The Dowry of Miss Lydia Clark (30 page)

I wish that would happen to me
, Harold thought on his way to the counter.

Tapping the lettering etched into the leather binding, Mr. Trumble went on. “
A Dictionary of the English Language
, by a Mr. Samuel Johnson.” He looked up at Harold. “No relation to Josiah Johnson, I don’t think.”

“And this book will tell you what
coor-dile
means?” Harold asked warily. He didn’t really have the time or inclination to stay and listen to a whole book being read.

The man chuckled and opened the cover. “It has in here every English word ever spoken from the time of Adam and Eve on.” For several minutes he rustled through the thin pages, occasionally licking his thumb. And then when he seemed to have found the page he wanted, he ran his forefinger slowly down it.

“Hmm,” Mr. Trumble finally murmured.

“What is it?”

The shopkeeper leaned closer to the open book, squinting his eyes. “I don’t see a
coordile
here. But here’s a
corrigible
.” He looked up. “Could it be that’s the word you’re wanting to know about?”

That sounded about right, so Harold nodded.

“Capable of being corrected, reformed or improved.”

“What does
that
mean?” Harold asked, leaning over to look at the upside-down page as if the mystery would somehow show itself to him.

Mr. Trumble raised himself again and rubbed his chin. “Well, I believe it means it could be better. Whatever it is that’s
corrigible
, I mean.”

“So if a woman says you and her could be
corrigible
, what’s she really saying?”

“Why, it means she wishes you and she was better friends.”

“Better friends.” Casually, Harold asked, “What if she was someone you wanted to court?”

“Well, you can’t court a woman who doesn’t want to be your friend, Mr. Sanders.”

He raised a hopeful eyebrow. “So
corrigible
is good?”

Giving another chuckle, the man closed his book. “Sounds good to me.”

Chapter 19

Their duty of dispensing a penny to the youthful parade finished, Andrew and Julia strolled back to the green from the vicarage. Julia had joined the others from the Women’s Charity Society in the manor kitchen to assemble sandwiches yesterday and would be taking her turn at the refreshment table after the auction.

“Of course, Grace had the sweetest voice of the whole group,” Andrew commented.

“But you wouldn’t be prejudiced, would you?” Julia gave him an indulgent smile, although she had always thought Grace had a melodious little voice.

“Why, not at all. Just because she’s my daughter doesn’t mean I have to overlook her talent.”

Moving her hand from the crook of his arm long enough to flick a grasshopper off the sleeve of her cream-colored organdy gown, Julia said, “You know who you sound just like, don’t you?”

“Don’t say it, Julia.” He gave her a sidelong look. “Don’t even
think
it.”

Julia smiled again, not shaken over his mock severity. “Very well. There are worse vices, I suppose.”

“And how would you know that, Mrs. Phelps?” he teased. “You’ve never even put a stray toe off the path of righteousness.”

“You’re speaking about Fiona now.” And just as she said her friend’s name, she looked ahead and spotted the Clays among the assemblage, spreading a picnic quilt upon the grass. Fiona fairly glowed in a pearl-gray silk gown, but as Julia and Andrew drew closer she could tell from Ambrose’s shadowed eyes that he was in the grip of the despondency that had so marked his adult life. After they exchanged greetings, Julia impulsively embraced the actor. “You’ll get through this, you know.”

“I know, Julia,” he responded with a wan but affectionate smile when they drew apart. “I just have to wait for that next hilltop.”

“It’s good that you came,” Andrew said as the two shook hands. “The fresh air will do you good.”

“I wouldn’t want to miss it.”

Julia knew Ambrose well enough to know that he would actually prefer to be secluded in his apartment, but he had made this unselfish effort on his wife’s behalf. Fiona’s expression told Julia she knew as well.

“Won’t you join us?” her friend asked. “We’ve time for a nice visit before our turns to serve.”

Andrew nodded at the glance Julia sent him and excused himself to fetch the quilt he had spread earlier on the far side of the Maypole.

When he returned and the two quilts were side by side, Ambrose said, “Why don’t we save yours for the children? There is more than enough room on ours. Speaking of the children, where are they?” he asked when the four had settled upon the Clays’ quilt.

Julia returned the waves of Elizabeth and Jonathan, still overseeing the table of lunches to be auctioned, and nudged Andrew to do the same. “Elizabeth is helping Jonathan with the auction.” As her stepdaughter’s nausea was limited to early mornings, she had declined Julia’s offer to have Laurel and Aleda take her place. “Philip went fishing for a little while with his friends, and Laurel and Aleda are following the children’s parade—to keep an eye on Grace, they say.”

Andrew blew out a breath. “And I’m exhausted from just hearing their whereabouts, so you can imagine what it’s like to keep up with them physically.”

“And you love it…both of you,” Ambrose smiled.

“Yes, of course,” Julia replied quietly, remembering that the couple would likely never have children. But God had given them an extra measure of grace in this regard, for they had never shown any sign of jealousy. In fact, they had become like an aunt and uncle to Julia and Andrew’s children.

The brass band Mr. Durwin had assembled several months ago began tuning their instruments on the platform, producing inharmonious but not unpleasant little sounds. While Andrew and Ambrose discussed Saturday’s Rugby match in Queensferry between England and Wales, as reported in yesterday’s
Shrewsbury Chronicle
, Julia moved closer to Fiona to ask about the new lodger. “I haven’t been over to meet her because I didn’t want her to be overwhelmed by so many new faces. I hoped to see her Sunday, but Andrew says she went home with a headache.”

