Charity Begins at Home (13 page)

Barry flushed dark, and Tristan wondered which of the fabled Ferris girls he was home to visit. He took pity on him and changed the subject. He remembered the guidebook in his hand and held it up. "I gather someone means to visit Italy."

Charity made an instinctive, immediately checked reach for the book, and Tristan worried he'd offended her again. If not, Barry was quick to provide reinforcement. "Oh, that's Charity's," he said with a smirk, sprawling on the couch, leaving just enough room for Charlie to squeeze in. "She reads all those travel books, though she's never going to go anywhere."

"I might go to Italy this winter, in fact. With Cammie." The door opened, and Charity flushed as she turned to take the tea tray from the maid. She set it on the teak table and began to pour tea into sturdy china cups. Tristan took the opposite chair and set the troublesome travel book on the table. Miss Calder kept her eyes on her hands as she gave him a cup, as if this routine transfer were fraught with peril. Look up at me, he commanded silently, but she didn't obey.

"With Cammie? That's rich." Barry helped himself to a half-dozen thumbprint biscuits, and started licking the apricot preserves out of the depressions. Between licks, he tormented his sister, as if the sight of his tongue wasn't torment enough. "Cammie can't look at the Channel without turning green. You'll never get her on a ferry. Besides, you'd have to wait till after Christmas, so you could get all the poor baskets put together and the carol service prepared, and then you'd have to cross the Alps in the blizzard season. I don't think so, Sis."

"You could sail and see the Rock of Gibraltar." Charlie, having broken his silence, immediately resumed it by cramming a biscuit into his mouth.

"You and your rocks. Say, Hale, do you like fishing? Charlie and I can show you our favorite spot. Sunrise is the best time."

Tristan was glad Barry had dropped the subject of travel, for he didn't like to see Charity embarrassed like that. But the prospect of spending dawn with a talkative undergraduate and a silent schoolboy did not appeal. It would be just his luck that they'd bring along the other two brothers Tristan hadn't met yet. "Fishing isn't one of my sports. Are you leaving?" he added in some dismay as Charity rose and began tidying up.

She picked up the guidebook along with a linen napkin, dusting the volume off and crossing to the bookcase to re-shelve it. "I hear Francis coming in. Barry, do leave some of the sweets for Lord Braden and your brother, won't you? They've business to discuss and will need sustenance." She waited for her brothers to take the hint and join her at the door. "Thank you for bringing me home, Lord Braden. Please give Anna and the boys my best, and tell them I hope to see them at church tomorrow."

So he was left there, trying to formulate a few intelligent questions for Francis, wondering why she had colored up so when Barry teased her about Italy. Perhaps she thought his point that the village couldn't spare her made her seem conceited. But Tristan could not accuse her of that; he had been in Calder long enough to know how essential she really was, and to admire her for it.

Chapter Seven

"I can't, Tristan." Anna halted just outside the church door. Lawrence and Jeremy didn't notice. Well-scrubbed and wet-combed, they were following Mrs. Cameron down the central aisle to the oak-and-velvet pew reserved for the earl.

Tristan could not see beneath the black veil his sister insisted on wearing, but he could just imagine the tears trailing down her pale cheeks. "Of course you can," he replied through gritted teeth. "It's just a church service. God knows we suffered through enough of them when Mother went through her Blessed Virgin devotion years." Of course, that was Roman masses they had endured, for their mother returned to her mystical papist practices whenever they were in Italy. Even now he could not breathe in the heavy sweet scent of incense without seeing his mother's perfect Madonna face raised up with a martyr's joy. Three years, that passion had lasted. This service, God willing, would only take an hour, if he could get Anna to cross the threshold.

Anna took a sobbing breath, but didn't protest as he took her arm and drew her to the Haverton pew. She gathered her skirts and sat down, staring straight ahead, unable yet to acknowledge the respectful nods of the other parishioners. Lawrence and Jeremy, Tristan was pleased to note, were quiet and well-behaved. But then he suspected Mrs. Cameron could have quelled even Bonaparte's mischief with one reproving glance.

