“Yes.” Mr. Boothroyd’s frown deepened. “I’d heard something to that effect.”

“My niece is having a favorable influence on him, naturally. But they’ve not been married overlong. Such things take time.”

“Marriage has vastly improved the lives of Mr. Thornhill and Mr. Finchley,” Mr. Boothroyd said. “I trust it will have the same effect on Mr. Archer. Though, I admit, he was always somewhat of a mystery to me as a boy.”

“And Mr. Cross? Do you anticipate his marriage?”

“Ah. As to that…” Mr. Boothroyd looked out the window a moment, his countenance grave. “I don’t believe Mr. Cross will ever leave the Abbey. If he marries at all, it will be to a maidservant there, or perhaps a village lass. Someone who has no great expectations of life—or of him.”

Clara’s fingers tightened around her Bible, a spark of indignation flaring in her breast. How dare they speak of Mr. Cross in such an unfeeling fashion? As if he was less deserving of happiness than the other gentlemen were. As if he’d stay at the Abbey forever, aspiring to nothing more than marrying a maidservant.

Not that there was anything wrong with maidservants. She might have been one herself, given less opportunity. But the very thought of Mr. Cross consorting with a pretty housemaid—like the brazen girl who had flirted with him in the woods—made Clara feel vaguely ill.

“I daresay it’s a kindness. We must protect the weaker among us. Only consider my nephew. He believes himself fit enough to accompany my niece to France, but I truly don’t know, Mr. Boothroyd. I truly don’t know.”

Mr. Boothroyd reached to take one of Mrs. Bainbridge’s gloved hands. He patted it, giving a murmur of sympathy. “There, there, madam.”

Clara averted her gaze from the intimacy. She affected to be riveted by the passing scenery, feeling very much like an intruder on some private romantic scene.

A growing affinity for each other? It was something more than that, surely.

She was happy for Mrs. Bainbridge, of course, but—at the same time—Clara fretted over what such a relationship might portend for her own future. If Mrs. Bainbridge was to wed, would she have need of a lady’s companion any longer? Clara didn’t expect so.

And then what? Another round of employment agencies and interviews?

Clara didn’t think she had the stomach for it.

She continued to gaze out the window as Mrs. Bainbridge and Mr. Boothroyd talked. The carriage clattered up the narrow, winding cliff road to the Abbey, rolling right along the dangerous edge. Bits of earth and stone crumbled beneath its wheels, falling down into the frothing surf below.

“We didn’t care about the danger,” Mr. Cross had said. “We weren’t afraid.”

She could almost see them, four boys climbing down the cliff’s face, three with dark hair and one with fair. Neville Cross. He couldn’t have been more than eleven at the time. Just an orphan lad with his friends. She imagined him falling and hitting his head, dropping into the sea to disappear beneath the waves. And when he’d come out again—when he’d been rescued and nursed back to health—he’d been irrevocably altered.