Once the prayer book had been safely put away again, they waited for Mrs. Wickerton to stand, as they were, and make her excuses. But she merely watched them.
“Perhaps we might finish our visit another time?” Aunt Clara asked.
“Of course! You must be wishing for a quiet coze, just the two of you. Don’t mind me.” She flapped a hand, moving spritely for someone of her age, her gray curls bouncing beneath her white cap. “I’ll see myself out.”
“Thank you for visiting, Prudence.”
Mrs. Wickerton smiled at the door. “I look forward to hearing all about your travels, Captain.”
He bowed to her, and she left.
“Come, sit,” Aunt Clara said. “Shall I ring for tea?”
“Yes. I would like that.”
She pulled the bell rope before taking her seat on the sofa again, moving aside the knitting.
Owen sat beside her, flipping back the tail of his coat. He perched on the edge of the sofa and sank into the familiar scent of this house, the view of rolling green Derbyshire hills from the window, the lavender that seemed to cloud his aunt wherever she went. Things he had not realized he’d missed so deeply, but were now bringing him comfort.
And yet, he could not remove from his mind the image of Emma Darling standing in the center of the road, dirty and seemingly broken.
He dragged his thoughts to the woman seated beside him. She had gained more lines about her face, but her gray eyes were comfortingly familiar. “You have not put off the widow’s weeds. It has been more than a year.”
“I cannot bring myself to do it. I know I ought to. It is silly, really.”
“You may grieve in the way you need to.” Heaven knew he’d seen plenty of grief over the last decade. People coped in a variety of ways. His stomach turned, thinking of the men who’d sacrificed for him—the ones he could never repay. Thoughts of them kept him up at night on occasion, but some wounds were slower to heal than others.
Aunt Clara had lost her husband. She could take as much time as she needed to.
“I’ve hardly had time to think of much else. Everything has been in disorder, Owen. It’s been the most dreadful thing—an entire wing of the house blocked off. The garden was dug out but left as it was.”
Dug out. He knew this from Uncle Edward’s letter but stifled a cringe anyway. Perhaps it was a good thing the place which held so many of his memories with Emma was forever changed. “Why did you permit the work to cease, Aunt?”
“I did not know if I would have the funds to pay the workers.” She worried her hands in her lap, revealing the depth of her anxiety on the matter. “If Edward gave all his money to the church, where would that leave me?”
“He would do no such thing.”
“He wasdevout.”
“Yes, but he loved you. He would make certain you are properly cared for. Of that, I have no doubt.”
“We’ll know once the will is read.”
Owen gave her an indulgent smile.
“You will find the neighborhood much changed. There is a new family in Thornbrook Hall, and poor Mr. Overton died, so we have a new rector, but he and his wife are lovely. You will like them both excessively.”
Since Owen could hardly recall Mr. Overton, he did not say anything on this score. The changed person in his mind was Emma. There could not be a situation more altered than hers, surely.
He was curious to know more, but he didn’t wish to incite any gossip. It was unclear how much Aunt Clara recalled of his past feelings for Emma or whether she had even been aware at the time of how deeply he’d thought he’d loved her.
Owen had not understood love then, not truly. It had been a calf’s love. Mere infatuation with a beautiful woman, that was all.
“Emma Darling is much changed,” he found himself saying.
“Do you think so?” Aunt Clara’s gray eyebrows pulled together. “Her situation is vastly altered, I’ll agree. But at her heart, she is the same pleasant girl. I do not know what I would do without her.”
He never should have mentioned her. To speak so plainly about the woman felt like a strange sort of betrayal. But he could not bring himself to stop. “You are friends, then?”
