“I have another question,” Adam said, after a long pause. “You have given an account of your actions that was so brutal, so painful to hear, that I cannot but believe it to be true. But there was another sin that you committed that day, and that was the sin of lying to my father. Why?”

The Reverend Miller looked up at Adam with tortured eyes, and it seemed that for a few moments he was deprived of speech. This muteness seemed to inflame Adam, for he continued, “Why would you cause my father the pain of believing that his loved ones were murdered and that his own son was responsible for the deed? Have you no heart?”

“I do not know,” the Reverend replied, his misery complete.

“I believe that I must have a heart, or else it would not feel as though it were breaking at present. Yet I have no answer to what you ask me. I do not know why I did what I did, except that I was terrified and knew not what else to do. Your father saw Mary and Freddie dead and was seized by a sudden and violent belief that you were the culprit. My sin was that I said nothing to correct his mistaken belief.”

“What?” Adam’s voice faltered here. “Why should my father leap to the conclusion that I was to blame?”

“I can only believe that the belief emerged from his own sense of guilt,” the Reverend replied.

“Why should he feel guilty?” Adam responded, more perplexed than angry. “Granted, he had a son and mistress whom he concealed from the world, and that was wrong of him. But he is not the first man to ever do such a thing, nor will he be the last. It is not a sufficient reason to twist his own mental faculties into mad beliefs.”

The Reverend paused for a while. When he spoke his tone was neutral, as though he truly wanted to answer the question, without behaving as though he wished to exonerate himself.

“Your father felt a terrible guilt that he had betrayed your mother’s promise, in spirit if not in letter, by loving another woman. I believe that he thought that if you knew about Mary and Freddie, then you would seek vengeance on your mother’s behalf.”

“But why?” Adam replied. His voice was faint as though overwhelmed by incredulity. “Why should he believe that I — or that the memory of my mother — should behave in such a vengeful fashion?”

“Shame will do dreadful things to a person,” replied the Reverend Miller. He said the words as though he were in his persona of a clergyman, teaching a lesson to his congregation. But then the impact of his words seemed to sink in, and he caught his breath with a terrible gasp of pain.

“Shame will do harmful things to a person,” he said again, and then he sank to his knees, “and I do not think it possible for a being to feel any more shame that I do before you at present. Forgive me, forgive me, I beg you. I have done you a terrible wrong, and I understand that I may never be able to right it.”

Charity glanced sideways at Adam again. She could see from the tautness in his jaw that he was fighting some kind of inner battle.

“It is not for me to forgive you,” he said finally. “You must ask forgiveness of my father, of course, but the true victims of this sad tale are Mary Warwick and her son. I would not wish to dishonor their memory by behaving as though I were the person most gravely injured in this affair.”

The Reverend Miller bowed his head.

“I cannot atone for my crime against them in this world,” he said. “That will be my task in the next, but all I can do at present is ask your forgiveness.”

Adam paused for a long while.

If someone had told him a few weeks ago that he would soon find himself in this position, then rage would inevitably have taken over. Perhaps he would have struck the Reverend the way he had struck Sir Toby, or else stormed from the room and declared that he would never offer forgiveness, not as long as there was breath in his body.

But then he looked at Charity.

She was very pale, and her breathing was very slight; she was doing her best to keep it regular and not allow herself to dissolve into ragged gasps.

Her posture was perfectly erect, and her chin lifted high. The way she was looking at her father was with the look of a woman whose entire world had changed within the course of a few moments. Adam knew the feeling well, and he found himself overawed by Charity’s composed demeanor. Clearly, she understood exactly what was going on, and yet she did not allow it to destroy her calm.

At that moment, Adam thought, she looked utterly magnificent.

The very sight of her seemed to inspire him to consider his reply to the Reverend Miller more carefully. Whereas before he would have answered with anger in his heart, now the foremost thought in his mind was just this: What can I do that is best for Charity? What can I do to be the sort of man that Charity deserves to have as her husband?

With these considerations in his heart, he began, slowly, to speak.

