miss Danforth.”
“I had forgotten the exhilaration of a good game. I should never have lost that rook.”
“I should have captured both of your rooks and your queen. Too busy guarding my postern gate, I suppose. Tell me of the disasters.”
Losing a rook was hardly… “Oh, those disasters. They make a boring recitation.”
The vicar picked up her queen and returned the lady to her home square. “Not as boring as working on my next sermon. Besides, I told you I was leaving for a deanship, and thus we have become confidants.”
To be this man’s confidant was no small thing. “When will you tell your congregation?”
His gaze went to the bird feeder, devoid of winged visitors. “The first Sunday of the new year, I suppose. My replacement should be on his way here by then. Weather permitting, I will be off to my new post shortly thereafter.”
“Do you want the weather to permit?”
“Yes. I have tarried here on the moor long enough, and I’m not getting any younger. Tell me of your disasters.”
During the chess match, the day had shifted from morning to afternoon. This far north, at this time of year, sunset came before four p.m., and given the overcast sky, afternoon had already taken on the quiet feel of a long, quiet evening.
“I should not complain,” Joy said. “My prospects are very encouraging, and I am in many ways the luckiest of women.”
Mr. Sorenson tossed a pawn into the air and caught it. “I hear a but lurking in the undergrowth, Miss Danforth, or several buts.”
“But fashions change from one season to the next, so my entire wardrobe had to be replaced. Without Grandpapa to manage the finances, Papa has not prospered.” No self-respecting Danforth admitted that Grandpapa’s expertise had been the font of family coin, for that shaded perilously close to acknowledging a connection to trade.
“Many families have seen their fortunes decline,” Mr. Sorenson said. “With the war, with the peace, with a bad harvest. Fifty years ago, the Danish and English royal houses intermarried. Less than twenty years ago, we were at war with the Danes, sacking their capital, and now we’re all great good friends again. My family’s situation has been challenging, what with cousins and grandparents in both Denmark and England. I do hope your family’s difficulties will resolve themselves.”
He had not asked a question, precisely, but rather, issued an invitation, and where was the harm in airing family linen to a rural vicar?
“Seasons are expensive,” Joy said, arranging pieces on their home squares. “I did not take. I am not willowy. I am not blond. I have no airs and graces. I read excessively. I play chess.”
“You play chess quite well.”
The vicar sat across from Joy, a man very much at ease in his body. At some point, he’d turned back the cuffs of his sleeves and shed his jacket, for the fire threw out a good heat. When a lady’s hair was cascading down her back, and her brother snored away the afternoon on the sofa, strict propriety could also take a nap.
“To play chess well is a singular failing in an unmarried lady, Mr. Sorenson. I had to learn that. I had to learn how to toss a game without seeming to. Lord Apollo can barely keep straight how the pieces move, and yet, I must allow him to best me.”
“I can’t say this Lord Apollo impresses me very much. He should either ask you for instruction or take his lumps like a gentleman.”
“Ask me for instruction? You have not moved much in London Society, have you?”
He rose and stretched, then poked at the fire and added more fuel. “I met my wife in London. Papa was a baronet, Clara an heiress of modest proportions, thanks to Grandmama. I was the handy second son dragged along to every soirée, ball, and ridotto in the Home Counties. My wife rescued me from all that, though she would say I did the rescuing.”
“You miss her.”
Mr. Sorenson set aside the poker and rearranged the blanket over Hiram’s prone form. “We were not married long enough for resentments and annoyances to take the shine off of our affections. We were still infatuated, still gleefully rejoicing to have taken the step into adulthood that confers a sort of freedom even while it also creates constraints. We saw only the freedoms and availed ourselves of them liberally.”
He referred at least in part to marital intimacy, though perhaps he alluded to more subtle pleasures. Joy could not imagine what those pleasures would be, and with Lord Apollo, the intimacies loomed like a particularly awkward quadrille to be endured. His lordship was prone to chattering, though being a lordship, the received description was that he was an excellent conversationalist.
“Why haven’t you remarried, Mr. Sorenson?”
He set up the white army, piece by piece, without resuming his seat. “At first, I was grieving. Merry young wives are not to be carried off by lung fever. God and I had many a discussion on that topic. Then I was busy finding my footing with the Church. Then I was besieged by the local ladies, and I could not choose one from among them for fear of dashing the hopes of the others. By virtue of tireless good manners, unrelenting small talk, and a complete lack of dash, I have become the harmless widower who can be relied upon to make up the numbers.”
His chess painted a very different picture—no small talk and plenty of dash.
“Isn’t a dean typically married?”
He sent her a bleak smile and regarded the lengthening shadows in the snowy yard. “I am not a dean yet, and you have completely thwarted my polite inquiries as to your own circumstances. What has sent you careening across the moors in the dead of winter, Miss Danforth? I suspect you are overdue to entrust the tale to somebody, and it appears we are to be cast upon one another’s company for some time.”
