The Earl of Edgeley had always been a pious man. But his religion consisted of more than occupying his pew at church every Sunday and reading the Bible with his family at home. His religion also involved works of charity. His own people were well-looked-after. No one on the Edgeley estates ever starved or suffered in any material fashion. And Rachel had been brought up to visit the laborers and tenants, to take baskets of food when any was sick, to offer comfort to any who needed compassion.

The visits had become far more than duty to Rachel. All through her girlhood she had spent as much of her days wandering or riding from cottage to cottage as she had spent at Oakland or at the homes of the friends of her own class. She had always been a great favorite, her sunny nature and ready conversation making the tenants forget their usual awkwardness and shyness with the upper classes.

And Rachel had not seen any of them since before she went to London. There had been far more important things to do: houseguests to prepare for, the dinner and ball to dream about, a marquess's proposal to consider, a future marriage with Algie to plan for. There was no time for her childish friendships any longer.

But why not? she had thought that morning when she woke burning with restless energy. Why should she not go to see some of her friends? Why should doing so be of less importance than mixing with the friends who had come from London to be with her? She would go alone, of course. Anyone else, even perhaps Celia, would be impatient with such an activity. And with anyone else present she would be conscious of her dignity and unable to behave naturally.

She would go to see the Perkins family. Was Mr. Perkins' back injury still making it hard for him to work for his large family? And the family was getting larger. Mrs. Perkins was expecting their ninth child. Indeed, her time must be close already. And it was always interesting to talk to old Mrs. Perkins.

Soon after breakfast, then, long before most people were up at Oakland, Rachel was driving the gig down the rutted lane toward the Perkinses' cottage, a basket of food on the seat beside her. Mrs. Greene, the cook at Oakland, had grumbled at having to prepare the basket, but she had done so when Rachel had called her "Cookie," the old pet name, and had threatened to take over the kitchen to make some cakes herself if she might not take some of Mrs. Greene's. She had been favored with a good hard look in exchange for her threat, but she had got the cakes too.

Mrs. Perkins came to the doorway of the cottage as Rachel drove up to the gate with the gig, drying her hands on an apron, a tiny child clinging to her skirts. Four other children were playing in the dirt of the yard before the door.

Rachel climbed down from the gig and reached for the basket. "Hello, Mrs. Perkins," she called gaily, "and everyone. Is that Molly hiding there? You have not forgotten me, have you, Molly?"

The child whisked herself completely behind her mother's skirt.

Mrs. Perkins bobbed a curtsy, made awkward by her considerable bulk. "Good morning, my lady," she said. "You really shouldn't have troubled yourself. And you all busy at the house with guests."

"I felt like an outing this morning," Rachel said. "And almost everyone is still sleeping. Can you imagine such laziness?"

She accepted an invitation to step inside. She was always fascinated by the interior. The main room served as kitchen, dining room, and living room. It contained a stove, a table and chairs, and a dresser. All were set on a floor of pressed dirt. There was another room beyond the first, and a wooden ladder leading up to an attic beneath the thatch. The whole house would fit inside her bedchamber, Rachel was convinced.

Mr. Perkins, seated at the table, tried to rise hastily, failed, and sat down heavily again.

"My man is took bad today, my lady," Mrs. Perkins explained, dashing forward to pull back a chair for Rachel and dusting at it with her bare hand.

"Please don't trouble yourselves," Rachel said. "I merely came to see how you all were and to tell Molly about London."

Half a head, including one eye, appeared around Mrs. Perkins' skirt and ducked back again.

"Who is it?" a querulous voice called from the next room.

"It's Lady Rachel from the house, Ma," Mrs. Perkins called back.

"Hello, Mrs. Perkins," Rachel called. "I shall come to see you in just a moment. But I have just remembered something I brought from London for Molly."

A whole head appeared from behind Mrs. Perkins' skirt, its eyes wide.

Rachel took off her bonnet and pulled loose a ribbon that was threaded through the brim. "It is pretty, is it not?" she said to the child. "And very smooth. It is satin. Would you like to touch it?"

Soon both Molly and two older girls were smoothing their fingers along the ribbon while their mother hovered behind, anxious lest they crease or soil the costly trim.

"Would you like me to put it in your hair, Molly?" Rachel asked. "You have such pretty blond curls. I think the green will look prettier on you than on me."

"Oh, no, my lady," Mrs. Perkins protested. "It is too costly."

"Oh, please, may I?" Rachel begged with a laugh.

"Go and fetch the comb, then, Tess," Mrs. Perkins directed one of the older girls.

Rachel soon had the child sitting very still on her lap while she combed out the soft and tangled baby curls and threaded the ribbon through in such a way that it would not immediately fall out again.

"Oh, you do look pretty," she said, hugging the little girl when she was finished and laughing at the rather ludicrous effect of the wide ribbon in the baby hair. "Do you have a mirror so that you can see yourself?"

The child slid from her lap and ran into the adjoining room. The other two girls gazed wistfully at Rachel.

"The ribbon is yours now, Molly," Rachel said when the child returned with the mirror. "And I shall bring some tomorrow for Tess and Lil, shall I? What are your favorite colors?"

Rachel crossed the floor to look into the inner room. She smiled at the elderly woman propped up in bed there, where she had spent the last four years. Old Mrs. Perkins smiled back at her through a thousand wrinkles.