“I do not wish to inflict any punishment upon you beyond that which you have already endured at the hands of your conscience, for Charity’s sake as much as for your own,” Adam said. His voice was tight as if all the pain from the last year was threatening to spill out of it.

“However, I must ask two things of you,” he continued.

“I will do my best to grant them as long as they are within my power,” the Reverend replied sombrely. His eyes were fixed on the floor, his shame evident.

“The first,” Adam said, “is that you go to my father on his sickbed and confess yourself to him. He has suffered greatly for the past year, and his suffering has been rendered twofold by the belief that his own son is at fault. Go to him, and tell him the true story.”

The Reverend looked as though his heart would crack from the horror of it all, but he made no reply except to nod his head.

“The second request,” Adam continued, turning his head to look at Charity, “Is that you grant me permission to ask your daughter to marry me.”

He saw from Charity’s face that she had not been expecting that, and saw, too, the way the blood bloomed in her cheeks, as though her very heart were overflowing with joy.

“What she says in response to my request is up to her,” Adam continued, “but I should like to proceed with her father’s blessing.”

“With all my heart, sir,” the Reverend Miller replied, his voice still wretched but fervent nonetheless. “It is evident to me now that you are a man of wiser judgement and greater heart than I, and therefore I can hardly stand in your way. I will go now to your father, and leave you to make your addresses to my daughter.”

With that, the Reverend turned around and walked out of the church, with a purpose in his gait that suggested that he was planning on walking all the way to the Hall, where, Adam knew, he was likely to have the most distressing conversation in all his life.

Esther bade the two of them goodnight, and quietly slipped away. Adam suspected that there would be a conversation between her and Charity that would be very difficult for both parties, yet he was confident that their friendship would not be permanently damaged. He suspected, based on what he had seen, that the affection between the two young women was so strong that it could overcome almost any challenge that the world set for it.

He expressed both of these thoughts to Charity, who was standing beside him with a look of great solemnity.

“That is true,” she agreed, “but I believe that in such cases one must have faith that the truth will set one free, although it may be very distressing at the time.”

Adam smiled down at her.

“You put things remarkably well,” he said, and then added in a teasing voice, “perhaps you should write down our tale and deduce what moral there is to be drawn from it.”

“How could I write it down and do it justice?” Charity replied. “How, for instance, could I rightly express how I feel now, with nothing further standing between us, with the great vista of the future stretching out ahead? The sensation to me feels a little like fear, except that it is bathed in a golden light like that of a sunset. How could I possibly express that feeling?”

“I believe that you just did,” Adam said. Unthinkingly, he leaned down to kiss her. The brush of their lips lingered on for a great many moments, and when they finally broke apart it was only so that he could put his mouth to her ear and murmur, so softly that no other creature could possibly hear it, “You will marry me, won’t you?”

For a moment Charity looked up at him with those familiar, playful eyes, those eyes that had first caused him to fall so deeply in love with her.

“Why, Mr. Harding, whatever gave you the idea that I had any wish to marry?” She smiled at him, continuing teasingly, “There are a great many adventures that I wish to undertake, and I am not sure whether you should like to join me in them.”

“I would join you in any adventure in the world,” Adam replied promptly, he held onto Charity’s waist to gather her close to him. “We shall go to Paris, to Rome — oh, to anywhere that you should care to visit. Places that I have never been before. Places that neither of us had even heard of.”

Charity’s smile widened until it seemed to bathe her whole face in light.

“Well, if you make me an offer such as that, then how could I possibly say no?”

For a few moments, they just stood and looked at each other, laughing with the same pure delight that children feel when they see the world and how beautiful it is.

“So you will be my Duchess then, Miss Miller?” he asked. He intended for his voice to sound teasing, but he knew that the emotion — the joy, the hope, the fear — had leaked all over it.

“I will be your wife,” Charity replied soberly. “Whether I am a duchess or not is immaterial to me. I wish only to make you happy, and for you to make me so. But we cannot allow our happiness to be governed by things like titles, things that may be easily given and taken away, things that are no more than a story which we tell ourselves.”