He beckoned Joy from her chair, though it took some rearranging of her blanket-cum-shawl for her to get to her feet. She joined him at the window and saw to her amazement that the pole supporting the bird feeder had become buried a good six inches deeper in snow.
“That sky,” he said, pointing to a bank of billowing, dark gray clouds tinged with pink on the bottom, “presages more snow. A lot more. I am very glad you did not attempt to travel on, Miss Danforth. Very glad indeed.”
Joy was tempted to slip an arm around his waist and rest against him. She and Hiram could well have been stuck in some drift, bickering their way to a cold death. They might have been stranded in surrounds far less commodious than this tidy vicarage. They might have both taken ill and been consigned to sickness or worse on the moor.
“I am glad too, Mr. Sorenson.”
“Call me
Pietr,” he said. “You have breached my postern gate, after all, and you are about to tell me your troubles.”
“Am I?”
“Yes, but for such a momentous undertaking, we ought to brew up a pot of tea, don’t you think? Hiram remains clasped in the arms of Morpheus—probably the best thing for him—while I must make sure the fire in the kitchen does not go out. Borrow my slippers, and we’ll soon have the kettle on.”
What had begun as an inconvenient and short detour was rapidly taking on the contours of an adventure. Joy spared Hiram one look—snoring away, indeed—and slid her feet into a pair of large slippers that had sat warming on the hearth.
“A pot of tea sounds like just the thing, Vicar, but my troubles are hardly momentous.”
“I will be the judge of that. Come along, and I will show you the sort of temptation I face when my housekeeper departs on a winter holiday.”
He held out a hand, and his gaze portended mischief. Harmless mischief, which was probably how the very worst mischief presented itself.
The prudent move would be to demur and cite a need to decently arrange hair now thoroughly dry. A proper young lady would allude to having to unpack her valise—a ten-minute exercise at best—and leave the vicar to his temptations.
Joy put her hand in his and followed him down to the kitchen.
“The bishop has sent me another round of candidates to consider.” Robert, His Grace of Rothhaven, passed his brother an epistle written in the exquisite hand of an ecclesiastical scribe. “We may have our choice of two naughty boys who barely avoided scandal as curates or three doddering tipplers. My immortal soul is not impressed.”
Nathaniel’s calls on the family seat were less frequent these days, in part because Robert himself ventured over to Lynley Vale on occasion. The first time he’d walked alone from one estate to the other, a distance of less than a mile, he’d felt as if he’d conquered a vast wilderness and returned victorious from the wars.
An epileptic duke took his sense of accomplishment where he could find it. Pietr Sorenson had come across Robert making that sojourn and simply wished him a pleasant ramble.
No hovering, no inquisition, no peeking about in hopes of spotting a footman-nanny. “Enjoy the lovely day, Your Grace,” said with that smile Sorenson had that intimated vast delight in all of creation.
Nathaniel frowned at the list of names and their descriptors. “This is the third such team of reprobates the right reverend bishop has sent you. We might be a small congregation of unimaginative sinners, but we pay our tithes. We deserve a proper haranguing once a week.”
Nathaniel ought to be getting back to Lynley Vale, for the snow had not let up, and darkness approached. How lovely to be the brother doing the fretting for a change. And to be doing normal, fraternal fretting, about the predictably disobliging Yorkshire weather.
Sorenson had made that point to Robert: That to have petty annoyances to complain about, rather than soul-destroying fears and grievances, was something to be grateful for. In typical Pietr Sorenson fashion, he’d not harangued. He’d simply remarked that he himself was the most fortunate of men, for his worst tribulations included nothing more vexing than listening to Biddy Peabody’s imaginary ailments or teaching a fresh crop of children to skate each year.
The scold to a wealthy peer enjoying general good health and a happy marriage had been so subtle as to be barely perceptible, though Robert doubted that such burdens were Sorenson’s worst tribulations. A handsome, intelligent, supremely agreeable widower who eschewed remarriage was no stranger to loneliness.
“Do you suppose the bishop is trying to tell us something?” Nathaniel asked, passing back the letter. The cribbage board sat on the table between them. The play had been dull, but then, the play was for old times’ sake, no longer a weapon to be wielded against the demons of boredom on a bitter Yorkshire night.
“The bishop is suggesting I convince Sorenson to stay?”
“We’ve had curates by the dozen,” Nathaniel replied. “They never last. They endure about two years by the moor, two years in which they are frequently off to visit aging relatives or spinster sisters, and then they’re gone. Durham, the Midlands, anywhere but our village. Two ducal residences in the neighborhood is probably what draws such fellows, but they lack Sorenson’s calling.”
Robert folded up the bishop’s epistle to the heathen on the moor. Robert would consult with his duchess, who would help him fashion a reply: We need a vicar who cares about us. Who has a sense of humor and a sense of discretion. A man who can use Scripture to comfort far more often than he does to exhort. A fellow who doesn’t bat an eye at finding a half-mad duke lurking among his congregants.
