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I can be secret as a dumb man.

“Well?” demanded Frances as she led the other Barstows back into the parlor. “What did he want to say that was so secret? Tell us!”

Sarah swiftly stowed her handkerchief, but there was no disguising her high color. Her mother-in-law noted it in one glance and stepped between her and her daughters.

“Frances, for shame. Let Sarah have time to ponder what she has heard.” With the discipline of her years, Mrs. Barstow added firmly, “You needn’t tell us, dear. Now or ever. Private sentiments between husband and wife are precisely that: private.”

“It was private, then?” asked Maria, disappointed.

“Yes, I’m afraid so,” Sarah answered, hardly audible. It was not another lie, was it? For what could be more private than the ridiculous marriage proposal Sebastian had just subjected her to, from two years beyond the grave?

Frances huffed out an equally disappointed breath, looking not much older than Maria.

“Well, then. Of course you needn’t say anything.

But if it was just to say he loved you he loved you he loved you, I don’t see why he needed to send Mr. Langworthy to do it.

I would be mortified to be given such an errand. ”

“Yes,” Sarah said again, vaguely.

“I wish someone would tell me he loved me he loved me he loved me,” cried Maria.

“And we would have to hide you away in a box if someone did,” her sister retorted, “for you are only eleven, and it wouldn’t be at all appropriate.”

Reluctantly the ladies picked up their work again.

Sarah considered fleeing to her closet room—everyone would only think she meant to have a good cry—but she refused to give Mr. Langworthy that satisfaction, even if he would never know of it.

He had said his piece and was gone, and she need never think of him again. From this moment onward.

But though Mrs. Barstow and Frances sewed and Maria worked at her lessons, and though an embargo had been placed upon Sebastian’s “secret message,” nothing prevented them continuing to discuss Mr. Langworthy, and soon Frances remarked, “I am sorry Mr. Langworthy did not stay for dinner, at any rate.”

“I too,” agreed her mother.

“I three,” said Maria.

Sarah said nothing.

“What stories he told!” resumed Frances. “I had no idea young men had such…goings-on. Or, if I did suspect it, I did not know my brother…participated.”

Mrs. Barstow pressed her lips together, glancing again at Sarah. “Your brother was as lively a young man as any other, and I suppose in the navy, where there are no ladies present to…dampen their excesses…”

“I would have thought it would be the officers who kept everyone to the straight and narrow path,” Frances mused, “but it seems the officers themselves are guilty of all sorts of things. That ‘ceremony’ he told us about, when they crossed the equator! And that lieutenant Boston or Beatty or whatever his name was—he was worst of all.”

“Sebastian was never a Beeton, I trust,” her mother answered.

“Beeton, yes, that was it. However ‘lively’ Sebastian might have been, he cannot have been cruel like Lieutenant Beeton.”

“Of course he was not,” replied Mrs. Barstow and Sarah in unison.

But Sarah twitched as she said it. Was it not a tiny bit cruel to have sent such a one as Horace Langworthy to her, to make such a proposal as he had made?

Clearly Langworthy himself thought so, or he would never have done it in the manner he did.

“Will we see Mr. Langworthy again?” asked Maria after some minutes. “Did he say, Sarah?”

“I believe he was returning soon, if not at once, to Portsmouth.”

“Oh, no! What a shame,” Mrs. Barstow mourned, echoed by her daughters. “I would have liked Gordy to meet him.”

“He can hardly catch the Newbury coach today,” Frances observed.

“It’s far too late, unless he goes via London and takes the last coach.

I’ll warrant he won’t leave until tomorrow at the earliest. Maybe we should send a note saying he could ride with Gordy and Peter to Oxford tomorrow.

There’s no reason Lord Dere’s men couldn’t leave him at the Angel Inn before they go on to Keele’s. ”

“There’s an idea!” agreed Mrs. Barstow, only to have Sarah say, “Oh, madam, it might seem very…pressing of us. If he had not time to stay to dinner, chasing him with notes might feel like desperation. He would have to accept, even if he did not wish to.”

It was rare that Sarah was insistent—she who was usually so amenable—that this exception left the Barstows with no alternative but to abandon their plan and hide their chagrin.

It also had the effect of dampening further talk of Mr. Langworthy (at least when Sarah was present, though Frances fully determined she would talk more to her mother of him and of Sarah’s odd behavior at the nearest opportunity), with the result that they fell silent.

More rain fell. Bash teased the dog and dragged a string for the cat and begged Maria to tell him a story, but that was all until an hour had passed and they heard the sounds of a carriage drawing up before the house.

