Hadrian (3 page)

Hadrian was no longer eighteen and clueless about how to go on—a vicar also dealt with tragedy and ill fortune in quantity. Nor was he willing to give up a decent breakfast, when it would appease the convention that said he should call upon his closest neighbor now that he was home.

“Did you get my letter?” Avis asked.

Hadrian had to cast back to recover the sense of her words. “I did. Your condolences were much appreciated.”

“You miss her?”

“I do,” he said, because that was expected, then, “It’s been two years, and one adjusts.” Because that was honest.

“One does. I will miss Harold sorely; he’s been a dear friend.”

“Also a wonderful caretaker of our lands. He’s leaving Landover in my hands when I’ve never had responsibility for more than a vegetable garden.” The tending of which had been enjoyable only when compared to chairing pastoral committee meetings.

Another spike of gratuitous irritation shot through Hadrian’s morning, along with a wave of weary bewilderment.

When would he
settle
? When would he let his old life go and come to terms with whatever this new life would be? When would he stop whining like a boy deprived of his sweet?

Lady Avis bent to snap off a daffodil gone brown and wrinkled. “Your brother loves Landover, so we must conclude he doesn’t simply want to travel, he needs to.”

Oh, delightful. Harold had not merely a friend in Lady Avis, but an advocate for his damned schemes. Hadrian trudged back into the conversation, trying not to let the effort of making idle talk show in his tone.

“What do you hear from your brothers?”

“Benjamin is in London, keeping a discreet eye on Alex, who has threatened to leave her post in Sussex. Wilhelm is off in Sweden, I think, or Norway by now, and will no doubt wander the north until the end of summer.”

“What does he find to do up there?” What would Harold find to do in Denmark—other than make sheep’s eyes at Finch?

“Who knows? It’s time and past Vim took a wife and settled down, but we’ve Viking blood in our veins, and Vim must wander and call it trading in various goods.”

Hadrian was perversely cheered to realize Avis had also been orphaned by excesses of familial
wanderlust
. “Lady Alexandra is in the south as well?”

Avis paused on the bottom step of a side entrance to the manor house, near a pot of roses still mostly leaves and thorns.

“Alexandra hides, Hadrian. She is an heiress and pretty, and yet she has wasted years governessing at some medieval hall on the southern coast. Her charge’s mother has remarried, though, and this means Alex will soon be off again, like a tinker without a home or coin of her own.”

The past abruptly swooped close to the conversation again, a raptor hungry to pounce on any stray comment, any veiled allusion.

“Lady Alexandra might enjoy being a governess.” Though Hadrian couldn’t reconcile that calling with the outspoken, bookish young lady he’d known.

Avis led the way into the house, which was cool and dark compared to the sunny outdoors. “Spare me your manners, Hadrian. Alex needs children of her own, a place to set down roots and to build a life.”
Hadrian followed her inside in silence, for Avis was likely the one hiding, the one lacking roots, the one…. Maybe she would not want children, would not be able to endure conceiving them.

“How does Hazelton stay out of trouble when he’s not keeping an eye on Lady Alex?” The question seemed safe enough, though Hadrian’s store of safe topics was running perilously low.

“Benjamin is close-mouthed about it. I suspect he’s an expensive snooper.”

“A what?”

She opened the door to a small parlor, one Hadrian didn’t recall from his youth. The room was defined by the French doors running the length of its outside wall. Sunlight flooded in, bounced off pale hardwood floors, ricocheted into a long mirror on the opposite wall, and vaulted to the high arched ceiling. A half-dozen glazed crocks sported forced bulbs—lemony daffodils, periwinkle blue hyacinths, blushing pink tulips. The furniture was cozy and upholstered in pale colors, and the sense of the entire space was of warmth, light and comfort.

“Benjamin is an investigator for hire,” Avis clarified. “You like my parlor?”

“I’ve never seen a room quite like it.” Different wasn’t the right word, wasn’t a positive enough word.

