He gave her a wary look.
“But you’re a grown man. At least thirty, by my guess.”
“One and thirty,” he said. “I lived at the c-convent for…for sixteen years.”
She gaped at him, so stunned she nearly lost her footing on a patch of loose stones. His hand shot out to grasp her elbow, steadying her before she could fall. Clara’s heartbeat surged into a gallop. For all his shyness and halting speech, he was a strong, capable man. Quick enough to catch her before she could come to harm.
“Careful,” he said.
“Yes, thank you.” She was breathless, and sounded it. “I wasn’t paying proper attention.” His touch sent a pleasurable shiver through her veins. Was it possible to feel the warmth and weight of his hand all the way through the folds of her cloak and the sleeve of her woolen bodice? Or was she imagining it?
She suspected the latter.
Another incidence of romanticizing things, no doubt. And who wouldn’t succumb to such? She was alone with a handsome gentleman on a cliff top above the sea. A gentleman who had just saved her from falling. And who had been raised in a convent, of all places.
“Like Sir Galahad,” she blurted out.
A look of bewilderment passed over Mr. Cross’s face. “Who?”
Clara closed her eyes briefly against a swell of embarrassment. She wished she’d kept that particular thought to herself.
But there was no unsaying it.
“Sir Galahad.” Her arms tightened around Bertie. “A knight of King Arthur’s Round Table. The one who found the Holy Grail. He was raised in a convent, too.”
“I don’t read fairy stories.”
“Sir Galahad isn’t a fairy story. He’s part of Arthurian legend. Mr. Tennyson wrote a poem about him some years ago.” She recited the first lines from memory:
“My good blade carves the casques of men,
My tough lance thrusteth sure,
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.”
Mr. Cross stared at her, an emotion in his eyes that was hard to read.
Heat rose in her cheeks. “Forgive me. I used to be rather fond of that sort of poetry. It’s silly. And utterly irrelevant to the matter at hand.”
“You don’t like it anymore?”
“No. It was a girlish fancy of mine, and one best left in girlhood. Now I’ve grown up, I prefer to expend my energies on more practical matters. Science and natural history. That sort of thing.” She cleared her throat. “I believe we were discussing your letter. Your hesitation to visit Mrs. Atkyns.”
He exhaled heavily. “You see why it’s d-difficult.”
“It needn’t be. That is, I can appreciate that you’re self-conscious about talking, but—”
“It’s not only that. How can I… How would she understand?”
“I don’t have any difficulty understanding you.”
His eyes met hers. “You’re different.”
The butterflies in her stomach fluttered to life. She was acutely reminded that only yesterday he’d called her beautiful. It was a precious jewel of a compliment. One she’d immediately locked away in her heart. In the coming years, she could take it out again whenever she was feeling plain and invisible. She could remind herself that once a handsome gentleman had called her beautiful, and meant it.
No one had ever done so before.
“On the contrary,” she said. “I’m exceedingly ordinary. Ask anyone.”
“I don’t need to ask. I c-can judge for myself.”
His matter-of-fact words warmed Clara to her toes. “My point is, if I can understand you, then I don’t see why Mrs. Atkyns should have any trouble.”
“Mrs. Atkyns isn’t you. Some people…” He left the sentence unfinished as they approached the stables. The two mastiffs were already there, milling about the yard.
Clara dropped her voice. “How much do you want to be part of helping the ponies?”
“I want to, but…” He looked away from her. “I c-can’t go there.”
“Then what will you do?”
“I’ll send Finchley in my place. Or Boothroyd. It’s…easier.”
Clara wanted to press him further but knew she hadn’t the right. His limitations were his own business. She wouldn’t presume to manage him. “It’s your decision, of course. You must do what you think best.”
Inside the stables, a groom was busy cleaning a harness. Another had a carriage horse out in the aisle, painting its hooves with turpentine. The caustic scent lingered in the air, along with the fragrance of saddle soap, silver polish, and fresh hay.
“Afternoon, Miss Hartwright,” the older groom said. “Come to see that wild Dartmoor mare again?”
“You’ll never make a saddle pony of her, miss,” the younger groom remarked. “Best look elsewhere.”
Clara forced a smile, greeting the two men as she set Bertie down onto the ground with the other dogs. The grooms thought her frequent visits were because of Betty. That she was besotted with her and had hopes of making her into a suitable mount. Clara didn’t bother correcting their misapprehension. She went along with it, pretending both to them and to herself. It was easier than admitting the truth.
She was fond of Betty. But it was Mr. Cross she’d been coming to the stables to see.
Not because she was setting her cap at him. Not because he was tall, and handsome, and like a golden knight from Arthurian legend. But because he’d been kind to her. He’d been kind to Bertie. And there wasn’t enough kindness in the world. Not in her world, at least. Not from gentlemen like him.
That was all there was to it. Kindness. A possibility of friendship. Not attraction. Certainly not romance.
She must take care not to make more of it than it was. If she did…well. The consequences of such foolishness wouldn’t be to her liking.
They hadn’t been the last time.
Clara stood outside the gates of the village churchyard in King’s Abbot, waiting while Mr. Boothroyd assisted Mrs. Bainbridge into the Abbey’s black-lacquered carriage. The horses stamped their impatience, snorting clouds of steam in the frigid December air.
Clara felt rather like stamping, too. She’d spent the last two hours in an ice-cold church, seated at Mrs. Bainbridge’s side on a hard wooden pew, listening to a sermon that was more hellfire and brimstone than tidings of Christmas joy. Her hands and feet had turned to blocks of ice and showed no signs of thawing.