“I don’t think it lasted long,” Fiona said. “She was in good spirits at lunch.”

“What’s she like?”

“Very agreeable. At times she seems a little sad, but no doubt she still misses her husband.” Fiona craned her neck to look past Julia’s shoulder. “Why, there she is now. She wasn’t down for breakfast, so I wasn’t sure if she would be here.”

Twisting around, Julia scanned the people gathered in groups to chat or lounging upon quilts on the grass. The only new face belonged to a young woman speaking to Mrs. Sykes across the lemonade table. She was fashionably dressed in a dress of white pique sprigged with small bouquets of brown and pink. After accepting a cup from the churchwarden’s wife, she sipped it while looking about her as if a little lost.

“That’s not her, is it?” Julia asked, motioning discreetly. Because most of her lodgers were elderly, she had assumed Mrs. Somerville would be as well. And Andrew, having never been one to comment on other women’s appearances, had not said anything about her age.

“We were surprised as well.” The young woman looked in their direction, and Fiona raised herself to her knees. “You don’t mind my asking her to join us, do you?”

“Of course not.”

Mrs. Somerville, first looking to both sides as if unsure if Fiona had meant her, smiled and handed her cup back to Mrs. Sykes. “Mrs. Somerville is coming over,” Julia leaned over to tell Andrew and Ambrose at the first pause between talk of place kicks and scrummages. The two men made moves to get to their feet, but by that time the young woman had reached them and held up a hand for them to stay put.

“Please, don’t get up,” she said. She was quite attractive, with strawberry-blond curls straying from a narrow-brimmed straw bonnet. “I’m staying but a minute. I just wanted to see what was going on.”

“We’re glad you came,” Fiona said, smiling. “Will you join us?”

“Oh, no thank you.” Mrs. Somerville gave a sheepish little shrug that looked charming on her. “I don’t want to impose on anyone. I thought I would bring a sandwich back to the inn.”

“Now, we can’t have you doing that,” Andrew told her. “We’ve room enough here to spare.”

“But I wouldn’t want to intrude….”

She was assured by both couples that she was most welcome. The men moved over to the next quilt, and Julia and Fiona made room for the newcomer between them. “I’m so sorry we didn’t have a chance to meet Sunday,” Julia told her, extending a hand. “I’m glad your headache went away.”

“Oh, I was
crushed
,” Mrs. Somerville assured her as they shook hands.

The three women chatted about London for a bit. No matter how happy Julia was to be settled in Gresham, she enjoyed hearing about the city. “It’s been a bit over a year since our last visit,” she explained. “Fiona tells me it has changed even since then.”

“It’s dizzying how much it changes,” Mrs. Somerville agreed. “Why, there are ready-made clothing shops springing up all over. For women as well as men. It doesn’t seem natural, does it? Just walking in from the street and coming out with a gown.”

“There is such a shop in Shrewsbury now,” Julia told her. “I’ve never been inside, but our parlormaid bought a dress there just last week.”

“Just
one
shop?” The younger woman shook her head sympathetically. “I don’t see how either of you aren’t terribly homesick.”

“What do you mean?” Fiona asked.

“For London.” She waved a hand to indicate her surroundings. “Not that this isn’t a lovely place, mind you. But the city has so much more to offer.”

“We had no choice in the matter,” was Julia’s honest reply. She smiled at Fiona, whose loyalty and optimism had made those terrible days bearable when her home was foreclosed. “Or at least…I didn’t.”

“I didn’t either,” Fiona corrected softly.

“Incredible,” Mrs. Somerville said at length in a strangely flat voice. “Then that makes three of us.”

That was a curious thing to say, Julia thought. According to her solicitor, Mrs. Somerville had applied of her own volition because her family was concerned about her. But then, some families were more insistent than others. She supposed that as long as Mrs. Somerville got along with her fellow lodgers and paid her rent, it was none of her business why she was here.

Noelle leaned back on the heels of her hands and watched a darkhaired young man ask for attention from the platform where a brass band had just finished playing. “The Phelps’s son-in-law, Jonathan Raleigh,” Mrs. Clay supplied from beside her. “He’s schoolmaster of the grammar school. And the young woman handing him a basket is Elizabeth, his wife.”

“Thank you,” Noelle told her. Sheer boredom had driven her from her room where she had planned to spend the day. If only Quetin would write! Other lodgers received mail, so the postal system had to be aware of this place.
But perhaps mail takes longer to get here
, was her only consoling thought. Surely small villages weren’t first priority, with so many people in the cities to service.

As young men, and some old, began taking sheepish steps toward the platform, Noelle breathed in the aroma of freshly cut flowers and had to admit to herself that this was preferable to sulking in her room. Her father’s duties had never allowed time for such nonproductive frolic when she was a child, and Quetin certainly wouldn’t have taken her to any such celebration in the London parks. He was quick to accuse her of being a snob, but he himself was only interested in events frequented by the
bon ton
, the upper crust. Why, he had even admitted to her once, after several glasses of wine had loosened his tongue, that he actually found opera maddeningly tedious!

She had become a little nervous when children began showing up and dropping themselves down on the vicar’s quilt, but they were surprisingly mannerly and didn’t whine or pull each other’s hair as she imagined most children were wont to do. The youngest, a girl with brown curls, even took a peppermint from her pocket and offered it to her. Noelle would not have taken it had she been starving, for she was dubious about the hygiene of even well-behaved children, but the offer touched her.