“When I’m not designing my gardens, I’m turning my sights on the house itself. I spend many of my mornings here or out on the adjoining terrace.”

“It’s peaceful,” Hadrian replied, but peaceful wasn’t quite right, either. To step into this room was a relief. Darkness would find no purchase in such a chamber, neither would loneliness. Light poured in and came to stay, bringing with it warmth and cheer.

“The tea trolley should be along soon.” Avis took a rocking chair, leaving Hadrian to choose an end of the cushioned sofa. “Tell me about leaving the church. Taking off your collar must be quite an adjustment.”

“I haven’t really left yet. I’m still nominally entangled with my last congregation.”
Though why was that
?

“Over near York? St. Michael’s of the Something.”

“Sword, though nobody’s quite sure where the appellation came from in a county of sheep farmers. The valley is pretty, not that different from our terrain here.”

“Not as dramatic,” Avis suggested. “The hills don’t range quite as high, and they haven’t the lakes.”

She was reported to remain close to Blessings—very close. “Have you traveled over that way?”

“I have not, though Harold described it to me. He said it’s lovely.”

“The winters are no better than ours,” Hadrian said, wishing the tea tray would arrive so he could dispense with his two polite cups, have a nibble of toast, then be done with this obligation. “The summers are quite fine.”

“The summers are too short. You’ve avoided my question.”

Apparently without success. “About?”

“Leaving the church, Hadrian. You’ve been ordained eight years, and now you must leave it behind.”

Why was she the first person to ask him about this?

“I choose to leave it behind,” Hadrian said, though it hadn’t felt like much of a choice, not when Harold and his Finch had been growing desperate. “I’ll miss some aspects of it.”

“Such as?”

He was spared an immediate reply by the arrival of the tea trolley, and it was a trolley, of a size that tracks in the hallway wouldn’t have been amiss.

“Shall we serve ourselves?” Avis asked, suiting actions to words. She passed Hadrian a cup of tea fixed with a healthy tot of cream and dash of sugar, as he’d always preferred it. “I’ll smile graciously, while you make yourself up a plate and concoct a suitably polite, mendacious answer to my question.”

The tea was ambrosially strong for even a spring morning in Cumberland could be brisk, while Avis’s smile was more welcoming and mischievous than gracious. For the first time that morning, for the first time since coming home, Hadrian’s smile was welcoming and mischievous too.

“What I miss about the church,” Hadrian said, as if announcing a sermon topic. He chose a slice of buttered toast, a portion of omelet, a thick slice of ham, and—why the deuce not?—another slice of toast while arranging acceptable and honest thoughts into mental categories.

“I make mine into a sandwich,” Avis said, as he assembled his meal. “We’re not at table, so feel free to do the same.”

Hadrian took a bite of his sandwich. “I haven’t done this since university—it’s a fine way to consume breakfast.”

“We have plenty and you’ve been riding, so eat up.” Avis took a nibble of her sandwich. “What do you miss?”

An astute, tenacious woman.

“A few people,” Hadrian said, taking another bite of excellent fare. “Not many. I do miss the sense of rhythm about the life of a vicar.”

“What sort of rhythm?”

“The days have a rhythm, as one prays at certain times, and visits, and has visitors, and works on the sermon, and prays some more.”
Or one was supposed to
.

“Comfortable but boring?”

“At times, as with anything.” How bored was Harold, watching the seasons change year after year at Landover, while feigning contentment? “The weeks have a rhythm, too, punctuated by the service on Sunday, then a day or two to regroup, and then the next service looms. The liturgical year has a rhythm, with high holy days, and conferences with the bishop and so forth at regular intervals. I could see my life unfolding in a certain sequence, and it wasn’t unbearable.”

Nor was it meaningful, though, and that—the sense of
empty
rhythm—had begun to wear on him.

“What did you do for enjoyment?” She passed him another sandwich, his first having somehow disappeared.