“That will be Lord Dere’s landau, delivering Gordy home,” said Mrs. Barstow, rising to open the door.

The rain had slowed to a dribble, and voices carried clearly to the rest of them in the parlor.

“In you go, Master Peter,” called the Perryfield footman.

“Oh, can’t it wait a minute, Ogle?” came Peter Dere’s protest. “There’s new people at the rectory, and I want to go with Gordy and tell his family about them!”

“It’s more than my head is worth, lad. You know when it rains or snows or even blows too hard, your mother can’t rest till you’re safe inside and bundled up.”

“It’s ridiculous,” the boy grumbled. “I’m nine years old, and she treats me as if I’m made of spun glass.”

“Up you go, Mr. Sickly Constitution,” said Ogle.

“It was my father who died of pneumonia, not me!” Peter muttered. He must have climbed in, though, for his voice grew fainter.

“Ay,” Ogle agreed. “And if he’d died of taking a splinter in the leg like Master Gordon’s brother, she’d never let you join the navy. That’s mothers for you.”

“Did you hear him, Gordy?” shouted Peter. “The navy! I could never join the navy. ”

Then the landau door banged shut, and Peter submitted to being carted off in warm, dry comfort, while Gordy took a run to vault over the low gate.

Frances was beside her mother in the doorway in time to see his boot slip on the wet stone path, landing him in a heap.

“Gordy, what on earth?” accused his sister Frances. “Now Reed will have to dry and brush your trousers before you can go to school tomorrow.”

“Mama,” he cried, ignoring Frances, “Peter and I met the navy man!”

Clenching her jaw, Sarah steadied herself to listen to another burst of talk about Mr. Langworthy, and Gordon did not keep her waiting.

“The new curate has come to the rectory, so when the Tommies were removing there again, I asked Della if Peter and I could go, and she said yes, so we all piled into the Tree Inn’s wagon!

And there was the new curate Dr. Rearden, and what a jolly fellow he is, all chuckly and whiskery, but we weren’t there more than a few minutes before Mr. Langworthy comes in, and he said he’d just come from here! ”

“He did,” his mother answered, taking his hat and helping him hang his coat.

“So you’ve all met him too! Isn’t he something? Polly brought us tea and gingerbread, and we ate and drank and listened to his stories about Sebastian and the navy and mathematics—”

“Mathematics?” interrupted Frances and Maria.

“—And not just mathematics, but navigation! How you use mathematics and the stars to find your way—all because I’d told him how Denver got us lost in Oxford—how Denver always gets lost because he doesn’t pay attention—and Mr. Langworthy said he could use the stars—Denver, that is. So I will have to teach him—Denver.”

“For pity’s sake, Gordy, take a breath,” Frances scolded.

“How will you teach Denver?” asked Maria. “You don’t know how to navigate yourself.”

“I don’t yet, ” he retorted. “But I will.”

“Did he recommend a book?” asked Mrs. Barstow.

“No, but he is going to teach us—the Tommies and Peter and me—himself!”

“What?” gasped Sarah, speaking for the first time. “When? How?”

“At the rectory on Saturdays. Not this one, of course, because everyone must settle themselves, he says. But next.”

“But how can he possibly teach you at the rectory on Saturdays, Gordon, when he will be gone back to Portsmouth ?” she demanded awfully.

Her young brother-in-law gazed at her in perfect innocence.

“Going back to Portsmouth? He didn’t say anything about that.

Maybe he means later. Because he is certainly staying in Iffley for the present, or he wouldn’t have made arrangements to start next Saturday.

Oh—and he said he forgot to give you this.

” Gordy dug in his pocket for the message he was meant to deliver and thrust it at her.

Sarah stared at the crumpled note as if it were a serpent poised to strike. What under heaven could the man have left to say to her?

Maria shook eager fists. “I know what that is! It’s more ‘I love you I love you I love you’!”

“Hush, dearest,” said her mother.

Gordon made a disgusted face. “Why should Mr. Langworthy tell Sarah he loves her?”

“Not Mr. Langworthy,” his sister replied with maddening superiority. “ Sebastian . Mr. Langworthy is passing along another secret message from Sebastian. ”

When Sarah still did not reach to take the note, Gordy tossed it in her lap, where it fell with more weight than a simple sheet of paper.

She thanked God that, after the discussion which had taken place earlier, no one would ask her to open it now; nor would anyone ask about the contents later.

They would all assume, as Maria did, that it was more of Sebastian’s posthumous endearments.

Therefore, with an unsteady hand, she slipped the message into her pocket for later perusal.