Page 41 of It Takes Two to Tumble
Her eyes went wide. “Are you all right, Ben?”
He shook his head. “I’d be better if I knew how to get you a bit of money,” he confessed.
She appeared not to mark his words. “I can’t figure out who it is.”
“Pardon?”
“You must have met someone else, and you must be terribly in love with her, or I can’t see you, ah, jilting me.” She didn’t seem angry with him, even though she ought to be. “But I know everyone you do, and even though I haven’t gotten around much in the past few months, I hear all the gossip. And there just isn’t any about you.”
Thank God for that. “There isn’t any other woman, Alice.” He couldn’t quite bring himself to lie to her. “It’s a question of...” He tried to find something to say. “It’s a question of ethics.”
“Oh,” she said slowly, something like realization dawning on her face. “Oh dear. I won’t tell Papa. He did mention something about a sermon of yours being rather popish.”
Ben opened his mouth in surprise and snapped it shut again. If she thought his misgivings stemmed from a belief that clergy ought not to marry, he wouldn’t correct her. He certainly wasn’t going to marry anyone else, so she’d never have any cause to be disabused of the notion.
“So, you see my predicament,” he said carefully, not wanting to confirm or deny her suspicion.
“I suppose I do. Well. That does leave me rather up the creek, my friend, but I can’t say I was delighted to be marrying someone who was only lukewarm about the prospect—”
He started to deny it but she cut him off.
“We’ve known one another practically all our lives, Ben. I do know when you’re enthusiastic about something. And I know you love me. Just as I love you.”
“I was looking forward to our marriage,” he said feebly.
“So was I,” she said. “But not, I think, in the way of the butcher’s boy and the baker’s daughter.” He hadn’t understood her meaning when she first invoked these two fictional lovers, but now he did. Now he knew all too well. “I was cross with you,” she went on, “for not understanding that I want more than someone to put a roof over my head. I know that I’m crippled and rather poor, but I wish you didn’t think it was impossible for me to find somebody who wants me. That’s what I want, and I think it’s what most of us want, and who are you to think I can’t do better than charity?”
“I don’t—”
“And I’m grateful to you, too, which only makes me feel ashamed of being angry.” Her voice broke on her last words.
“Alice,” he said, crouching on the ground before her sofa and taking her hand. “You’re my dearest friend and I think you deserve everything that’s good in the world. Everything. I know that after today I’m likely to lose your friendship, but before I leave I want you to know that.”
“We’re still friends, you idiot.” She wiped her eyes. “I just wish everything were different.”
Ben squeezed her hand. “So do I,” he said. “So do I.”
“Sit yourself down,” Mrs. Winston chided as Ben whisked dust covers off the furniture in the vicarage study. After seeing Alice, all he wanted was to burrow in a hole like a wounded animal. He didn’t want to return to Barton Hall, where he had found so much happiness, but had also diverted the course of his life. “That’s my job you’re at, and even if you didn’t see fit to send notice that you meant to come back today, that doesn’t make it any less my job to see that things are done the way they ought.”
Ben attempted to fold one of the covers but Mrs. Winston snatched it from his hand. Dust covers seemed a bit excessive for so short an absence—had it only been a month ago that he left the vicarage for Barton Hall?—but Mrs. Winston liked things done properly. He didn’t want to tell her quite yet that he only planned to be at the vicarage for as long as it took to arrange for a curate to take over his duties or for Sir Martin to appoint his replacement.
“Oh, you’re going to be like that, are you?” she said, hands on her hips.
He attempted a sheepish smile, but it must have fallen flat because she raised her gray eyebrows so high they disappeared into her cap. “You’ll be wanting tea,” she said, and disappeared towards the back of the house.
He wadded up the dust covers and tossed them into a corner of the room for Mrs. Winston totskover later, then sat at his desk and buried his head in his hands. He tried to get past his anger and confusion and sort out what needed to be done. First he needed to write an official letter of resignation. Then he needed to write to Phillip.
He performed all the small acts of time wasting, tasks that were adjacent to writing but not actually putting pen to paper. He straightened his blotter, topped off the inkwell, cut himself a new nib. He smoothed out a creamy sheet of writing paper and dated it.
At the sound of tapping on the doorframe, he turned, fully expecting to see Mrs. Winston standing in the open doorway, bearing a tray of tea and demanding explanations for his sudden arrival. But it was Hartley, his hands in his pockets and a self-conscious air about him.
“I saw that the curtains had been opened,” Hartley offered, still in the doorway. “And I thought I might come by.”
“Of course. Sit, please.”
Hartley shut the door behind him and sat in a chair that was covered in threadbare tapestry.
“I’m glad you came to see me.”
