“Ah, good.” His relief was a palpable thing. Julia wanted nothing more than to withdraw into herself at such a reaction, that a mere ten minutes in her presence was something from which he was clearly so eager to retreat.

  She set her unfinished drink on the nearest table and slid forward in her seat to stand up. Before she could do more than place her hands on the arms of the chair, Mr. Halberd held out his own hand to her, palm turned upwards.

  It would be rude to refuse. And then the questions remained of why her instinct was to refuse him in the first place. But she placed her hand in his, his skin so warm against her chilled fingers she nearly pulled away for fear of being scalded. As soon as she was on her feet, she began to shrug out of his jacket to give it back to him.

  He shook his head. “Keep it for now. You can return it at your leisure.”

  At her leisure. She almost laughed at that, as though she was a fine gentlewoman with nothing better to do than to loll about on overly upholstered furniture and send servants scurrying away to return borrowed jackets that smelled too much like their owners.

  “I don’t know when I will see you again,” she said, and let the jacket slip off her shoulders before she handed it back to him. “But thank you, Mr. Halberd.”

  She gathered up her pelisse and her reticule, carrying them in a bundle as she followed the servant out of the study and towards the front of the house. With her shoulders rounded forward, her chin tucked down against her chest, she watched the damp tips of her boots appear and disappear again beneath the stained hem of her gown. The carriage was already outside and waiting for her, the poor driver hidden beneath hat and coat and scarf, a collection of wool and knitted things hunched against the weather.

  “Mrs. Benton?”

  Julia stopped before she stepped out the door and onto the first stair leading down to the drive. Mr. Halberd came up beside her, the breadth of his shoulders easily filling up the rest of the doorway. “Yes?” she prompted when he did not speak again right away.

  He hesitated. She would wonder about that hesitation later, if it occured because he was reluctant to say what was inside his head, or because he had stopped her before he had fully considered what he wished to say to her. “I, uh… I wanted to thank you for your care with Zora this afternoon. She does not take kindly to many people, but she appears to already hold you in high esteem.”

  Julia chuckled. “I’m not sure how you can tell from so short a time of seeing her with me.”

  “She showed you her kitten, did she not? Ellen, is it?”

  “Ah, but I’m not certain she’s fully decided on Ellen yet. Boadicea may still be a contender.”

  “Well.” Was that a touch of a smile at the corners of his mouth, or merely a trick of the light? “She does not introduce her kitten to everyone. Apparently she has appointed you as someone special in her small circle of acquaintances.”

  Despite the dampness of her clothing, the chill seeping through the layers of wool and chemise and stockings to reach her skin, a soft warmth spread through her at those words, like a flame licking outwards from her abdomen.

  “And I wanted to apologize to you,” Mr. Halberd continued, this time speaking with his gaze directed downwards, as though the scuffed edge of the step had become the most fascinating thing in the immediate vicinity. “For any brusqueness I displayed when I came upon you and Zora in the stables. I was… I was caught off guard by your appearance there, and I hope you did not take my surprise for incivility.”

  “No, not at all. I doubt you have many older widows tramping about on your property, so I understand if I caused any confusion.”

  She looked away from him then, unsure of what else to say. A history lay thick between them, and she could not honestly class Mr. Halberd as much more than an acquaintance, as far as their past interactions had gone. “So,” she said, because there were no other words within reach that came along to help her. “Thank you, again.”

  She moved to walk out beyond the shelter of the house, only a few quick steps needed to cross that small portion of the drive and step up into the carriage that sat waiting for her. Mr. Halberd came up from behind, holding an umbrella over her head. At the carriage, he again offered his hand to her as she climbed into the vehicle. And there was his bare skin against hers, the warmth of his fingers spreading across her palm like water spilled from a jug.

  It should not have affected her, she knew. It was surely only a courtesy on his part, basic manners put on display. Had she been without the touch of another person for so long that a few brushes of his fingers against her jaw, her hand, should imprint themselves on her skin as though she’d been burned?

  Ah, but it wasn’t as simple as that. She looked at him through the carriage window after the door was shut, his face and features blurred by the rain-streaked glass. Yet her memories were clearer, her mind slipping back a dozen years to when she had first been introduced to him, had first laid eyes on him. Not in church, but at the vicarage, when Mr. Halberd and his wife had come to welcome the new vicar to the village.

  Julia remembered Mrs. Halberd. A beautiful creature. Julia had always been aware of the loveliness of others in comparison to herself. It was a practice she had tried to fight, that constant urge to set herself against other women and discover where she placed. Mrs. Halberd had been all that was kind and welcoming, her smile bright and her eyes glittering as she asked questions about their wedding, about Julia’s plans for the roses that grew on either side of the front gate, about recipes that Mrs. Halberd promised to have her cook send on to the vicarage for them to sample.

  She was like a light walking into the vicarage, settling on their threadbare chairs as though she had wandered into a palace. Even Frederick had come out of his shell in Mrs. Halberd’s presence, discussing his ideas for that week’s sermon and listening eagerly as she pointed out which biblical excerpts and verses would best accompany his chosen topic.

