Chapter Ten
The center of Chadleigh did not appear to be flooded, although the road got progressively muddier as Kate approached the town.
When she dismounted, she looped the reins around the gatepost between the churchyard and the vicarage and made a half-hearted attempt to rid her riding habit of its mud spatters.
Some was dry enough to brush off quite easily.
Some merely smeared, so she gave up and walked through the gate to the vicarage.
It was a substantial house. She understood the vicar had no children, so there must have been plenty of room for a curate to lodge. Although it was hardly what the Marquis of Winster’s son was used to.
She walked up the garden path and knocked at the door. A middle-aged housekeeper in a black dress and starched white cap opened the door to her.
Kate presented her card. “I’m Lady Ambrose,” she said cheerfully. “I’m staying with Lady Chadbon at Chadbon Court. I wonder if the vicar could spare me a moment or two?”
“The vicar hasn’t been well, my lady,” the woman said. “But come in for a moment while I inquire.”
She vanished into the room on the left of the front door. But she wasn’t gone long. She emerged looking faintly surprised. “Mr. Bancroft will see you, but please will you keep your visit brief for his sake? This is the first day he’s been up for longer than an hour or two.”
“Oh, of course I will,” Kate assured her, wondering if she should have come in the first place. There were surely more useful things she could be doing with her time.
Mr. Bancroft made to rise as Kate walked past the housekeeper into the room, which appeared to be the vicar’s study.
“No, please don’t get up,” she said at once, for he had the frail look of the convalescent, almost as though any sudden movement might shatter him.
He smiled, a sweet, half-rueful smile, as he relaxed back into his comfortable wing chair.
A shawl hung half over the back, as if he had shrugged it off.
“Then you must sit, Lady Ambrose. Thank you for calling on me. It’s a long time since anyone has.
I’m afraid I’ve been rather ill, and no one likes to bother me. I miss my visitors.”
Kate sat in the chair nearest to him. “That is surely a promising sign for your health and strength. Your parishioners will be missing you even more.”
“Well, we have my young friend the curate. I admit I fought against it at first. It’s hard to admit one’s own weakness, you know, let alone acknowledge that one cannot carry out the basic duties which are my life. But there you are. He has been a blessing.”
Kate felt an unexpected puff of pride in Rupert. And a breath of cold in her veins. “He has been a blessing.” Not “He is a blessing.”
“Actually, it is Mr. Grande I want to discuss with you.”
“It is?”
“He is not here, is he?”
“No, I’m told he has been called away on some family matter. But he has left all his things here, so my hope is he will return before Sunday at the latest.”
“Might I ask who brought you the news of his departure?”
“Lord Chadbon called in yesterday. In truth, I was disappointed not to see young Grande, for he had promised to come to tea. It was the first time I’d come downstairs since my illness.”
“I’m sure he would have been there if he could.”
“He’s a good sort of fellow. He listens and never judges. I hear things, even in my sickbed, and a man with his vocation, however young, does not abandon his duties to God or to the world.”
Kate found herself having to make that mind-boggling adjustment once again, from the Rupert she remembered and the Rupert that Amelia had described, to the Rupert he’d apparently become.
Face to face it was easier, for he was still Rupert.
Hearing about him, however, was like discussing a total stranger.
“Did Lord Chadbon say he had abandoned his duties?” she asked, inclined to indignation.
“No, just that he’d been called away and had asked His Lordship to convey the message to me.” He turned his head toward the opening door. “Ah, my dear, have you met Lady Ambrose?”
The vicar’s wife was, at first glance, the complete opposite of her husband. Her style of hair, her dress, and her expression were all severe. And she was clearly not pleased by the visitor.
Kate rose and offered her hand. “Mrs. Bancroft, do forgive the intrusion.”
The vicar’s wife blinked with surprise—or perhaps suspicion—before she touched Kate’s hand. “You were not to know that the vicar has been so very ill. Although what Mrs. Dale was thinking about to show you in here, I do not know. It is past time for the vicar to return to bed now.”
Something very like annoyance flickered in Mr. Bancroft’s mild eyes before he said, “I am not a child, my dear, and I am still the vicar of Chadleigh. I will have another five minutes with Lady Ambrose.”
