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Her hands caught on his jacket. The pouch fell from his pocket. The silver rattle jingled onto the mattress.
    Her thumbs slipped over it before jabbing it into his gut. "No bauble. Leave." She sighed and then began to sob. "Leave."
    His spectacles steamed. He popped the useless gift into his pocket and dragged himself from the room.  
    With a closed door as the final separation between them, he sank against the wall in the hall. He wasn't built of stone, nor enslaved to his emotions, but this had no logic, no reasoning. Just pain.  
    He was empty, empty with a hole just as big and as deep as when his best friend, Gerald Miller died. A friend so much closer than his own brother. Miller had died in Barrington's stead.
    Why God? If he'd let Smith perish alone, not knowing redemption... Would that have been better?  
    If he'd only chosen to take Amora home. Maybe it would've made a difference. At least, he could've been with her and not let her face this agony with strangers.  
    He ripped off his spectacles, closing them within his palms so tight it felt as if they'd break. This one time in three months, he chose something over her. That equaled the death of his child? Amora hating him?
    He swallowed the hard lump in his throat. It didn't go away.
    His Blackamoor love wasn't enough-- the heart of a dull, color-robbed man wasn't enough. He'd just proved it, by not being here to protect her or their child. "God, I was away doing your work, not out carousing or imbibing. Why couldn't you have been here with my wife, my child?"
    The pounding on the stairs drew Barrington's weary attention to the man he'd seen earlier.
      "God was here, Mr. Norton. But some things aren't meant to be."  
    Barrington scooped up his lenses, thrust them on and turned to the intruder, the wild haired vicar from the entry. Wilson's outstretched hand hovered inches away.
    This time Barrington took it. He allowed the older man, maybe six or seven years his senior, to hoist him upright.  
    "Mr. Norton, I am about His business and sometimes the path is sorrowful. Even Job cried, and none of us could carry his heavy burdens."
    Barrington pushed past him. He wasn't going to open his soul to a stranger. "Follow me."
    With listless steps, he led the man down the stairs to his prized room. Once inside, he closed the door. "Sit, Vicar. I'd offer you something to drink, but I don't have anything strong. Though my late father could conjure something drunken from the kitchen." He bit his lip. This wasn't James he complained to but a minister, a stranger at that. "Did the doctor or Mrs. Gretling summon you?"  
    "I was playing cards with the doctor when the footman arrived. The message was so dire; I came along to see if I could bring comfort. I'm helping at St. George's for a season. My living in Hampshire will be vacated soon."  
    Barrington paced from his perch against a bookshelf. He walked past the vicar and dropped into the chair behind his desk. Once he pushed stacks of paper out of the way, he viewed the vicar with open suspicion. "You're from Hampshire? We're from there. Clanville to be exact."
    "I know of the Nortons and your wife's Tomàs family. As a boy, I used to visit my cousin, Minister Playfair, in your village."
    The man knew of them? Barrington drummed his fingers along the desk, trying hard to order his thoughts given the stranger's advantage of foreknowledge. "Oh, the old vicar."
    "Yes. Playfair was a wonderful mentor. I loved fishing with him at the stream behind the smithy, close to the priory. Lots of good tackle. Tasty trout."  
    Cheery, almost skipping, the vicar's tone reflected boyish hope. To Barrington it grated, reminding him of another place he'd never show his son. Another memory to be shed from his list.  
    Wilson puffed up his chest, sitting back with folded arms. "Clanville. I loved playing in the creepy priory, the old Norman temple. And I had been known to steal a few of Mr. Tomàs's pippins. That sweet juicy apple was