He was not sure he was going to need it. It was altogether possible that before dark he would be happy to put as much distance between Newbury and himself as was humanly possible. But he did not want to give the impression that he expected to be offered hospitality at Newbury Abbey.He walked up to the abbey, expecting at every moment to be rained upon, though the clouds clung on to their moisture long enough to save him from getting wet. Soon after passing through the gates of the park he saw what he assumed was the dower house off to his right among the trees. It was a sizable building, more a small manor than a mere house. He hesitated for a moment, trying to decide whether to go there first. It was where she lived. But he tried to think like a gentleman. A gentleman would go to the main house first in order to have a word with her brother. It was an unnecessary courtesy, of course. She was thirty-two years old. But people of the upper classes set some store by the niceties of courtesy, necessary or not.It was a decision he regretted soon after he arrived at the abbey itself, as grand and imposing a mansion as Penderris but without the comfort of being owned by one of his closest friends.
