She picked up Mary-Jane, who squirmed and protested, and laughing together the women and children went down to breakfast.
* * *
THE VISIT FLEW BY, AS VISITS must do. In Kintbury the young couple enjoyed few intimate moments; no consideration was given to their privacy. The parsonage bustled as a parsonage was wont to, and it was hard for them to find a quiet corner. The climate, too, was against them: It was no sort of weather for walks. And Mrs. Fowle—poor Mrs. Fowle, one could not but feel for her—got more distraught with every day that brought the departure nearer. She was loath to leave her boy’s side.
But in the last light hour of Tom’s final afternoon, they were, finally, alone together. Cassy was trying to capture a likeness of Tom with her colors. It was not as easy as she had found it before. She did not want to include the grim set of his jaw, the dark circles around his eyes, or that fear deep within them, but already could barely remember what he looked like without.
One of life’s dreamers—though who knew what, exactly, he dreamed about?—Tom was always content to sit in an armchair and do nothing, so she was surprised when he suddenly stirred.
“There. You have had long enough to work on my indifferent appearance.” He rose and came round to look. “Oh, yes. So clever. It quite defeats me, my love, how you can be so excessively good at everything to which you turn your hand.” The thought did not seem to make him anything like cheerful. “I do wonder that such an extraordinarily gifted and accomplished young lady would even think of marrying a hopeless case like myself.”
“Oh, Tom!” Cassy started to pack up her brushes. “This really is not one of my better efforts. It is not very clever at all.” She swung round to face him. Their eyes locked for a long moment. Her response—poor, ill judged, inadequate—seemed to echo around them.
With a grim smile, he reached down and took her hand. “Let us walk. We have spent long enough sitting. I have a small piece of last business to attend to. Please. Come with me.”
They dressed up well—Mrs. Fowle fussing around them, insisting they not be too long—and set out into the gloaming. It was a short walk, up a walled path that was glassy with cold, to the church. Tom looked neither left nor right—he could not feel quite comfortable in a graveyard at twilight—and tightened his grip on Cassy’s arm.
“It turns out I made a slight hash of things when I was helping my father. The new curate spotted it. Odd little chap. Eyes like a hawk.” He stepped into the church porch and opened the heavy oak door for her. “Got rather excited about it. Is that all that there is to God’s work? I was minded to ask him. Do a few little dates matter, in the great divine scheme?”
Cassy half listened, but her mind was still in the drawing room: She was consumed with her own reproach. Why had she behaved so, to this man she loved so deeply, whom she had loved for so long? It was so unlike herself she could not explain it. All her life, she had always, instinctively, said the right thing at the right moment. Why would she slip now, on his very last day?
They entered the cold church, lit a candle, and walked over to the register. “I failed to write the year in one of the banns, and a Christian name in a burial, so the new curate told me.” Tom found the right pages, and dipped his pen.
While he did so, Cassy cast a quick eye over the other entries in his familiar handwriting. “This christening here”—she marked the ledger with her finger—“I may be wrong, but should there perhaps—possibly—be a birthdate for the baby?”
Tom looked over. “Ah, yes. Good, Cass—correct as ever. You have sharper eyes even than that curate. How much more competent I will be at these and all other matters when I have you to guide me through every day.”
She smiled, left his side, and moved to the head of the aisle while he did what he had to. It was a pretty church, small and plain, though its windows were stained. She looked up as the last winter light filtered through, sank into the quiet of the moment and communion with her Maker—oh dear Lord, keep him safe; let her be strong—until Tom appeared by her side. They stood quietly together, the betrothed young lovers, in front of the altar. He turned toward her and took her hand.
“My dear Cassandra,” he began, “I know I am not the most eloquent of men. But there are things I must say before I leave you.” His face was grave. “Things I want you to know, in case I never come back.”
In all those weeks of preparation, even in those spacious days of that first farewell visit, they had been careful never to embark on this conversation.
“Oh!” Cassy was not sure she could bear it. “You will come back. I am depending on it. Please let us not have to discuss, to consider … It is too dreadful—”
He gripped her arms. “We must. I want you to know that I have made my will, and left you the bulk of my—well—of what little money I have managed to accumulate.”
“Please do not tell me—” She fought with her tears, but she lost.
“I want you to have it. You are paying me the compliment of constancy in my absence. You should be … reimbursed if I fail to return.”
“But we are betrothed. This is my choice.”
“It will give you a little security, though not much,” Tom continued. “And I want you to promise me that this bequest will not make you beholden to my memory.” He was urgent. “That if you do not marry me, you must feel free to marry still.”
Her face was wet. When she spoke, her voice was broken. “I promise you,” she forced out, “Tom, I promise you…” And, mostly because she had always believed that he was her destiny, and a little because of how she had behaved earlier, she found her strength and declared: “I promise you faithfully, here before God. I will never marry any man other than you.”
* * *
AT DINNER THEY COULD HARDLY ignore that this was Tom’s last, but no one knew quite what to say.
Fulwar, favoring distraction, began a recollection of hunting heroics of which, it just happened, there was only one hero. “I was out on Biscay. Do you know why I called him that?”
Everyone knew; no one answered.
“Because he was a great, roaring bay! We had been out front since the setoff”—Fulwar had no regard for the virtue of novelty in anecdote—“hounds in full flight, fella came up on my left as we were taking the hedge—”
Even Cassy knew this story backward.
“Broke m’ left leg and lost half m’ teeth!”
Tom was not even pretending to listen.
“Did I take to my bed?”
The whole table seemed sunken in misery.
“Drank a bumper at supper that very same night!”
Then Eliza—sensitive, intelligent Eliza—introduced the perfect formula with which to discuss the imminent departure: “I wonder how old this new baby will be before Tom meets him?” she pondered, looking down into her lap as she spoke.
Mrs. Fowle immediately brightened at the thought of her new grandchild. “Oh, still in the cradle, I hope.” She was emphatic. “It will not be a long voyage, I am quite certain. Lord Craven will not take you away for much more than a year.”
“I quite agree, Mama. Swift and glorious does it. You will be making short shrift of those natives, I know,” said Fulwar.