  But Julia had been flustered at the unplanned arrival of their guests. They had hired no maid yet, and Julia had taken the full weight of the cooking and housekeeping upon herself until they acquired help. And so she had been in the kitchen, clad in an apron covered in a mingling of flour and lard and dirt, her hair twisted up into a serviceable rather than fashionable style, her gown something she had plucked out of her wardrobe because a few more stains wouldn’t mar what was already halfway towards ruined.

  There had been no time to go upstairs and change. No time to even remove her apron, as the knot had stuck and all of her frantic pulling at it had only tightened it further. She stood beside her husband, offering tea when she could not recall if they had purchased any yet, or if the tea service still boasted its full set of cups after their move. Mrs. Halberd had behaved with perfect grace, as though the prospect of tea with neither tea nor cups was exactly what she had wanted and nothing more.

  Julia had escaped to the kitchen in an effort to assemble a tray from the few things she had in the pantry. She had no desire to return to the parlor again, to stand there in her plain, frayed gown while Mrs. Halberd twinkled like a star dropped down from the firmament. It was the jealous, bitter side of her coming through, the side that always reared its head when she was tired or anxious or beset with worries. She had only been a wife for a few weeks, wed to a man she had accepted only because she had been too old and too desperate to wait for someone she might eventually come to love.

  And she had told herself she would try to love her husband, while understanding that those things could take time. Even as she had looked at Mr. Halberd as he entered the vicarage, as she had wondered what it would be like to have the ability to flit and flutter like Mrs. Halberd and gain someone such as him for a partner instead.

  Julia pressed her head back against the seat, hoping the jostling of the carriage would shake her free from her thoughts. Old thoughts, they were. Ones that had circled around and around inside her head until they’d been worn down to the smoothness of a pebble. And perhaps soon, with more tumbling and more wearing, they would disappear entirely. And she would cease to think of what could have been, how her life might have turned out differently, when indeed no such privilege as options or choice had ever been available to her.

  Chapter Three

  * * *

  The schoolhouse was built from a converted barn that sat at the edge of the vicarage’s property. The current vicar, Mr. Parker, taught his more esteemed pupils in his study, those few boys that came from both affluent or minorly-titled families, the ones who would need their grounding in Latin and declensions and a fair bit of history and arithmetic before they were bundled off to a proper educational institution where their places in the world would be carved out for them in those hallowed halls.

  Twice a week, the local boys from the village, the farmers’ and tradesmens’ sons, bundled into the damp, drafty schoolhouse for a basic education in reading, writing, and numbers. Everything that was necessary for running a farm or a business, for totting up figures and filling out sales orders.

  And on Sundays, Julia taught the village’s daughters.

  There were not many to teach. Not that the village boasted a remarkable disproportion of young ladies to young men, but rather that the majority of families did not believe their daughters to be in need of an education beyond what the tutelage of their — mostly — illiterate mothers could provide.

  Julia sat on a bench with Lilith, one of the older girls who had started to come for lessons only because her younger sisters were now grown enough to help with the various chores around the house, giving her leave to come to school for an hour every week and practice her reading.

  “Every time you arrive at a word you do not understand, I want you to write it out on your slate, hmm?”

  Lilith nodded, her bright, freckled face already screwing up in concentration for the task ahead.

  There would be no sending the girls home with additional work to tackle during the week. Most of the poorer families did not own books, had few means of practicing their letters over and over for memorization. Sometimes there was not even a family Bible, the sort bearing the names of their ancestors scrawled down in increasingly faded ink on the front pages. So their studies had to be done during that single hour when Julia had them in her care. Primers and prayer books and slates were passed around, the half dozen girls who made up her class sitting together on one bench at the front of the room, closest to the pot-bellied stove and its radiating heat.

  “Mrs. Benton!” A younger girl seated at the end of the bench raised her hand, fingers waggling.

  “Oh, Esther! Your spelling words. I nearly forgot! Let’s see how we fare with those today, shall we?”

  Julia took the primer from Esther and stood facing her so the girl could not see the words. “Now, spell ‘fountain’.”

  “F… um, O… U…”

  A noise at the back of the room dragged Julia’s gaze away from Esther as she forged her way through ‘N’ and ‘T’.

  Mr. Halberd stood there, just inside the door, a broad smudge of black in his layered greatcoat and hat. There was sunlight in the room, pockets of it coming in through a few small windows spaced at intervals. He raised his hand to remove his hat as he stepped sideways and away from the door, into one of those pale rays of sunlight that limned him in cold illumination.

  “... I … N,” Esther finished, displaying a grin that sported no less than three missing teeth.

  “Very good. Only nine more to go. Next is ‘establish’.”

  She would make him wait until her hour with the girls was up. She had so little time with them already, and that was taking into account the fact that a few of her pupils could not make it every week, their responsibilities at home sometimes preventing their parents from sparing them.”

  “Wipe your slates before you leave!” she reminded them as the clock ticked into a new hour and she declared their class finished for the day. “And Kit, don’t forget your hat!”

