30. Chapter Thirty

C lara did not realize how much she’d missed the sound of children until she’d spent months in London, separated from anyone not yet out of the schoolroom. She laughed at the antics of little Susan chasing the tail of the kite, as if she could somehow reach more than a dozen feet above her head to grasp the trailing ribbons.

It was nice to be back in the country. She knew what to do here, knew where she belonged, knew the people she encountered. It was what she’d been wanting to return to ever since leaving for London.

And if she reminded herself of that often enough, she would be happy again. She would stop wondering about the children she and Eleanor had packed baskets for. She would stop wondering how Lady Grableton’s group was doing. She would stop listening for the busy life of London outside her windows in the middle of the night.

She would stop missing Hugh.

“Miss Woodbury.” A little boy named Charlie tugged on her skirt. “How do I attack a person?”

Clara laughed softly. Charlie was always coming up with outlandish scenarios. Yesterday he’d contemplated what it would look like if a large cow broke into their house and ate all the pudding before dinner. Given the crumbs clinging to his cheek and shirt, Clara had been fairly certain he was the large cow in question.

Last Sunday, he’d wanted to discuss the possibility of giving the church a roof that could roll back so that he could enjoy the sun while sitting through the boring sermon.

“Well,” Clara said as she gave the kite a tug to keep it aloft in the light breeze. “We don’t typically attack people. It isn’t how God wants us to treat each other.”

He puffed up his little chest. “But I’m the man of the house. I have to defend you.”

She bit her lip to keep from laughing. He was, indeed, the oldest male in their little group today. “That’s a noble idea, but we are quite safe out here. We aren’t even a mile away from the village.” It was debatable if they’d even completely left the village, given they were in sight of two cottages.

“But what if, Miss Woodbury?”

She gave him an indulgent smile as she kept her eyes on Charlie’s little sister Marie and another younger boy named Michael who had joined Susan in running around beneath the kite.

“It’s admirable that you would want to protect me, Charlie.”

“That’s right.” He gave a nod and pressed his mouth into a firm line. “It’s my job to protect you. And the girls.”

“What about Michael?”

“He’s too little to help me. I’ll have to do it myself.”

And then, to Clara’s absolute shock, he took off at a run, screaming at the top of his lungs.

She spun around to see him charging toward a man who was indeed walking toward them from the village.

A man Charlie would not know.

A man that looked an awful lot like Hugh.

Her heart climbed into her throat, choking out her breath as she tried to call out for Charlie to stop.

Unfortunately, his screaming caused the other children to start screaming and crying as well. Clara turned toward them, swallowing multiple times before she managed to call out that everything was all right.

Susan calmed her cries to a sniffle. “Are you certain?”

“Yes, that man is a friend of mine.”

Michael gave a chest-jarring hiccup. “You tell Charlie.” Then he stuck his little thumb into his mouth.

Clara turned back around to see that Charlie had made it to Hugh and was still yelling, arms outstretched and hands curled into claws as if he were pretending to be a bear.

Hugh knelt down just out of arms’ reach of the boy, talking and pointing.

Charlie stopped screaming but didn’t lower his arms.

“Is Charlie going to eat the man?” Susan asked.

Clara turned to look down at the girl. “No, of course not.”

“Is the man going to eat Charlie?” Marie’s eyes widened.

“No, children, no one is going to . . . eat anyone.” The words were so ridiculous she could barely say them, particularly as the only thought that could stay solidly in her mind was the question, What was Hugh doing here?

She turned back to Hugh. Charlie’s arms were lowered now, and both of them were turning toward the little group.

His gaze met Clara’s for a moment. Then his eyes widened, and he was running her direction.

The children started yelling again, though it was an excited, laughing sort of yell. Clara turned to look at them and found herself nearly nose to tail with the kite she’d all but forgotten about.

In all the twisting and turning, she’d completely trapped herself in the kite string still clutched tightly in her hand. The kite had yet to plummet from the sky, but when it did, her head was doomed to be its destination.

