The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner Page 0,107
the door after him.
* * *
Dr. Gray and Liberty were heading to the church together, with a quick stop at Adeline Grover’s along the way. Dr. Gray had taken extra care with his bath that morning, tousling up his hair and indulging in some of the eau de cologne that his late wife had bought him in Jermyn Street for what turned out to be their last Christmas together. When he’d dabbed a few drops along his jawline after his shave, he had looked at the bottle, and the memory of that Christmas morning had felt, strangely, at peace with his present life. Not pulling away at it, as his memories had so often done in the past; not draining anything from the moment, but completing it somehow. Reminding him of who he was, and what he wanted, and what he still deserved to have. He accepted that Jennie would have wanted him to keep living, and that doing so would not reflect on his love for her, which he knew to have been infinite and strong. He had no regrets there. And Jennie had loved him just as infinitely. She would want him to be happy and content again.
But he also knew that she would not want him to be with Liberty Pascal.
Liberty talked incessantly while taking his arm as they walked along. As usual, she was prattling on about Adeline Lewis Grover and her beaux. Her preoccupation with Adeline’s love life struck Dr. Gray as both strange and most unfortunate—ever since that night in the garden when he had lost his head, he had been avoiding Adeline, yet Liberty was always right there to remind him of what the young widow was up to.
“Oh, how I love weddings,” Liberty was saying. “There’s nothing like a wedding to stir up some romance, I always like to say, don’t you think, Dr. Gray?”
“I wouldn’t know. I don’t get to too many around here. It’s a pretty small village.”
“Oh, but you must have gone to Adeline’s, last—what was it—only a year ago last February? How sad that all was. And not so long ago at that. Did you?”
“Did I what?” asked Dr. Gray absentmindedly.
“Why, did you go to Adeline and Samuel’s wedding?”
“Yes.” He nodded.
She gave him a hard look. It was like trying to draw blood from a stone.
“Well, I am sure it was a most romantic day. Childhood sweethearts and all that. Although that Adeline, she’s more complicated than she seems. I mean, away at college, we all wondered about the boy back home. He sounded an angel, to be sure, but—I don’t know—it all seemed a little lopsided. On his side, I mean.”
Dr. Gray was looking about him at the crowds of daffodils still filling the front gardens of the terrace houses along this stretch of the street.
“There was this professor, you see.” Liberty’s tone was managing to sound both hushed and loud at the same time.
“Hmm?”
“Oh, well, perhaps it was just cold feet. But we all wondered whether Samuel was more an obligation of sorts, going off to war—didn’t they get engaged right after he got conscripted?”
Dr. Gray was barely listening, just recalling the image of Adeline standing at the altar in her cream-coloured frock, her hair down in waves about her shoulders, a little crown of cream roses setting off the perfect pink of her cheeks.
“In fact, there wasn’t just the professor,” Liberty was droning on. “Adeline has apparently always had a weakness for older men, throwing herself at lonely widowers and the like, confessed as much to me at college once. Said she—”
Liberty stopped talking. Dr. Gray had stopped in his tracks, staring at her. Adeline’s words in the garden that night—“push me away all these years”—kept ringing through his head, like a long-suppressed clarion call.
“What did you just say?”
Liberty bit her lip. She was usually two steps ahead of Dr. Gray, but today for once he was catching up, and way too fast at that.
“Well, look at me, talking your head off and we’re already here. Let me go in and get Adeline, and you stay right there and relax, hmm?”
Liberty ran up the garden path to Adeline’s house while Dr. Gray tested the hinges on the front gate, swinging it easily to and fro. Adam Berwick had been by after all.
Just then he heard a honk and looked behind to see Adam himself at the wheel of the Knight family Rolls-Royce, Yardley Sinclair sitting in the front seat next to him.