Sophie wondered at her brittle, barely concealed sarcasm... or was it wistfulness? Did she fear herself a spinster? Miss Blake was no longer in the first blush of youth, but she was still an attractive woman, and still young enough to marry. Had she wished to marry Captain Overtree herself? Sophie hoped not.
She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want to ask a hurtful question or say the wrong thing. Had Miss Blake ever been engaged? Had a suitor? Flirted with the Overtree brothers? Perhaps she would ask Kate sometime. She doubted she’d have the courage to ask Captain Overtree himself.
“I have not seen your marriage mentioned in the papers,” Miss Blake said. “And you know some say the newspaper announcement is more important than the wedding itself, socially speaking, of course.”
Mrs. Overtree interjected, “I intend to remedy that, never fear. I shall write to theTimesand theCouriermyself. Something simple, I think, like: ‘Lately, Captain Stephen Overtree of the 28th North Gloucestershire Regiment, to Miss Sophie Dupont of Bath.’”
“Nothing about Sophie’s family? Or the wedding itself?” Miss Blake asked.
“Sometimes less is more.”
“So...” Miss Blake glanced at the captain, fingering the fringe on the sofa cushion. “I suppose your brother attended as witness? Or was it that friend of yours from the army, Keith something?”
“Neither, actually. Wesley has sailed for Italy again. And Lieutenant Keith was... indisposed. Though he did mention he would be coming here. In fact, I am surprised he isn’t here already.”
“Do you expect him soon?” Miss Blake asked.
“Yes, I do.”
“Heaven help us all,” Mrs. Overtree sighed. “I shall have to warn Cook to double her recipes.”
chapter 10
After the captain excused himself and Mrs. Overtree left to talk to the cook, Kate looked out the window and said, “Come, Sophie. The sun is out and the wind has died down. Let us go and take a turn around the grounds.”
“Thank you. I would enjoy that.”
She and Kate went to retrieve their wraps, bonnets, and gloves, while Miss Blake reclaimed hers from the footman. They went out a side door and through a stone archway into a walled garden beyond.
“In a month or so, there will be flowers everywhere,” Kate said.
For the present, they enjoyed the circle of shaped hedges, the topiaries, vine-covered trellises, and fountain. They walked around the back of the house, past a lawn-bowling green and a pretty stream crossed by a small stone bridge. Then they continued around the side, near the stables.
There, Miss Blake pointed to a rooftop visible through the trees beyond the garden wall. “Windmere lies just there. See that door in the wall? I use it more than anyone, I think.”
They continued their circle around the house until they approached the front. There Sophie admired a charming dovecote resembling a miniature cottage with a tiled roof.
As they reached the entrance gate, Kate pointed out the church on its other side.
“Have you met our vicar?” Miss Blake asked her.
“No, not yet,” Sophie replied.
Sophie’s gaze trailed over the stone wall separating the manor from the churchyard with its leaning cankered headstones and junipers dotted with frosty white and blue berries.
Kate began to explain something of the history of the church, but Sophie wasn’t really listening. She was not fond of moldering old churches. And besides that, she was distracted by something. An awareness. A prickle of unease crept up her neck, as though someone was watching her. She looked at Miss Blake beside her, but the woman’s gaze remained on the church. Sophie glanced over her shoulder at the manor and saw a curtain fall back into place in a top-story window.Hadsomeone been watching them? A little shiver passed over her, even as she told herself she was being foolish. Probably only a curious housemaid. Hadn’t Mrs. Overtree said their rooms were up there?
A thin young man with light reddish-blond hair stepped out of the church.
“There’s Mr. Harrison,” Kate said, abruptly ending her history lecture and breaking away from their trio, walking over to speak to the man over the low wall.
“The vicar is such a young man,” Sophie observed.
“Oh no, that isn’t the vicar,” Miss Blake said, making no move to follow Kate. “That is his... well... son.”
“Why do you say it like that?”
“Mr. Nelson and his wife took in David Harrison there when he was a lad of five or six. Raised him as their own.”
