Part 17 (1/2)
”Your brother does not!”
”Jonathan is a clergyman. The cases are different. Once you and Adam are wed...”
”Never! I will never marry a libertine,” she cried pa.s.sionately. ”Oh, why did you not warn me, Sarah?
Pray stop, I must talk to Mr. Meade.”
Since they were about to turn into the drive, Sarah did not heed this request. Lydia jumped down from
the slow-moving gig, stumbled, recovered herself, and ran into the vicarage, leaving the front door open.
Sarah drove round to the stables and left Dapple to Arthur's care. With dragging steps she moved towards the house. It was her duty to rea.s.sure Lydia, to reconcile her to Adam's past misdeeds, yet how could she do so when her heart had leaped with joy at those words of rejection?
Try as she might, she could not forget his brief kiss that misty day.
She paused outside the French doors to the study. Within, her brother and Lydia were standing close together, talking earnestly. Jonathan was far better equipped to help the naive girl understand and forgive
her betrothed, Sarah told herself, and she turned back to enter by the kitchen door. ”If anyone asks for me, I am gone walking,” she told Mrs. Hicks as she pa.s.sed through. She went upstairs and changed into an old walking dress. The last clouds had blown over and the day was growing warm, so she put on sandals and her straw hat. She longed for the soothing peace of the open hills, the sense of perspective that only age-old Stonehenge could bring to her troubled spirit.
Slipping down the stairs, she saw that the study door was open. She should make sure Lydia was restored to tranquility before she sought her own solace. Sighing, Sarah crossed the hall. There was a murmur of voices in the study. As she reached the door, she heard Jonathan say firmly, ”Quite sure.” ”Then I am free again!” It was Adam. ”Ever since Mama decided it was time for me to take a wife, I have felt prison walls closing in. That house party was a c.o.c.kle-headed notion at best.” His laugh was joyous, unconstrained.
It was too much for Sarah's fragile composure. She fled.
Returning to Cheve for Peggy's wedding, Adam had stopped at the vicarage on his way home. The front door was open, so he tethered his team and strolled in. Led to the study by the sound of voices, he had entered the room just in time to see his betrothed fling herself into the arms of his best friend.
”Ahem! I trust I do not interrupt?”
Two startled faces swung towards him. The vicar flushed and released Lydia, but she clung to him.
”I love Jonathan,” she told Adam defiantly.
”Betrayed!” He struck a dramatic att.i.tude, clutching his chest. ”Don't look so alarmed, Miss Davis, I am
roasting you. To tell the truth, I suspected this might happen. Jonathan has been your fervent admirer for weeks, if I am not mistaken?”
”Was it so obvious? I had not intended to steal your bride, and I doubt her parents will thank me for it.”
”No need for them to know we were ever betrothed.”
”I do not care if you are not rich and t.i.tled, Jonathan. I shall like being a vicar's wife. I am sorry to disappoint Lord Cheverell, but I do not want to be married to him.”
”You are quite certain?” Adam wanted no misunderstandings to bedevil him at a later date. When Jonathan answered for his beloved, ”Quite sure,” Adam laughed. ”Then I am free again!” After some remarks on his mother's folly in thinking his sisters capable of finding him a wife, he went on to enquire, ”Have you come to a decision about the cathedral post, Jonathan? I mean to try to bribe you to stay here. It is time the living was increased, and even with Sarah gone you will need a bigger house once your family begins to grow.”
”Where is Sarah going?” asked Lydia in dismay. ”I shall need her to show me how to go on.”
”Not far. To Cheve, I hope.”
Jonathan looked at him in astonishment. ”You want to marry Sarah?”
”If she will have me.”
”There can be no doubt of that. I never dreamed there was the least chance of your offering, and I warned her not to wear her heart on her sleeve.”
”But I have done my best, these past few weeks, to destroy any regard she may have had for me. I have wasted years. Now I have come to my senses, I shall woo her and win her if it takes the rest of my life. Where is she?”
A short time later, Adam drove down the Amesbury road, praying he was right in guessing that Sarah was bound for Stonehenge. He did not pa.s.s her on the road, but on so fine a day she would have walked cross-country.
He paced among the towering stone arches, with growing impatience, for half an hour before he saw her limping towards him. He hurried to meet her.