“I enjoyed…” He fell silent, staring at the second sandwich.

Another bog but less treacherous, for he’d had time to ponder this.

“I enjoyed the sense of being useful,” Hadrian said. “Of offering some comfort and solace to those in greatest need, and of making remarkable some particular moments of joy.”

“Weddings?” Avis guessed.

“And christenings. Those even more than weddings.”

“I’d forgotten you’d be involved in those.” Avis topped up their tea cups, but of course, babies might be something she’d want to forget. “Have some fruit.”

Oranges sat in a blue crockery bowl along with hothouse strawberries.

Hadrian plucked a succulent red berry from the bowl. “You raise these?”

“I do. I’ve grown self-indulgent in many regards, Hadrian, the gardens and greenhouses being only one example.”

Self-indulgent, and isolated. Though maybe an excess of privacy was another indulgence. “Your music being another?”

She grinned at him over her tea cup, and the grin lightened everything—the mood, her face, the room,
Hadrian’s
mood.

“I love my music. I will also ask that you leave me at least three of those strawberries, though I’ve been enjoying them all week and likely will for another week at least.”

“Three.” Hadrian selected the largest trinity of berries and set them on her plate, then made free with the rest. “These are delicious. I haven’t had any since last year.”

“You didn’t garden over in Yorkshire?”

“Not after the first couple of years.” Hadrian paused in his consumption of the strawberries. “The congregants were an odd lot. It became apparent I was to buy my produce from them and use their choice of horse for my transportation, and their choice of housekeeper for my vicarage.”

“This sounds more like being a child at the whim of the nursery staff than it does being the spiritual leader of a community.”

She’d put words to something he’d avoided admitting even under the heading of honest thoughts.

“All clergy must resign themselves to a paradox,” Hadrian said, eyeing a particularly large strawberry. “You are a leader, but in such way that nobody is offended, threatened, imposed upon, or otherwise inconvenienced. You effect this miracle not only because you are a shining example of diplomacy, humility, and self-sacrifice, but also because the folk you’re leading stock your larder, shingle your roof and, if they’ve a mind to, write to your bishop.”

“What would your bishop say, if this paradox chafed and the hypocrisy became too oppressive?”

“He’d say get the hell out of the church.” Hadrian set the strawberry down. “I’m sorry, that was not well phrased.” He rose, but caught the expression on his hostess’s face.

Not shocked. Smiling, the minx.

“As a young man, you were intent on joining the military,” she said. “You were intent on subduing the enemy and growing rich in foreign climes. Maybe you were the one who suffered the subduing.”

“Suffered nominally, perhaps.” Though others suffered far worse fates. “But subdued, apparently not.”

A cheering thought, which had been in short supply lately.

“Good for you, Hay Bothwell.” She smiled again, that soft, wonderful smile, and the word
alluring
popped into Hadrian’s head. “Never admit defeat.”

“Is that the Portmaine motto?”

“It’s my motto,” she said, getting to her feet and again slipping her arm through his. “Let’s walk off a little of our meal, shall we?”

“If you like.” He let her lead him from the bright little parlor, up to the Portmaine portrait gallery, which looked out over the sprawling back gardens.

“I do this with Harold,” Hadrian said. “When I’ve been gone we spend a few minutes the next morning greeting the ancestors.”

“A ritual. One with meaning.”

“Yes.” Her insight pleased him, tremendously, because so many of the supposedly holy rituals had felt devoid of meaning. Theatre conducted to facilitate a social gathering for the village, nothing more.

“Between ritual and routine lies a word of difference,” Avis said, pausing before the first Viscount Hazelton. “Did you know he had twelve children and they all lived to adulthood?”

“He was lucky, or his children were.” Hadrian would have missed her expression, except he turned his head to study the old fellow in his hose and collar.

Avis Portmaine did want children, desperately. Good God Almighty. The look in her eyes, the sorrow tracing her mouth, and the resolve in her spine all spoke of longing to the point of pain.