Her grandmother could not be shifted in her opinion that he was an angel.
“And he worships the ground you tread upon, Anna,” she said. “The good Lord has looked after you, my love, without any assistance from your gramma and grampa. That will keep me humble. However, I shall have a bone to pick with him over it when I come face-to-face with him in heaven. I assume that is where I am going. Indeed, I will not take no for an answer.”
She laughed heartily, and Anna was struck, as she was over and over again during those eight days, with a wave of . . . not memory exactly. She remembered precious little of the years she had spent here. But there were sometimes snatches and whiffs of familiarity, nothing definite enough to be captured by the mind, but real enough to prod at the heart and linger there. The only real memories were the lych-gate—though why that she did not know—and the window seat in what she learned had been her mother’s room, with its view down over the churchyard and the church. But there were Gramma’s laugh, the doilies, the big round china teapot with its faded painting of an idyllic rural scene and the small, triangular chip in its lid, Grampa’s way of always seeming to get the many small buttons of his waistcoats into the wrong buttonholes, and his quiet, affable smile. There was a feeling in church on Sunday too that she had once gazed upon her grandfather in his role as vicar and wondered if he was God. And the feeling—or was it a memory?—that she had asked Gramma once in the middle of the service and been shushed with a hand over her mouth and a whispered assurance that indeed he was not.
Her grandmother laughed heartily when Anna asked her about it after the service, as they were walking home, each of them with an arm linked through Avery’s.
“Indeed it did happen,” she said. “At the time I felt I could have died with embarrassment, for you chose the very quietest, most solemn moment in which to pipe up in your little voice, which must have carried right up into the bell tower. But I have held it as a fond memory since.”
“You thought perhaps your grandpapa was God, Anna?” Avery asked. “But how very foolish of you. God is far sterner, is he not?”
Gramma moved her arm sharply and caught him in the ribs with her elbow as she laughed.
It was an idyllic week in too many ways to count. Anna and Avery went for walks in the countryside, along lanes and cart tracks wherever they led, her arm drawn through his or sometimes hand in hand, their fingers laced, or sometimes, when there was absolutely no one in sight, with their arms about each other’s waist. Occasionally he stopped to kiss her and revert to his old manner.
“Anna,” he said once with a noticeable shudder, “you are acquiring the rosy complexion of a country wench. You actually look healthy. I am not sure I dare take you back to London. Perhaps rosier lips would be a slight improvement.” And, after kissing her thoroughly and regarding her with the old, lazy eyes, “Yes, that definitely helps. I shall have to keep on doing it.”
“Absurd,” she said, smiling at him.
“Quite so.”
He made love to her each night, slowly and quietly, for the house was not very large. It was wonderful beyond words.
On the evening before they left, after several days of hesitating, her grandparents agreed that they would come to Morland Abbey for a few weeks during the summer—Avery had mentioned a month or two or ten. Anna’s grandfather had been threatening to retire for at least the past five years, her grandmother reported, and there was a perfectly delightful young man of their acquaintance, a curate at a church in Bristol, who would be only too eager to step into a living of his own. It would not take much effort to persuade him to come as a locum tenens for a few weeks.
“Perhaps, Isaiah,” she added, “you will see when we return that the parish has not collapsed without you.”
“Perhaps, Alma,” he said, smiling fondly at her, “that is what I am afraid of.”
He would send his own carriage, Avery told them, and would brook no protest, and sufficient servants to ensure their safety and comfort during the journey. He would make all the arrangements for horses and refreshments and accommodations. All they would need do was come.
“It will mean the world to Anna,” he told them. “And it will give me great delight. There are some remnants of the old abbey remaining, including the cloister. They will interest you, sir.”
There were tears shed the following morning before Avery handed Anna into the plainer of his two carriages, which had returned from the inn where the rest of their entourage awaited them. But there were smiles too. They would all see one another again soon.
“So different from the last time I was torn from them,” she said, sitting back in her seat as the carriage made its way out of the village.
“Do you remember?” he asked, taking her hand.
“Not with my head,” she said. “But with my heart, yes. I can remember crying and crying. I can remember my father’s voice, gruff and impatient, telling me to be a big girl. I believe I was very fortunate not to have to grow up with him as Harry and Camille and Abigail did.”
“That is one way of looking at it,” he said. “Yes, indeed, my Anna, you were fortunate to grow up in an orphanage.”
She turned her head to smile at him. “It was not so very bad,” she said. “It shaped me into the person I am now, and boastful as it may sound, I like myself as I am.”
“Hmm.” He looked rather arrested for a moment. “Yes, I do too. I even like that bonnet, though every finer feeling ought to revolt at the very sight of it.”