Downshire
is a relatively small English county but like a pocket battleship it packs a
lot in, a short but beautiful coastline, a channel port, the Ancient forests of
Dancingdean and Pepperstock, the craggy ridges and manmade lakes of the
Pepperstock Hills National Park, the rolling hills of the Downshire Downs, the
beautiful Finchbottom Vale and farm land as far as the eye can see from the
Trotwood’s and the Grace’s in the south to the home of the Downshire Light
infantry, Nettlefield, and their affluent neighbour’s, Roespring and Tipton in
the north but our story begins Oxley Green
There had been a sad loss in
the village of Oxley Green after the sudden death of their highly respected
Vicar of St Thomas’, Nigel Howes, and even if that wasn’t tragic enough his
widow Emily had decided to vacate the vicarage and make room for the new Vicar
Andrew Fanning in order for him to establish himself in the village as soon as
possible because it was difficult enough trying to fill her husband’s shoes.
He was at present lodging at
the Mountaineer, which was not the most suitable accommodation for a man of the
cloth or for a layman for that matter, not that he would have minded staying
there if it meant not putting Emily out of her home, but she was of a mind to
go.
Andrew was a single man and
she knew that the demands on a Parish Priest were hard enough to endure when
you have a wife to share the burden and a home in which to do it.
When you had to spend time in
a hospice at the bedside of sick parishioners, ministering to them as they
slipped into the next world, and then after they had slipped their mortal
bonds, return to a room over the pub, it was not conducive to his spiritual wellbeing.
So that was in Emily’s
thinking when she insisted she would move,
She also took steps to remedy
his single status by employing a young widowed parishioner, Lindsay Head, as
his housekeeper.
Emily had history in the
village for matchmaking and she was very shrewd and she had the measure of
Andrew Fanning the first moment she met him and she also knew that Lindsay had
a heart as big as the moon and with Andrew’s sweet tooth and her culinary
expertise Emily knew that Lindsay would very soon bake her way into his heart.
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