Page 30 of The Beloved Escapade

He almost laughed. He caught the shape of it in time and turned it into a cough, because the laugh held no bitterness, and that was the thing he could not yet explain to himself.

The secret room behind the library had waited three centuries. It had, at present, a door shut upon it by the small, determined young lady at his side, who had made her terms with her back against the shelving. And Lorenzo, who could not wait for coffee to cool, found that he did not resent the delay so much as marvel at its author.

He would write to his father tonight. Both letters’ worth in one. Babbo, I have found the house. Also, I am to be married. His father would read the second sentence three times and then ring for wine.

“You are talking to yourself in Italian,” Lucy observed. “Under your breath. You do it when you think.”

“I do it always,” Lorenzo admitted. “In company, I merely do it more quietly. What did I say?”

“I have no idea. It sounded like arithmetic.”

“It was a letter,” he said, “that I owe.”

She glanced at him sideways, quick and shrewd, and did not ask. She was learning the doors of him already, he thought, and choosing which to knock upon. He was beginning to suspect that she chose better than he did. It was disconcerting to be the recipient of such interest when it was usually he who dispensed it.

The lane dropped, the hedges gave way, and the village opened before them. The one street, the tide out, the boats on their sides in the mud like sleeping cattle, and the smell of salt and fish and smoke rising to meet the carriage.

And every living soul in Little Severn stopped what it was doing.

It was not subtle. Lorenzo had been stared at in villages the length of England, and he knew the ordinary grades of it. The flick, the lean, the murmur behind the hand. This was none of those. This was the full and honest halt.

The woman with the fish basket stood in her doorway with a fish actually suspended in her grip. The carter set down his barrel with ceremony, as one clearing the decks. Two children ran the length of the street ahead of the carriage, crying news to doorways that had already heard it, and the doorways emptied, and by the time the coachman drew up before the church gate, there was a modest crowd assembled with the frank, unhurried attention of people who did not intend to pretend they were doing anything else.

“The new owner,” said Lucy, under her breath, with dawning comprehension. “Oh, heavens. I am the raree-show.”

“What?” asked Lorenzo, perplexed.

“The raree-show,” Lucy answered quietly. “The curiosity everyone has come out to stare at.”

“Ah. Like the peep-shows in the piazzas at home.” Lorenzo understood at once. “Prepare yourself, signorina. You are about to eclipse every one of them.”

He handed her down from the carriage. The crowd sighed, audibly, collectively, a sound like the tide turning. Miss Smith descended behind them and swept the street with a scowl, and the crowd discovered urgent business, all of it, everywhere, at once.

The vicarage stood beside the church in a garden given over to gooseberries and bees, and the Reverend Mr. Sandys received them in a study lined with sermons and smelling of ink and apples.

He was an old, mild, deliberate gentleman with white hair rising from his head like steam and spectacles worn low, and he moved through the world at the pace of the church he kept, which had been standing for seven hundred years and saw no reason for haste in others. He had already heard of Miss Carroway’s arrival, naturally.

Lorenzo watched him not say so. The whole village had known by midnight the night before that the new owner of Grey House had arrived, and the vicar of a parish this size knew what the village knew before the village had finished knowing it. Yet Mr. Sandys arranged chairs and sent for his housekeeper and inquired after the state of the roads with the serene manner of a man to whom the afternoon’s business was a complete and delightful surprise.

Then he sat down behind his desk, drew a great flat book toward himself, and peered at them over the spectacles.

“Now,” he said. “I understand I am to have the pleasure of calling banns.”

“You are, Mr. Sandys,” said Lucy.

“For yourself, Miss Carroway, the parish is very glad to see Grey House opened, I may say. My predecessor used to dine there in Captain Belafonte’s day. And for this gentleman …” The mild eyes came around, and settled, and gave him their long look without appearing to do anything of the kind.

“Signor Lorenzo di Bianchi,” said Lorenzo, and bowed.

“Just so,” said Mr. Sandys, and dipped his pen. “We shall proceed gently, sir, and arrive together. Your name in full, if you would be so kind. Slowly, and I will thank you to spell it.”

Lorenzo spelled it. There was a difficulty at once regarding the di, which Mr. Sandys wished to know the nature of. Was it a name, or a courtesy, or, as it were, scaffolding?

Once explained, he entered with two capital letters, struck out, entered with none, considered, and entered a third time correctly, remarking that the banns book had survived the Commonwealth and would no doubt survive this also. The Christian name went in without incident. The surname required the pen to be re-cut.

“Condition,” said Mr. Sandys. “Bachelor?”

“Bachelor.”