to be particular about the state of someone else’s marriage.”
A much longer and more troubled silence followed. Penelope chewed harder on her lip.
“I consider John and me married, for whatever that’s worth,” Harry said at last. Very quietly, so only the snow would hear him.
Penelope’s ire melted at this. “I know you do. And I know he feels the same. It’s just—it’s strange sometimes, to have spoken vows specifically so we could break them.” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Do you think Owen knew? About . . . about us?”
“About our deviant tastes, you mean?” Harry asked. He took Penelope’s hand and tucked it into his arm. Warmth seeped through her gloves and sank into her grateful bones. “I think he had a very shrewd idea. I just think he didn’t mind.”
Penelope was shocked. “He was a vicar! How could he not mind?”
“I think he felt himself bound by a higher law than that of the crown, or even the Church,” Harry replied. “Can you imagine any world in which Owen, of all the family, failed to love us?”
“Impossible,” Penelope said at once.
“Exactly,” Harry replied.
Penelope stared down at the headstone. Cool gray with chips of mica that glittered beneath the frost. It looked so cold, when Owen had always seemed so warm. Hair the same honey-blond as Penelope’s—though his would never be streaked with silver, as hers was now. The memory of him seemed dimmer and dimmer every year.
Not his laugh, though. That stayed clear and immediate, as though the last time he’d ever laughed had lodged beneath her ear like a pearl bob. There’d been so much joy in it, a sound of pure delight and love and warmth.
If there was anything like a heaven—and Penelope had never been really convinced—but if there was, she was sure it was a place where such sounds were common.
This world had a ways to go before it deserved such laughter.
Beside her, Harry cast her a slantwise gaze from beneath the brim of his hat. “Have you never thought about coming with us on a voyage, Pen? We’ve never captained a hen frigate, but we could, if you wanted.”
She snorted. “You think the best thing for a woman who prefers women is to spend years on board a ship packed full of men?”
“You’d be surprised,” was the laconic response.
Penelope shook her head decisively. “There are no beehives at sea.”
“Ah, well, that’s true enough.” Harry chuckled, and together they nodded farewell to Owen and turned back toward the road to Fern Hall. “But you aren’t too lonely, here by the ancestral hearth?” His gaze was keen again, his mouth just a sliver away from a smile. “You’re finding some use for that warm heart of yours?”
“My heart, maybe,” Penelope said. She thought of Agatha Griffin, green-lit at a ghost Christmas; Griffin walking the bee circuit in her blue coat, grousing about poetry; Agatha Griffin, half smiling by candlelight. She sighed at the hopeless futility of all that yearning. “Other parts of me, sadly, have yet to be invited to join in the fun.”
Harry chortled, as she knew he would.
Mr. Flood’s coat was deep brown wool, and Agatha could imagine exactly how it would fit if she put it on. She knew she’d have to turn the cuffs up precisely twice to leave her hands free to work, and just how many inches of the fabric that fit his broad shoulders would drape down her more compact frame.
She couldn’t seem to stop thinking of it. It kept her more quiet than she might otherwise have been, on the walk back to Fern Hall.
Ahead of them, Sydney and Eliza were bent close together. Sydney’s brow was still wracked with anger after that ominous sermon, and Eliza’s anxious gaze occasionally flashed back to where Agatha and Mr. Flood kept pace a dozen yards behind the younger pair.
“Are you worried about them?” Mr. Flood asked, breaking the silence.
“I beg your pardon?” Agatha shook herself, and tried to bring herself back to polite attention. “We always worry about the people we love. Isn’t it a mother’s instinct where her child is concerned?”
“I wouldn’t know,” said Mr. Flood. “I ran away to sea at twelve, and I hardly remember mine. I do recall a distinct lack of worrying over me, though. Even though some of the trouble I found was . . . worth worrying over.”
Agatha didn’t want to pity Mr. Flood—it sat poorly alongside her determination to guard Penelope against the worries his presence