Page 10 of Temptations of a Wallflower
“What brings you to London, Mr. Cleland?” she asked, breaking the silence.
He hesitated, then said, “Visiting family.”
Interesting, that pause. As though he had another agenda. But vicars were supposed to be upright and honest, the epitome of truthfulness. He had no reason to evade her question. She was likely just spinning tales once more, seeing things that weren’t truly there.
She started to speak, then stopped. Why did she hold herself back? He was a vicar. She could be herself with him. He had nothing to gain by their acquaintance, nor she with his. All artifice could be, in essence, lost, and nothing would suffer for it. What was the point ofempty politeness? It served no purpose other than to fill time with shallow words and hollow gestures.
Liberated from her hesitancy, the words flowed freely.
“An interesting choice for a younger son,” she said. “The Church.”
His brows rose at her frankness, but he didn’t look affronted. Instead, he seemed intrigued. “My brother is a barrister, but there’s too much arguing in the law.”
“Don’t care for conflict, then,” she noted.
“Not for its own sake, no.” He appeared thoughtful. “There are clerical disputations, but they exist to make people’s lives better. The law seems engineered to be as complex and difficult as possible. It supports itself. It couldn’t exist unless it wanted to muddle everything.”
She matched his pace down the path, but she didn’t pay attention to the flowers and statues around them. “Then one could fashion change from within, if one so desired it.”
“I’m but one man,” he pointed out. “It would take much more than I could possibly effect to dismantle hundreds of years of tradition.”
“The tradition of muddling,” she said with a smile.
“The very one.” He smiled back at her, engulfing her in warmth. Gracious, did the man have a lovely smile.
“What of soldiering?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Much as I like the idea of defending my country,” he said, “I have no desire to order men around. Especially if that means commanding them to face their own deaths.” He glanced at her. “Forgive me. That was . . . indelicate.”
She waved her hand. “No reason to apologize. In allhonesty,” she confessed, taking up more of the spirit of candor, “I appreciate you not shielding me from such matters. Most men think women cannot manage to hear anything that might suggest unpleasant—even ugly—truths.”
“It’s my experience that women are far stronger than men,” Mr. Cleland said, guiding them around a dry fountain.
She contemplated this. “How so?”
“They shoulder the burdens of life and death much more gracefully than men.”
What a surprise to hear anyone, especially a male, say such a thing. No one had ever voiced such an opinion to her before. “I imagine that, as a vicar, you must see a lot of the harsher sides of the world.”
He tilted his head in acknowledgment. “Sickness and, yes, death. But I also see its beauty. Marriages and births.”
“This must all seem frivolous to you.” She glanced back toward where the party continued, a riot of bright colors and empty conversation.
“On the contrary. Darkness and light exist side by side. We can’t have one without the other.”
She laughed. “My goodness, you sounded very vicar-like just then.”
He grinned in response. “I did, didn’t I? Can you write a letter to my archbishop and let him know?”
“‘Mr. Jeremy Cleland conducted himself with the utmost vicarish behavior in the midst of a godless garden party.’”
“Beautifully phrased, Lady Sarah.”
She couldn’t stop her own grin. “I have some skillwith a quill.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she wanted to grab them back and secret them under a rock. She couldn’t very wellbragabout her writing. Ladies didn’t boast, and certainly not about the erotic novels they penned.
“You write?” he asked.
“A little,” she murmured. “Trifles.” It galled her a little to have to hide what she labored so hard over, but circumstance necessitated false modesty. “Nursery rhymes for my nieces and nephews.” Which wasn’t entirely untrue. She had written a few little bits of childish doggerel for the amusement of her elder brothers’ children.
