The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner Page 0,14

dying without an heir. The estate also included the little steward’s cottage where the Gosport and Winchester roads intersected, and where Jane Austen had finally found a home for her writing after years of dependency on several other male relatives. Here in this church, nearly a century and a half later, the Knights still held sway. The Knight family heraldry stained the panes of glass, the altar stood above the family crypt, and the pews were made from oak that had been felled on the Knight estate.

As Dr. Gray entered, he removed his hat and, after crossing himself, looked up to see Adeline Grover alone in the front pew, her long, straight brown hair brushing against her full pink cheeks as she kept her head lowered in prayer. She was wearing a simple floral-patterned housedress that had been let out at the waist, with a white girlish collar and cuffs on its short sleeves.

Her husband, Samuel Grover, had ended up perishing last March in a dive-bombing attack off the coast of Croatia, unknowingly leaving her just one month pregnant. The baby was now all that she had, her husband’s body lying below one simple plain white cross on the rocky island of Vis. Dr. Gray had been surprised at the young woman’s composure throughout the ordeal. With all her brashness, he would have thought Adeline would become quite bitter, quite fast, if life dealt her an unfair hand. But instead she radiated a strange positivity, almost a desperate determination that somehow everything would turn out alright. He would have chalked it all up to her youth, but he knew from patients such as Adam Berwick that being young when tragedy strikes can make it even harder to endure.

From across the aisle he had watched her stand in church every Sunday for the past six months, both hands on her expanding belly, listening peacefully to the words of Reverend Powell. Perhaps expecting a child could do that—he would never know himself. But he wondered if the pregnancy was keeping her from fully experiencing her grief. He was the last person on earth to judge anyone for that; he sometimes wondered what good grief did at all.

Adeline looked up at the sound of his heavy step on the old stone floor but did not turn around. He watched silently as she crossed herself, then stood to move up the centre aisle towards him.

He remembered her and Samuel’s wedding day here last February, during the young officer’s final leave. Adeline had been radiant—but then again, she always looked bright-eyed and game for anything. Yet as wonderful and spirited as Adeline was, she had ended up too interesting and progressive a teacher for their slumbering Hampshire village. She had quit halfway through the last spring term, on the heels of her wedding, and dedicated herself to setting up house for Samuel once he permanently returned from the war. Even now, in the late-summer heat, with only a trimester left in her pregnancy, Dr. Gray would occasionally wander by the little Grover house to find Adeline knee-deep in the dirt of her garden patch, pulling up the courgettes and wax beans and beets to be pickled and preserved for the winter ahead.

He smiled at her approach, hoping she would not pass by without stopping to talk.

“Adeline, how are you feeling?”

“Better than last week. Which is unusual, I understand, as all the old women keep telling me it only gets worse.”

“Best not to listen to them,” Dr. Gray advised with a laugh. “They have their line, and they will stick to it. They can be counted on for at least that.”

She made as if to keep on her way, and he fell in step next to her.

“Am I keeping you?” she asked.

“Not at all—I worried I’d done the same to you.”

She shook her head quickly. “No, I was finished. Said all I needed to. And then some.”

“I’m sure He was listening. You are hard to ignore.”

“Dr. Gray!” she exclaimed in mock offense.

He was one of the few people in Chawton who did not recoil whenever they ran into her, as if suddenly flinching from the memory of her loss—which of course only made her feel even worse, the opposite of what the other villagers surely intended. She had also always loved Dr. Gray’s dry sense of humour, and the way he acted so admonishing, even when she suspected that he might be a much softer person inside. During the few times Samuel had been on leave,