He began opening drawers and cupboards. “Here we have the tonics and tisanes, the purges—Mrs. Peabody’s purges are the equal of any you will find in Harrogate—and the elixirs to prevent baldness. My own copious locks owe their location on my head solely to Mrs. Peabody’s good offices, as she will doubtless tell you twice at every assembly.”
“I like your locks.” Joy also liked having her own hair for once unconfined during daylight hours, though she really ought to braid it up.
“I like hearing Mrs. Peabody brag.” Mr. Sorenson closed up the cupboards and drawers. “She pets my hair as if I’m her prize hound. You must not tell a soul, but I have never been able to bring myself to use her elixir. Smells of rotten fish. The cats lap it up like coachmen doing justice to the summer ale.”
“The cats?”
The vicar moved along the passage to a back door. Darkness would soon descend, and the path out to what looked like a stable, chicken coop, and garden shed combined was blanketed in new snow.
He opened the door. “Here, kitty, kitty, kitty! Come along, you louts. Supper awaits.”
The cold was a physical force pushing into the passage, though the fresh air was also invigorating.
The vicar cupped his hands around his mouth. “I said come along!”
Two dark shapes wiggled through a low gap in the boards of the stable and came up the drifted path in a series of bounds. A pair of enormous felines shook the snow from their luxurious fur and strolled into the hallway, tails high, as if they’d just handed their vouchers to a footman at Almack’s.
“I have never seen such grand specimens,” Joy said. “They look impervious to the elements.” They resembled miniature lynxes, with tufted ears and poufy feet. One was a flaming ginger with yellow eyes and a white bib, the other a splendid blend of tawny colors with green eyes and white paws.
“As with any pair of sturdy Norse lads,” Mr. Sorenson said, “they are not impervious to the lure of food. Let’s put the kettle on, and then I will see to my barn chores and fetch the straggler.”
The cats led the procession into the warmth of a dimly lit kitchen, clearly following a nightly routine. “Shall I light some candles?” Joy asked.
“I generally make do with one or two,” Mr. Sorenson said. “Vicars are supposed to be thrifty. My housekeeper pretends it isn’t so, but I frequently forage in here late at night. She mutters about very large mice, while I content myself with the occasional sandwich. I know where to find what I need, but I do try to conserve the candles.”
He swung the kettle over the coals on the hearth, then poured milk from a ceramic jug into a dish and set it on the floor. The cats made growly noises as they commenced lapping at the milk.
“Now to show you the penance exacted upon me each Yuletide.” He opened a cupboard above the counter and took down a large tray covered with linen.
“My housekeeper fears I will starve in her absence. We have our choice of three varieties of shortbread, cinnamon buns, lemon cake, and… I don’t know what she calls this creation, but it’s some sort of bread with honey, spices, nuts, and currants rolled up inside. Add a little butter or cheese, and it could fortify a marching army.”
The offerings were exquisite, and the scent of cinnamon blended with other subtler spices. “She spoils you.”
“I am only one man. How in a mere span of days am I to consume all of this? There’s more in the larder. Fortunately, the children demand their tithes, or I would soon be fat as Mr. Walmer’s prize sow. If you would slice us up some apples and cheese and choose a selection of sweets, I will see to my livestock.”
Hiram would have been impersonating a plague of locusts, ill or not. “You aren’t tempted to steal even a taste?”
An odd little silence tripped past, with the vicar regarding not the tray, but Joy. Or Joy’s mouth. In the shadowed kitchen, she could not be sure.
“The treats will be sweeter for a little anticipation,” Mr. Sorenson said. “I won’t be gone long, and that,”—he nodded at a particularly ornate drawer pull—“is the tea drawer. Don’t skimp on the leaves. We’ll need strong tea to stand up to the baked goods.”
He moved off toward the back hallway, and Joy followed him. “You haven’t even a cloak.”
“The animals keep the barn fairly warm, and if it’s snowing, it’s not all that cold.”
Was he in a hurry to leave the kitchen? “That’s a fallacy, and you will wear a coat, sir.”
