AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Brandy, if you please,” she said.
“An excellent choice,” he said, smiling. “That will warm you inside, just as the fire warms you outside. And would you like some toasted bread and cheese?”
“Ohhh! I shouldlovesome! We used to toast cheese for our supper all the time at home… I mean at Sagborough, but here we are far too grand for such simple pleasures.”
“Well, I am not at all grand, and I love toasted cheese.”
“You are not like the rest of your family,” she said cautiously, wondering if he would be offended by such plain speaking.
He merely laughed. “You mean theyaregrand? I suppose they are a bit. Charles is, anyway. Lord Charles Heaman, brother to the Marquess of Barrowford, as he never ceases to remind us. The rest of them might seem a bit stuffy, perhaps, and utterly predictable and boring, but not grand. You must not let it worry you if they are a bit stiff at first. They have never met anyone quite like your family, that is all.”
“Vulgar mushrooms, you mean?”
That made him smile again. “You are not at all vulgar! I find the Fletchers a refreshing addition to Hertfordshire society, to be truthful. I am very glad you came to liven us up, and relieve the tedium of life here.”
Julia found him an odd sort of man, unlike anyone she had ever met before. The rest of his family were very much as she had expected the aristocracy to be, rather full of their own importance and somewhat distant, not people she could be at ease with. But James Plummer was different, or perhaps because she had first taken him for a gamekeeper she saw him differently. The barrier of rank that sat, invisible but immovable, between the Fletchers and the Plummers melted away when she was with him, and he felt more like an extra brother than a stranger. How curious that was.
He had found toasting forks, bread and cheese by now, so for a while they both sat in front of the fire and toasted and ate and laughed as they tried not to drip melting cheese everywhere. He was more successful than Julia was, and twice he reached out and deftly caught cheese that was about to fall on her gown. She could not remember the last time she’d had so much fun.
After a while, her immediate hunger sated and mellow from warmth inside and out, she said, “Is it so tedious, your life here? You have all this wonderful countryside to enjoy, and employment to keep you busy.”
“Oh yes, my employment. Rector of the parish of St Hilary’s. My flock to be tended, if I were so inclined. But I am very remiss in attending to my duties.”
Another of those gentle smiles. He was not a man she would describe as handsome, but when he looked at her like that, and the firelight caught his brown eyes and made them glow, framed by a mass of soft curls, he was very attractive indeed. Nothing at all like any clergyman she had known before. Clergymen were stooped and elderly and disagreeable, not charming young men with a liking for toasted cheese.
“Why did you become a clergyman, then, if you find the work so disagreeable?” she said.
He gave a bark of laughter. “A very good question, Miss Fletcher. The answer is the obvious one — that I am a younger son, with no inheritance to anticipate, so I must needs earn my bread.”
“You could have chosen a profession more to your liking,” she said. “Johnny is a second son, too, but he is a Fellow at his Cambridge college, and will be a professor in time, or so he says. What made you enter the church?”
“Sheer laziness,” he said, with that strange little smile that always seemed as if he were sharing a private joke. “My father was an army man before he became the heir to the baronetcy, and he assumed I would follow in his footsteps, despite my repeatedly expressed disinclination. The army always seemed too energetic a business by half, to me, not to mention the prospect of dying in some horribly painful way. The alternatives are even worse. The law requires too much book learning, and a government post would involve being polite to every nincompoop in Europe. Too fatiguing for words. But when I was fourteen, Mr Ames, the rector at the time, unexpectedly died.‘How about the church, James?’my father said, and I felt I could manage that. Keep the necessary terms at Oxford, a little bit of effort to memorise the Thirty-Nine Articles and an interview with the bishop — surely that would not be beyond my capabilities. And so it has proved. But the best of it is that Father engaged a curate to take care of the parish until I was ordained, to whit, Mr Thomas Leadbetter, who is not merely a devout and pious clergyman, but an energetic and diligent parish leader, who likes nothing better than to minister to his flock, especially at inconvenient hours and during inclement weather. The parishioners love him, and who am I to come between them? So apart from an occasional sermon, which I copy from a book and then reduce to a tolerable length — my best effort was ten minutes, I believe — I have nothing to do but hunt and shoot and rescue young ladies who fall into muddy puddles.”
Julia wondered if he was being honest with this description. Few men would admit to laziness, but it was true that he passed his days in gentlemanly pursuits rather than parochial duties.
“Don’t you feel guilty, leaving everything to your curate?” she said.
He sighed. “I should, I suppose, but we are both content with the arrangement, so why worry? Have you dried sufficiently, do you think? I should perhaps return you to Chadwell Park before your absence creates alarm.”
“There’s no need for you to accompany me,” Julia said. “I know my way perfectly well from here.”
“But I must follow the same route home, so we may as well walk together as not, do you not agree?”
There was no denying the logic, so they tidied up the hut, banked the fire again, and walked together to the High Field gate and thence down the park to the house, chatting companionably all the way.
8: A Visitor
‘To Miss Fletcher, Chadwell Park, nr Ware, Hertfordshire. My very dear friend, you will never guess what has happened! Camilla Weston has run away! Can you believe it? Her father arranged a hasty marriage for her to a farmer near York, which is perhaps as much as she could expect, but she would have none of it and now she has gone, taking all the money her mother had saved for young Luke’s schooling and the coal merchant’s bill, and has quite vanished. Mr Weston seems to think she is gone to her aunt at Newcastle, and has taken off in pursuit, although whether to bring her back or to throw her in the sea and be rid of her once and for all is impossible to say. No time to write more, for Ricky is waiting to whisk this to the post office in time to catch today’s mail coach, but thank you for all the sketches. Such a lovely house! I will write more tomorrow. Your good friend, Belinda.’
~~~~~
James returned to the rectory in the very best of spirits. What a girl she was, Julia Fletcher! The way she had stood up to Bellingham was glorious, a moment to savour, beyond question. And then that intimate time in the hut, sharing toasted cheese and brandy, and talking as equals. He could not remember a time when he had spoken so freely to a woman.
There had only been one odd moment which occurred on the walk home. As they walked across the park, they had seen in the distance two female figures, one rather larger one walking ahead with a book in her hands, and a smaller one running about on the grass and weaving in and out of the trees, shouting as she ran. And the oddity lay in what she was shouting —‘Can’t catch me!’, she yelled, dodging about as if she were being chased. Yet no onewaschasing her, and the larger woman was oblivious to the game.
“Who is that?” he said to Julia, only to realise the answer immediately. “Your youngest sister, Isabella, of course.”
“Bella and Dorothea. The one with the book is Miss Crabtree, the governess. They try to take some exercise every day.”