For a gentle man, he was oddly firm. And Kate, who had been about to depart with profound apologies, found herself staying put as much in support of the vicar as for her own ends. Mrs. Bancroft’s face flushed. Her eyes narrowed, but without an unseemly quarrel, there was nothing she could do.
“Please, no longer, Lady Ambrose. I will not have my husband placed at risk.”
“Indeed not,” Kate replied seriously.
But the door was already closing with a loud click behind the vicar’s angry—or perhaps just very anxious—wife.
“Forgive us,” he said. “She worries for me, and I fret at my current uselessness. What is it about young Grande that troubles you?”
It almost took her breath away. It was certainly a timely warning about trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes.
She met the vicar’s gaze.
“Is he in trouble?” Mr. Bancroft asked quietly.
Kate nodded, appalled to feel her throat closing up. “Yes, but I am trying to help him. We are old friends, he and I. And I wanted to be sure you did not think badly of him. He hasn’t deserted you, or the parish.”
“I know. Is there anything I can do to help?”
“There might be,” Kate said. “I understand Lady Chadbon often invited you to dine.”
“We clergymen are useful when hostesses are short of a gentleman.”
“Then your wife is not invited with you?” Kate asked, shocked by such rudeness.
“Not on those occasions, when he has political friends staying. I regard it as more duty than social occasion. And so I warned young Grande the other evening.”
“Oh, every gathering is fun for him. Tell me, sir, when you dine there, is it often with the same guest?”
“I have grown used to certain familiar faces.”
“Marcus Otteridge, perhaps? Sir Colin Nye?”
“Actually, I never met Nye at such affairs, though I know him well enough. We all grew up around here, Chadbon, Nye, and I.”
Kate’s eyebrows flew up without permission. “I didn’t know that.”
“Yes. The Nyes had Tetley Hall, where the Gibbs now reside. Colin sold up and moved to London when his father died.”
Was that important? She couldn’t see how. “What of Mr. Otteridge?”
“Oh, no, he is not local, although I have met him many times at Chadbon Court.”
“Can I ask what you think of him?”
“In what way?”
Kate hesitated. Clearly, the vicar was not comfortable with gossip, so she decided on the shock approach. “Is he capable of violence?”
The vicar’s jaw dropped. “Violence? How much trouble is Grande in?”
Kate rose. “Nothing that should concern you. Please get well, and don’t worry.
He always lands on his feet eventually. I hope you know his position here means a great deal to him.
More than anything.” She held out her hand and the vicar took it, his grip gentle but firm, his eyes old and perceptive and suddenly uncomfortable.
“Goodbye, Mr. Bancroft. I’ll call again, if I may. ”
“Please do.”
She smiled and left him. She wasn’t entirely surprised to see his wife hovering in the doorway across the hall.
“Thank you for your consideration, Lady Ambrose,” Mrs. Bancroft said stiffly, walking with her to the front door.
“Convalescing men can be difficult to manage,” Kate said, remembering the summer of her brother’s broken leg. “I quite understand. Goodbye, ma’am.”
“My lady.”
*
For Rupert, idleness had only ever been bearable in company, the more riotous the better. Confinement with nothing to do except reread the law treatise that the magistrate had lent him—in jest, Rupert could only assume—was beginning to weigh on him.
Even the gloating constable, whose name was Boyle, would have been better company than none.
But he had only seen Boyle twice that day, briefly, when the man brought him bread and weak ale for breakfast, and bread and cheese and more weak ale at midday.
Rupert at least had hope of enticing the man into a game of cards if he came back, but as the hours dragged on, he suspected the constable was busy collecting evidence against him.
Or making it up.
It was interesting being on the powerless side of Society for a change. Not fun, but a salutary lesson that deepened his understanding. Though it hardly helped Dinah or anything else about his current situation.
He had been touched by Kate’s visit last night.
The sight of her breaking into his prison had made him want to laugh and hug her.
Even when she departed, he had been left with a feeling of warmth that he had no real right to in present circumstances, and he had slept for the first time since being locked up.
However, waking only an hour later to the sounds of rain battering the ground and the plants outside, he had been extremely worried for her.
The magistrate had not been near him either. Rupert had more than half expected to be summoned again and bound over until the assizes. In which case, he’d have been moved to a much more crowded—and less salubrious—prison to await his trial.