The Dowry of Miss Lydia Clark Read online

  The Dowry of

  Miss Lydia Clark

  Books by

  Lawana Blackwell

  The Jewel of Gresham Green

  THE GRESHAM CHRONICLES

  The Widow of Larkspur Inn

  The Courtship of the Vicar’s Daughter

  The Dowry of Miss Lydia Clark

  www.lawanablackwell.com

  The Dowry of Miss Lydia Clark

  Copyright © 1999

  Lawana Blackwell

  Cover design by Jennifer Parker

  The Story of Little Sarah and Her Johnny-Cake and the poem Hot Apple Pie are from Pictures and Stories From Forgotten Children’s Books, by Arnold Arnold (Copyright 1969) and granted permission by Dover Publications, Inc., New York.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

  Ebook edition created 2011

  ISBN 978-1-4412-0304-5

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  This book is lovingly dedicated

  to my sister,

  Lynn Wolverton,

  who is a delightful mixture

  of warmth, beauty and wit.

  LAWANA BLACKWELL has twelve published novels to her credit including the bestselling Gresham Chronicles series. She and her husband have three grown sons and live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 1

  April 8, 1872

  Mealtimes in the dining room of the vicarage behind Saint Jude’s were often noisy events, but Julia Phelps could not bring herself to scold the children for it. Not when her husband of sixteen months was one of the chief contributors to the chatter that accompanied clinks of silver against china and muffled thumps of glassware against the linen-draped tabletop.

  It was obvious that Vicar Andrew Phelps, having spent his childhood in boarding schools or under the supervision of nannies, now relished having a brood about him. And as he had told Julia many times, he and Laurel would have been terribly lonely these past eight months since his older daughter Elizabeth’s wedding were it not for his new wife and three stepchildren.

  “But no knowledge is ever wasted,” he was saying over breakfast to fourteen-year-old Aleda, who had expressed dismay that Miss Clark was planning to introduce algebra to the seventh standard students at the Octavia Bartley School for Advanced Learning. “And she’ll explain it one step at a time.”

  “Yes,” Philip agreed between bites of toast. At sixteen years of age, he and stepsister Laurel had only one more year of secondary school remaining. “It’s just an introduction, you know. She won’t have you factoring polynomials with summer break only two months away.”

  Grace, who turned nine a little over a fortnight ago, screwed up her heart-shaped face. “What does that mean?”

  “Polynomials?” Laurel replied. “They’re—”

  “Not that. What does it mean that no knowledge is ever wasted?”

  Andrew paused from cutting his bacon. “Why, because learning makes our minds grow.”

  “Bigger?”

  “I shouldn’t think so, Gracie. Or else our skulls would have to expand as well.” He winked at her. “And that would be a sight now, wouldn’t it?”

  “Miss Clark would have to stoop to come through the schoolroom door,” Laurel said, touching her own blond head for emphasis. “She practically has all of the textbooks memorized.”

  “Jonathan is bright too,” Grace asserted. She was the only child in the household who still attended the village grammar school, where Elizabeth’s husband was schoolmaster. And while she referred to him as Jonathan in the family setting, he became Mr. Raleigh as soon as she set foot on school property. “He can spell words backward.”

  “Children?” Julia was forced to give a reminder from her place at the foot of the table. “You don’t want to be tardy, do you?” This directed their attention back to the task at hand—breakfast. She met Andrew’s apologetic smile with an indulgent one of her own. Another reason she did not scold was that she herself enjoyed the chatter. For the sake of her lodgers at the Larkspur, she had had to insist that her children speak only occasionally at the long dining table, and then only after asking for her permission. She was acutely aware, with Elizabeth now married, and Philip and Laurel leaving for the university in little over a year, that there would be future days when she would sorely miss young voices around the table.

  It was only after Grace had obediently finished her coddled eggs and bacon that she ventured forth on the previous subject. “But what if someone decided to memorize the name of every person in Spain?” she inquired meticulously. “Wouldn’t that be wasted knowledge?”

  Her stepfather cocked his head at a thoughtful angle and dabbed his mouth with a napkin. “Does this particular person ever intend to visit Spain, Gracie?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Or perhaps author a book on Spanish genealogy?”

  “No book.”

  “Then indeed that would be wasted knowledge. So you’ve proven the old adage to be false.”

  Grace nodded solemnly, signifying that she did not take lightly the responsibility of being an adage-disprover. But her composure was disrupted when Aleda sent her a wry smile and asked, “And what about the ability to spell words backward? Isn’t that wasted knowledge?”

