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promise you, I will not try to sway you one way or the other. If, by the time I am through with my obligations at the abbey, you discern your vocation is at Hallowshire, I will escort you there with a glad heart. If not ... ?” He shrugged.
    Cecily’s eyebrows rose. “You will simply let it alone?”
    He squeezed her fingers and then released them, speaking as he walked to the stable doors. “Well, I may be pressed to ask your sister for a small donation.” He crossed his arms over his chest and looked up through the doorway at the sky. It had stopped raining.
    Cecily smiled at his back. “Small donation” in the bishop’s mind usually meant a very large donation. She walked to stand next to him, looking up at the sky in much the same manner. The clouds were no longer thoroughly gray, only at their bottoms now, and the edges of them were fluffy and white like snow, parting sporadically to reveal the lightest shade of blue afternoon sky beyond. A trio of golden beams played over the rain-darkened dirt of the yard, and the bailey was unusually still.
    Cecily turned her face to look at John Grey. His profile was sharp against the frame of the stable doorway, and his eyes skittered over the clouds, as if searching for something hidden there.
    “Will you stay at Fallstowe?” she found herself asking.
    “No. Very kind of you, and your sister as well, to offer,” he said, and Cecily was surprised that he had already spoken to Sybilla. What a strange pair of days she’d had. “I will enjoy Father Perry’s hospitality for tonight and then return to Hallowshire in the morn. My hope is to come to Fallstowe for a pair of days each week.”
    Cecily looked back to the sky. “I understand.”
    “Will you see me when I come?” he asked quietly. “I confess that it will make my time at Hallowshire more bearable, knowing that I have your presence to look forward to.”
    She turned her face toward him once more, quickly, and found that he was searching her face much as he had searched the clouds in the sky.
    “Will you be taking your own vows when you return to the bishop, Vicar John?” Cecily asked boldly.
    He stared at her for a pair of moments. “It is a season of discernment for many, Lady Cecily,” was all that he would say.
    “Of course I will see you,” Cecily answered at last. “You may lecture me on the many reasons why I should commit to the abbey, and I in turn will try to convince you to take your vows as a priest.”
    John Grey grinned. “Or not.”
    “Or not,” Cecily agreed with a smile.
    “Perhaps—” John Grey began, but whatever he planned to suggest was lost beneath the sound of a woman frantically calling Cecily’s name from across the stable yard.
    “Lady Cecily! My lady!”
    Both Cecily and John Grey turned to behold the kitchen maid trotting across the bailey toward them, waving at Cecily with an old rag.
    “What is it, Marga?” Cecily stepped from the door frame tentatively.
    “Beggin’ yer pardon, Lady Cecily, but you must come. Good day to you, sir.” The maid curtsied perfunctorily in the vicar’s general direction. “Lord Bellecote is near to tearin’ the bed apart, milady. I believe the draught you give him is wore off. He’s carryin’ on dreadful for you, and won’t let anyone else in the chamber!”
    “I’ll come, Marga,” Cecily assured the maid calmly. “Keep everyone else away from him until I arrive, and have a tray of cool, wet towels ready for me in the kitchen. Lord Bellecote is likely feeling a superior ache in his skull from the sedative.”
    “Yes, milady.” Marga curtsied again and then turned on her heel and scurried back across the bailey.
    Cecily began walking away from John Grey, backward so that she might still bid him farewell. The man was enigmatic, and although Cecily longed to spend more time with him, peeling back the layers of this non-vicar, this not-a-priest, Oliver was calling for her, he was in pain, and she must go.
    “Will you stay for