Then Hugh was by her side, catching the string and pulling the kite gently to the ground. He grinned at her. “I do believe you and kites should not be in the same vicinity.”

Clara licked her lips twice before her mouth could manage to form words. “I do believe you are correct.”

With the kite safely on the ground, Hugh set about lowering the string to the ground so she could step out. The assistance of four very excited children made the process long and complicated, but eventually Clara stepped free of the encumbrance and handed the remaining bits to Charlie.

“Your freedom has been attained,” Hugh said, his voice barely above a whisper as he rose to stand beside her.

“So it has.”

Clara heard the children’s chatter, their questions about Hugh mingled in with their immediate retellings of the event they’d all just witnessed, but she couldn’t tear her gaze from the man. Why was he here?

His brown eyes watched her, assessing her as he would the inner workings of a clock, yet the confidence she’d seen him display in front of those gears and levers was missing. Had he come for her?

Of course he had come for her. The man had no reason to leave London unless he was coming for her. No one from Eldham would be contacting London’s premier clockmaker for themselves.

The question she couldn’t answer was how she felt about his arrival.

“Miss Woodbury.” The insistent tugging on her skirts finally drew Clara’s attention. Michael was pressed to her side, gaze fixed on Hugh, mouth pressed into a firm determined line. “Do you want me to call a bear on him?”

Clara sputtered. “Call a bear?”

“Like the story in the Bible. I can ask God to send a bear out of the woods to protect you.”

“I believe that won’t be necessary. Mr. Lockhart is an, er, acquaintance from London.” Clara noted an intention to discuss with her father which stories were being used in the Sunday children’s lessons. It wouldn’t do to have Michael running about praying for God to smite people with random bear attacks. Not that she’d heard of many bears in the local woods, but should someone actually encounter one, Michael’s calling for it wouldn’t go over well.

“An acquaintance?” Hugh gave her a crooked grin.

Clara shifted her feet. “One could go so far as to say friend, I suppose.”

“I see.”

The space between them, which had felt so intimate only moments before, suddenly seemed cavernous. His gaze lowered from her, and he turned to face the children. She immediately felt the loss of his complete attention.

His voice was tight as he addressed the children. “And what has brought you lot out to this field on such a fine day?”

“Mama says I little menace,” Michael said.

“Oh?” Hugh’s mouth tilted into a grin. “Is that so?”

He nodded. “Miss Woodbury made me disappear.”

Clara smothered a laugh with her hand. “I’m giving their mother a moment to air the house without assistance. Their father was recently ill and caring for everything has been difficult.”

That was an understatement. Clara had offered to do the actual cleaning, but Marie’s mother had nearly cried at the idea of a morning of silence to work in peace, so Clara had brought Marie and Michael on a walk.

Charlie and Susan had been collected on the way, along with Charlie’s kite.

“I’m certain she appreciates the respite.”

“As am I.” Clara cleared her throat. This man had come all the way from London. She would be a fool to think he hadn’t come with intentions of declaring himself or the hope of reciprocated feelings. A man didn’t travel one hundred miles just to tell a woman that he’d been right to let her go.

Perhaps she should tell him that their time apart had given her time to reconsider things as well? She had, after all, given him the impression that she’d chosen another. Had Eleanor told him otherwise? Was that why he’d come now?

Clara licked her lips and kept her gaze fixed on the children who’d grown bored with the statue-like adults and were now attempting to get the kite aloft once more. “This was a ministry I could offer their mother this morning.”

“Oh?” Hugh nodded. “There are quite a few verses about rest and peace that would apply.”

“Yes.” She swallowed. “But I didn’t recite any of them.”

Somehow, he grew even more still, as if he’d decided to not even breathe until he knew where she was going with that sentence. She rushed on. “Ministry is more than hymns and sermons, you know.”

He turned to look at her, a bit of hope back in his golden eyes. “Is it? I don’t believe I’m aware of a story where Jesus gave a woman a rest from her rambunctious children.”

She shrugged. “He kept their attention by telling them stories at least once, but that isn’t the point.”

