Page 32 of Fair as a Star

Winnifred grudgingly got up and moved with them to the pew behind Sir Henry’s. Aunt Hortensia was already there, examining the church decorations through the lenses of her lorgnette.

“Are you responsible for this?” she asked as Beryl sat down next to her. “All this floral nonsense?”

Clusters of greenery, wildflowers, and ribbons hung at the end of each pew. A delicate, eminently tasteful decoration. Beryl had spent an entire afternoon affixing them, and was rather pleased with how they looked. “You don’t like them?”

“Can’t see any point in such fripperies. Not inside a church.”

“They’re the same flowers and ribbons the ladies’ committee is using to decorate the stalls at the fete.”

Aunt Hortensia gave a grunt of disapproval. “Commerce.”

“It isn’t commerce. It’s charity. Everything the villagers sell at the fete was made with their own hands, and all of the proceeds go to help the church.” Beryl had spent most of her life in Shepton Worthy volunteering for such events. It was how she’d kept her mind occupied. How she’d kept the melancholy at bay.

Indeed, she’d often suspected that it was this very propensity for charitable endeavors that had first attracted Henry’s notice. That he’d seen her doggedly visiting the sick and helping to raise funds for the church and concluded that she was perfectly suited to be the wife of a country baronet. A lady who would engage in appropriate activities—who wasn’t prone to silliness or excess, but instead devoted to the wellbeing of others.

And she did care about the villagers and the church, about the sick and the needy. But her work on various committees wasn’t altruistic. It was selfish. A means of combating a private demon.

No one knew that, because no one knew her. No one but Mark.

She gazed up at him as the service started. He was clothed as soberly as Mr. Venable, but unlike the vicar—or any clergyman Beryl had encountered before—Mark looked startlingly handsome in his clerical garments. He was tall and broad-shouldered, his dark hair attractively rumpled, though he must have recently combed it.

He’d been running his fingers through it again. It was a sure sign that he was distracted. Troubled, even. That, and the uncommon solemnity in his blue eyes.

She wondered what was wrong.

Whatever it was, it didn’t inhibit his reading of the scripture. His voice was steady and thoughtful as he read a passage from the Old Testament. When he’d finished, he led them in a psalm before making way for Mr. Venable at the carved walnut pulpit.

The vicar cleared his throat several times before beginning his sermon with a wheezing passage from John: “‘A woman, when she is in travail, hath sorrow…’”

Five minutes dragged into ten. Beryl’s mind was just beginning to wander when her attention was arrested by the queerest sound. It was coming from the back of the church. An odd hissing noise that stopped and started several times, growing ever closer.

From his seat in the chancel, Mark glanced down the aisle. A look of almost comical dismay came over his face.

Beryl turned in her seat to follow his gaze. Her eyes widened in horror.

It was Ernest. His lead dragging behind him, he was making his way to her up the aisle, stopping intermittently to lift his hind leg against the greenery that hung on the end of the pews.

Mark gave a choked cough.

Beryl didn’t dare meet his eyes. She rose from her seat in a flash, strode down the aisle and swept Ernest up in her arms and straight out of the church.

She carried him into the churchyard, the vicar’s sermon trailing behind them on the morning breeze. He must not have seen Ernest—or heard him. Beryl prayed no one else had either.

“You naughty, naughty little dog,” she whispered. “To have done such a thing, and in a church of all places. Have you no sense of decency?”

Ernest gave her cheek a penitent lick.

A gurgle of laughter rose in her chest. She bit her cheek to stifle it. If Mama or Aunt Hortensia followed her out, it wouldn’t do for them to find her giggling at such vulgar behavior.

But moments later, it wasn’t her mother or aunt who appeared around the side of the church. It was Mark. He was still in his cassock and surplice.

“Oh no,” she said. “Have I disrupted the service?”

He shook his head. Suppressed mirth gleamed in his eyes. “I slipped out through the side door. No one else appears to have noticed a thing.”

“Not even the villagers at the back?”

“Not that I could tell. Most were looking at Venable. The rest were half asleep.”