"Look." Jeremy's loud whisper to his brother brought one of those glances from Mrs. Cameron, so he resorted to mouthing, "Charity," and pointing at the organ to the right of the altar, not a half-dozen steps from their pew.

Tristan was unsurprised to see Charity as the church organist. He wouldn't be surprised, in fact, if she stood up and gave the week's lesson. She looked small at the keyboard, though it was a tiny organ, too small to hide the figure of the boy pumping the bellows. Charity was frowning with concentration as she approached the end of one of the simpler Bach fugues. As she pressed the last key, her shoulders lifted in a silent sigh of relief and the vicar entered the reverberating sanctuary.

Tristan was lulled by the familiar cadence of the mass, though he was used to hearing the words intoned in Latin. He and Anna had been baptized Anglican, of course, but their father had been a free-thinker who thought their religious education should best end there. Their mother always threatened to have them baptized again by their cousin the archbishop in Naples, but she never carried through. Such an absurdity, all this anguish about the true church. His mother loved her statues of tormented martyrs, while Mrs. Cameron would think them vulgar, preferring Anglican saints too sensible for martyrdom. Why should either have to give way?

The vicar wouldn't hold with such tolerance, Tristan thought, as Mr. Langworth stood at the pulpit, frowning at his notes. Apparently he found something amiss, for with a righteous snort, he balled up one page and flung it away into the recesses of the pulpit. Then his pink face turned red as he pierced the congregation with a glare and reminded them not to flirt with the devil. How inscrutable people were, after all. When they first met, Tristan had thought the vicar the most amiable of men, a pastel study of gentleness and mercy. And here he was, thundering like Jeremiah about paganism, as though paganism could stand a chance in cautious Christian Kent.

Mr. Langworth's gaze seemed to fix on Tristan for a moment before passing onto another churchgoer. Could the vicar have heard of Tristan's classical paintings? But surely even the vicar would understand that the classics weren't pagans, precisely. Of course, the gods weren't Christian, but—It didn't matter, Tristan told himself firmly, but he had to smile, imagining the vicar's certain response to the Aphrodite painting. Pagan and nude, besides. He would probably collapse in apoplexy.

Tristan rubbed his forehead to hide his grin, then noticed Lawrence's less successful attempts to contain his mirth. When Tristan nudged him, the boy could only nod in the direction of the organ. Charity was sitting up straight, innocently attending to the vicar's sermon. But then she darted a glance at Lawrence and made a face. He dissolved again into silent laughter, earning a sharp glance from Mrs. Cameron. Charity, her eyes bright at her own escape from reproof, turned back toward the pulpit. But for an instant her eyes met Tristan's and her expression faltered. Then she raised up that stubborn chin and focused every ounce of attention on the vicar.

The service was concluded, the recessional hymn only an echo, before she looked back at their pew. She ran lightly down the altar steps, taking Anna's hand, drawing her out into the sunlight to greet the vicar, keeping up a soothing stream of chatter, even convincing Anna to push back her veil. A few other ladies came to say hello, but most kept their distance, only nodding respectfully at the new widow.

Francis Calder stood, hat in hand, at the edge of the church steps, staring wistfully at the pale vision in black. When Tristan took pity on him and presented him to Anna, the normally hearty Calder could only stammer his way through a few pleasantries. But Anna responded to this flattering awkwardness, lowering her eyes and holding out a fragile hand.

Immune to his sister's attractions, Tristan for the first time observed how stupidly men responded to beauty. Even the vicar, pagan denunciation forgot, hovered about her like a great black moth, inquiring solicitously of her health, bending close to hear her faint answer.

Tristan liked to think that as an artist, he took a more objective attitude toward feminine beauty. But then he recalled a contessa who had kept him cooling his heels one sweltering summer in Rome. He glanced around, wondering if Charity would be able to read his thoughts if she saw his face. But she was gone from the little circle around Anna.

