The Courtship of the Vicar's Daughter (43 page)

Rory nodded back, openmouthed at being singled out.

“Mr. Langford here hasn’t had a turn yet. May he ride with you?” Rory nodded again, and before anyone else in the queue could protest, Mr. Raleigh turned to the rest and said, “I’ll push.” The change was instantaneous. Giggling and chattering children clamored on the contraption, and Mr. Raleigh indeed gave them a good spin. But since it only held six safely, he found another queue already waiting when he was finished with the first group. He came over to the steps only long enough to hang his coat over the railing and give Julia and Miss Hillock a helpless shrug.

By the time recess was over, some of the older boys were clapping Mr. Raleigh on the back as if he were one of them. And actually, only about ten years separated him from the oldest student. It was obvious Mr. Raleigh enjoyed the acceptance that was demonstrated.

But as much as she enjoyed the sight of teacher and students at play, an old saying came to Julia’s mind.
Familiarity breeds contempt
.

When the last of his calls had been made, Andrew reined southeast toward Alveley. He could still hear the children at recess as the wheels jolted from the change of Church Lane’s cobbled stones to macadamized roadway. It had crossed his mind after sharing Scripture and prayers with Mrs. Ramsey and Mrs. Cobbe that some five or six weeks had passed since Paul Treves had joined them for supper at the vicarage. He frowned at the memory of how he had corrected the young curate in front of Elizabeth and his other guests. It was foolish to treat a potential son-in-law that way. What if the young man had gotten discouraged and given up on courting Elizabeth?

What if, indeed?
Andrew shuddered, lifting a hand to wave at a passing farmer in his wagon. That would have been a fine situation—Jonathan Raleigh showing up in Gresham just after Elizabeth’s heart had been broken again. Thankfully, she had received a letter from Mr. Treves recently and had seemed in no lesser spirits for it.

A nagging guilt occupied the back recesses of his mind over his actions at the school this morning.
If he only would have left town, I wouldn’t have been forced to do it
, Andrew reminded himself and felt a little better.

Chapter 26

Would that be quinarius with an “n” or quimarius with an “m,”
Elizabeth wondered that same afternoon, holding her pen poised above the journal. All she could tell from Mr. Pitney’s notes was that he had been listing some types of coins uncovered in the excavation. And all she could do in this case was to leave a space to be filled in later after consulting with the archeologist.

Just two days into her work, Elizabeth found that she enjoyed her new secretarial position very much. It was a lonely occupation, performed at an old desk in a quiet corner of the upstairs sitting room, but interesting. Her job was to combine the notes taken from the archeologists the day before and enter them into the pages of a monthly journal that would be sent to officials of the British Archeological Society. It was a challenge at times to decipher Mr. Pitney’s scribbling and Mr. Ellis’s surprisingly poor spelling. But that made the work all the more interesting, and she was more than a little proud when she could turn it all into uniformly penned lines of facts, measurements, and dates.

The thought of earning wages of her own was also appealing. Papa was exceedingly generous, but a village vicar only earned so much, and she hated asking him for spending money. Now she would be able to put aside savings for Christmas gifts. With the family more than doubling in size by then, the extra funds would certainly come in handy.

Also in the back of her mind was the thought that she should put some away for when she and Paul married. There was plenty of time to accumulate a good-sized nest egg, what with his waiting until he became a vicar to propose. Even then they would have to plan an engagement of at least six months. Any shorter and the local gossips tended to speculate about certain things, vicar’s daughter or not.

She had wondered more than once why he didn’t formally ask her to marry him now, so that when he did become a vicar they would have the waiting behind them. Of course that was too forward a question for a young woman to ask her intended, but it would seem that such a notion would occur to Paul. Surely he was as eager to marry her as she was to marry him. She supposed it was pride that made him wait. He would not approach her father for her hand until he could face him as an equal.

A soft knock sounded just as Elizabeth was refilling her pen. “Yes?” she called.

The door opened and Dora entered the room. “The vicar’s askin’ for you, Miss Phelps. He’s in the parlor.”

“He is?” A glance at the clock upon the chimneypiece told Elizabeth that the better part of the afternoon had passed. But her father sending someone to fetch her was odd. Usually when he wanted to speak with her while she was working, he just came upstairs himself. She started emptying her pen back into the bottle, managing to stain her thumb and forefinger with blue ink. “Is there anything wrong?”

“Wrong, miss?” Dora shook her head, a decided glint in her eyes. “I’m not supposed to tell you anything more. Your papa says it’s a surprise.”

“Yes? What kind of surprise?”

The maid grinned coyly. “That’s why they call it a surprise, miss.”

Grumbling to herself about being interrupted with still a good two hours of work to finish, Elizabeth nonetheless managed to feel some curiosity and anticipation. She rose from her desk and went downstairs. From the parlor doorway she could see that the surprise turned out to be Paul Treves, seated on the sofa and conversing with her father over affairs of the church. He looked as handsome as ever in a gray wool suit, white shirt, and an aquamarine silk cravat that brought out the blue of his eyes.

“Why, good afternoon, Paul,” she said, ignoring the unsettling little twinge of disappointment that had nudged its way into her mind.

Smiling back, he replied, “Good afternoon, Elizabeth.”

Her father beamed indulgently from his chair. “I realized it has been too long since we had Mr. Treves over, so I persuaded Vicar McDonald to give him the rest of the afternoon off. I owe the vicar a game of chess for it, but he plays poorly, so I got the better end of the bargain.” He insisted then that Paul and Elizabeth go out for a stroll. “You’ve still a couple of hours until supper.”

