Chapter 14

H

AVING ARRIVED AT the central square of Haven and turned the stolid mule over to the blacksmith for a warm wait in one of the smithy stalls, Norah was nearly wild with the need to escape the presence of the handsome couple. Emmeline was positively basking in the attention of her hero and John gazed down at Emmeline with warmth and tranquil appreciation.

He wasn’t even being sickening, the way most men were when Emmeline was twining them around her finger. He was simply very good to her and Em clearly liked and admired him.

So why did Norah feel like screaming at them both?

“Oh look, the sweets shop! I adore sweets! Go on without me, I’ll catch up in a moment!” She was being strange and she knew it, but it didn’t stop her from actually fleeing their perfectly perfect perfectness. She blew into the shop and leaned against the shut door, her eyes shut tight and her heart aching.

“Ahem. May I help you, Miss Grey?”

Norah opened her eyes to see a pretty young woman in a spotless apron behind the counter. There was something familiar about her pert nose...

“You must be a Higgins.”

The woman—or possibly girl, for when she smiled she looked no more than seventeen—nodded excitedly. “Yes, miss! I am! Did my auntie tell you about me?”

Auntie? Miss Higgins?

Norah shook her head, blinking at the sheer breadth of the Higgins dynasty. So many children. A stab of envy jabbed her directly between her ribs.

Getting ahold of herself, she straightened from her ridiculous pose against the door. “It’s very nice to meet you, Miss Higgins—”

“Oh no miss!” The girl giggled. “I’m Mrs. Felton. Did you see the sign above the door? Felton’s Sweets. My Ronnie’s da owns the shop.”

A husband, at her age? Norah suddenly felt every year of her spinsterdom like a wide stretch of desert before her.

Why do I mind? I don’t even like the notion of marriage!

Dotty Auntie Nottie was still her destiny and she’d best get used to it. She stared at the rows of jars filled with bit of sugary color. They reminded her of the trays of jellies, and sitting in the firelight with Vicar Barton, sharing their shadowed histories.

Call me John.

She shook off the spell of memory and forced a smile for the dewy Mrs. Feldon. “I’d like to buy something that the children of Haven favor especially.”

 

 

ACROSS THE SQUARE, John waited patiently for Lady Emmeline to purchase every green, blue-green, and yellow-green ribbon in the establishment. The milliner, Mrs. Corbin, was ecstatic.

“I bought up too many yards, Vicar,” she confessed to John quietly. “It right worried me with the ball tonight and me havin’ so much left unsold.”

“Well, Lady Emmeline is a keen patron of—of fashion, I’ve noticed.”

“Oh, aye! Isn’t she a grand picture? Like a princess come to our little village of Haven.” She gave John a wink. “A princess needs herself a knight in shining armor, Vicar, don’t ye reckon?”

It seemed a strange thing to say. John merely smiled benignly and wondered to where Miss Grey had disappeared.

When John and Emmeline left the milliner’s, with John toting an astonishingly large paper parcel packed with nothing but ribbon, they spotted Miss Grey leaving Felton’s sweet shop with an even larger bundle of something that could only be sweets. John smiled. Miss Grey did love her confections.

“Oh, we’re done already.” Lady Emmeline sighed. “It’s hours until we need to get ready for the ball. I don’t want to go back to the manor yet.”

Knowing that she’d spent much of the last week abed, John couldn’t blame Lady Emmeline for her resistance to returning.

Miss Grey looked as if she wouldn’t mind leaving half an hour ago, or even as if she hadn’t come at all. Something in John rose to the challenge of impressing her. “May I give you ladies a tour of the vicarage?”

Miss Grey bit her bottom lip. Lady Emmeline didn’t hesitate. “Yes! Excellent notion, sir! I’m absolutely perishing to see the vicarage!”

 

 

SOMEHOW VICAR JOHN Barton had tiptoed into Norah’s dreams and built the very house for which she had always wished. It was achingly familiar and simultaneously surprising, the way that the windows were wide and tall and the daylight fell just so upon the floors. How she would have arrange the parlor just the same, and how the graceful curve of the banister leading up the stairs fit beneath her hand as if she’d used it all her life.

