Mr. Wentworth glanced around the vicarage, which Mrs. Baker kept spotless. The place was less than a hundred years old—thus it was the new vicarage—and detached from the church, unlike the prior manse, which was now used for Sunday school, meetings, and fellowship meals.
Like every other durable structure in Yorkshire, the vicarage was a stone edifice. The interior was lightened by whitewashed plaster walls, mullioned windows, and polished oak floors covered with sturdy braided rugs. Darkness in the form of exposed beams, wainscoting, and fieldstone hearths did battle with light, and on an overcast winter morning, the gloom was winning.
“The Lynley Vale butler says we’re in for more foul weather,” Mr. Wentworth observed, following Pietr into his study. “I have never seen snow like you have up here. Acres of snow, waist-deep, and the sky looks like nothing so much as more snow preparing to further bury a landscape we won’t see again until July.”
“The first winter is something of an adventure,” Pietr said, going to the decanters on the sideboard. “Brandy?”
“If you will join me.”
Pietr poured two generous servings and passed one to his guest. “The second winter, you realize about halfway through that it’s not an adventure, it’s a penance. You endure the third winter on the strength of grim resignation, and the fourth winter, you resolve to move south come spring.”
Wentworth sipped his drink. “How long have you been here?”
“More than four winters is simply referred to as ‘too long’ to one not born in these surrounds, but the other seasons are glorious. Would you care for a hand of cribbage? Chess, perhaps?”
Men could not simply sit and talk with one another. Learning that had taken Pietr several years. Women, perhaps because their work was so unrelenting, had the knack of purely spending time in one another’s company. Men were more difficult to put at ease.
“It’s damned snowing again.” Mr. Wentworth’s tone was indignant as he took his drink to the window. “Pardon my language, but it snowed yesterday and the day before.”
“I would not want to be the bearer of bad news,”—vicars were frequently exactly that—“but it’s likely to snow again tomorrow and the next day.” Pietr considered his drink, though really, consuming spirits this early in the day, and so shortly after Mrs. Baker’s departure, was ill-advised. “To an early spring.”
Mr. Wentworth drank to that. “I dread the hike back to Lynley Vale, and I consider myself as stout-hearted as the next man.”
“You consort with Wentworths. You are more stout-hearted than most. What brings you to the village?”
Mr. Wentworth, whose daily business put him at the throbbing heart of international commerce and whose nearest associations were one step short of royalty, made a face as if he’d been served cold mashed turnips.
“Holiday shopping.”
“Ah.” Pietr joined Wentworth at the window, and indeed, fat, white snowflakes were drifting down from a pewter sky. Nothing to be alarmed about—yet. Mrs. Baker would reach York safely, though if the coachman was wise, he’d spend the night in town before asking the team to make the return journey.
“What am I supposed to give people who can buy entire counties if they so desire?” Mr. Wentworth asked.
Pietr handed out the same advice he gave to yeomen and gentry alike. “For the ladies, something small, unique, and pretty. For the gents, something comfortable and comforting. Avoid the useful and the necessary, which should be provided outside the context of holiday tokens. If you can make your gifts with your own hands, so much the better.”
“I make deals,” Mr. Wentworth said. “I make business transactions. I make coldly rational decisions.”
This was the recitation of a man who’d never been in love. Of course Christmas would baffle him.
“We have a talented wood-carver in the person of Dody Wiles, who can usually be found holding forth in the inn’s snug on a winter afternoon. For a price, he will make you birds, kittens, flowers… He can fashion them into coasters, or use a heavy wood such as mahogany to make a paperweight. His pipes are works of art, though he does require time to finish his creations.”
“A wood-carver?”
“He was a drover who nearly lost a foot to frostbite. He needed a sedentary occupation, and the herds’ loss is our gain. What on earth is that fellow thinking?”
A coach and four was rocketing along the far side of the village green, matched blacks in the traces.
“Fancy carriage,” Mr. Wentworth muttered. “Fine horseflesh. What is a conveyance like that doing in a place like this?”
The vehicle rocked to a stop outside the coaching inn. A man climbed out. Youngish, based on the way he moved, dark-haired. He wore neither hat nor scarf nor gloves, though his greatcoat sported three capes.
He had no sooner put his booted foot to the snowy ground than he went careening onto his face into the nearest drift.
“Is this what passes for entertainment in a Yorkshire village?” Mr. Wentworth asked.
A lady climbed out of the coach. Her age was impossible to tell because she did wear a bonnet and scarf. She was spry, though, and she alit without benefit of a male hand to hold. She marched to her fallen comrade and stood over him, hands on hips.
He remained in the snow, facedown, unmoving.
“This is not entertainment,” Pietr said, setting his drink aside. “This is a problem, and one I must deal with. The lady’s coachy appears to be a madman and her escort three sheets to the wind. You are welcome to bide here, Mr. Wentworth, but I must pour oil on troubled waters and speak peace unto the heathen.”
“You can’t leave it to the innkeeper?”
“The hostlers aren’t changing out the team, and our humble inn is full to the gills with holiday travelers. Yesterday’s clouds promise that at some point today, the snow will mean business, and that woman will be stranded on the Dales with a drunk for an escort and an imbecile at the reins. Nobody will intervene now because she’s not their problem, but I am a vicar and thus have a license to meddle.”
Mr. Wentworth finished his drink and set the glass on the sideboard. “I have a propensity for meddling myself. Walden pays me to meddle, in fact. I didn’t know there was a profession for it.”
“Neither did I. You figure that part out after it’s too late.” Pietr did not bother with a hat, though he did tarry long enough to whip a scarf about his neck and pull on fleece-lined gloves. He stalked directly across the green, snow crunching beneath his boots, Mr. Wentworth tromping along at his side.
By the time they reached the coach, so had the innkeeper, his wife, two aldermen, the blacksmith, Mrs. Peabody, and any number of guests from the inn.
“Mr. Sorenson, it’s as well you’ve troubled yourself to join us.” Mrs. Peabody managed to convey that Pietr had dawdled half the day away. As head of the pastoral committee, she took seriously her duty to ensure that her vicar walked humbly with his God. “Somebody is sorely in need of last rites.”
“Looks to me,” Mr. Wentworth said, “as if somebody needs a bit of hair of the dog.”
Mrs. Peabody drew in a breath, like a seventy-four gunner unfurling her sails. “Sir, I don’t know who you are, or why you feel—”