“A man can change his mind,” he said with mock dignity and caused more good-natured laughter.
Claudia, who did not want her marriage to be turned into a joke, was very glad to hear Piers say, “Seriously, I think you’ll make a fine vicar, Hale.You always had a practical turn of mind and there’s more to the position than abstract theories of divinity.”
“He will thrive in the Church,” Claudia said proudly.“He is bound to receive quick preferment.”
“Bishop before he’s forty,” Fosterson said grinning.
“Goes without saying,” Joseph agreed.“What about you, Withy?Of all of us, I had you marked for a life of research in Oxford.I think the professor had you marked to succeed him.”
“I would have if he’d ever settled to the one subject,” Claudia’s father said affectionately.“Ill-disciplined cub!Fine brain for analysis, though—what on earth do you do with it now?”
“Oh, try to make the estates profitable,” Piers said vaguely.“Find solutions...”
“To what?”Hubble asked.“Jacobin fervour?Which steward is diddling you?”
“Oh, no, the stewards were never a problem, and the countryside is not much given to Jacobinism.But we have had a few more basic puzzles to solve.”
“Like what?”Mal Keith asked, clearly intrigued.“And who iswe?”
“April and I.”Piers sounded surprised to be asked, and everyone else seemed just as startled by his answer.“We had to find the mother of a baby abandoned on our doorstep at the beginning of the year.Another time, there was a body in my home wood.What else April?Haggs’s portrait – you remember Peter Haggard?”
They all remembered Haggs.
“Lord Bilston’s murder,” April reminded him.“Oh, and Aunt Prudence’s missing treasures.”
“But we don’t talk about those,” Piers said.“Oh, and we tracked my cousin Bertie down when he got into a spot of trouble in Portugal.”
“You went to thePeninsula?”Mrs.Hubble exclaimed.“In war time?”
“Oh, Portugal was perfectly safe by then,” Piers said, and April nodded, a soft smile on her face that made Claudia’s stomach clench.“Actually, we were married there.”He raised his glass to Claudia and Joseph, and to the Hubbles.“To marriage, which I heartily recommend.”
There was more laughter at that, and Claudia’s smile felt fixed and frozen.Until Piers, colouring slightly, made another toast.“And to parenthood.We are expecting the happy event around September.”
At least the explosion of pain came with a leavening of relief and understanding.
So that is why he married her.
