“I…”
He tapped the side of his nose. “I heard enough to know you spoke kindly to each other, and that you meant every word. That’s all the Almighty requires. I don’t know what sorrows you both carry, and I don’t need to. The Lord reads hearts better than gossip does. You’ve got a good one, Lady Adeline. That’s plain enough.”
Tears pricked her eyes. “You’re very generous, sir.”
“Not I,” he said. “God is. I’m merely His errand boy. Now, up with you, before my wife finds you wandering and gives you the lecture I haven’t the heart to.”
She curtsied, flustered and grateful, and escaped into her room with her face still warm and her heart unaccountably lighter.
By midmorning the house was bright with movement. The vicar and Winston spread a map across the dining table, marking the roads that might be passable. Mud steamed in the sunlight beyond the window. When all was in readiness, the vicar’s wife pressed a small basket of food into Adeline’s hands.
“You’ll be hungry before the next inn,” she said. “There’s bread, cheese, and a pie. And one apple tart, if His Grace behaves.”
Adeline smiled. “I’ll make sure he does.”
The journey was slow but sweetly quiet. Winston sat beside her, one arm resting along the seat’s back, his other hand finding hers in the middle of a story and not leaving it again. The countryside unfurled around them in green and gold, washed clean by the storm. He spoke first of his childhood, of the times he’d escaped his governess to fish for minnows in the Greystone brook, of the secret path through the orchard wall he had sworn to Cordelia he’d never made.
“I used to think,” he said, “that if I could just get far enough into the woods, no one could make me return. I never did, of course. By nightfall I was always back at the door, pretending I’d been lost so she wouldn’t scold.”
Adeline laughed softly. “I used to hide in woods, too but not for adventure. My mother and I built a little shelter once, a sort of bower made of branches and a fallen trunk. We’d sit there in the evenings and watch the foxes play. She said they were the only creatures clever enough to live without cruelty.”
“She sounds remarkable.”
“She was,” Adeline said, her smile fading. “Before my father began drinking. Before she learned to walk softly so as not to wake his temper.”
Winston’s hand tightened on hers. “I wish I’d known her. I think she’d have made even me behave.”
“Never,” Adeline said. “She’d have spoiled you.”
“Then we’d have suited each other perfectly.”
They shared the laughter that followed, quiet and companionable. When the road steepened, the driver called that the horses would need rest, and Winston told him to stop at the top of the hill, where a copse offered shade.
The air was clear and sweet after the storm. Below them, fields rolled out toward the horizon, patched with water that flashed like glass. The driver led the team to a stream, leaving them with the vicar’s basket. Adeline carried it to a patch of dry grass beside a fallen tree. The sun warmed her shoulders through the thin fabric of her gown. When she looked back, Winston was limping a little but refused her offered hand.
“I’m not entirely broken,” he said.
“You’re not entirely healed either.”
“I’ll accept that.” He sat beside her with a groan that made her laugh again.
She unpacked the basket, bread still faintly warm, a wedge of cheese wrapped in muslin, the promised apple tart gleaming with sugar.
“The vicar’s wife has a kind heart.”
“She’ll have my gratitude for a month of Sundays.”
They ate slowly, sharing the pie and talking of nothing in particular. Of the fields they passed, of whether the rooks would build again after the storm. Winston grew thoughtful as they finished the last crumbs.
“Strange,” he said, watching the sky. “A day like this makes London feel like a fever dream.”
“And this,” Adeline said, “feels like waking.”
He turned his head. “Does it?”
“Yes.” She looked away quickly, flustered by the way his eyes caught hers and held them.
They rose after a while and followed the sound of water until they found the spring. A clear trickle that fell from the hillside and gathered in a shallow pool among moss and stones. Sunlight flashed on the ripples. Winston stooped to cup water in his hand, and when he drank, she watched the movement of his throat, the drops sliding from his fingers.
