Page 16 of A Lady of Means (Roses and Rakes #1)

Lady Moria turned to see the young vicar, uncomfortably rubbing the back of his neck.

She recalled the Sunday morning when her younger sisters had seen this man for the first time and how silly she’d told them they were for gawking.

They didn’t feel so silly to her now. He was tall and wiry, with blonde hair and the kind of eyes that you just knew held a deep soul within.

Of all the men Moria would come to know, Llewyn had the kindest eyes.

She wiped her own eyes awkwardly. “Thank you,” she breathed. “But how did you…?”

“I saw you here before, my lady. Then I kept seeing fresh flowers left here. I’m something of a botanist myself, but I was impressed.

Jasmine in winter? I figured it would be the charitable thing to do to leave something in your stead while you were…

missing for a few days.” He paused for her reaction, there was no censure or judgment in his words, or in his tone.

As Moria was still trying to control her tears, he kept talking.

“I paid a call to your mother while you were ill. I looked in on you as well, but you were resting.” He offered her his hand to assist her with rising to her feet, she took it gratefully.

“It seems you have a habit of coming to my aid, then,” Lady Moria said as she smacked her hands together to shake off the snow on her gloves. She wiped the remaining snow from her dress and smoothed her hair where her cloak had mussed it.

Lady Moria had always been beautiful, that had never been a secret. When Llewyn Fortney looked at her, she felt that he saw more than just a pretty face. He saw her. Grieving and half healed and somewhat lost, but not broken.

He swallowed uncomfortably, looking away. “Yes, well. That is rather the calling of a man of God, my lady. And also, to tell you, that pain may last for the night, but joy comes in the morning.”

She leaned, picking a spare tendril of Jasmine from the posy at her former lover’s grave, and placed it in the buttonhole of the Vicar’s thick wool jacket.

When he offered to show her the hothouse next to the church where he grew his flowers before walking her home, she felt that she had been given a rare gift: a true friend.

* * *

A clock tolled in the study. Moria shook her head to clear it of her reverie.

She took a seat across from the vicar in her London drawing room.

He’d aged some since, new laugh lines adorned his face, stubble coated his jaw, and he seemed more comfortable in his role.

But the gentle demeanor of a fledgling vicar who placed flowers on a young man’s grave for a girl who mourned in secret, remained.

“London feels too…tarnished and worldly for a saint like you.” She offered him her best smile.

“Don’t know where you get such notions of my sainthood, Lady Moria.”

“That is the only explanation for your being such a long-suffering friend of someone like me.”

“Long-suffering,” he scoffed. “That’s more the word I’d use for whatever poor fellow finds himself saddled with you for a wife.”

Moria sighed, deflecting. “Why does everyone keep talking of my marriage? Perhaps I’m too interesting for matrimony.”

Llewyn laughed again, a sound that was all him, light and ebullient. “Nice try; but you sent me a missive that you had a matter you needed to discuss, and here I am, my lady, all ears.”

Llewyn took the cup of tea she offered him, prepared with two sugars as he preferred. The butler entered, announcing a visitor who was close on his heels and entered the room in a huff. “I tried to tell her you were entertaining company, my lady.”

Llewyn stood at the sight of the woman who entered, ever the gentleman. Was Moria imagining it or was Llewyn studying Letitia’s upswept dark hair, the chocolate shades of her eyes, the heart shape of her bronze face as though he found something to admire?

Moria went over to the young woman, kissing her on both cheeks. “Letitia? Is everything alright?”

The Vicar looked between the two women expectantly, so Moria made introductions.

“Reverend Llewyn Fortney, this is my friend, as well as my brother-in-law Viscount Ludlowe’s private secretary, Miss Letitia Blackshear.”

Moria thought that Llewyn took a little longer than propriety allowed bowing over her friend’s hand. Maybe Lllewyn would be impressed by her story, or her beauty; he seemed to find ladies in distress an array of some expertise.

Moria motioned for her friends to sit, picking up her teacup and saucer as Letitia poured her own cup.

“It was your missive that brought me here, my lady. I received a note that you had a matter that required urgent attention.”

Moria choked on her tea.

“Is that so?” Llewyn asked her, but looking at Moria.

Moria saw how this looked, but she wasn’t the one who had sent either of them missives.

Before she could reply, Letitia produced the note from the ample bosom of her topaz gown, a blush spreading up Llewyn’s neck and seeping over his cheeks as he averted his gaze.

Moria glanced down at the note. She knew that handwriting. Her companion.

“It is to be a confessional then,” she said with a resigned sigh.

Llewyn sat back in his chair, his arms folded at his chest, waiting.

Letitia piled a plate with teatime treats. “Start talking, lass.”

Moria cleared her throat, fussing with her skirts. “There’s a man.”

Llewyn and Letitia looked at each other, then both burst into laughter.

“You’ve been seen with many a man, and with a face like yours I would do a lot worse,” Letitia said, her south bank manners taking over.

And then in a rush, Moria gave them an abridged version of her history with Captain Devyn Winter, and his presence at not one but two balls the night before.

She conveniently left out the interlude in the sitting room with a man of God present.

Still, it felt like she’d been holding in one long breath for over a year and had finally exhaled letting her friends in on her secret courtship.

