Where were her words?
He strode after her, and soon they reached the back side ofwhat had once been the church. Here the gentleman—because he had to be a gentleman with those clothes, that way of speaking—could see the ruins, the toppled stones, everything open to the sky.
“There is no parson,” she said, once again out of breath.
He looked at the grass growing where the chancel had been. “Because there is no church.”
“No. Not for centuries. Sacked by a mob who hoped to find popish gold.”
She smiled, but he did not smile back, just examined her with those eyes of pale ice ringed by a darker blue.
His face had a stoniness to it, as if it had been hewn from a quarry. But this gentleman must not always keep his face still because the marvelous expanse of his forehead had creases, so someone or something puzzled him from time to time. Like her, he had gray in his hair, but his was confined to his temples while hers had completely obliterated her brown. There were fine lines by his eyes and grooves by his well-shaped mouth with lips that were not too full, not too thin, but just right. And his nose . . .
His nose was delightful. Truly. It might be the best thing about his face because it was not the nose one expected of a gentleman. It veered towards the blobby rather than the aristocratic. It was a bit wide across the bridge and a bit crooked, and she immediately wanted to know what it would feel like to have the tip of it—that round softness—rubbing against her own nose or across her cheek.
Unbidden, her hand came up to her face, and she stroked her cheek.
He watched her hand. For a moment, it was as if they were both under a spell. Her touching her cheek, him watching her touch her cheek.
The spell was broken when the lines next to his eyes became deeper, darker, more obvious, and she realized he hadwinced. And he had almost certainly winced because her hand was crusted in dirt.
“Yark,” she yipped and scrubbed at her cheek with her sleeve since her apron was soiled from neck to hem.
He turned to survey the churchyard, giving her a moment of privacy.
“No church. No parson,” he said. “I suppose it’s too much to hope for a church register.”
She started to laugh, but his face held no trace of a smile. None. Had he made a joke? If so, what a dry mock, indeed.
He went on, “I was deceived by the intact wall at the front.”
“Oh, yes,” she said eagerly. “Did you see the elephant?”
But, of course, he must have. The elephant gargoyle was huge and strange, impossible to miss. One would have to be blind not to remark upon it. Certainly, he had seen it.
It was good Susannah answered her own question because the gentleman did not.
Instead, he said, “I was also fooled by the neatness of the churchyard. You must be the keeper’s wife.” He looked at her again.
Under his cool gaze, her head suddenly felt intolerably warm, so she fumbled at her bonnet ribbons with her grimy hands and took off her bonnet and fanned herself with it.
“No, no, no. I’m no one’s wife, and there’s no keeper. I cut the grass and pull the weeds because everyone else who ever knew the people buried here are also long dead themselves.”
“That makes you an unpaid keeper, Miss . . .”
“Beasley,” she said without hesitation. But then some queer pique took hold of her. He was a man who thought he deserved answers when he couldn’t even be bothered to ask questions.
She frowned at him. “Isn’t that how one could describealmost every woman in the world? An unpaid keeper of one kind or another?”
He had nothing to say to that. Very few people would. She saw his Adam’s apple go up and down.
“Then no one has been buried here for centuries,” he said.
Another non-question, but the words felt weighty, like a warning. Oh, no. Oh, no. Was she mistaken, and this man was not an out-of-place gentleman but an official of some kind? A churchyard inspector who was here to discover the grave, disinter the remains, and punish her with something much worse than being sent to Coventry.
He tilted his head to the side ever so slightly. “I don’t suppose you know the name Puddlewick.”
No, this was not what she had feared. Not at all. This man was trying to discover an entirely different secret.