  After a second of tight-lipped concentration, Grace replied, “That’s not the same thing.”

  “Then how is it useful?” Philip asked, not to be left out of the teasing.

  “It just is.” Clearly outnumbered, Grace called for reinforcement from the head of the table. “Isn’t it, Papa?”

  A smile warmed Andrew’s expression. She had started addressing him as Papa instead of the more formal Father only weeks ago, and knowing how much it pleased him, Julia reckoned he would defend her position if she maintained that cows had green spots.

&n
bsp; “Does it make you smile when Jonathan spells words backward, Gracie?” he asked.

  “Yes, sir. Everyone in the whole schoolroom.”

  “Then I would consider that extremely useful knowledge.”

  After the children had left for school, Julia and Andrew took their second cups of tea in the parlor so that Dora’s cousin Wanetta, the housemaid hired shortly after their honeymoon, could clear the table. Andrew, dressed in his black suit for making calls, looked dignified, as befitting his station. Only the crinkles at the corners of both hazel eyes and the dimples faintly visible beneath his blond beard would suggest to a stranger that he was capable of playfulness as well as piety.

  And Julia looked the part of a minister’s wife in a green-and-white striped silk, its overskirt draped in back to form a modest train. Only her auburn hair, falling to her waist behind her shoulders, still needed arranging into a chignon upon which to anchor a pert straw hat trimmed with ribbons and flowers. She enjoyed making calls with Andrew and would have joined him today were it not for the meeting of the Women’s Charity Society held on the first Monday of every month.

  “Mrs. Paget asked me to remind you to stop by the kitchen,” Julia told her husband as they sat on the sofa with teacups and saucers. One of Andrew’s usual Monday errands, after conducting chapel at the grammar school, was to call upon seamstress Mrs. Ramsey and her mother, Mrs. Cobbe, for prayer and a condensed version of the sermon that Mrs. Cobbe’s frail health had prevented them from hearing at Saint Jude’s the previous day. As Mrs. Paget usually began her baking for the week on Monday mornings, she often had a treat to send along for the two to enjoy.

  “And please don’t let anything happen to whatever she sends with you,” Julia felt compelled to add, for Andrew had a habit of misplacing things whenever he was in deep thought.

  He nodded sheepishly. “I’ll have to remember not to leave it in the schoolroom.”

  “Pray do, or Jonathan will assume it’s for him.” Their son-in-law’s sweet tooth was notorious, especially for baked items from Mrs. Paget’s kitchen. “But why can’t you just leave it in the trap?”

  Lowering the teacup from his lips, he replied, “Because I’m not taking the trap, dear. Don’t you remember—your meeting?”

  “Oh, but Mrs. Bartley is hosting it today. The manor house isn’t that far.”

  “Neither are any of my calls.”

  Sighing, because she was aware that any argument she could present would not pierce his stubborn chivalry, Julia nonetheless made an attempt. “Andrew, how do you think I managed my way around Gresham before we married?”

  He simply gave her a maddening grin. “You walked, of course. And a handsome sight you were. I used to go out of my way down Market Lane in the hopes you would be on your way to Trumbles or somewhere. Remember the time we both slid and almost collided on the ice?”

  It was unfair that he could coax a smile out of her even when she was exasperated with him. “Yes, I remember.”

  “You had on those outlandishly huge boots,” he said with a chuckle.

  “And your hat flipped right into my hands.” She forced herself out of the pleasant reverie. “Your calls are much farther away than my meeting, Andrew.”

  He set his empty cup and saucer on the tea table, then took hers from her hands and did the same. “I’ll not ride when my wife is walking, Julia Phelps. And I must leave soon, so we’re wasting valuable time arguing that could be spent more profitably.”

  “More profitably, Vicar?”

  His arm cradled her shoulders. “A kiss, dear wife! Two if there’s time.”

  As it turned out, there was time for three, but that meant Andrew had to grab his bowler hat and hurry out the door. Just as he was unlatching the garden gate, Dora came rushing outside with a basket upon her arm. “Mrs. Paget says not to let this out of your sight this time,” she said, indicating the bundle wrapped in a white towel tucked inside.

  Andrew winced, recalling the reproachful looks the cook had given him for days just last month after it was discovered that an apple pie had grown stale in the boot of his trap. Mrs. Paget, good soul that she was, did not appreciate having the fruits of her labor wasted. “I’ve already been warned,” he replied, and as the delicious aroma wafted up to his nostrils, he added hopefully, “Fig bread?”

  “With walnuts, too,” the maid replied with a knowing smile.

