Anonymous

The Vicar's Girl

Chapter One

The house that stood on the edge of the moorland had a look of total remoteness, as if all within were quiet and ever would be so. White palings, newly-painted, surrounded the frontage and-reaching halfway around the back of the stone-built residence-gave way on either side to a barred gate which led into a paddock where a horse was grazing.

Reining in his own quiet nag, the Reverend Percival Jubstone wondered which of the two new inhabitants of Edgemoore, as it was aptly called, were at home. It would almost surely be Miss Vanessa Markham, he told himself, since her brother would be at his teaching post at this hour. Village gossip, which so often reached his ears via his housekeeper, told him that she was an attractive woman. He hoped it would be so and, having tethered his horse, took the path to the front door and drew upon the bell, hearing it jangle within.

Scarcely a moment passed before the door was opened by a young maid, cap askew and with a cloth in her hand.

'Your Mistress is in?' enquired Percival politely, taking note all at one and the same time of the girl's age, which he judged to be about seventeen, the slimness of her figure and the promising gourds which her black dress revealed.

'Oh, sir, your Reverendship!' Mary uttered, quite taken aback by the appearance of one who seemed to her such a lordly person.

'It is all right, Mary', came a voice from an adjoining room, and therewith appeared Vanessa herself-a comely young woman indeed of perhaps twenty-eight or so, as the Vicar immediately perceived.

'Yes, ma'am', Mary said almost thankfully, for it was her first day at the house and no one had told her how to receive visitors, this in great part being because Miss Markham had expected none as yet. Edging away while trying to give all appearance of not really doing so, Mary succeeded in giving way to both and scuttled thankfully back into the kitchen.

'I thought to call-to make myself known. Forgive me if I have arrived at an inopportune moment', boomed the reverend gentleman.

'Not at all, not at all-pray come in. I am sorry about Mary's ineptitude. She is young and…"

'Untrained?' he interrupted her as they entered the small drawing room that was pleasingly uncluttered. 'Forgive me for having broken across what you may have been about to say, Miss Markham. It is a matter to which I have given much thought, however'.