“If he wants to court you, and you’re enamored with him enough that he hasn’t been on the receiving end of your unparalleled cold shoulder,” Letitia inquired, “What do you need the two of us here for?” she motioned between herself and the Vicar.

Moria toyed with the wrapper on a sweet she held in her lap. “A soldier’s wife isn’t exactly the…position in life that I had sought after. Marcus was a-”

“A prig. A toff. A jackass. In every sense of the word. Yes, we know.” Llewyn said, nodding.

“Why is it that when I use language like that, I get a chastising like “‘Be careful, my lady, God hears all. He is in the very air around us’,” she had committed to her bit, assuming a dignified air. “But it’s excusable for you?”

“That’s different,” he shrugged. “I’ve devoted my life to His calling, I have a little more shall we say…cache…with the creator than a heartbreaking debutante.”

Moria let out a laugh that pulled one out of Llewyn as well.

“I think this time it’s your heart on the line, though, right, my lady?” Letitia asked, bringing them back to the topic.

Letitia took Moria’s silence for an answer and reached for her hand.

“Then we shall have to arrange a meeting with the rest of your siblings first, and one that will seem like the stars have aligned to bring a Captain and the diamond of the season together in the least salacious tableau. Perhaps back at Brookevale when you return for the christening?” she questioned, looking to Llewyn.

“That could work,” he said, nodding. “And the seclusion of the country would offer the two of you time to better understand one another apart from,” he gestured to the drawing room and its protrusion of blooms and calling cards, “all this.”

Before Moria could answer or puzzle on it further, the butler entered again. This time, he escorted two young ladies both wearing startlingly pink frocks.

“Lady Gretchen von Mien, and Miss Carina Smythe.”

Llewyn stood with her to greet them, but Moria did notice that he didn’t linger on the sight of them the way he did with Letitia.

Moria made the introductions, Letitia doing her best to hide her amusement with a shared glance of camaraderie with Llewyn that Moria would definitely be bringing up later when they were alone.

Lady Gretchen greeted Moria with an air kiss at each cheek. “We waited for you at Lady Sinclair’s luncheon for nearly an hour before we gave up and came here to tell you ourselves what we witnessed.”

Carina took a seat at the tea table. “Your new little friend from Africa was all too happy to keep the Duke company in your absence, I’m afraid.”

Moria raised a brow, but Lady Gretchen pulled back to give Moria a glance over. “And what on earth are you wearing? Yellow? You know it’s Wednesday, correct?”

Before Moria could return to the subject of the Duke and Miss Herring, Letitia leaned her head in her hand where her arm was resting on the linen covered tea table and asked, “What’s Wednesday?”

The inhabitants of her drawing room from all quadrants of her life were all looking at her awaiting her answer on the significance of Wednesday’s and this wasn’t how or who or when or where she explained that particular credo aloud for the very first time.

Then who?

Soft, dark eyes, and lips that spread into a bracing smile flashed in her mind.

I want all that you are willing to give me, Moria.

Moria pasted on a smile, trying to make it look genuine. “On Wednesday’s,” she said, looking to Lady Gretchen and Carina. “We wear pink.”

Across from her, Llewyn caught her eye, a spark of curiosity in them even though he kept quiet.

“That’s it, then? Just the pink-” Letitia cut in.

“And we promenade! But it’s always in pink,” Carina supplied.

“And our dear Moria is in this washed-out shade of yellow,” Lady Gretchen added.

Llewyn’s countenance was soft and understanding, like he could see through Moria. He looked to the jasmine on the mantelpiece and then back to his hands folded in his lap.

“Is the priest here to deliver your last rites or something?” Lady Gretchen said, looking at Llewyn suspiciously, but addressing Moria.

“Wouldn’t mind that being the last face I see,” Carina said in a conspiratorial whisper linking an arm with Moria’s.

Moria sniffed a laugh. “Reverend, I’m afraid you’ll have to forgive my friends.”

“There’s nothing to forgive, my lady,” he replied, but Moria could see the apples of his cheeks starting to redden as he brought a teacup to his lips.

“I’m sure the Lord requires Lady Moria’s supplication on other fronts, perhaps,” Letitia said, with an obsequious smile that Moria knew meant she had some explaining to do later.

“That is one of my favorite subjects to discuss: the grace of our Lord for every sinner, regardless of origin or sex,” as the Vicar sipped his tea, Moria could see the edges of Letitia’s fine-boned face soften like that had been exactly what she needed to hear.

“He’d be the only Lord who did, it isn’t a common experience for a woman to be on the receiving end of any grace at all,” it was Lady Gretchen, surprisingly, who made such a profound pronouncement.

When Moria looked at her, she saw another layer to a friend she might have misjudged as somewhat shallow.

“Hear, hear,” said Letitia, holding her teacup in mock salute in a moment of unlikely camaraderie.

“‘She is clothed with strength and dignity, and she laughs without fear of the future.’ Proverbs 31: 25. That’s God’s blessing for women who count him as a friend,” Llewyn offered, looking at each of the women at the table.

“Why, you’ve almost described our dear Lady Moria perfectly,” Carina said, placing an arm on Moria’s shoulder.

Moria sucked in a breath. “That’s very kind of you, Carina. It wasn’t always the case, I assure you.”

“Regardless of our pasts,” Llewyn said, holding Moria’s eyes. “We needn’t fear what’s ahead.”