“It’s not?”

She shook her head. “No. A wise man once told me that people had to know I cared before they would care about what I know.” She gestured toward the children. “A tender touch on the scraped knee of a child is needed before the admonishment to not run along the top of the field wall.”

Hugh looked at the ground and shoved his hands into his pockets. “It sounds as if you have been reconsidering your goals in life.”

She shook her head. “No. But I have been reconsidering by what means I can best achieve them.”

He gave a nod. “I have been doing the same.”

“You have?”

“My uncle taught me that doing something for God meant giving my best effort to the task. Somewhere along the way, I twisted that to mean I had to be the best. I had equated success and acclaim with honoring God with my work.”

Clara snorted. “By that token, only one clockmaker in London would be able to serve God at a time.”

Hugh nodded. “A ludicrous idea when taken to its end, I agree.”

“Have you decided to give up clockmaking, then?”

The look he gave her nearly made her break form and laugh. “Hardly. Nor have I given up the goal of owning my own shop and achieving success with it.”

“Oh.” Any desire to laugh left her. Perhaps the assumptions she’d made earlier were wrong. Perhaps Duke or Ambrose had sent him on some phony clock mission, hoping they would reconnect.

She had to know. The time for plain speaking had come. “If you’ve not changed your goal, may I ask why you are here? I can’t aid your cause. My father cannot guarantee you an order of chronometers large enough to establish your shop and reputation.”

“I never asked him to.”

Clara curled her hands into fists, a renewed stab of misery slicing through her chest. “Yet that is what you rejected me for.”

“May I remind you that you rejected me first? Perhaps I should save myself some embarrassment by asking if you still intend to hold out for a man bound to the church. For while I will never stop assisting my uncle, I will still be a man of trade.”

“Seeing as I have no control over what offers will come my way, I could not possibly make assurances as to what my future’s husband’s occupation will be.”

She swallowed and gave him the confession she’d been unwilling to utter in London. “I admit I was rather blinded by Mr. Pitt’s situation in life, and I did not see his character. I can assure you that I have no intention of allowing such a mistake to happen again.”

“Are you saying that character now matters more to you than position?”

“I am saying—oh, blast, yes that is what I am saying.” Tears pooled in her eyes. “It’s hopeless, isn’t it? You and I? We can’t even apologize to each other, or whatever it is we seem to be doing now, without turning it into a battle of wits and contentions.”

His smile was soft as he extended a hand toward her. “Clara.”

Silently, she placed her hand in his without thought. Only after his fingers tightened around her own did she question the wisdom of the move.

“I would rather spend my life fighting with you than agreeing with any other woman. Even at our most heated, we have never been cruel.”

She squeezed his hand in agreement since there wasn’t a chance words would get past the lump suddenly in her throat.

“Some might call that passion,” he continued with a wide smile. “You make me a better man, Clara. You make me think, make me care, make me come alive when I was finding it easier to numbly chase someone else’s goal.”

His free hand lifted to brush away the curl that had blown into her face. “I would rather spend a lifetime arguing with you than a single day with a simpering miss. You show me parts of myself I would never have dared to confront before, would never have thought to question. Perhaps, if you continue to do so, I may one day turn into a man worthy of you.”

Clara sniffled and realized warm tears were slowly tracing down her cheeks. “That sounds awfully close to a proposal of marriage, Mr. Lockhart.”

“That’s because I’m working toward one, Miss Woodbury.”

“I do believe a lifetime with you would be a challenge I never thought to seek out.”

His eyes widened, and Clara rushed to say the words that would let him know she had no intention of rejecting him a second time. “But it is an adventure I now know I will not be complete without.”

They stood for a moment, grinning stupidly at each other.

“Miss Clara Woodbury,” Hugh said gently, “would you do me the great honor of—” His eyes suddenly widened and his hands tightened around hers. “Run!”

“What?” Clara’s mind spun off in bemusement as he attempted to jerk her to the side, just as the kite, followed by all four children, rammed into her back.