  The fair-haired Kit grabbed her squashed straw bonnet from a peg on the wall and dashed around Mr. Halberd as she ran to catch up with the rest of the girls.

  And then Julia was alone with him.

  Mr. Halberd closed the door behind the nimble Kit. To keep out the chill, Julia reminded herself. But still she looked at the rows of benches between them as though they were bulwarks erected in her defense.

  “Mr. Halberd,” she said, pleased at how calm and easy her voice sounded to her own ears. “What brings you here today?”

  He took a few steps forward. She watched his gloved hands as he slowly turned the brim of his hat between them. “My daughter.”

  Julia waited for him to elaborate. When he did not, she moved along the front bench and gathered up the scattering of slates abandoned there. “Is something wrong? Is she unwell?” It had been three days since she had met Zora in the village and accompanied her back to Langford. Had the poor girl caught a chill since her jaunt in the inclement weather?

  “No, she’s… I mean, she’s quite well. But she is why I’m here.”

  Julia set the slates on a table in the corner, along with the small stubs of chalk she did not want to lose. Supplies were expensive, and most of them were purchased from her own meager savings. She turned to him with her hands buried in her apron, wiping the chalk and the smears of graphite — along with the agitation — from her fingers. “Well, Mr. Halberd?”

  He took another step towards her, out of the shaft of sunlight that had drawn him as an imposing figure only a moment ago. Now, he appeared to be just a man, his dark hair flattened from the weight of his hat, the lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth carving deeper as his jaw set. “You live in the village. I believe you rent a set of rooms there?”

  It was hardly a question. “Yes. From Mrs. Cochran.”

  His gaze darted away from her, skimming the corners of the schoolroom as if he might find something of interest there, hidden behind the stacked benches and crates of old books and a few buckets of coal set in from the weather. “You were fortunate then, to find a place to stay after the death of your husband. But you do not have family nearby?”

  “Not nearby, no.” She swallowed and lowered her head before his attention could find its way back to her. “And I had no wish to inflict myself on them, the poor and recently widowed relation. At least here, as things are, I feel I can retain some small portion of freedom. Or at least the illusion of it.”

  The truth spilled from her lips before she could stop it. And so she breathed, and she smiled, and she looked up again to find Mr. Halberd watching her.

  “I must admit,” he said, and gave his hat another turn. “I came here today believing I already knew how best to phrase my request, but…” He cleared his throat, his lips tightening into a line so thin they almost disappeared. “Zora has reached an age when she needs someone. More than a mere nurse, and I never found her a new one ever since we left London. No, I’ve been remiss in seeing to my daughter’s care, and I realize now she is in need of a governess, or something very like.”

  “And you wished to approach me concerning this matter because…?” Julia left the question to hang in the air between them.

  “I know the role of a governess can be repellant to some.” He spoke slowly, deliberately, and Julia wondered if this was the part of his speech that had already been composed in his head. “It occupies an unusual place between family and servant, and it is also a paid position, so some would denigrate it as employment. But you’ve already shown that you’re not hesitant to work,” he said, gesturing around the empty schoolroom. “And you say you have no family here, no one who might argue against you taking on such a position in a household.”

  No family here…

  His words hurt more than she thought they would. But then he couldn’t know how much his words could harm her, could remind her of the family she had never been able to provide to her husband while he had been alive. She eased the tension out of her shoulders and reached behind her back to fuss with the knot of her apron. “You wish for me to be Zora’s governess?”

  “You are educated, are you not? You are… I mean, you were a vicar’s wife. So I suppose reading, writing, embroidery… Do you speak any languages?”

  “French,” she admitted. Though as the wife of a vicar in a small English village, it had never done her any good. “And some Latin.”

  “Music? Drawing?” His eyebrows rose higher with each word, and she began to suspect he was simply pulling items out of thin air. “I know a few of those things are usually required as well.”

  This had to be one of the strangest conversations Julia had ever taken part in. With a slight shake of her head, she hung up her apron and took her pelisse down from its peg. “I play the pianoforte, yes. I wanted to play the harp, but my youngest sister, well…” She bit off that tidbit of sibling rivalry before it could advance any further. “And I draw, embroider, all of those things. With varying degrees of success,” she added, before it could sound like she was boasting.

  “And you’re not…” He tilted his head to one side as he regarded her. “You’re not about to be married again, are you? No suitors clamoring for your hand?”

  She couldn’t decide whether to laugh outright at the notion of someone seeking her out for a wife, or to take offense at the surety in his tone that she had no plans to marry again in the near future. “No suitors, Mr. Halberd. None at all.”

  He blew out a breath. “I apologize if the question sounds officious, but I’m reluctant to bring someone into the household only to have them leave again a short time later in order to be married.”

  She smiled to show him she was not perturbed. “I understand.”

  “Then you will consider it?” He took a step forward. There was still half the room between them — the schoolhouse was not a small room — but Julia felt the space slipping away from her as though the floor had tilted beneath her feet. “Zora needs someone to teach her, to exert a healthy influence on her. I am not home nearly as much as I would like, and without her mother—” He cut himself off suddenly, his words tumbling away from him, leaving an echo like rocks falling down a cliff.