Page 10 of Courting the Vicar’s Daughter

“Miss Robin.” He barely remembered to bid her goodbye with a deep nod before giving greeting to the woman who’d somehow held his attention even while he spoke to another.

Harry moved to block her progress, though Miss Ames had stopped of her own volition to speak to a woman who held the hand of a little girl. Harry couldn’t help but overhear the conversation.

“Mrs. Sutterfield, Miss Rachel, how good to see you both. But where are your other charming children today, Mrs. Sutterfield? I hope everyone is well,” Miss Ames said, her voice a mixture of concern and cheer.

“Well enough, Miss Ames,” the woman answered, real warmth in her words. “Thank you for asking. Frederick and Robert have colds and stayed behind to rest. It’s the turn in the weather, of course.”

The Sutterfields, he vaguely recalled, owned land on the other side of Annesbury Village.

“I do hope they feel better soon.” Miss Ames bid the woman good day, then turned to Harry with an air of expectancy to her posture.

“Mr. Devon, it is good to see you again. I hope you have sufficiently recovered from our last meeting.” Though her smile remained polite, Harry saw the hesitancy in her gray eyes.

“I have, thank you. Has Bell found herself up any more trees?” he asked, sharing what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “If need be, you may call on me to rescue her again.”

Her cheeks turned a little pink. “I hope that will not be necessary, Mr. Devon, though I thank you for the offer of your services. At present, I have a different request to make. I told my father you returned to the neighborhood. He wished me to extend an invitation to you to dine with us, this evening if convenient.”

“This evening?” Harry stood taller. His memories of her father were nothing spectacular. He had sat through the man’s sermons when he attended church with his sisters but had no distinct memories good or bad. His father, on the other hand, had never had anything good to say about the vicar. That alone made Harry disposed to like the man.

“Or perhaps another time,” she said when he hesitated too long. “When your family can spare you.”

Harry hurried to reassure her. “This evening would be perfect, actually. I look forward to seeing you both.”

Miss Ames offered him another polite, slightly bland smile, then gave him the time for dinner and took her leave. He watched her retreating form with curiosity, but only for a moment. Another old neighbor greeted him, and by the time he looked up again she was gone. Harry finally made his way out of the church to find Christine and Thomas, conversing with their neighbors in the churchyard.

“We are delighted to have my brother with us,” Christine was saying to three different women gathered near her, their bonnets bobbing up and down as she spoke. “Though I cannot say how long he will remain. Young gentlemen tend to be restless, I suppose.”

That’s one word for it. Harry didn’t feel so much restless as aimless. He steeled himself to enter the conversation, prepared for curious mothers and tittering ladies to attempt filling his social schedule. As much as he disliked London, one of its benefits would be relative anonymity. At home, everyone knew his name, even if they didn’t truly know him.

Harry stepped forward, fixing his most amiable smile in place.

§

“The Devon boy. I must confess feeling a measure of curiosity over the sort of man he’s grown into.” Daisy’s father spoke in his usual ponderous manner, the words coming from him slowly, as though coated in molasses. His voice, deep and soothing, had grown a little rougher with his age. Knowing his habits as she did, Daisy hummed in agreement as she tidied his study. They employed a manservant, housekeeper, cook, maid of all work, and a kitchen maid, but Daisy knew her father liked his study organized a certain way and made it part of her own work. There had been other servants in the past, before her sisters married and her father decided to use part of his income to hire a curate.

“His father, God rest him, wasn’t a pleasant person for all that he was an important one,” Mr. Ames continued, stuffing his pipe with tobacco. He settled more deeply into his chair. “Do stop fussing, Augusta. It is the Sabbath.”

She straightened the letters on his desk. “I like to have busy hands, Father.”

“One of your virtues, I’ll grant you, but you would be better occupied to pass the time in quiet reflection.”

Reflecting on any point of her life seemed a rather useless way to spend her time. For two years, she’d been her father’s only child at home. Six years previous, she lost her mother to influenza. Lily married shortly after and left for India. Gabriella went away with her Naval officer. It fell to Daisy to care for Father, home, and the parish charitable duties. And still, she tended to her personal dreams of the school.

She came to sit in the chair beside her father’s. “What did you think of the sermon today, Father?”

He puffed on his pipe, its rich scent wafting through the room. Mother had always disliked when he smoked indoors and limited the recreation to the study. Despite all the years since her loss he never took the pipe out of the room. Though her parents had never been overly demonstrative in their affection for one another, it was comforting to know he honored her memory in such a simple way.

“Mr. Haskett did well,” her father said, sounding thoughtful. “I am not entirely in favor of the way he creates his own sermons so often. There are more than enough good texts in the world to read from. Greater minds than his, and mine, have already written the finest of speeches regarding the state of mortal man.”

Her father’s views didn’t surprise her at all. He’d read many of the most famous sermons over the years, relying on texts his bishop recommended to him, and their library was evidence in his favor that more than enough had been published on every moral topic imaginable.

“I think it shows a desire to meet the people’s present needs,” Daisy ventured to say.

“Perhaps. You did always like creative sorts, being one yourself.” The tone he used to say those words was speculative, not pleased. Her father was the sort of man who believed if one method worked, you needn’t waste energy trying anything new or different.

I’m not certain I would call Mr. Haskett creative, she thought to herself, affecting an expression one might wear during quiet reflection. His sermons are nearly as dry as those read from books.

A knock on the door brought her attention away from her thoughts and the maid appeared, a cheerful smile on her face. “Mr. Devon has arrived for dinner, Mr. Ames.”