Emmeline didn’t hesitate to peek into the mostly empty bedchambers, so Norah did as well. She saw the one meant to be a cozy nursery and she ached to see it filled. She glimpsed a single wide, curtained bed and blushed for the next ten minutes, for she would have chosen those very same rich blue jacquard draperies herself for the pleasure of seeing the firelight cast a glow of perfect evening light behind the privacy of their folds.

Emmeline was less impressed. “You’ll be painting all this wooden paneling, I assume?”

John’s voice was warm but firm. “I like the wood. I cut the paneling just that way to show off the grain.”

Emmeline was flabbergasted. “You. You cut the wood. Did you built this house? With your actual hands?”

Norah felt her heart beat faster yet. She stroked her fingertips over the silky finish of the warm oak doorframe and shivered slightly. She didn’t have to ask if he’d done it himself. He’d done it all with those strong, capable hands. She could see him everywhere, feel him in every square foot. It was part of him.

Emmeline’s voice broke the spell. “But she works for you! She should cook them!”

Norah tried to ignore her thudding heart and followed Emmeline’s voice—it was her irritated voice, oddly enough—down the back stairs to the cellar.

She found Emmeline and the vicar standing amid heaping bushel baskets of ... parsnips? Yes, parsnips. Hundreds of them, stored most improperly too, if she was not mistaken. Some would be rotting underneath, although at the moment the chill was keeping the cellar air sweet enough.

Emmeline turned to Norah, pulling her into what had clearly become a debate. “Nottie, his Higgins brings him raw parsnips and just leaves them that way!”

Vicar Barton looked amused and a little sheepish. He shrugged and smiled at Norah. “I’ve never had the heart to tell Mrs. Higgins that I don’t know how to cook. She’ll just want to do it for me, but she already works so hard. I’m sure it’s dead simple, but as I cannot yet brew a decent pot of tea, it is quite beyond me. I think I’m a little bit defective in the kitchen.”

Norah couldn’t help but find the secret cache of guilty parsnips adorable.

I’m so smitten that I would likely find a random roomful of badgers adorable.

“Of course you cannot cook! The very idea!” Emmeline was incensed at the notion. “That’s what Higgins is for!”

Norah saw John’s eyelids flicker at the way Emmeline said “Higgins” without the more respectful (and honestly less confusing within the territory of Haven) title of “Mrs.” It wasn’t Emmeline’s fault. In her world, no one called servants by anything but their surname.

Lord Bester found Norah’s habit of using “Miss” or “Mister” quaint and somewhat seditious. Still, he acknowledged Norah’s friendship with mere staff to be useful in certain situations, as when they needed to be cajoled into staying on without pay.

I do strive to be useful. Poor relations must always be useful if they wished to be tolerated.

Emmeline’s mood was shifting quickly and she squinted slightly at the brighter light in the kitchen when they climbed from the cellar. Norah saw John noticing it as well. By unspoken mutual agreement, they had Emmeline bundled up and back in John’s cart in a matter of minutes. It was a good time to head back to the manor, for the clouds had begun to mask the sun and the afternoon threatened to turn grim.

Vicar Barton kept the pace even on the way back, but he did not pause to point out any more of the village features. Norah rode silently on the other side of Emmeline, her thoughts occupied by light-filled rooms and curved banisters and solid, sandstone walls.

Norah wanted to stay there. She wanted to make tea in the spacious kitchen. She wanted to sit on the deep windowsills and dream.

It was if the house had always been waiting for her—this house that could never be hers.

Even strong wood can break, Miss Grey, if one does not take care.

Should she tell Em about her feelings for John? No. Emmeline might be many things, but Norah did not doubt her loyalty. Em would step aside immediately. Which would do very little to win John for Norah, for he clearly wanted a beautiful bride. If an “Emmeline” was what Vicar John Barton wanted, then a “Norah” would be disqualified before she even began.

Then naive, impulsive Em would still be out in the world, prey to the fortune-hunting jackals of the world. No, if Norah could do nothing else for these two people she loved so much, she could keep their way clear of such confusing side issues.

