Charlotte stepped into the coolness of the shadowed church, with its thick stone floors and imposing columns, acutely aware of the curious glances in her direction. Light shone through the stained-glass windows, painting the ancient wooden pews and boxes in shades of auburns and greens and giving the entire vestibule an ethereal glow.
She carried Henry to the family pew in the front and paused but a moment to look at the plaque boasting her family name before she opened the door to the pew box and sat down. Keeping with tradition, Sutcliffe and Rebecca sat in the public pew in the back. The familiar setting unleashed a flood of long-forgotten memories from her childhood. Here, almost as much as at Hollythorne House, she felt her parents’ absence keenly.
Whispers met her ears, and although she could not make out the words being uttered, she sensed they were about her. About Henry. About all that had happened. She glanced over her shoulder only once to see two women with their heads bowed in a hushed conversation, eyes fixed on her. She pivoted back and slowly looked forward. She could not control what was said about her or the situation at hand. But she would do her best to prove herself worthy.
* * *
When they returned to Hollythorne House after service, Charlotte had not entirely worked out her feelings from church. She had not been welcomed with open arms, but then again, she’d not been shunned. She had recognized familiar faces, and there were many new ones. Reacclimating herself to village life—as well as being accepted by the locals—was a process that would take time. Initiative. Patience.
Instead of lingering on those thoughts, she took advantage of the first full day of true sunshine—one where the sky was blue and the breeze felt more like a promise of spring than the impending winter. When Henry fell asleep for a nap, she decided to face one of the more difficult tasks she’d been avoiding since her arrival.
She made her way around the house, back behind the walled gardens. The family burial plot was outside the rear garden, under a copse of oak trees as ancient as the house itself, on the highest point of the garden, overlooking Blight Moor’s expanse. Sobriety cloaked her as she approached the place where so many of her ancestors lay. She was almost afraid to come to this space and face the emotions it might conjure.
She was familiar with her mother’s gravestone. Her mother had died of fever when Charlotte was twelve, and she’d often tended her mother’s grave herself. But it was her father’s gravestone that made her hesitate. He’d been quite ill the few years leading up to his death, and during those last difficult months of his life, nothing had mattered more to him than seeing her settled. The last time she saw him was here at Hollythorne House, six months after her marriage. He’d been in his chamber, clad in a patterned dressing coat, looking frail. Very pale and gray. To cheer him she’d regaled him with stories of how happy she was as mistress of Wolden House.
The stories had been a lie, of course—a lie she’d told to give him peace and comfort in his final days, for he alone had orchestrated her match with Roland. She could not bear for him to know that his efforts—that a man he’d trusted to be good-hearted and attentive—had resulted in misery for his only daughter.
Her chest tightened as she sat on the stone bench next to the gravestones. The lullaby of the winds sweeping over the moor grass kept her company, and the skylarks that made their homes in the brambles and hazel bushes reminded her of the life surrounding her. What would her father think of her actions and her return to Hollythorne House? He’d been such a volatile man, patient with those he cared for and brusque with those he did not. He would be mortified at the state she was in.
But his stalwart blood was flowing through her veins. She’d inherited his practical sensibilities and his dogged determination. He would instruct her to do whatever necessary for stability and peace. And she would do just that.
Chapter 24
When Anthony first returned to Blight Moor after the war to learn that his uncle was dead, the mill had burned, and Charlotte was married, he made it his singular goal to forget the small village where he’d spent his adolescence and early adulthood.
Such difficult news on the heels of battle could crumble some men, but Anthony had decided early on that it would not break him. To combat the torment and stinging regret, he’d simply not allowed himself to think on it. Fortuitously, the busyness and danger associated with the life of a thief-taker had been the ideal catalyst to keep his mind free of the past’s emotional traps. He’d been largely successful at doing so, but one visit to accompany Charlotte to the church in the village, not to mention seeing familiar faces, threatened to dismantle his carefully curated walls and unleash the intentionally sealed memories.
Now, in the midst of all his activity, one truth haunted him: he’d never forgive himself for not saving his uncle. It did not matter that he’d been hundreds of miles away at the time the fire occurred. He should have been here. He knew that. He’d always known that.
One of their many conversations haunted him, and now even the strongest mental determination could not keep his mind from recounting it.
“I encourage you to really think your plans through, Anthony,” Uncle Robert said as they sat at the small, roughly hewn table in the mill cottage’s kitchen. “This commission you wish to purchase will exhaust the funds your father left you. You’ll be an officer, yes, but you’ll have no money.”
Anthony shrugged nonchalantly with all the confidence of his eighteen years. “If the time comes and I need money, I can just sell the commission. Sounds simple to me.”
“Consider, such a sum of money could set you up for a comfortable life here on Blight Moor,” his uncle countered. “When I die this mill will pass you to. You’ll have a legacy, spanning generations of Welbournes, to leave to your own children. You could do much worse.”
Anthony sniffed and stared out the window into the black night. Why did his uncle always have to find fault with his plans? How could he not see the logic of it? Ultimately, the decision regarding what he wanted to do with his life was his.
The shadows caused by the light from the fire simmering in the broad hearth reflected on the weathered lines of his uncle’s full, timeworn face. “Every man, young and old, dreams of adventure. Believe it or not, my first choice of occupation was not to run a mill, but other factors came into play.”
“But my father followed his calling,” Anthony argued, determined to have his point heard and validated. “He had goals and followed them. I intend to do the same.”
Uncle Robert’s expression didn’t change, and he nodded his graying head frustratingly slowly. “Yes, your father made a choice. But that did not mean he did not have responsibilities he left behind.”
Defensiveness bubbled within Anthony’s chest. “So you’re saying my father turned his back on his responsibilities?”
Uncle Robert stood from the table and crossed the low-ceilinged kitchen to stand next to the broad hearth. He pushed up the sleeves of his linen shirt and tossed another piece of wood on the simmering fire. After several moments of no sound other than the popping fire, he asked, “How much do you know about your father’s childhood?”
“Not much.”
Uncle Robert straightened from the fire, brushed the wood’s debris from his hands, and returned to the table. “Your father was three years older than me. Our father endeavored to teach us both to form a good life on the moors . . . how to respect the land and the people in it. But our great-uncle, you see, had been a soldier and traveled far and wide. Your father idolized him and wanted to be just like him. When our father died, everything he owned passed to your father. As the firstborn, the house, the holdings, the farmland—it all went to him.