Page 28 of Miss Ashbury and the Anatomy of Mending a Heart

“I’ve never heard of a better match. I’m so happy for you both.”

She was, truly. James and Candace were meant for each other. Still, Vera ignored the little pang in her heart. It wasn’t jealousy—at least, not the way she understood it. She didn’t begrudge them for having found each other, and she certainly hadn’t wanted to marry James. But she did want someone who fit her as well as James fit Candace—someone who was hers and hers alone.

That was a well-worn hope, a coin that had been tossed into a wishing fountain years ago and left to tarnish, forgotten.

“How is Adelaide feeling?” Vera asked, to draw her own attention away.

Candace looked heavenward. “I daresay she’d be feeling a lot better if my brother would calm down. He’s far more nervous about the business than she is.”

“A matter of personality, I suppose.”

“He’s always been a bit high-strung.”

“They say that redheads often are,” Vera said lightly.

Candace pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. “Statements like that simply aren’t fair. Now if I respond with anything other than perfect grace, I’ll only be proving your point.”

“That is the joke.”

“What of the baron? Does he share his mother’s hair color?”

Vera nodded, though she was perplexed at the conversation’s return to Stephen. Though she supposed it was natural—the countryside only offered so many topics, and a newcomer would be high on the list for weeks.

Candace gave a sly smile. “Do you remember when we first arrived in Devon?”

Vera couldn’t imagine what on earth had made her friend look so smug, but she knew better than to trust the expression.

“Are you referring to your brief, passionate affair with the gin?” Vera offered, trying to distract her from whatever mischief her mind had conceived. “Because I do remember that, yes.”

She waved a hand covered in delicate white lace. “Not that. I’m speaking of that silly game I made you play—the one where you answered a series of questions about what you wanted your life to look like.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Candace. And don’t get any ideas into your head, I mean it.”

For Vera did remember. Candace had pressed her into playing, guilted her into answering what kind of man she’d prefer to marry.

“You said he’d have dark hair and live in the country,” Candace insisted.

“And you claimed you’d marry a blonde who lived in the city. We all know how accurate that turned out to be.”

Candace just laughed—as a happily married woman, she was far past the point of injury when it came to previous speculation.

This was the problem with married people, Vera thought. As soon as they wed, they completely forgot the feeling of being unattached. It was as if a giant eraser moved over the blackboard of their mind, swabbing out all the fear, the uncertainty, all the little inconveniences and loneliness with which they’d once been so well acquainted.

They told their single friends not to worry, not to take it so seriously. It was as if they believed that since it had worked out for them, it would certainly work out for everyone, eventually.

That wasn’t true. That wasn’t the reality of things. But pointing that out to a happily attached person was pointless. They forgot that things didn’t always work out so neatly for others as it had for them. They also forgot that a good match took far more than two eligible people living in the same general vicinity as each other.

“Very well,” Candace conceded. “I just want to point out that the baron has dark hair and lives in the country.”

“He also stomps around frowning at everyone who crosses his path.” Vera nodded toward the hedgerow, where the boys’ giggling could be heard. “Even Benjamin—his own brother—wants nothing to do with him.”

Her eyebrows raised. “That sounds grim, indeed.”

“That is precisely the word for it—grim. Speaking to him is grim. Being in the same room with him is grim. Looking at him is grim.”

“He isn’t at all handsome?”

Vera held herself back from rolling her eyes and settled on sighing instead—as if him being handsome had anything to do with it.