Her gaze wandered toward the vicar. He sat next to Emmeline, who was now a bit pale and uncharacteristically silent—but of course, still achingly beautiful!—and Norah could not help but see again how astonishing they looked as a couple.

She felt a leaden sadness take her over. Loving Vicar John Barton had changed everything. She’d thought she knew what her future held. She was only now realizing that her destiny was no longer so sure.

I will never be the same after coming to the manor and Haven. I don’t think I can ever be satisfied with simply being the dotty auntie to Emmeline’s children.

Then she realized something far, far worse.

I cannot live the rest of my days with Emmeline and her husband.

Her husband, John Barton.

The man I love.

The gray wintry day suddenly seemed endless, as if it would last for the rest of her life.

 

 

THAT AFTERNOON WHILE Emmeline rested, Norah busied herself with tying up little portions of sweets in squares of cheerful printed muslin provided by the ever-resourceful Miss Higgins. She used some of Emmeline’s extravagant ribbon purchase to make pretty bows, thinking that the girls could keep them as hair ribbons and the boys could give them to their mothers or sisters, although Norah imagined there might be a few ribbon-bedecked puppies running about as well.

The thought made her lips curve in a wistful smile.

Emmeline woke up from her nap much refreshed and ready to dress for the ball. Norah was glad to see it and squelched the tiny voice that said it would have been nice to skip the ball entirely, as a dutiful cousin tending to poor Emmeline. However, Emmeline was getting better every day and an evening of dancing and enjoying herself would do her no harm. Em need not suffer even a jouncing carriage ride home, for the ball would take place only a few floors away from her bedchamber.

Having decided to utilize that very escape plan if she needed it for herself, Norah suddenly felt more able to face the evening’s festivities.

Miss Higgins arrived as lady’s maid to help Emmeline dress, but Emmeline sweetly insisted that Miss Higgins join them in their preparations. So they were a merry enough trio, oohing and ahhing over Emmeline’s dramatic purple silk ball gown strewn with amethyst beads and Norah’s simple but luxurious one made of a deep green velvet that threw coppery glints into her tawny hair and, according to Emmeline, her dressmaker and Miss Higgins’s experienced eye, made the most of Norah’s “assets.”

Miss Higgins proudly donned a very pretty woolen gown the exact color of autumnal leaves, trimmed with a twining-vine edging stitched in contrasting yellow-gold embroidery. Emmeline squeaked at the beautiful stitching and dashed for her jewel case. Returning with a choker of golden silk ribbon that held a single carved bit of coral as a centerpiece, she gifted it to Miss Higgins on the spot.

“Norah told me how you nursed me so compassionately while I slept. It is the least I can do to repay you.”

“But my lady! It is too fine!”

“I shall never wear it again now,” Emmeline said firmly at Miss Higgins’s protest. “For it shall always seem lacking without that particular gown to match with it!”

Norah encouraged Miss Higgins as well. “She’ll only slip it into your pocket later if you say no. It simply won’t do to refuse her.”

Miss Higgins bit her lip and accepted the choker, which was very pretty but a mere trinket in comparison to Emmeline’s vast collection. It did look divine on Miss Higgins, with her deep brown eyes and her shining dark hair in braids fancifully coiled in high loops.

Emmeline’s hairstyle was a complicated arrangement of curled, pinned and artistically loose locks that looked as if they’d tumbled free in effortlessly accidental perfection. Fortunately, it was one of Emmeline’s favorite displays, so Norah had a good bit of practice. Miss Higgins thought she might try something similar with her ladyship’s hair sometime, though it was “mightily unruly” and would likely “dance right down.”

Then Emmeline and Miss Higgins turned on Norah with speculative gazes. “Your turn, miss.”

Norah shook her head. “My hair is already done.” It was the same as always, her thick braid twisted into a bun and pinned down tight.

Miss Higgins narrowed her eyes. “Not by half, it ain’t. I’ve been itchin’ to get me hands on you.” She held out one hand to Emmeline. “The pins, my lady? We’re going to need all of ‘em, me thinks.”

“I’m ready.” Emmeline gave Norah a cheerfully diabolical grin. “I bought lots of ribbon!”