He heard her light voice mixed with childish shouts, and located her off to the side of the church lawn within a wedge of wisteria bushes. She stood in the center of a circle of children, extending her hands in front of her then out as if she were swimming. "Swim, swim, Jonah! Swim away from the whale!"

When the children took up her cry, she changed from coach to whale, swimming purposefully across the grass as the children scattered, shouting with glee. Her fashionable blue bonnet was hanging down her back; sunlight glinted off her hair. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes abrim with laughter, as she pretended to grab Jeremy out of the swirl of children around her.

She belongs so well, Tristan thought. Wherever she is, she makes her home. Whomever she's with, she makes her own.

Near him two stately matrons stood, commenting on the service and the weather, watching the children play. "That Charity Calder," one remarked significantly. Mrs. Dalton, he recalled from the introductions.

Tristan pretended to be absorbed in watching his nephews gambol with the village children. But really he was waiting, daring her to call Charity a hoyden, to disapprove of her high spirits and unladylike display, so that he could rise to her defense.

"That Charity," Mrs. Hering agreed, shaking her head, and then proceeded to demolish his assumptions about the narrow-mindedness of country folk. "Such a very good sort of girl. Look at how well the children mind her. Little Lawrence—why, he's an earl, and she has him apologizing for knocking down the blacksmith's boy."

"Well, the Calders have never held themselves too high. I'll wager it's a relief for you, isn't it, Agatha, that she's come back as organizer of the Midsummer fair?"

Mrs. Hering glanced around for the vicar and, finding him gone, snorted. "Well, I got no joy in the position! She's the only one, it's true, who can get round the vicar when he's put his back up. And he's got his back up with this festival, right enough." Lowering her voice, so that Tristan could barely hear her, she added, "My Crispin, you know, is set to offer for her again. She refused him once, but he was out in his timing, for her father had just died. She's out of mourning now, and she's had her season, and I imagine she must have decided Kentish men are just as good or better as any she saw in London."

"Well, I wish him the best, I do. If she married your boy, she would be able to stay here in the village where she belongs."

Tristan knew a pierce of resentment as these women assigned themselves ownership rights to Charity, as if her birth in this village gave them first claim on her. But he was surprised at his own proprietary sense—as if somehow he should have that first claim, should he choose to exercise it.

Just then Charity detached herself from the children and ran up the stairs. "No, no, Mrs. Hering," she cried breathlessly, waving the ladies away. "I'll take care of the altar. You go on home to your dinner. I have to talk to the children's parents about the play anyway."

Tristan wanted to reach out and stop her, to hold her back, to force her to stop working just for a moment and give her attention to him. But she only tilted her head to the side and smiled as she went past him into the church. He refused to chase her into the sanctuary, determined to wait until she came out.

After their long afternoon together, he had expected more communication with her than a greeting and that quick smile. But she'd paid more mind to the blacksmith's boy, behaved more flirtatiously with Lawrence, smiled more warmly at Mrs. Hering. But then, none of their encounters—had they really met only four times?—had followed any pattern he recognized. When they did connect, he felt comfortable yet always intrigued, on edge, not a combination he expected with women.

Young Charlie Calder, who had been one of the altar boys, came out of the church then and, casting a quick glance at Tristan, leaned on the iron railing beside the steps. As the younger children scampered over the lawn, calling out challenges to each other, Charlie's thin face grew still. Tristan knew an unwilling sympathy for the boy. He was so wiry, as thin as a reed, his thick dark hair the most substantial part of him. How unlike his siblings Charlie was. They were all so gregarious and confident, and Charlie's shyness was that much sharper in contrast.

Tristan didn't want to reach out to this boy; his own nephews were expensive enough for a man who couldn't afford much emotional expense. But Charlie looked so lonely there, waiting for his sister, watching the children but unable to join them.

"What do you plan for your holiday, Charlie?"

At least the lad could respond to a direct question. His voice was low and quiet as if each word came considered. "I'm supposed to study Latin. That's in the morning. I have chores, too, of course. And rock hunting. I collect rocks and fossils, and the like."