Page 2 of Miss Ashbury and the Anatomy of Mending a Heart

Vera wondered what lie they’d been told, even as she shoved the letter to the bottom of her basket and walked briskly from the village in the direction of Jacqueline’s house.

Vera desperately needed advice, and the Baroness Winthrop was just the person to give it.

* * *

The Devon countryside was at the peak of late-summer beauty, green growth juxtaposed by interesting rock formations that jutted at random from the landscape. On any other day, Vera would have enjoyed the familiar route that separated the village from the baroness’s estate.

As she walked past verdant fields, Vera worried her lip with her teeth. She had never been without a home before. It was a strange sensation—as if she’d been a boat tied safely to a dock, and someone had come along with an axe and chopped through the mooring rope with one strong swing.

Not that she was without a roof—Vera currently resided at the home of Percival Waldrey, the Marquess of Salisbury, though only because she’d been invited there by his sister. Candace was the newly minted Duchess of Canterbury, and had quite rightly moved in with her husband, the duke.

Now, Vera was in this strange in-between—a bog of uncertainty that grew deeper and muckier by the day. For though she was staying with Percy and his wife, Adelaide, Vera hadn’t been invited by them; she simply hadn’t left. Candace was too distracted by her new marriage—and rightly so—that she hadn’t invited Vera into her new household as a guest.

Vera would have headed home to London—she certainly had been planning on it, eventually—but she’d put it off in order to delay the inevitable unpleasantness. Call it what she may, Vera had absconded from home, run away like a spoiled child of twelve instead of a young lady of twenty-four.

Now she had no home to return to. Her fingers clenched around the handle of her basket.

Lost as she was in her befuddled thoughts, the baroness’s estate appeared quickly, and before Vera knew it, she’d arrived upon the stone steps of Bertforth House. It was a large, stately country home—white painted brick, with large arched windows that gazed owlishly at the circular front drive. Trim decorated the space where the brick and the roofline kissed—a small swath of lace upon the throat of a grand lady.

Vera rapped the brass door knocker that was shaped like a fox and wondered—not for the first time—where the baroness had found such an item. Knowing the lady’s devotion to woodland creatures, Jacqueline had probably commissioned it.

The butler opened the door, his salt-and-pepper eyebrows lifting with his polite smile. “Miss Ashbury, how lovely to see you. Please, come in. The baroness is in her parlor.”

Vera thanked him, relinquishing her basket, gloves, and cloak to his efficient care. She’d been a regular visitor here as of late—a natural consequence of sharing a house with newlyweds who were expecting their first child.

Vera strode past the round table that held a collection of blue-and-white pottery, each vessel planted with different forced bulbs. Some were well past their peak, but the baroness found beauty in the entire cycle of plant life, not just the part where the plants were green and blooming. At the moment, Vera felt a special affinity with the papery brown stalks listing to the side.

The parlor wasn’t a parlor at all—at least, not anymore. Vera rapped her knuckles against the polished black door, and Jacqueline’s muffled voice called out, “Hold a moment! Sheldon is behind the door.”

Vera smiled as a gentle scuffling erupted within the room, complete with murmured chidings meant for Sheldon alone. Finally, the door opened slightly to reveal the baroness in her customary ensemble of slim trousers and a nipped-at-the-waist tunic. Her dark hair was shot through with silver at the temples and braided back simply from her face. She clasped a chubby hedgehog to her shoulder.

“Vera!” Jacqueline said, her eyes alight. “I was hoping you’d be by today. Come in!”

Vera returned the greeting, chagrined that the woman always greeted her in such a fashion. Surely Vera would wear out her welcome eventually? But that day had not yet come, and the baroness ushered her in, carefully closing the door behind her and setting Sheldon upon the flagstones.

The baroness fondly called this room her parlor. Perhaps it had once been one in the traditional sense. Now, the room was sparsely furnished, stripped down in service of its true purpose. A set of sofas covered in thick leather faced each other before a fireplace that possessed a unique fire screen made from tightly latticed metal to prevent accidental tragedies. The fire burned lowly as it always did—the animals preferred it a bit cooler than people would.

A full tea service rested on the table between the sofas—a table taller than was typical. The height helped keep twitching noses and sly little paws away from the refreshments.

“I don’t know why he loves that spot so much.” Jacqueline shook her head fondly at the hedgehog. “Heaven knows he’s most in the way when he rests behind the door—he’d be much more comfortable in his nest.”

“Perhaps he has a contrarian way of thinking and does it on purpose.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Maybe. Or maybe he knows that’s where visitors come in and he’s waiting for his noontime feeding.”

Vera chuckled, a low rasping sound that she kept under control in the city but had learned to let loose in the countryside.

“Have you come to check on Marcella?” The baroness nodded toward one of the crates of shavings against the wall and it shivered as if in response. “She’s quite well, only napping. Come, join me for some tea and we’ll see if she deigns to grace us with her presence.”

Vera smiled, scanned the leather sofa for other animals, then sat. “I’m glad to hear she’s well, but it’s you I’ve come to see, not the squirrel.”

“I’m a better conversationalist, to be sure.” The baroness poured a cup, doctored it just the way Vera took it, and pressed it into her hands.

Such a simple thing, but tears rose in Vera’s eyes. She’d taken tea with her mother since she was a girl, and until the day she’d left London, her mother had to ask whether she took sugar or cream. Vera wasn’t a dolt—she knew it was no accident that she cared so deeply for the baroness, a woman old enough to be her mother, when her relationship with her own was so fraught with disappointment.

“Are you well?” Jacqueline asked with a slight tilt to her head and a little smile.

“Yes, er…no. I mean, yes.”