The Country House Courtship by Linore Rose Burkard

a decision: If Mr. O’Brien made the slightest reference to her childish fancy, she would feign ignorance. She would pretend
she
did not remember. It was not a wholly honest strategy, she knew, but her desperation to avoid embarrassment was severe enough to recommend her to the thought.
    The tea cups were filled, and soon the room fell silent while everyone sipped tea or ate a sweet biscuit. Mr. Mornay had now opted to sit beside his wife. Miss Bluford scurried to get her mistress just the right assortment of biscuits that she liked; Beatrice ate hastily, hoping to fortify herself somehow with the victuals. Mr. O’Brien ate little, as though just to be polite.
    Ariana asked, “Why do you not tell us about these past years? Where have you been situated? How has life treated you? Will this be your first vicarage? I can still hardly comprehend that
you
are to be our very own parson! I am—”
    Mr. Mornay cleared his throat. When she looked to him, he said, “Mr. O’Brien is come only to explore the opportunity of this living—as we must consider whether he will fit
our
idea of what we must have in a vicar. We, both of us, must find it fitting, before anything is settled.”
    Ariana thought she could tell by his tone and eye that he meant not to approve of the man. Surely that was his meaning in saying such a thing. She was disappointed, for it had seemed so providential and comfortable an arrangement, having Mr. O’Brien here to fill the vacancy. Only, of course, her husband would not want it to be so. He had never felt the slightest regard for Mr. O’Brien, and, to the contrary, had used to call him “that endless pest.” She would talk with him about the matter when they were alone; but for now, she turned a bright smile to the cleric and said, in her best hostess voice, “So—tell us what you have done since 1813.”

    Mr. O’Brien also understood Mr. Mornay’s meaning as boding nothing good for him. Why had the man allowed him to come? Why had he not prevented the whole affair by means of letters? He was irked that it was happening so. That he had been put to the trouble and expense of this call when it was going to end as he feared. He would soon be back at St. Pancras’s parish, as though the whole interview, the travel, the expenses, had never occurred. But he had no time to dwell further upon the subject. Mrs. Mornay had addressed him with a question.
    He answered as best he could, briefly detailing his short stint in the army—with a look of significance to Mr. Mornay that no one but the two men understood the meaning of. Mr. O’Brien explained how he had received a sum anonymously, of sufficient size to purchase a commission.
    â€œAnonomously?” asked Mrs Royleforst with astonishment.
    â€œYes.” A short silence commenced, and so he continued his tale. How, during his first field assignment, he had injured his left arm during an action at Vera (in Spain, he explained) while defending the Bridge over the Bidassoa. It was a key structure and the French did lose it in the end; but 850 British soldiers were wounded or killed, and Mr. O’Brien was one of them. (He assured the room that over 1500 French casualties had been suffered, which was sufficient to underscore the English victory, and brought relief upon the faces of his audience.)
    Since the bullet had narrowly missed a vital artery—which would have cost him his arm, if not his life, said the medical officer—Mr. O’Brien had been forced to consider his time on earth in a new way. His narrow escape from death made him reconsider his motives. He had joined the army to avoid dwelling on pain (spoken carefully and without a glance in Ariana’s direction), and yet it had brought only more of it into his life. Besides his own injury, he had witnessed death and brutality on the battlefield as he hoped never to lay eyes upon in this world again.
    â€œBy