The Scottish Bride (Sherbrooke Brides 6)

“And I have an excellent memory.”

26

Eden Hill House

Glenclose-on-Rowan

SAMUEL PRITCHERT, TYSEN’S curate for three years now, a stickler with a rigid soul, a man with a face so morose it was rumored that his own mother cried when he was born, said in his flat, deep voice, “Reverend Sherbrooke, I regret to report that the local ladies—so many of them—feel cut adrift from you, their pastor. They do not feel that you are truly back to minister to their needs. As the lovely and very young Mrs. Tate said, ‘Our dear reverend seems inattentive since he finally came back after his months and months of absence. He no longer cares about us.’ ”

Tysen just stared at him. He’d always thought it amazing how everyone spilled their innards to Samuel Pritchert within minutes of his appearing, despite the fact that Samuel always looked nearly ready to burst into tears—that, or simply sink into a pit of gloom. But everyone did speak to him, frankly, many times too frankly.

Tysen himself trusted Samuel implicitly to keep his finger on the emotional pulse of his flock. Samuel had just given his prologue. He was ready to move forward with but a nod from his vicar. Tysen didn’t want to hear this. Truth be told, he was afraid to hear more, but he knew he had no choice.

And so Tysen lowered his quill to his desktop, leaned back in his chair, and rested his head against his crossed arms. He said mildly, “I have only been home for eight days, Samuel. It is true that this will be my first sermon in three months, but you did an excellent job. I felt particularly moved by your sermon this past Sunday, for you presented it quite well. It would seem to me that any flock would like an occasional change of the guard in the pulpit.

“Now, tomorrow is Sunday, and I will once again be before them, my time away from them over. Why, Mary Rose and I visited with everyone before we went to Brighton and then on to visit my brothers. I have been home to stay for a week now, and everything is back to normal. I have seen everyone in these past days, spoken to everyone, commiserated with everyone, prayed with everyone. Surely both Mary Rose and I have taken tea with nearly everyone yet again, and I will say that everyone has been quite civil. So please tell me, Samuel, how could they possibly come to this conclusion, a conclusion that is nonsense, of course?”

“Be that as it may, sir,” Samuel said, not answering the question because he deemed it irrelevant, “I must tell you that I always strive to communicate God’s word to his flock, and to communicate the flock’s words and feelings and thoughts back to you.”

“Very well. Tell me what I haven’t seen.” At Tysen’s nod, Samuel gently cleared his throat. Tysen could see that he was striving to find a tactful way of delivering the blow. He sa

id finally, reluctantly, “I feel it my duty, sir, to remind you that you are no longer in Scotland, surely a place of sufficiently strict Protestant ethics, a place that surely holds no more sinners than we have here. But nonetheless, the Scottish people are still not our sort. Perhaps they changed you, sir, presented you with problems that made you think differently from the way you’ve always thought, made you yell and howl when normally you would speak quite calmly, perhaps even whisper, made you perhaps question—perhaps even deny—all the spiritual and pious philosophies you have hitherto always firmly believed and espoused.”

“Although your words flowed quite nicely, Samuel, I am not entirely certain I understand what you just said.”

“You would have understood before you left for Scotland, sir. You would have answered me in the same vein—before Scotland. Ah, it is difficult, Reverend Sherbrooke. I will endeavor to clarify my sentiments. The Scottish people, sir—they are, quite simply, not like us. They do not share the exact breadth, complexity, and depth of our beliefs. They do not comprehend or appreciate the ways we look at ourselves and at the world. They are different from us, sir.”

“Ah. What sort are we, Samuel?”

“We are Englishmen, Reverend Sherbrooke.”

“I begin to see. And my wife isn’t.”

“That is correct, sir. From what I’ve learned, our people are striving out of respect for you to tolerate her if you will but return your former self to them. That means, sir, that they want you the way you were before you left for Scotland. They want the real you to come back to them.” As Tysen’s eyebrow was still elevated, Samuel added, near desperation in his voice, “They very much want you to try very hard to be yourself again. No one else, just your old self, the very introspective and devout self that was in full bloom here before that old and revered self left for Scotland.”

“The way I was before I went to Scotland,” Tysen repeated slowly. “What do you think they mean by that, Samuel?”

“I have even spoken at length with many of the men and the ladies in our flock, Reverend Sherbrooke. They have sought me out, actually, many of them. They wanted to speak to me. Mr. Gaither, who now owns the Dead Spaniard Inn—he just purchased it this past week from his older brother, Tom the Wastrel—something you didn’t know and it would have been nice if you had but known and commented upon it.

“Ah, yes, my point is that Mr. Gaither was the men’s spokesman. He told me that they have all discussed the situation amongst themselves. I have to say it, sir—though it smites me to have to—they have even gone so far as to smirk and leer. They are jesting at how a pretty woman has brought you—a devout man of God—as low as a young man rutting his first female, as low as a young man who has no thought, no caring for anything save his own fleshly desires. Mr. Elias even reported that he saw—actually saw—you kissing your wife, sir. He said it nearly knocked him on his, er, arse.”

Tysen nearly roared out of his chair then, ready to separate Samuel Pritchert’s head from his shoulders. He caught himself with effort, and simply nodded.

“It has quite bothered me, sir, because they now see you as one of them—no longer a man of God who has always been set apart from them, set apart from the base desires that seem to plague men and bring them low time and time again.

“They see you, quite frankly, as now being as weak and as much of the flesh as they are, as consumed by matters of the flesh as they and their neighbors are, as all their friends and enemies are. They fear for you, sir. You have fallen low. You are, in their eyes, no longer their spiritual leader. You have fallen from grace.”

Matters of the flesh. Tysen froze. He thought of the last three months, all the glorious nights and glorious mornings, each and every one of them filled with endless delights, endless tenderness and discovery, and dear God, endless lust that bowed him to his knees, made him heave and pant and yell with the utter joy and wonder of it, and emptied his brain of what he was, what he used to be.

Samuel was right. He wasn’t the same man now as the one who had traveled to Scotland. He realized that he’d been smiling for at least three months now, smiling at nothing in particular, something he hadn’t done since he’d been a very young man, since before he’d decided to become one with God, a spiritual man of the Church, before he’d met Melinda Beatrice.

He saw himself clearly then, the before and the after. After that decision so long ago, he’d become dour, so very serious, that he was humorless, unable to see anything that brought simple joy to life. From that point, he’d had only one goal, only one focus. Over the years, that focus had been on the people for whom he alone was responsible. They were to look up to him, to depend on him to tell them how to solve their problems and to succor them in their time of need and pain. And these people expected certain behavior from him, he’d known that very well, and he’d never let them down, before he’d gone to Scotland, before he’d wed Mary Rose.

Certainly he’d always loved his children, but he’d never given them his unstinting attention or the unfettered joy he now lavished on them and on himself and on his new wife.

Mary Rose. His wife. He’d made love to her that very morning, kissing her awake, his hands all over that smooth, warm body, feeling such pleasure, such overwhelming need that seemed to grow greater each time he became one with her. He’d awakened, he remembered, with a wondrous smile on his face, and hard as the oak planks of the bedchamber floor.

Tysen rose and walked to the windows. It was gray and cold outside, a nasty, dreary drizzle streaking down the glass. It had moved from fall to winter in such a short time. He realized he was cold, cold all the way to his bones. He said nothing to Samuel, just walked to the fireplace and built up the fire. Then he drew in a deep breath and turned back to his curate, who hadn’t moved, just stood there, silent and still.