At that moment she took his hand in both of hers.

“This,” she said, looking down at their joined hands, “is real. There is little else in the world that truly matters, so long as this remains real.”

They stood together for a long time outside the church. The sun was setting, and it lit up the copses of trees that stood all around into a lacework of black foliage. The hills were bathed in the dying light, and the coral-pink color was illuminating Charity’s face in a way that made it impossible to take his eyes off her.

Adam knew that he could not linger for long. He knew that it was his duty to go to his father and to tend to the old man, who would undoubtedly be most distressed by Reverend Miller’s confession. Whether his father wished to see him or not, he would not allow anything to prevent him from being at his side.

For the first time in his life, Adam was nervous to speak to his father.

Ever since he was a boy, he had always been taught that he never had any reason to fear the Duke. He knew that the other boys of his age often feared punishment from their fathers, but he had always known that as long as he told the truth, the Duke of Mornington would respond in a way that was stern, yet never unfair.

His more recent encounters with his father had been characterized by anger and pain rather than nerves.

But for the first time, he was nervous.

Indeed, if it hadn’t been for Charity squeezing his hand and offering him a gentle, loving look, he did not know whether he would have been able to bring himself to enter the bedchamber.

The Duke was sitting propped up against his pillows, with his eyes downcast. The pain that he felt was evident and seemed to hit Adam as soon as he entered the room. He was reminded anew of how much weight his father had lost, how much smaller and older he was now than he had been a year ago.

But when the Duke spoke all the nervousness in Adam’s chest melted away, to be replaced by some overwhelming feeling that he did not even know the name for.

“My boy,” the Duke said, and held out one trembling hand, “forgive me.”

Adam was at the bedside in three long strides, taking the hand that was offered and bending to kiss it.

“There is nothing to forgive, Father,” he said.

“There is everything to ask forgiveness for,” the Duke replied thickly. “It is my foolishness, my pride, that stopped me from listening to you. I spent every moment of your childhood raising you to be an honest man, and when the moment of reckoning came, I doubted you. I am ashamed of myself, and I have caused you a great deal of suffering through my behavior.”

“If it were not for the suffering that I have experienced, then I would not have grown into the man I am today, and therefore I do not only forgive you but offer you my gratitude,” Adam replied with great feeling.

“The man you are today, eh?” the old man said. “What mean you by that, my son?”

Adam explained about everything that had happened since he had returned to the country. Of course, he could not tell much of the story without making reference to Charity, and when he did, so it was in the warmest tones, such that the Duke could hardly be in doubt of how his son felt.

“So you would not have uncovered the truth if it were not for this little Miss Miller, then?” the old man said gruffly.

“Without a doubt, she has been the cause of this resolution,” Adam replied. “Were it not for her, I would be too occupied with pitying myself to seek out what really happened, nor would I have had the moral conviction to pursue the truth when I found it. And it was she who put everything together, she who found the torn robe.”

“Then I am indebted to her,” the old man said. “And for her sake alone I agree with you that there is no sense in pursuing any charges against her father. I have been a friend of the Reverend Miller for a long time, and I am afraid that that friendship is gone forever, another loss to add to the vast number I have suffered.

“Why should I add any more loss to the world? Why should I cause suffering to the girl who I hope will soon be my daughter-in-law?”

At these words, Adam felt his cheeks warm, though now it was through delight rather than nerves.

“So you mean to say, Father, that I have your permission to wed?”

“Permission?” the old man exclaimed, in the same gruff tone. “I should say that you have my strongest encouragement! It sounds to me that it was a stroke of luck for you to meet this young lady, and I hope that you will continue to be influenced by her for the rest of your lives. I look forward to the happy event, indeed!”

Adam bent his head again to kiss his father’s hand, before standing up.

“Thank you, Father,” he said, meaning it from the bottom of his heart.

“Eh? What do you have to thank me for? I have behaved monstrously to you,” the old man replied.

