Page 34 of How to Ruin a Duke
“Simon Thorn.”The vicar dropped his clippers.“In the flesh.Well, now.This is a surprise.”
“It surprises me too.But it was time.”
“Past time, I think.”Stern gray eyes regarded him for a long moment, then McCrone clapped Simon on the back.“Yes, past time.Sorry I didn’t recognize you, but then, you’ve changed a fair bit since you were last here.”
“You haven’t.”
“I know, I know.I’ve looked old my whole life.Now my years have caught up to my looks.”With a grace that belied his statement, the vicar stooped to retrieve his clippers, then trimmed off another leaf with a flourish.“Come to visit your parents?”
“And a few of the living.”Simon took a deep breath.“Father, can you grant me absolution before I call on the Howard family?”
McCrone examined a rogue bit of vine, then clipped it off.“You’ve always had it for the wanting of it.Is your heart finally ready?”
“I think it is.It might be.”Simon told McCrone about the letter from Howard.He left out Rowena’s role, though the merry twinkle in the old man’s eyes showed he suspected there was more to the story.
“I heard about that,” said the vicar.“I hear about everything, and Howard doesn’t get a lot of mail from London.”
“Did he write the reply himself?”
“He did indeed.”McCrone pushed at the clippings with his foot, making a neat pile of them.“Going to see him next?At this hour, you might find him at the workshop.”
Simon blanched.“The…tinsmith’s workshop?”
“Well do you know it.”McCrone eyed Simon narrowly.“Will you permit yourself that absolution or not?”
Hell.Simon had never wanted to return to the tinsmith to whom he’d been apprenticed.He didn’t want to see Howard there, struggling with tasks that had once been simple for him.He didn’t want to be faced with the contrast between what was and what had been.
But he hadn’t come all the way to Market Thistleton only to turn back.“I’ll try,” he told the vicar.
McCrone didn’t look entirely pleased by this, but he didn’t press the matter.“Your parents’ roses are blooming well,” was all he said.Gathering up the clippings, he bade Simon a good day and left the churchyard.
Alone amongst the sun-dappled graves, Simon made his quiet way to his parents’ plots.They had both died of a fever, separated by only a day, and they rested now beneath the same stone.Behind it, a sturdy rosebush leafed and bloomed.
“It’s still here.”Simon set down his satchel, reached out a forefinger, touched a ruffled red-pink flower.He had planted the bush when it, and he, were no more than sprouts.“I’m glad it’s been with you this whole time.Mum.Dad.I wish I’d been able to be here too.But…I’m not sorry about the way matters turned out.”
He wouldn’t have made a good vicar, but he’d tried to be a good whatever-else-he-was.He told them about Rowena, about her shop and the letter she sent.Why he was here now.
In the gentle breeze, the roses nodded, listening.
The loss of his parents was so old that it had faded, grown comfortable.He could shrug on the missing of them like a familiar robe, wrapping himself in memory—then lay it aside again fondly when it was time to leave.“I love you,” he told them both.“Wish me luck, all right?”
When he left the churchyard to turn toward the shop where he’d once been apprenticed, he felt more peaceful.This was how his life had progressed: the vicarage, the churchyard, the tinsmith’s workshop where Glennon Lines had taken in an orphan and tried to make a metalworker of him.Simon had failed at that, but he’d found other successes in his life.It was time for absolution.
From the front, the tinsmith’s shop looked like most others: a neat window displaying shining wares and a counter and shelves within to display yet more.At the rear of the store, these items were forged and formed, and it was to this workshop that Simon went.
The metallic odor was strong, as was the blast of heat from a forge as large as a blacksmith’s, hot as the maw of hell.Here sheets of tin were formed into cooking vessels and storage containers.Tin was punched into lanterns and tugged into kettle spouts and brushed in a molten layer over iron pots.It was snipped and sheared and soldered and hammered.Tin, tin, tin.
The workshop, with all its organized clutter and myriad tools, reminded him of Rowena’s.He’d always admired the skill of those who worked with their hands; it was proof that they had something to offer the world.This was why he’d been so willing to apprentice himself to Lines.
That, and the fact that he’d had nowhere else to go.
At the benches and tables, people worked using everything from massive hammers and anvils down to the most delicate nippers and narrow chisels.One of the workers, a stripling boy, was unfamiliar to Simon and was likely an apprentice.Lines himself, a man bulky from labor, had grown a luxuriant mustache.It, like his hair, was the exact shade of the silvery metal with which he worked.
Lines came forward when he noticed Simon.“Thorn!I heard you might be coming back to see us.Or have you come back to finish your apprenticeship?”
Simon reared back in dismay.“God, no.No.That’s not why I’m here.”
Lines laughed, scratchy and belly-deep.“And that was always going to be the answer, accident or no.You’re not athingssort of person, Thorn.You’re apeoplesort of person.”
