Mr. North.
His visits were growing in frequency and duration. And how could James possibly tell a vicar to limit his calls, especially after what had transpired on the property?
He cleared his throat and returned his focus to his sister. “That seems unlikely. What could you possibly have asked that would upset her so?”
“I asked her a question about her past. It was too personal. I should’ve known better. She told me the very first day we met that she’d experienced a similar situation to what I had with Richard. She almost eloped with a young man but was stopped. She said she’d share the details of it with me one day, but she seemed upset after I brought it up.”
A disrupted elopement?
So Miss Hale did have a bit of a past.
No wonder she’d acted defensively on Rachel’s behalf.
He refocused on his sister. “That doesn’t sound right to me. Perhaps there is something else. Or she really did not feel well. I wouldn’t worry over it.”
But with everything that had transpired and all of the suspicion, he remained uncertain. There was so much he didn’t know about her—but it was not her past that concerned him. It was the present, and how it would affect the days, months, and years to come.
* * *
Dusk was already starting to fall, and shades of purple and blue covered the autumn’s browns and golds as Cassandra ambled back toward Briarton Park. The bare-branched trees swayed and creaked in sharp gusts, the urgency of which reminded her that she needed to get home.
She was late—much later than she should be. It was her free afternoon, but Mr. Warrington had repeatedly made it clear that no one was to be out alone on the grounds, given the recent violence, after dark.
In the courtyard a riding lesson was in progress. The girls were clad in their new riding togs that Betsy had been engaged to fashion for them, and both Mr. Warrington and the groom were instructing them.
She lowered her cape and approached, and memories of the day she arrived to ask for a position rushed her. But now, instead of anxiety and uncertainty, a sense of calm cloaked her. This place—Briarton Park—was home, and the people in it were becoming a source of comfort. Rachel was a friend. Maria and Rose, her purpose. And Mr. Warrington . . .
Cassandra paused to take a deep breath.
Mr. North might be winsome, but Mr. Warrington enchanted her.
And now he was approaching her.
She waited, still and silent, as he strode from the courtyard, hatless, casually and confidently. His silhouette cut an impressive figure against the backdrop of the leafless trees and winter shrubbery as he drew nearer, through the gate by the orchard and to the path along the front drive, where she stood.
“Miss Hale,” he greeted. “Rachel said you weren’t feeling well. She was worried.”
“I didn’t mean to worry her. I should have told her where I was going.”
He did not ask for details, yet the ensuing silence and his raised brows asked the questions his voice did not.
She owed no further explanation, but until this point she had not realized how badly she wanted to tell someone.
To tell him.
Her mother had made it clear that she wanted it kept a secret, and Cassandra had planned to keep it a secret. But Mr. Warrington already knew so much about the situation. And she trusted his advice. “As it turned out, the woman we visited on one of the calls today was named Mary Smith. And she is my mother.”
“Your mother?” he repeated. “And this is good news, isn’t it?”
The words fought her as she spoke them. “I’m not certain. She wants nothing to do with me. I’m never to call on her again.”
“I am sorry,” he said softly.
“At least I know the truth.” She infused her voice with as much optimism as possible. “I know who my father was. I know who my mother is, and I know where she’s living. And thanks to Mrs. Hutton, who used to be the housekeeper here, I know the circumstances surrounding my birth. It is everything I wanted to know.”
The breeze lifted his hair from his brow, and he studied the distance as if pondering what she’d said. “But it’s not enough, is it?”
Alarmed by his insight, she looked away from him. “It should be. But no. It’s not. I suppose I will have to be satisfied and leave it as it is.”
“If we, myself included, wait for complete satisfaction, we’ll always be disappointed. There will always be unanswered questions and things we wish were different. If we dwell on those, though, we risk missing the good that is before us. I know that to be true every time I look at my daughters.”
He could relate, she knew.
He’d lost his wife. He surely wanted resolution to unanswerable questions, just like she did.
She distractedly pulled her kid glove tight. “Well, I know I have a brother, a mother, and my father’s dead. So now what?”
“You have an inheritance.”
“True, but I have no way to prove my identity. Mr. Longham possessed every pertinent piece of documentation, and now—”
“I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Mr. Shepard made an arrest regarding Longham’s death.”
“Yes, Mr. North told me.”
At the reference to Mr. North, Mr. Warrington’s jaw twitched.
Or had she imagined it?
He adjusted his stance. “I’m not familiar with the details, of course, But Shepard did stop by Weyton to say the man in question was also a suspect in some of the mill attacks. He also said he had evidence that tied him to Longham’s assault as well, but I’m not sure what that evidence was. Perhaps this development will lead to the papers you need.”
She indulged in an exasperated sigh. “Everything, every aspect of this search, feels so convoluted. Mrs. Hutton informed me that the woman who raised me—Mrs. Denton, the very one who wrote my recommendation letter—was actually Mr. Clark’s sister-in-law. Can you believe it? Apparently she was Peter Clark’s maternal aunt, and they were quite close. It seems as if everything I know is a lie or a shifted version of truth. I don’t know what to do or where to go. Perhaps no one can be trusted.”
He took one step closer to her. “You can trust me.”
She looked up at him, suddenly very aware of his scent of sandalwood and the outdoors, of horses and fresh air. The pewter of his eyes was vibrant in the early evening light. How she wanted to believe his words were true. Yet she could not shake her mother’s experience from her mind. Had her mother believed that she could trust Robert Clark?
All she knew for certain, in spite of her conflicting thoughts, was that she did not want to leave Mr. Warrington’s side. There was strength, a comfort in his presence, which until now had been quite foreign to her. Perhaps it was the space he gave her when they spoke, or the manner in which he seemed to focus on her wholly, without agenda or motive, that affected her so.
A gust of evening wind swept in, dislodging her hair and whipping it around her face.
He reached forward, slowly, and lifted the wayward curl away from her face. His finger brushed her cheek and lingered there. Intimately. Tenderly.
At the touch, a thrill shot through her—the thrill of being connected to someone, of being understood or, at the very least, cared about. This was the feeling she’d been searching for. The feeling she’d been chasing. And yet it was in its infancy. If allowed to grow, where could this feeling go? What could this become?