Page 23 of Discovering Grace

They slowed when they reached Silas’s lands. Silas Riley, the Earl of Inglewood, and his bride, Esther, had gone away to London to complete his time in Parliament. The house remained shut up while they were away. With the earl and his countess in London, and Hope gone, the group of friends had been broken up again. At least Isaac had returned from the war, but he kept to himself a great deal.

“We ought to call upon Isaac soon.” She spoke without thinking, their former conversation fallen from her thoughts.

Jacob glanced toward the north, where Isaac’s baronetcy lay. “I have thought the same. We should not leave him to himself long.”

They broke through the trees into the long grasses, then down the drop to the beaches. The rush of the waves and salted wind calmed her, though the breeze immediately took to teasing at the curls on the back of her neck. Most of her dark locks had been artfully pulled upward to fit beneath Hope’s purple hat.

Grace shifted in her saddle. “Perhaps we could call upon him together?” She bit her lip after speaking.

“I will ask my mother if she might wish to come and see the gardens.” Grace’s confusion must have shown. Jacob chuckled before he added, “You need a chaperone now, Miss Everly. You’ve no sister to accompany you.”

“Oh. I suppose so. I thought on that today, actually. But with my mother away and everyone so used to the way we do things, no one said a word about a groom following along.” She watched a gull dip low across their path before it caught the wind and soared upward, over the water. “And we both know I am safe with you.” Whether that was true due to his position as an almost-vicar or the lack of attraction he held for her, Grace did not allow herself to decide.

Jacob said nothing, and Grace kept her attention upon the birds.

* * *

They had turned home, and regained the path, when Jacob finally spoke the matter upon his heart. If it were anyone but Grace, he would say nothing, but she understood him and her sister in a way no one else ever could.

“I had thought of marrying Hope,” he said, his words breaking through the silence of Inglewood’s trees more abruptly than he thought they would. The sentence fell upon his ears as the sound of an axe against one of the birch trees.

Grace did not turn to him in shock, nor did she gasp or give way to any other dramatics. Instead her dainty chin jutted outward and her gaze remained fixed on the path before them.

“I know.” The words were too clipped for him to find any sign of her thoughts on the matter.

“You do?” How he might coax more from her? She dipped her head in a brief nod, but her lips stayed pressed together. Certainly she had more to say on the subject than that. “I was terribly obvious?”

Grace ducked her head to avoid a branch, then kept her gaze down, avoiding his. “To me, yes.”

Rather than embarrassment, Jacob felt relief at her admission. “My mother sorted it out as well. Perhaps my brother did, too. But Hope never acted any differently. I thought I had been circumspect.” He removed his hat long enough to swipe at the thin line of sweat upon his brow. Though the weather remained mild, the heavy coat he wore kept him uncomfortably hot.

“She never said anything of it to me, if that is what concerns you.” Grace’s tone sounded disapproving. “Why did you never say anything to her?”

Jacob’s mount snuffled, causing him to realize how tense he had grown. He bent his neck from one side to the other in an attempt to relieve that feeling. “Truthfully? I had no idea how she might react to the idea. We have all been friends for so long. I thought she might laugh at me.” He studied Grace from the corner of his eye. Would Grace laugh at him? No, she had always been a compassionate sort, and kept her emotions well hidden beneath a mild, calm expression. Except at that moment, her lips were pressed together in what appeared to be an uncomfortably tight manner.

Jacob tried to ease the conversation into more comfortable territory. Perhaps his distress over the situation had wounded Grace’s feelings, too. She was his friend, after all, and they discussed her sister’s future too casually. “It was all for nothing, obviously. Hope is gone now.” He put one hand to the back of his neck, rubbing at the knot at its base.

“She will return in a year,” Grace said, bending to twitch at her riding skirts on the side opposite him. “You could begin your suit in earnest then.”

While he had once tried to comfort himself with that truth, it had grown harder to do so of late. Speaking his doubts to Grace only brought his folly further into light. A wave of uncertainty that had lapped at his ankles had started to rise. As often as he tried to lecture Hope into doing things the proper way, into being the sort of person that he wished for rather than who she was, would she ever see him as more than a friend?

“Will you miss her?” Jacob asked, rather than continue discussing a possible courtship. “Her liveliness, her entertainments?”

Grace’s expression softened and she faced forward, presenting him with a profile that might physically resemble Hope, though the gentleness in her countenance was something he’d never seen upon her sister’s face.

“I will miss her companionship.” That admittance came with a sorrow he hadn’t expected. “She is my dearest friend. There is no one who knows me so well as Hope. As to the entertainments,” Grace fiddled with her horse’s mane and sighed. “I don’t suppose there will be as many, with Hope away, but we will get on.”

“Yes, as we must. I wonder who will take up her projects while she is away?”

Grace turned to him finally, her nose wrinkled. “Which projects?”

Hope had been involved in any number of charitable schemes. A redeeming quality, balancing out her sometimes more inappropriate actions. “The sewing group she started last month, to provide linens and clothing for the orphans of soldiers. There were several women interested in participating, I thought.”

The woman at his side frowned and turned away, most abruptly. “Her conversation will be missed at that gathering, to be certain. But that was not Hope’s project.”

“It wasn’t?” Yet Jacob had heard Hope in the churchyard, inviting women to come to her home to work out how best to go about organizing the work. “What of her championing a circulating library for Aldersy, then?”

“All that remains for that is collecting the donations and dues that have been pledged.” Grace did not even bat an eye before answering. “I intend to see that done and then my father will lease a room in the village and hire someone to oversee the books.”