“No,” he said. “That’s very true. You wouldn’t love it the same way at all.”

She grasped his arm. The wool of his coat was damp and scratchy beneath her fi ngers. “You understand. He doesn’t. He says there’re connections that go beyond blood. But they don’t for me. And I can’t understand why they do for him.”

“Perhaps it’s because he knows that we humans ultimately love something that we have to struggle for — something that we give up everything to have — far more than the things that fall our way through chance.”

She released his arm. Her hand fell with a thud to the bench between them. Unwittingly, the man had spoken Simon’s own words. Her husband may as well have been in the room with her.

She wondered how she had come to unburden herself in the presence of a stranger. I’m desperate for someone to take my part, she thought, looking for a champion to bear my standard. I don’t even care who that champion is, just so long as he sees my point, agrees, and lets me go my own way.

“I can’t help how I feel,” she said hollowly.

“My dear, I’m not sure anyone can.” The man loosened his scarf and unbuttoned his coat, reaching inside to his jacket pocket. “I should guess you need a tramp in the air to think your thoughts and clear your head,” he said. “But you need fresh air. Wide skies and broad vistas. You can’t find that in London. If you’ve a mind to do your tramping in the North, you’ve a welcome in Lancashire.” He handed her his card.

Robin Sage, it read, The Vicarage, Win-slough.

“The Vic—” Deborah looked up and saw what his coat and scarf had hidden before, the white solid collar encircling his neck. She should have realised at once from the colour of his clothes, from his talk of St. Joseph, from the very reverence with which he’d regarded the da Vinci cartoon.