“Mr. Harding has returned? I scarcely believe it. I did not expect to see him in these parts again.”

Miss Esther Campbell, Charity’s oldest and dearest friend, had arrived at the vicarage only moments after Mr. Harding had left it, and found Charity in a mood of dreamy disorientation such that she had never seen in her friend before.

“In these parts,” Charity agreed, pouring the tea as a means of occupying her hands and mind, “and still less in our garden.”

“Well, he pays your father a great compliment in calling upon him so soon after his return to the village,” Esther observed placidly. If she had noted the distractedness of Charity’s manner, she had the tact to refrain from commenting on it.

Charity stole a glance toward the door to the parlor to confirm it was shut fast and leaned closer to Esther to speak in lowered tones. “I believe it must pertain in some way to the reason for his banishment, for I can find no other way of accounting for it.”

“Could it not merely be a matter of a former pupil seeking wisdom and solace from a former teacher and a man of God?” Esther inquired. “I hear that the Duke is very ill and that they fear for his life. Is that in itself not a reason for a son — even an estranged son — to seek comfort and advice?”

Charity hesitated. When Esther expressed the matter like that, it seemed reasonable enough as an explanation. Yet she found it hard to understand herself.

“It is,” she agreed. But it does not account for the fact that, of all people, he chose to seek comfort and advice from a man as unfeeling as my father.

Though Charity felt all the love and respect that was due her father, she found it a little hard to believe that anyone would turn to him as a source of wisdom and guidance in their hour of need. The Reverend Miller was an intelligent man and an intellectually rigorous scholar, but he lacked the ready sympathy and compassion that might be desired in a clergyman and still more in a parent.

What the Reverend lacked in parental authority, he compensated for in a fretful disposition and a constant endeavor to control his daughter’s life in whatever way he could.

He had chosen not to educate his daughter too extensively, feeling that a great deal of book-learning was not suitable for a girl. He had taught her enough scripture to fulfill her envisaged role as a clergyman’s wife, but had preferred not to take her education any further.

Charity’s regular raids on his library were, therefore, her earliest exercises in quiet defiance of her father. In this way, Charity had taught herself a great deal more than she could have learned from most governesses or at polite seminaries for young ladies, including the rudiments of several European languages and whatever else she could lay her hands on.

The notion, therefore, that her father might be a beloved and trusted tutor to the lively young man whom she had twice encountered that morning, was a peculiar one.

“Did Mr. Harding look well after all his travels?” Esther asked.

Charity hesitated. “I scarcely know,” she replied. “I cannot say what he looked like before.”

“It must have been a distressing time for him,” Esther pointed out. “I hear that there is some talk of his being disinherited.”

“Surely not,” Charity said, thinking of the young man with the lively eyes and struggling to believe that he could have done anything so egregious as to prompt such an extreme response. “Could the Duke not have responded to a small dispute in a fit of bad temper? Could both parties not have overreacted somewhat?”

He would not be the first young man, she thought , to quarrel with his father and disappear to the Continent to prove a point. Although I can hardly believe that he is the type to behave so melodramatically.

At this, she shook herself. And what, she asked herself, do I know of temperament that would qualify me to make such a judgement on the strength of two very brief encounters?

“I think it unlikely that there was poor judgement on the Duke’s part,” Esther replied temperately. “By all accounts, he has always been a sensible and well-balanced man, if somewhat prone to hot-headedness.”

Esther’s father was the Duke of Mornington’s steward, and as such, she had some knowledge of the family at Lawley Hall, albeit from a distance.

“Then perhaps there has been some misunderstanding,” Charity suggested, wanting very much to place some credit in her own words. “Perhaps the whole matter will be resolved now that Mr. Harding has returned home.”

She could not say why she felt so invested in the idea that all would soon be resolved between the Duke of Mornington and his heir. Charity had never much concerned herself with the whims of the aristocracy.

She knew that there were young ladies in the vicinity who would have heard of Mr. Harding’s return and immediately begun to calculate how it might affect their own prospects as women of marriageable age. But Charity had a great disdain for any behavior that she considered to be mercenary, and therefore avoided any chatter of marriage, particularly when it pertained to wealthy young men.

Her curiosity about the young gentleman was far more organic. She simply could not understand any of the particulars of the matter - why Mr. Harding had left, why he had returned again, and why he had chosen to seek out her own father as soon as he had arrived.

Apart from anything else, Charity’s lively mind was not sufficiently stimulated by her daily tasks in the vicarage, nor by the society of her very limited circle of acquaintance. The perplexing matter of Mr. Harding gave her something to consider, something of substance for her to contemplate.

And of course, there was something else that occupied her too. Something ineffable, something that she did not voice, not even to Esther, but that pertained somehow to the sensation she had felt in her bosom when she had seen the tall figure of Mr. Harding in the early morning light of the grove.

It was a feeling quite unlike the polite interest that she always did her best to feel when introduced to the earnest and sensible young men of the parish, the clerks and sons of lawyers destined for the clergy, toward whom her father would always position her.

It was a feeling that seemed to emerge more stubbornly the more Charity did her best to push it away. It was a sensation of wanting to linger over the image of Mr. Harding’s broad shoulders and noble profile in her mind’s eye — a deep thrill running through her, seeming to disturb the very chemistry of her blood, when she thought of his voice.

A wish, she reminded herself, that was quite irrelevant to reality. After all, what did it matter what the sight of the Duke’s son made her feel, when she was the daughter of a mere clergyman, and he was apparently disgraced and therefore, no doubt, in need of a monied young heiress?

Esther and Charity continued with their chatter. Since they talked every day, or near enough, one might have thought that the two ladies would have run out of things to say to one another. However, that had never proved to be the case so far.

And yet…though Charity was certainly not bored by her friend’s conversation, her mind continued to wander back to Mr. Harding. The more she did her best to resist the thoughts, the more insistently they continued to emerge.