Joy grabbed a large wool cape from a peg on the wall. “This one will do.” She held it open and gave it a shake.
“You scold me,” he muttered, turning his back to her. “And argue with me and beat me at chess.”
“You are wrong about snow and cold.” Joy draped the cloak over his shoulders, yielding to the impulse to smooth fabric over muscle and bone. “I read up on northern winters before I left London. It’s never too cold to snow, though it can be too dry. You tend to your own livestock?”
“I enjoy the exertion.”
She was reaching to do up his buttons when he jammed a battered, low-crowned hat on his head and made for the door.
“Back in a trice.”
And then he was gone into the chilly darkness. Joy put together a tea tray for two—she wasn’t about to waken Hiram simply to inquire if he was hungry—in the company of two cats tending conscientiously to their ablutions.
“He spoils you,” she said. “Who spoils him?” She would like to, if only a little. Pietr Sorenson was charming her without trying to. He gave as good as he got at chess. He did not stand on a pointless observation of the proprieties when people were hungry, ill, or cold. More impressive yet, he took the time to notice the fears and hurts behind the human failings in his parishioners.
“I truly would like to spoil him a little, to see him yield some of that unfailing graciousness of heart.” Though how did one spoil a man who easily resisted an entire tray of sweets?
And beneath that query lay a more difficult admission: Joy liked touching Pietr Sorenson. Liked how he’d stood close to her while showing off his apothecary. Liked stealing a little caress to his shoulders while helping him to don his cloak.
She’d never been tempted to steal a caress to any part of Lord Apollo Bellingham, despite the several occasions of tactile larceny his lordship had directed toward her.
The tea kettle whistled, the cats scowled, and Joy busied herself putting together sustenance for the body. A thought intruded as she sliced two apples into quarters: What about sustenance for the heart? The vicar clearly did not want for a comfortable home or a full larder, but how did he nourish his heart?
The Lord of Misrule had taken up residence in Pietr’s imagination—and in his breeches.
“The problem,” he muttered, picking up a muck fork and stepping into the gelding’s stall, “is that contemplating the end of your role as Vicar in the Dale has unmoored you.”
When private, Pietr frequently lectured himself in the second person, as if the voice in his head belonged to an internal spiritual monitor, a stern fellow who made clear distinctions between right and wrong.
“To be a bit at sea is understandable—change can be daunting—but to be an utter gudgeon will not serve. Fortunately, you have yet to toss caution entirely to the wind. And need I remind you, you house an invalid in the person of her sot-in-training brother, and thus Miss Danforth’s wellbeing rests entirely in your hands.”
The dean presiding over the cathedral of Pietr’s honor droned on, though Miss Danforth, having served several Seasons’ penance in Mayfair, was unlikely to be ignorant of worldly pleasures.
“Not that experience on her part signifies.”
Pietr’s lack of recent experience signified. Those infrequent trips to take tea with the bishop had allowed for a few discreet frolics with the widow who ran the lodging house Pietr preferred in York. On his last visit, he’d accepted the use of the Wentworths’ York town house, and that had honestly been something of a relief.
Or had it?
A relief to his conscience, perhaps, but what of his body? What of the heart that longed for the comfort of a skin-to-skin embrace and the soft laughter of a satisfied lover?
“And I’m hardly ancient,” he observed as he finished tidying up the horse’s stall. “Hardly doddering.”
Watching Joy Danforth contemplate strategy at the chessboard had inspired Pietr to musings of a different sort. Would a kiss beneath the mistletoe be too trite? Could he take her skating on the river, his arm about her waist?
“Not with a foot of new snow on the ice.” Though the children would broom and shovel the ice clear within an hour of sunup. “Not with Lord Apollo Bellingham awaiting the arrival of his guests.”
Pietr paused to scratch his horse’s ears. Thomas, named for the Apostle given to doubt, was a good sort of horse, up to Pietr’s weight, equally reliable in the traces or under saddle. He was exactly the variety of unprepossessing, stalwart fellow a servant of the Church should own.
“But you are a gelding, my friend.”
