The Vicar's Widow

“Go on, then, Montgomery, make your offer!” a man shouted, and a cry of howling laughter rose from the crowded ballroom.

No matter how she despised him, Kate couldn’t help but admire his calm in the face of this half-drunken, half-deranged crowd. He smiled, nodded as the laughter died down. “My offer to you sir, is a carriage and a driver,” he called out cheerfully, and earned another round of laughter from the crowd.

Lady Southbridge, obviously not pleased that attention had been turned from her, managed to wedge herself in front of Montgomery and the crowd, her arms high in the air as she tried to quiet them all. “Hear, hear!” she shouted. “Lord Montgomery has made a very generous offer of two—”

“One,” he quickly interjected.

“One, is it?” she asked, clearly disappointed.

Smiling, he nodded. “One.”

“One then,” she said in a bit of a huff. “He’s made a very generous offer of one thousand pounds to the Ladies Auxiliary charitable fund, and the least we might do is hear his terms!”

“His terms, his terms!” the crowd began to shout, and a few sympathetic debutantes began to form a protective circle around Miss Forsythe.

Kate stepped deeper into the shadows as Montgomery moved forward and raised his hands, gesturing for the crowd to quiet.

“My terms,” he said thoughtfully as the laughing crowd began to quiet. “Are quite simple, really. I will give one thousand pounds to the Ladies Auxiliary in exchange for the repair of my heart, for it has been quite irreparably damaged, I’m afraid. Unable to function, as it were . . . incapable of beating properly.”

The crowd grew very quiet. Kate closed her eyes and drew a tortured breath; she knew of damaged hearts. He couldn’t possibly know about them, how they weighed a person down, snatched a person’s breath away, what with all their thrashing about like a wounded bird, beating harshly and erratically.

“I had not known before now how useless a broken heart can be,” he continued to a rapt crowd. “It does not regulate the body properly and puts everything at sixes and sevens. Day becomes night, night becomes day, and a man is given to wandering about aimlessly.”

What had this to do with Miss Forsythe? Confused, Kate opened her eyes and looked to where Miss Forsythe was standing. She was not alone in her confusion; several heads swiveled between Miss Forsythe and Montgomery.

“Having suffered this horrible predicament, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is only one thing to be done for it. A lady—”

A collective gasp went up from the crowd.

“For whom this old heart is destined, must take it and repair it—nothing else will do. And not just any lady, but one who is kind and charitable. One with eyes as deep as the sea and the warmest smile in all of England, who has a good keen wit about her so that she may keep me quite on my toes, and never let me believe I am more than I am.

“What I am, ladies and gentlemen, is a man who is quite impossibly in love. There is only one woman who will do for me, and if she refuses me, then I might as well give this heart of mine to the Ladies Auxiliary, too.”

Now the crowd was wild with anticipation, and Kate felt her own heart sinking deep into confusion from which she was sure she’d never be able to retrieve it. What was he doing? She wanted to cry out, to vomit, to do something, anything but stand here and listen to him profess his love if it was for another woman, for now her hope had been raised up from the dead. From where she was standing, she could see Miss Forsythe staring up at him with an expression of pure fear. She, too, thought this declaration of love was for another woman. Kate’s hope surged.

“Therefore,” Montgomery said, riveting everyone’s attention on him again, “I am prepared to offer my name and protection and my lifelong love and adoration to the woman who can repair this heart of mine, if she’ll have me.”

One could hear the crowd draw their breath and hold it.

And then Montgomery did something extraordinary. He looked to the back of the ballroom, to where Kate was standing—no, to where she was bleeding—and said, so gently that she wasn’t very certain she heard him, “Will you have me, then, Mrs. Becket?”

Something snapped inside her—a flood of relief overtook her grief, light covered the dark thoughts she’d had in the last several days. Someone, perhaps Miss Forsythe, cried out, and Kate could hear voices all around her, could feel eyes on her, as she tried to catch her breath.

Someone shouted that Miss Forsythe had fainted, and Kate was certain she would, too, at any moment, for it seemed as if her knees had ceased to exist; there was nothing to hold her up.