Sebastian indicated a neat stone house beside the church.
‘That’s the Vicarage where we all grew up.’ A frown creased his forehead. ‘When Reverend Alder died, the new rector was on the doorstep within a week, demanding we vacate it. I had barely recovered my feet from the wound I’d taken at Talavera, and I had the responsibility for a grieving ten-year-old and an angry fifteen-year-old.’
‘Oh, how awful. What did you do?’
Sebastian sighed. ‘I tried to talk to the new squire, but the old squire had been dead a few years, and this man was a distant cousin with no interest in the village except what rents it brought him. The best he could do was offer me the cottage. It was in a shocking state of disrepair but, between us, we turned it into something habitable. That’s all history now and once Connie and Matt come to Brantstone it will cease to be home.’
‘What will you do with the cottage?’
He smiled. ‘Oh, I have a notion, but I don’t want to spoil any surprises, so I will keep it to myself for now.’
They had reached the lychgate to the churchyard, and Isabel followed him up the uneven flagstones towards the church. Theyentered the porch and stood looking at the heavy oak door. It stood open but Sebastian seemed hesitant to enter.
‘This is where the Reverend Alder found my mother and I on Christmas morning. I was still a babe in arms and my mother near death.’
Isabel stared up at him. ‘He found you here on the church porch?’
He nodded. ‘What few warm things she had, mother had used to wrap me in. I suppose she must have been at the end of her resources and thought that, if she were to die, there was a chance that I might survive and be found by the Christmas churchgoers the next morning. It was sheer chance that the Reverend Alder found her in time.’
Isabel turned to look back at the tranquil village. ‘What brought her here, of all places?’
Sebastian shrugged. ‘My mother never talked about the time between my father’s death and her rescue by the Reverend Alder, so I suppose I will never know.’ He smiled a crooked smile. ‘God, perhaps?’
They stepped into the soft light of the church and stood looking down the aisle towards the sanctuary. The building smelled of dust and damp, mingling together with the scent of furniture polish and candles.
Sebastian entered a pew and kneeled, bending his head over his hands. Isabel slipped in beside him and, closing her eyes, said a brief prayer for Connie’s speedy recovery. Sebastian straightened, and they sat together for a long time in silence, looking up at the altar. The late afternoon sun streamed through the fine stained-glass window of the crucifixion, spilling coloured jewels onto the stone flags.
‘I still expect to see him,’ Sebastian said at last.
‘Your stepfather?’
He nodded.
‘How did he die?’ she asked.
‘He’d gone into Chester for a meeting with the Bishop. Arunaway horse hit him as he was crossing the road. He died four days later.’ He looked at her and rose to his feet. ‘Come, Lady Somerton. There is a beautiful evening waiting for us.’
They walked back out into the sunlight and the peace of the old churchyard.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It had occurred to Sebastian, as he had sat in the church, that this visit to Little Benning marked a transition point, a crossroads between his old life and his new. There could be no turning back now. He had a sense of a job unfinished. One more loose end to tie off.
He scanned the ragged lines of graves. ‘Will you excuse me, Isabel, but while I am here, I should pay respects to my parents,’ he said.
She looked up at him with understanding in her eyes. He had the odd sensation at times that this strange woman seemed to see into his soul.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Do you wish to be alone?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s of no matter to me.’
He strode through the maze of crooked headstones and battered tombs, looking neither right nor left, to the quiet corner of the churchyard where John and Marjory Alder lay together in death as they had been in life. A posy of now dead flowers had been laid by the simple single gravestone. Connie’s work, he suspected.
He laid his hand on the headstone and looked down at the well-tended grave.
‘Did you know that, when a clergyman is buried, he is buried facing the west, not the east,’ he mused.
‘Why?’