"As pretty as a picture," she said. "Such clothes, my lady. I'll wager everyone in London took you for a princess. And I bet all the gentlemen had eyes for no one else."

"The streets were quite congested wherever I went," Rachel said, "with all their carriages and horses."

The old lady laughed heartily. "I can just picture it," she said. "And you are not married to any one of them yet, my lady?"

"There were far too many to choose among, alas," Rachel said. "And what are you finding to do with yourself, Mrs. Perkins?"

"I have not had you to come and talk to me this long while," the old lady said. "But I keep talking myself. I give orders all the time." She chuckled. "Though nobody ever follows them. Not since I can't chase them with a broom anymore."

"Perhaps I can bring you some books," Rachel said.

Mrs. Perkins chuckled again. "Now, what would I be doing with books, my lady," she asked, "when no one in the house can read? No. I used to like to listen to the old vicar read from the Bible in church. There must be wonderful things in books."

"But I should have thought of it before," Rachel said eagerly. "I could read to you, Mrs. Perkins. Maybe not as well as the vicar, but enough to entertain you. Would you like me to?"

The old lady clapped her hands and laughed. "Now, that would be something," she said. "Lady Rachel coming to read to me. You run along and enjoy yourself, my lady, and don't worry your pretty head over the likes of me. I have had my life. Seven children, you know, and every one of them grew up healthy. Didn't lose a single one."

Rachel leaned forward eagerly from the stool on which she had seated herself. "But if I said I would enjoy it?" she said. "Would you let me read to you? I would enjoy it so much."

Mrs. Perkins patted Rachel's hand where it rested on the edge of her bed. "There," she said. "Life is not over yet. Fancy me going to have a real lady read to me from a real book. Well."

"Then it is settled," Rachel said, jumping to her feet. "Tomorrow morning I shall come. I have promised to bring the other little girls a length of ribbon each anyway. And I shall bring the Bible. Is there any story you particularly like?"

"Me?" Mrs. Perkins chuckled again. "No, my lady, you choose. But there was one. I always remember it because it was read the Sunday after my man and I were wed, and it seemed to suit so well. About that Ruth, it was, and her man's mother. N-Nell? Norma?"

"Naomi," Rachel said. "I shall find that story for you, Mrs. Perkins."

A few minutes later Rachel was bouncing her way back home over the rutted lane. She was humming to herself. Perhaps there really was something in what David had said. Jesus had always been happier with the poor than with the rich, he had said. And David too was happier with his humbler parishioners.

In fact, if she looked back on the days that had passed since they had left Oakland for London, she could not recall a morning she had spent more contentedly than this morning. Or an afternoon or evening for that matter. Though that was absurd, of course. It was just the sunshine and the birds' songs that had given her heart a lift and made her forget for the moment all the wonderful times she had had over the last few months.

Rachel began to sing.

Chapter 8

David found that he had to make a deliberate effort to remind himself that the members of the two leading families of his parish were also part of his flock. It seemed like a shirking of his duty to be riding into Singleton Park on his way to join a picnic that Algie had organized. The afternoon was glorious after a cloudy, misty morning. The weather would have been ideal for visiting some of the more widely scattered cottages of his territory. However, attending the picnic was also work. He owed it to both Algie and the Earl of Edgeley to attend some of their social functions. And this one was special. It was in honor of Miss Barnes's birthday.

At least this time he did not approach the gathering with dread, David mused. He had seen Lady Rachel only once since the ball three nights before, at church on Sunday, but he did not feel the embarrassment at having to face her that he had felt on the other occasion. She had even looked at him a few times during church, a faint smile curving her lips the first time he met her eyes. But she had colored up when it had happened during his sermon, and had directed her eyes at her lap for the remainder of the service.

He was glad they had had a chance to talk privately at the ball. He felt that the air had been cleared between them even if the problem had not been solved. Incredible as it was, it seemed that she really did have an infatuation for him. She was afraid to risk loving him, she had said, afraid to trust that that love would become the love of friendship. It was far too late for that. Those had been her exact words, as far as he could recall them.

It was too late for him too, of course. He loved her in every way it was possible for a man to love. Including the physical. Thoughts of her were beginning to wake him in the middle of the night and set him to tossing and turning on his bed, unable to gain the oblivion of sleep again.

But he no longer felt burdened by a sense of sin. There was nothing impure in his love. He was doing nothing to encourage it. He was not deliberately dwelling on his feelings or on erotic images of Rachel. If his circumstances were different, or even possibly if his personal commitment did not hold him back from accepting his godmother's offer of help, he would consider his love for Rachel quite an honorable thing. He would perhaps be able to offer for her before her betrothal to Algie became official. As it was, he could never hope to marry her. Besides, she would soon be beyond the reach of any man except her betrothed.

But his feelings were not wrong. It was never wrong to love, he believed. He would not try to stop loving her. His life was devoted to love. And Rachel Palmer was eminently lovable. He must do what he had asked her to do. He must risk not putting up a wall between his feelings and her. And he must trust that in time the sexual desire would die and leave behind only deep affection and respeet.

He hoped that Rachel could do the same. But surely she could not love him as deeply as he loved her. Could she? What was there about him to love except a passable exterior? The women in his past had always assured him that he had a handsome face and physique. But what else was there for Rachel to love? He had renounced all the qualities that women of her class would find attractive.