“I mean, thank you for raising me to consider all people as equal. If it had not been for your influence, then I very likely would be spending my life chasing heiresses in London in order to obtain their wealth, and I can be quite certain that there is no lady in England with half the worth of Charity, whether she be the heiress to fifty pounds or fifty thousand.”

For a few moments the old man’s eyes clouded over, and Adam was sure that he was thinking about his own lost love for Mary Warwick.

“Well, you do not choose where you find love,” he said. He was no longer looking at Adam, and Adam suspected that the mist that had formed in his eyes had turned into rain. “My advice to you, boy, for what it’s worth, is to take love wherever you can find it.”

“It is good advice, Father.”

“I am not strong,” the Duke said. With those words, he gave an aged, creaking laugh. “I think that much does not need to be spoken; you can see it plain enough for yourself. But no matter. I am not strong, but I will swear to you that I am strong enough to see your wedding day.” A gleam entered his eye, and a couple of years seemed to disappear from his face. “Perhaps there is time for a grandchild or two.”

“I pray that that may be the case, Father,” Adam said sincerely.

“Let me sleep now,” the old man said. “I will need to gather all my strength for later. I intend to be at my best for when I meet your bride. Get along with you.”

Sir Toby was dispatched with relative ease, primarily because he was too much indisposed by the effects of his excessive drinking to create too much mischief.

“I will have another chance,” he kept muttering to himself, as he clambered into the carriage, “this place shall be mine. Your father knows that I am the better heir, and he will act accordingly.”

Adam took great pleasure in slamming the carriage door very loudly and watching the adverse impact that it had on his cousin’s face. The gentleman looked very much as though he might be sick, and it occurred to Adam that there was a long and bumpy carriage ride ahead, during which he would have plenty of time to reflect on all that he had lost.

“Always a pleasure to see you, Toby!” he said, his voice at a volume much higher than that which he would typically use, for he could not resist the sight of Sir Toby wincing.

The carriage rolled away, and Adam returned to Charity’s side.

“Are you sure you can bear to marry me?” he asked teasingly, “knowing that the rest of your life you shall be pestered and hounded by mercenaries like Toby, who are always trying to get something out of you? I would have thought that relatives such as him would be more than enough to make any sensible young woman reconsider.”

“Then perhaps I am not a sensible woman. To be sure, it might be more convenient if you were poorer,” Charity responded in the same jesting tone. “We would be free of such encumbrances and life would perhaps be a good deal pleasanter. But…”

“But…?”

“Since we cannot change your circumstances, and since your father seems to be intent upon forgiving you and restoring you to your previous status in society, I fear that we shall have to learn to bear the inconveniences of wealth, which are a great deal less bitter than the inconveniences of poverty.”

This remark made her pause for thought, and then after a short spell of silence, she said, “Adam?”

“Yes, my dearest?”

“Now that we are onto the subject of giving alms, I can think of one recipient who would be a great deal worthier than that dreadful cousin of yours.”

“Good lord,” Adam remarked, “we have not been engaged a day, and already you are taking charge of my financial affairs.”

Charity laughed, but continued in solemnity, “The person that I believe we must give any required assistance to is Mrs. Warwick.”

“Yes, of course,” Adam responded, his tone immediately becoming somber.

“She has no child to care for her in her old age,” Charity continued, “and as such I believe that the task falls to us to ensure that she always has whatever things she needs, for as long as she lives. She is a proud and independent old lady, and I am quite sure that she will refuse any help that we offer. But I believe that we must offer it, do you not?”

“You think of everything and everyone, my dear,” Adam replied, his tone containing the sort of rapture that is experienced by lovers who are engaged and have all the future stretching out ahead of them. “I shall learn to hold myself to far higher standards, with you at my side to guide me toward the right path.”

“I do not wish to be your guide,” Charity replied, “for there are a great many things that you know and I do not. I wish to be your wife, and for us to always guide each other and to challenge each other to be better.”

Adam turned to face Charity, his hands encircling her waist to gather her close.

“That seems to be as good a wedding vow as any,” he said and kissed her rapturously.