  “Perchance she’s keeping some aside for us?”

  “Oh, you know how Mrs. Paget is when she gets to baking. She’s set aside a loaf for the missus to take to Miss Elizabeth and put two more to the cupboard.”

  A breeze scented of apple blossoms from the squire’s orchards met Andrew in the vicarage lane, quivering the new leaves of the aspens to his right like harp strings. Beyond, the village green was sprinkled with yellow cowslips, blue and pink wild forget-me-nots, and ragged robin. He could faintly hear the moving waters of the River Bryce and, farther in the distance, the exquisitely soothing sound of a cowbell. Oh to be in Gresham now that April’s here! he thought, taking liberty with Robert Browning’s poem. As much as he looked forward to heaven, he was grateful to God for the bits of heaven on earth he had experienced in his lifetime.

  A quarter of an hour later he reached the steps of the mellow brick building in which many of Gresham’s inhabitants had first learned their alphabets and numbers. Faintly he could hear youthful voices trailing off with the final notes of “We Bless the Name of Christ the Lord.” Andrew was reaching for the doorknob when he remembered the basket upon his arm. The heavenly aroma was still noticeable, so there would be no hiding that he carried baked goods with him. Being an adult, Jonathan would understand—albeit reluctantly—that the treat was intended for someone else. But how could Andrew justify tempting thirty-three children when he had not the liberty to share? In one fluid motion, he set the basket down on the stoop behind him and advanced on into the classroom.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he greeted the schoolchildren after Jonathan’s nod to indicate that he was finished leading hymns.

  “Good morning, Vicar Phelps,” a chorus of voices returned.

  Andrew’s message centered around the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, for he could not stress enough to the children how precious even the most seemingly insignificant life was to their heavenly Father. He labored as diligently on his school messages as he did on his Sunday sermons—he would not justify appearing at the school once weekly just for the sake of a ritual. And he received occasional encouragement that his ministry was bearing fruit, such as the conversions of two of the most irascible students, Jack and Edgar Sanders, now faithful members of the Wesleyan chapel.

  Coming to faith seemed to have made them only slightly less irascible, but Andrew had to remind himself that even Saint Peter had had a few rough edges to his personality. Thinking about the Sanders brothers caused him to notice, as he concluded his devotion, that their back row desks were empty. And at that same moment, the door opened slowly, and two boys with sun-bronzed faces shuffled into the room.

  “We’re sorry we’re late, Mr. Raleigh,” Edgar, the oldest, mumbled to the floorboards. “A wheel broke off the wagon, and Harold made us fix it.”

  “He wouldn’t even get down to help,” Jack threw in.

  “Well, take your seats,” Jonathan told them with a glance in Andrew’s direction.

  Andrew nodded that he understood and waited until the two empty desks were filled before directing the students to bow their heads for prayer.

  Back on the front stoop, Andrew noticed two speckled drays pulling the Sanders wagon away from the stand of elder trees in front of the school yard. Shocks of straw-colored hair peeked from under the driver’s felt cap. Just before another tree blocked Andrew’s view of him, the man turned in his seat and they locked eyes. It was Harold, the oldest son, Andrew realized. With courtesy usually found lacking in most Sanders males, he sent Andrew a cheery wave. Andrew raised his arm to return the greeting, then bent
down to pick up the basket—which felt considerably lighter. He gaped down at it for several seconds before his mind would accept that it was indeed empty.

  Indignation quickening his pulse, he tightened his grip around the basket handle and considered giving chase. He would certainly do so if he had the trap. But there were certain restraints imposed upon him by his vocation, and one was that vicars did not sprint down village lanes trying to outrun a pair of horses—much less pull young men from wagon seats to throttle them for some offense.

  Sighing, he stepped down into the school yard and considered facing Mrs. Paget straightaway to confess how he had not kept the basket in sight at all times. It was usually better to get unpleasant tasks over with rather than dread them all day. And being that there were two more loaves in the cupboard, surely she wouldn’t mind sending another. Would she?

  He scratched his bearded cheek and thought of the lecture she would deliver. In the bounds of the kitchen, it was easy to forget that he was the master of the house and Mrs. Paget the servant, for she had cooked at the vicarage for years before his arrival and had the knack for making him feel like a small boy at times.

  And then an idea rescued him from his dilemma. Bakery. And Mrs. Paget wouldn’t even have to know. He hushed the little twinge in his conscience by reminding himself that the cook’s intent was that Mrs. Ramsey and her mother receive a loaf of fig bread. And he would carry out that intent to the best of his ability.