Page 13 of Fair as a Star

“Yes?”

“You haven’t heard any gossip about me, have you? About why I left the village?”

Winnifred affected a high degree of interest in the trimmings on her skirts. “What sort of gossip?”

“The unpleasant variety.”

“Oh, that.” Winnifred fell quiet for a moment. “I don’t give any credit to it. If you’d done something wrong—something scandalous—I’d know about it, wouldn’t I?”

“What are they saying?” Beryl asked.

“It’s rather malicious.”

Beryl’s stomach turned over on itself. “Go on. I want to know.”

“Very well.” Winnifred inhaled a deep breath, as if steeling herself to deliver bad news. “The prevailing rumor is that you went away to have a baby.”

“A baby?” Beryl’s arm slid nervelessly from her sister’s.

“And that isn’t the half of it. There are some in the village who’ve suggested that Jack Rivenhall was the father. They say that’s why you missed his funeral. That you were distraught because you’d been having a secret love affair with him, and had been left unmarried and with child.”

Beryl’s knees went weak. It was all she could do to keep walking. “How do they imagine any of that could have happened with Jack away soldiering for two years or more?”

“Lord knows. I didn’t say it was reliable gossip. Just malicious.” Winnifred’s finely arched brows snapped together in a scowl. “And now you’ve gone pale.” She drew Beryl to a stone garden bench tucked beneath a nearby rose arbor. “Come. You’d best sit down before you faint.”

Beryl sank onto the bench without protest. She was almost afraid to ask. “Is that the worst of it?”

“That you cuckolded Sir Henry with his own dead brother?” Winnifred took a seat beside her. “How could it be any worse?”

It could be the truth, that’s how.

But Beryl couldn’t give voice to her fears. “You’re right. It’s quite bad enough. I must make an effort to quell it, for everyone’s sake.”

“How can you?”

“By doing what I’ve always done. Showing myself in the village. Making myself of use. It’s harder to gossip about someone who does you a kindness.”

“Harder,” Winnifred said grimly, “but not impossible.”

Mark rarely used the gig when paying calls on his parishioners in the village, and never in the summer. He enjoyed the walk back to the vicarage too much to forego it. The gently curving path ran beneath a canopy of trees alongside the harebell-blanketed banks of the Worthy River.

Though one couldn’t exactly call it a river.

It was merely a tributary of the River Brue, and a smallish one at that. But it was one of the loveliest places in Shepton Worthy. Soft with color and fragrance, and kissed by sweet summer breezes.

As he walked, his coat thrown over one arm, and his cravat loosened in a minor concession to the heat, Mark turned his face up to the clear blue sky, letting the sun warm his skin.

A muffled sound came from up ahead. He recognized it immediately. It was a sound he often heard when ministering to the sick and ill, or when sitting with the recently bereaved. It was someone weeping softly.

A lady weeping.

He slowed his step, debating whether or not to proceed. Avoidance was the easiest course. It would save him the trouble of interfering, and very likely spare the embarrassment of the poor woman. She obviously didn’t want to be disturbed. Why else had she come to such a remote spot to do her weeping?

But he couldn’t walk away. The villagers were his responsibility. If he could give someone comfort or counsel, he was duty bound to do it.

Advancing carefully through the trees, he passed under a low-hanging branch and through a gap in a wild tangle of shrubbery. No sooner had he done so that he came to a jarring halt. His breath stopped in his chest.

It was Beryl Burnham.