“Sorenson has humility,” Robert said. “Genuine consideration for others. What does it say about us, Nathaniel, that we could return to our reclusive ways, the Wentworths could decide to once again leave Lynley Vale to factors and stewards, and the parishioners would barely notice? Take Sorenson away, and twenty years on, they will still fondly recall the old vicar.”
“He’s not old,” Nathaniel said, rising. “By church standards, he’s served out his terms and is ready for the first in a series of brilliant promotions. If we value him, and we do, we must not stand in his way.”
Robert got to his feet as well. “I am the last person to confine another in uncongenial surrounds—to confine another anywhere—but Sorenson understands this place, Nathaniel. He understands the people, and even the livestock, weather, and wildlife. Promotion is all very well, but would Sorenson decline a summons from the Church if he knew he was appreciated here?”
“He knows we love him,” Nathaniel said, “and I use that word advisedly. He has never violated a confidence, never turned me aside no matter how bad my chess. He was the closest thing to a friend Althea had, and he has the knack of judging the annual Fair Day baking contest such that the losers are flattered as thoroughly as the winners.”
“And that matters,” Robert said, ushering Nathaniel from the warmth of the family parlor. “Constance would say that diplomacy regarding the ladies’ pies is part of the reason why this village has no mendicants or inebriates.”
“Althea and Constance have something to do with that,” Nathaniel said, peering out the window in the foyer. “Looks like we’re in for it tonight.”
Robert held his brother’s greatcoat for him. “Good snuggling weather.”
Nathaniel grinned. “It’s all good snuggling weather in Yorkshire, and Althea has stripped half the trees on the estate of their mistletoe. Morale at Lynley Vale is good of late.”
“Morale at Rothhaven Hall is… Something of a holiday bacchanal is already under way, though the riot subsides when I walk into a room. Constance abets the staff, goes about humming carols and ordering Cook to test different recipes for wassail.”
“About time the old place saw some yuletide mischief.” Nathaniel pulled on his gloves and wrapped a thick scarf about his chin and ears. “Loki will delight in the new snow.”
“Loki had best not put a foot wrong, or we’ll be dining on horsemeat at Christmas.”
“He loves this weather, and he’s finally settling down. Typical Rothmere, late to mature, but a good soul at heart.”
Nathaniel whacked Robert on the shoulder, and then he was off into the frigid, gathering gloom. Robert stood for a moment on the terrace, watching his brother swing into the saddle and trot off down the lane.
By decree of the ladies, paths were kept shoveled from the house to the stable, from Rothhaven Hall’s garden to Lynley Vale’s park and from the park up to the manor house. Benches along those paths were regularly swept free of snow, and no disobliging boulder or protruding rock was permitted near the trails.
Robert was not to suffer a seizure and die wandering out on the moor. He was to keep to the safe paths. Because he had much to live for, he did exactly that—except when abed with his duchess, at which times, wild behavior abounded.
Nathaniel’s great beast of a horse prefer
red the challenge of the elements and thus went frisking and capering down the drive, leaving the profound quiet of deep winter in his wake.
In the village, Pietr Sorenson dwelled alone in his vicarage, as he had been dwelling for years. Had he asked for the notice of his church superiors? Did he want to leave? Was it the greater kindness to let him go or to insist that he stay, for if any man was deserving of kindness, Sorenson was that fellow.
And yet, in all the years Sorenson had shepherded the local flock, he’d maintained a certain subtle reserve. The last citadel of a man’s dignity was the privacy of his thoughts and feelings. One did not intrude on such preserves lightly. With Pietr Sorenson, Robert wasn’t sure one even could, his parapets were that well defended.
“This is the medicinal pantry,” Mr. Sorenson said. “Mrs. Peabody keeps us well supplied.”
He opened what looked like a made-over wardrobe, one that had been fitted with shelves, drawers, and interior cabinets. The workmanship was exquisite, the knobs all carved to resemble tiny birds in flight.
“Mrs. Peabody was the woman who wanted Hiram to have last rites?” A beady-eyed little creature who would have looked to have misplaced her cauldron and pointed hat.
“She means well,” Mr. Sorenson said. “Mrs. Peabody was one of seven daughters, and only she and one sibling remain. None of the ladies married advantageously. All were widowed young, and thus penury is a constant worry for Biddy and her sister. They sell their tisanes, some of which are surprisingly effective, but mostly, they worry about which of them will go next.”
Abruptly, Joy was ashamed. “That is awful. Nobody should sit around waiting for death to roll the dice.” An unwelcome thought intruded: Why sit around waiting for Lord Apollo Bellingham to propose?
Though he would. Joy was nearly certain of it.
The vicar brushed his fingers over the burnished wooden wing of a hawk. “We think of the elderly as peacefully rocking away the years, and perhaps that’s true for a few of them, but I suspect the reality for many requires more courage than they ever had to call upon earlier in life.”
A Rogue in Winter Page 4