Page 80 of The Lord Meets His Lady
“We’re looking for Maude Turner,” he explained. “We heard this was her home.”
Vicar Pemberton’s breath caught before he sighed. “In a manner of speaking, yes.”
“May we see her?” Genevieve asked, voice cracking.
The vicar held up a finger when footsteps approached. “A moment.”
“Whoever has come at this late hour?” A plump woman, a mobcap perched on graying brown hair, poked her head around the corner. She shooed back a girl in dark-blue skirts.
“My dear, we have the honor of hosting Lord and Lady Bowles,” the vicar said.
He made quick introductions, to the squeals of more childish laughter from the other room.
Mrs. Pemberton stepped into the entry hall and bobbed a curtsy. “Please come in, come in. We’re late getting the children to bed, but I’ve some tea and biscuits I can offer you.”
“We don’t want to trouble you,” Lord Bowles said. “If you could tell us where to find Maude Turner, we’ll be on our way.”
“Oh.” The older woman fretted with her fingerless gloves, nodding gravely at her husband. “You’ll take them to her now, won’t you, dear?”
“Yes, dear.” The vicar reached for a black coat and round hat.
Genevieve tugged her hood forward. Her burgeoning courage faltered under Mrs. Pemberton’s probing stare. The older woman looked askance at her while the vicar buttoned up his coat. Genevieve coaxed herself to breathe. This journey was almost over. Vicar Pemberton led the way out the door, and they followed him across winter-yellow grass, their breath visible in the moonlight. The romantic ride across the bridge was lost in a sea of uncertainty.
The vicar cleared his throat, staring straight ahead. “Mrs. Turner came to us last winter. There’d been a fire at her cottage”—he peered at them, his brows arching—“though ‘cottage’ is too kind a word. ‘Hovel’ would be more accurate.”
“She’s a doll maker, isn’t she?” Lord Bowles asked.
“Of sorts.”
Vicar Pemberton opened a gate, motioning for them to go ahead. Moonlight sparkled on the church’s gray edifice. Patchy moss climbed the cornerstones of a dark, lonely church.
“She lives inside the church?” Genevieve broke her silence.
The vicar coughed into his balled fist, quickening his pace. “Up ahead.”
Winter grass grew longer here. And why not? Who would want to tread these grounds? With each step, the grass dampened her shoes. A shiver started from the earth, working its way up her legs, and didn’t stop until her neck quavered from the cold. Gravestones leaned. Some tipped at ancient angles, the markers centuries old. Somewhere among the dead lay her grandmother, Maude Turner.
She was too late.
Vicar Pemberton took them to the back of the graveyard where night was darkest and a gnarled tree draped its branches like prying fingers. This had to be where Coldstream village buried its poorest inhabitants.
“For all my years of service in the church, I’ve not mastered the skill of delivering bad news.” The vicar waved his hand over a rough wooden cross stuck in the ground. “This is where she was laid to rest. I’m very sorry.”
Genevieve dropped to her knees. A mound of earth rose gently, weeds and grass sprouting. The cross was bare of a name and date. She rested both of her hands on the ground, palms down.
Nothing.
Emptiness welled inside her. That strange hole in need of filling was worse than the pain and wondering about rejection. Pain, at least, filled a person with something. Wondering promised an answer might come. But with this, she had nothing. Fisting her hands on the grass-covered grave was the closest she’d ever be to her grandmother—the woman who rejected her as a babe in her mother’s womb.
She was alone in the world.
Even Lord Bowles would be gone, come winter’s end.
He crouched beside her. “Can you tell us anything about her, sir?”
“Mrs. Turner wasn’t one to frequent the church. She lived at the edge of town. Minded her own affairs.” The vicar clasped his hands behind his back. He searched the dark, giving a small shrug. “She sold dolls from time to time at the annual summer fair.”
“You didn’t really know her, did you?” Genevieve tipped her head up.
