Ruth Axtell Morren - A Bride Of Honor

Nevertheless, a flush crept from the edges of his white clerical collar to his hairline as he turned to her.

The impact of her honey-brown eyes almost knocked him over. They were framed by lashes a shade darker. Tawny eyebrows created an arresting contrast to her golden hair.

She was even lovelier up close than she’d appeared in the pew. Blond curls framed a heart-shaped face. A finely chiseled nose curved up the tiniest bit at the end.

“How do you do?” he finally managed.

She murmured something indistinct and looked down.

He cleared his throat, searching frantically for something to say—anything to prolong the moment. But his mind had suddenly emptied of all lofty thoughts. He might never have preached an edifying sermon moments ago. “I’m honored you joined our humble congregation today.” As soon as the words were out, his face grew warm. He sounded as if he were toadying for a compliment.

She looked up immediately. Her smile lit up the rich brown depths of her eyes and brought radiance to the delicate pink of her cheeks. “Oh, no, sir—it is we who are honored. I mean—that is to say…”

Her evident confusion eased his own agitation. “I hope you enjoyed the service.”

“Oh, yes, sir—Reverend—” She stopped.

A kindred feeling stirred inside him as he realized how shy she was. She was very young, perhaps no more than seventeen or eighteen.

He forgot his own fears in his wish to put her at ease. “Hathaway.”

“I beg your pardon, Reverend Hathaway.”

He was unaccustomed to reacting so to a young lady, but then he’d never been so close to one so lovely, and so obviously of rank.

Before he could think of anything else to say—and conscious of the line of people waiting behind her—she said, “I…I enjoyed your sermon, Reverend Hathaway. Very much. I mean, I’m not certain if ‘enjoyed’ is the correct word….”

His mouth turned up at the corner in rueful understanding. “I hope you found it thought provoking at the least.”

“Oh, indeed, yes! That is a much better way to put it. I…I’ve never heard preaching such as yours before. It…it wasn’t comfortable, and yet—” she drew her dark eyebrows together “—it filled me with something I’ve never felt before.”

The words were what every preacher wanted to hear. He tried to dismiss the thought that the pleasure he felt from the compliment was heightened by the fact that it had come from such a lovely young creature. To hide his confusion, he turned to his sister. “May I present my sister, Florence Hathaway, and her fiancé, Jonah Quinn.”

She greeted both.

“Enjoyed the preaching, did you?” Jonah asked with a smile.

Again, she blushed, but did not lower her gaze as she had with Damien. “Yes, very much.”

“Our Damien always preaches a good one. Warms the insides when it doesn’t feel like a punch in the gut.”

Her laughter joined Jonah’s. “Oh, yes! That’s it exactly.”

Jonah winked at both ladies. “Why don’t you come ’round for tea this afternoon for more of Reverend Hathaway’s wit and wisdom?”

Damien was preparing to greet the next parishioner in line when Jonah’s words stopped him. His eyes sought his sister’s. Florence was rarely at a loss in any situation—she would know what to say. But Florence was looking at Jonah, stunned.

An awkward silence followed when Florence did not speak up immediately to second the invitation. Damien, who knew his sister so well, realized she must be feeling nervous about entertaining ladies of such distinction. As the silence stretched out, he knew he must say something. Except for the rector and his mother, they rarely entertained members of the ton in their modest parsonage.

Damien bowed his head toward Miss Yates. “We would be honored if you would visit us this afternoon.”

“We should be delighted,” the older lady replied immediately. “What time would you expect us?”

Florence seemed finally to remember her obligations as hostess. “Would four o’clock suit you?”

“Four o’clock would be perfect.” Miss Yates touched her young companion on the elbow. “We must be going.” She bowed to the three of them. “Until this afternoon.”

Damien watched them continue down the church steps and across the lawn toward a fine-looking carriage, his mind in a daze. A liveried servant sprang down and opened the carriage door for them, confirming his supposition that they were members of the upper class. When the servant slammed the door shut, Damien noted that it was decorated with a blue-and-gold crest.

“Reverend Hathaway.” The peremptory tones of another female parishioner yanked his attention back to the receiving line.

“Yes, Mrs. Cooper, how lovely to see you this morning….”

Lindsay sat in their coach as it carried them down St. George’s Row along the northern edge of Hyde Park. Reverend Hathaway’s sermon still echoed in her ears.

His words had seemed directed at her, exhorting her in a quiet, earnest way to become a true disciple of Christ. Church sermons had never been like this before. Sermons were usually dry, delivered in the elevated tones of a minister who seemed more concerned with his elocution than the text.

Never had she heard the scriptures in such a personal way, a way that demanded something of her even though she’d always lived according to the church’s laws.

“What did you think of the Hathaways, my dear?” Beatrice asked.

Lindsay turned to the older lady, a distant cousin on her mother’s side who had recently come to live with her father to oversee Lindsay’s coming out. “Oh, most genial,” she agreed wholeheartedly, although thinking about it now, she had to admit she’d hardly noticed the reverend’s sister or her betrothed in her admiration for the reverend.

“Mr. Quinn certainly seemed genial, not at all what I expected.”

Lindsay remembered the large, dark-haired man’s friendly manner. “Oh?”

“I meant from all I’d heard about him.”

“What do you mean?”

Beatrice’s eyes widened. “Don’t you know? He’s a former convict.”

Lindsay turned on the seat and stared at her cousin. “A convict?”

“Haven’t you read the papers? He was awaiting his execution at Newgate when he was rescued by a gang of ruffians. For months he escaped the eyes of the law.” Beatrice shook her head with a chuckle. “It turns out all along he’d been hiding away in a parsonage right here. The magistrates were in an uproar.”

“You can’t mean he was here…at St. George’s?”

Her cousin nodded. “The very same.”

Lindsay looked away from her cousin, her thoughts in a whirl, unable to reconcile the godly man who had delivered such a quietly convicting sermon with a man who would harbor a criminal.

“He could not have stayed hidden for so long if the reverend and his sister hadn’t helped him,” Beatrice confirmed for her. “And to think, in the course of aiding and abetting him, Miss Hathaway fell in love with him. It is to her he owes the royal pardon he received.”

“Oh, my,” she breathed, hardly able to grasp it.

“It was in all the tabloids,” Beatrice continued. “Of course, I’m forgetting you’ve been away at school and have missed the goings-on here in London.”

“Tell me all the particulars. It sounds wonderfully romantic!”

By the time Beatrice had finished a story that sounded more incredible than anything in her novels, they’d arrived at Lindsay’s home on Grosvenor Square in the heart of Mayfair.

Despite the happy ending to the tale, Lindsay found it almost impossible to imagine breaking the law and hiding out from the authorities. “You know, I believe it’s no coincidence Mr. Quinn gave himself up to the authorities. If I had been residing under the Reverend Hathaway’s roof all that time, I, too, would have been convicted of any wrongdoing and made a clean breast of things.”