And so it was that within ten minutes of attempting to figure out if Mr. Pitney had scribbled an “n” or an “m,” Elizabeth found herself walking with Paul along the edge of the green among the willows that flanked the River Bryce. The shouts of boys at an informal cricket match at the center of the green filled the air, and at times she could hear the faint and awkward strains of a violin being practiced in someone’s garden. Ahead, the sun streaked the sky orange from atop its perch on the Anwyl’s crest. She was truly happy to have him here now that the surprise had worn off. He seemed happy to be with her as well, which made the afternoon all the more pleasant.

“You’ve ink on your fingers,” he said, scooping up her hand to look at it. It was as close to holding hands as they could come, out here in the waning light of day, and he gave hers a squeeze before letting go. “Writing letters?”

The little sign of affection warmed her, and she smiled up at him. “I was working when Dora came to fetch me.”

“Working?”

She told him all about her new job. “This is only my second day, but I find it fascinating.”

Paul nodded thoughtfully, both hands in his pockets. “When you say you organize the notes from the day before, does that mean they excavate on
Sundays
?”

“No, of course not. The notes I have today are from Saturday’s excavation.” She smiled. “Mr. Ellis and Mr. Pitney don’t expect me to work on Sunday either.”

“That’s reassuring.” Still, there was a puzzling little dent between his eyebrows.

“What is wrong, Paul?” she asked.

He gave her a tight little smile that did nothing to smooth his forehead. “Nothing. Have I mentioned that Vicar McDonald’s son and family are visiting from Yorkshire?”

It seemed as though Paul’s mind wasn’t really on the vicar’s son, but Elizabeth shook her head and asked, “For how long?”

“Only a week. His son is rector at Saint Bartholomew’s and can’t leave his duties for much longer. And, of course, there is the traveling time to consider.”

“Of course,” Elizabeth agreed. To her left she could see the roof of the schoolhouse and found herself wondering how Jonathan’s first day had been. It was odd that her father hadn’t mentioned it, considering that he had been there to conduct Monday chapel. But then she reminded herself that she hadn’t seen her father since this morning, and he surely wouldn’t be bringing up Jonathan’s name in front of Paul. In fact, it was highly doubtful that Papa would want to talk about Jonathan at all.

Why are you even thinking about him?
she asked herself, irritated that he kept popping into her thoughts. She had only to remind herself of the humiliation and grief he had caused her in Cambridge, and suddenly Paul seemed all the more dear to her. She was aware, as they neared the bridge, that some five minutes had passed since either of them had spoken. He still walked with his hands thrust into his pockets, his expression thoughtful. She was about to ask him what had him so absorbed when he stopped and turned to her.

“Elizabeth …” He hesitated, as if weighing his words.

“Yes, Paul?”

“It’s not my place to pry, but did you seek your father’s counsel before taking on that position with the archeologists?”

“Seek his counsel?” Elizabeth shook her head. “It was Papa who brought me over to the
Larkspur
to speak with them.”

Both eyebrows shot up. “He did?”

“But of course.” Now she was feeling just a little impatient. He quite obviously had misgivings about her new position and expected her to pry them out of him. Well, she wouldn’t, she told herself, pointedly staring in the distance south of Market Lane and attempting to identify the person driving the approaching carriage.
It’s either Doctor or Mrs. Rhodes out on a call
, she guessed, which meant that somewhere either a human or animal was in need of mending. Elizabeth felt a touch upon her elbow and looked at Paul again. He motioned in the direction of the vicarage.

“It’ll be dark before too long. We should start back.” They walked quietly for a minute or two, then Paul halted and blurted out, “Elizabeth, I must tell you that I don’t approve of women doing men’s work.”

She was stunned. “Men’s work?”

“You’re a secretary, aren’t you? You may as well pull on boots and drive cattle to market. I cannot imagine what your father was thinking.”

The comparison of driving cattle with what she actually did was so ludicrous that Elizabeth laughed. That was the wrong thing to do, for Paul’s cheeks flamed red. She had forgotten how much it humiliated him to be corrected and sobered again.

“Paul, I sit alone at a desk and copy notes and scribbling neatly into a journal,” she said calmly. “That’s all there is to it. Mrs. Hollis says there are hundreds of women secretaries in London.”

“This isn’t London, Elizabeth. You have to remember that as a vicar’s daughter, you set an example for the rest of the women here.”

“I don’t think my example—”

“It’s bad enough some are working in the cheese factory and that you’ve a woman veterinarian running the roads from one farm to another. It’s just not natural, I tell you, and blurs the rightful line between the two sexes.”

“But what else would you suggest I do with my time?” she asked, becoming increasingly frustrated with his unwillingness to see reason.
Especially when you’re in no hurry to marry me
, she thought. “I’ve no children to tend, and Papa is out making calls every morning. Dora and Luke and Mrs. Paget have been running the vicarage since before we came and certainly don’t want me in the way.”

After staring back at her for a second or two he nodded, as if she had explained her situation in such a way that he finally understood. Elizabeth relaxed and let out a quiet sigh of relief, but the whole effect was spoiled when he said in what he probably meant to be a helpful tone, “Couldn’t you embroider or something?”

“I don’t
like
embroidering!” she replied through clenched teeth.

The heat in her voice accomplished what reason could not, for he blinked as if he had just been jerked out of a heavy slumber. “I didn’t intend to make you angry, Elizabeth. I was just expressing an opinion.”