Seeing Joy Danforth padding around in Pietr’s slippers, watching candlelight dance along the highlights in her unbound hair, had inspired Pietr’s imagination to bolt from the barn at a dead gallop, and the beast was not headed for the churchyard.
“I want to bed her. I want her to bed me.” He’d felt the occasional stir of interest in other women. Althea Wentworth had inspired mild speculation, though she’d needed a friend far more than she’d needed a complication.
“And that’s all I would be to Miss Danforth. A complication.” He left the stall, taking care to latch the door. Tomorrow might well see the horse and cow confined to quarters if the snow kept up, and a bored beast of any species got up to mischief.
Milking the cow took less than ten minutes. She wasn’t dry yet, but her output was waning. “I will offer you warmer water tomorrow, I promise, and you might be inspired to drink more and thus yield more.”
She liked a good scratch to her brow, and the chickens preferred her company to that of the horse. Pietr poured the milk into its glass jar, tended to Bossy’s housekeeping, and fed supper all around. Nobody’s water bucket had ice in it yet, though tomorrow morning might tell a different tale.
“Kitten, you’d best show yourself,” he called when he’d finished collecting the day’s eggs.
Now that the moment to return to the kitchen was at hand, Pietr hesitated. He’d made no overtures, crossed no lines, but he’d also failed utterly to lecture himself into a state of resolute decorum. Standing in the cold with his breeches undone might obliterate the most direct evidence of wayward thoughts, but it would not calm a wayward heart.
“I yearn,” he said, having a look around the hay mow. No kitten. “I am out of the habit of yearning, and thus my self-discipline is wanting.”
Was that a good thing? To lose sight of longings and desires that the Creator had designed into the creature?
“Kitten, I will leave you to sleep with the hens, and that is an indignity your compatriots will never allow you to live down. If you aspire to be a cathedral cat, you must locate some damned dignity.”
A rustling in the straw pile presaged the emergence of the third feline to grace Pietr’s barn. “Ruddy blighter. You had me worried.” Such a small fellow would not fair well against the elements. Pietr scooped him up and held him at eye level.
“You would do well to contemplate your future, my boy. I have ambitions for you.”
The kitten commenced purring, an inordinately comforting rumble. No ambitions here, just a healthy little creature who suffered a bit of shyness.
“I would hate to lose you,” Pietr said, knowing that he must return to the kitchen, and to good sense. “But I believe Miss Danforth has put her finger on a worse problem. I have lost sight of myself.”
Winter evenings had ever been a penance, when Pietr was most likely to be plagued by old memories and sorrows. He missed his wife, though that ache had grown dull with age and was softened—finally—by many joyous memories.
The problem was not missing a departed spouse, but rather, missing himself. The part of him that wasn’t a vicar, wasn’t a brother, wasn’t a neighbor. The man, the person. The living, breathing, hungering, raging, pondering, lusting male nobody ever saw.
“The part of me that is not now and never will be a reliable, unprepossessing gelding.” Where had that fellow been, and why was he choosing now to make a reappearance?
Pietr closed up the barn and braved the cold, dark walk back to the kitchen and to all the temptations and insights to be had therein.
Chapter Four
Joy was famished now that a laden tray sat on the sturdy wooden table across from the kitchen hearth. A stout black tea was steeping, and the house had acquired the profound quiet of a winter night, though the hour was early. She had braided her hair, the fire’s soothing warmth at her back, and all the while, her mind had been far from quiet.
Of all men, Vicar Pietr Sorenson tempted her to foolishness.
Because he was vigorous of body and mind?
Because he was good-hearted?
Because he was forbidden?
Other men had earned her notice, though only in passing. One had a clever turn of phrase, another was an inspired dancer, a third made an excellent partner at whist. Ever since she’d ventured past propriety with a long-ago singing teacher, she’d felt little curiosity regarding how any particular man comported himself behind a closed bedroom door.
The poets lied outrageously. There were no rainbows and raptures. There was a lot of fumbling and muttering and awkwardness. Then, when the fellow had found satisfaction, worse awkwardness ensued.
