CHAPTER ELEVEN #4
A surge of hope thrust a flutter of excitement into Lucy’s breast. Yet she could not but protest. “There must be fifty churches at least in the immediate vicinity of Upledon, never mind the whole of Gloucestershire.”
“Then we will search all their registers until we find it,” Stefan promised.
He drew her towards him, and a tender smile curved his mouth.
“We must find it, for I know you too well, my dearest, to suppose you will consent to marry me without. However long it takes, to me it will be time well spent.”
It felt strange to be once again scouring the area around her old home for evidence of her past. Stranger still, to Lucy, to be doing so in a spirit of unbridled hope. So much hung upon this journey, she was near overwhelmed with the sense of its urgency.
Stefan had left her at his great-aunt’s overnight, Lucy regretfully agreeing it was already too late to set out. Indeed, since the morrow was a Saturday, she had begun to chafe at the notion of potentially wasted time.
“It will take us all day to get there, and then it will be Sunday. How can we enquire at any church on the busiest day in the Anglican week?”
“What better day?” had argued Stefan. “When we may be sure of discovering the incumbents in their churches.”
He had returned to fetch her the following morning, driving, to her surprise, his curricle, and accompanied only by his groom.
“I believe it will suit us better not to be burdened with Dion’s presence on this occasion.”
Lucy had cried out at this, protesting Dion was not a burden. “And I am astonished she agreed to be excluded.”
Stefan had laughed. “It was not accomplished without argument, I assure you. Dion is naturally delighted at the outcome of events and wanted to be in at the kill, so to speak, but I managed to persuade her of the futility of leaving Corisande in charge with Paulina and her infant fixed in the house.”
Lucy could not but appreciate the justice of this, though she had entered a caveat. “But who is to chaperon me?”
“There is no impropriety in your travelling about the country with your affianced husband,” Stefan had pointed out, with a lurking twinkle.
Lucy had frowned down the leaping flame set alight in her veins at the thought of being quite alone with him whenever they must rack up at an inn for the night. “That depends,” she said severely, “if the gentleman in question is disposed to behave himself.”
Stefan’s eye had gleamed. “His conduct will be impeccable.” He had leaned to whisper in her ear. “In particular in the matter of never neglecting opportunity.”
Lucy had flushed both inside and out, and abandoned the subject for fear of his saying anything more outrageous.
In the event, however, the purpose of the journey became ever more prominent until Lucy could think of nothing else.
She was glad of the speedy curricle, for there was no need to spend a night upon the road, although it was excessively late by the time they entered into Gloucestershire at Preston and located a likely hostelry.
It was all Lucy could do to remain awake long enough to partake of a makeshift meal before falling into bed, no thought of amorous undertakings so much as crossing her mind.
On the Sunday, Lucy was yawning as she ate a desultory breakfast. It occurred to her she’d had but little rest during the last few days, so intense and relentless had been the march of events.
But she was eager to start, and waited with ill-concealed impatience while Stefan tucked away a mountainous breakfast.
They began with Preston vicarage, went on to the rectory at Broomsberrow, doubled back to the vicarage of Dimmock, and then checked the churches at Kempley and Pauntley, and finally took in Oxenhall vicarage.
By which time they had travelled more than fourteen miles and wasted hours in fruitless questioning.
Despondent, Lucy hung back from re-entering the curricle. “We will never find it. I don’t believe it exists.”
Stefan put his arm about her. “Take heart. We have covered a mere five or six churches as yet.”
“Six,” stated Lucy flatly. “There are six in the immediate environs of Upledon.”
“They are beginning to look the same to me,” said Stefan ruefully, releasing her and casting a frowning glance at the sky. “One more, and then I think we must look for a likely inn and bespeak rooms for the night. Where shall we go next?”
Despite Lucy’s upbringing, her acquaintance with the incumbents of churches further afield was slight. “Corse, I suppose, though we must cross the Severn to reach it.”
Detecting her drooping spirits, Stefan tried to cheer her. “We could not expect to be as lucky a second time as we were in discovering Alice’s family. Recollect we have no notion where my uncle and your mother might have met, let alone run off to.”
Lucy sighed. “Perhaps it was out of the county altogether.”
“Unlikely, I think. Alice would not have ended in Upledon, and as it seems clear my uncle abandoned her soon after the ceremony, there can be little doubt it took place within a not unreasonable distance of Mr Graydene’s vicarage.”
“Begging your pardon, my lord, but seems to me as there’s one place as you might try miss ain’t said nothing about.”
Stefan looked to where the groom was holding the horses’ heads. “Where’s that, Cobbold?”
“Much Marcle.”
“Much Marcle!” exclaimed Lucy. “I never even thought of Much Marcle. It is outside the county.”
“Aye, miss. It’s what you said made me think of it. I bent the ear of the landlord at Preston, in hopes of turning up a place where we might get a change of horses, and he said as the nearest were the Rose and Crown at Much Marcle as might be able to hire out at need.”
“In that case,” said Stefan decisively, “we’d best head off there. Let’s hope they have rooms enough to put us up. How far is it?”
“You’ll have to go back to Kempley,” Lucy put in. “I imagine it is not much above six miles. But it must be nearly as far to Corse.”
“Up with you, then. We can take in Corse tomorrow.”
Bundled into the curricle, but with little hope of discovering anything at this journey’s end, Lucy’s thoughts turned again upon the trials of her birth mother. “I cannot help wondering how Alice survived.”
Stefan was gathering up the reins. “I imagine my uncle paid her off. Clearly she had found the means to live until the very end. Let ’em go, Cobbold.”
The curricle started off, the groom swinging up behind as it passed him. Lucy contemplated her mother’s plight with growing distress.
“I have been so wrapped up in my own concerns in the case, I have not previously thought of her sufferings. She must have run out of money. Why did she not send to him for more?”
Stefan’s response was curt and forthright. “I doubt she knew where to send. Did she not rely upon your adoptive father to make the application on your behalf?”
“Yes, but she did not tell him they had been married. Or perhaps she tried to and was too ill to make herself understood.” Lucy clenched her fists and shook her head vehemently.
“I cannot but dread we are come upon a wild goose chase. Why should we suppose a man as unprincipled as your uncle would have troubled himself to make an honest woman of poor Alice?”
“You have me there,” Stefan conceded. “Had it not come from Aunt Dorothea, I should have been inclined to dismiss the whole tale as a fantasy.”
Lucy continued to brood, not noticing much of the way and oblivious to the increasing chill and the gradually fading light, until Cobbold announced there was a spire up ahead. “That’ll be Much Marcle, my lord.”
Within a few moments, the village hove into sight.
It was a pretty place, with evidence of more dwellings in the chimneys behind the ones within the immediate environs.
The church was set off to one side of the green, and the curricle passed the Rose and Crown as Stefan looked for the lane that would lead them to it.
He found it and the carriage turned in. Lucy stared at the squat shape ahead of her, prey to an inexplicable presentiment of discovery.