The vicar had her wondering, though, about what might happen with him behind a closed kitchen door—fumbling and awkwardness would have no part in the proceedings, of that she was certain.
And yet, further speculations about private encounters with Pietr Sorenson were pointless. He was a gentleman, and Joy was soon to be promised to another. She nonetheless allowed herself to assist Mr. Sorenson to remove his cloak when he returned from his chores.
“I’ll set that milk in the window box,” she said, accepting the jug from him. “The cream will have risen in time for our morning tea.”
“And we shall have plenty of eggs,” he replied, taking three brown eggs from his pockets. “We had a stretch of sunny days last week, and I usually keep a lantern lit in the barn, hence the largesse. If ever you need a topic for the churchyard, bring up how well the hens are laying, and all the local philosophers will have something profound to offer on the topic.”
And Pietr Sorenson would not merely pretend to listen to that wisdom, he’d give it his whole attention.
“I peeked in on Hiram,” Joy said. “He’s utterly cast away, though he did not seem overly warm to me.” He had looked once again like a youth, a boy lost in slumber, not a man who’d completed his studies and was ready to find his place in the world.
The vicar hung up his cloak, thwacked his hat against a muscular thigh, and hung the hat on the same peg. “Perhaps a cold has him in its grip. Colds can impersonate an ague. When he’s not escorting you across the tundra, what occupies young Mr. Danforth?”
“The usual amusements. He came down from university last spring and was in great demand by the hostesses. Papa and Mama have high hopes for him.”
The vicar wiped his boots on the worn carpet at the back door and plowed his fingers through his hair. “Does Hiram have any aspirations for himself?”
Joy led the way back to the kitchen’s warmth. The cats sat on the raised hearth, looking vaguely annoyed, as cats often did.
“Hiram aspires to affix himself upon Lord Apollo Bellingham’s coattails, there to bide until an heiress or other serendipitous opportunity takes notice of him. My brother wasn’t much of a scholar. He has no vocation for the Church. The military is fresh out of wars to wage, and a diplomatic post is best undertaken by those with some gift for tact.”
“Your brother is a gentleman
, then. They also serve, who keep the tailors employed.” Mr. Sorenson washed his hands at the wet sink, then took down a hanging ham. “Would you like some meat with our repast? This is a very good smoked ham.”
“I would, thank you.”
First, he chopped up a generous serving for the cats, which provoked a soft mewling noise from the vicinity of his breast pocket.
“Somebody else is hungry,” he said, returning the ham to its hook and the knife to a washbasin. “A great strapping lad was lurking beneath the straw pile.”
He reached into his waistcoat and produced a ball of gray fur. “Behold, I bring you tidings of great joy. The resident lion deigned to come in for supper.”
The lion was clearly of the same lineage as the Norse cats, right down to the luxurious coat and tufted ears. Said lion was a juvenile exponent of that grand race and wore an expression of perpetual dismay, as if the world sorely affronted one of his tender sensibilities.
“Does he have a name?”
“Köttr. Cat, in the ancient language of my mother’s antecedents.”
“Cat? That’s the best you could do?”
“He answers to it, when there’s ham involved.” Mr. Sorenson set the kitten down with the larger beasts, who made room for him around the feast. “The kitten will go with me to the cathedral. The older fellows are too set in their ways, but Köttr has a vocation.”
“How can you tell?”
“He’s never caught a mouse. That’s a sure sign of spiritual sophistication in a cat, according to Mrs. Peabody.”
Köttr certainly enjoyed a good appetite. “Spiritual sophistication or laziness?”
The vicar washed his hands again, and without even being reminded to. “Is Hiram lazy?”
The cozy kitchen, the quiet, and the weight of a day that hadn’t gone as planned all conspired to rob Joy of sororal loyalty.
“If Hiram is an example of what happens to decent boys sent off to university, we ought to close the doors of both Oxford and Cambridge. He did well enough at public school. He had friends whose company I could enjoy, though they were boys, with all the noise, bluster, and vulgarity attendant thereto.”
A Rogue in Winter Page 5