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and effectively stopping her in her tracks.
    She forced herself to remain calm. He was too forward, too sure of himself, and too often threw himself in her way. But thus far he’d not gone beyond that. He had never raised a hand to her, hadn’t taken to verbal threats. In that respect, he was better than any of the other men who had ever been part of her life.
    “You are blocking my path,” Clara told him calmly.
    Edmund took refuge behind her, clutching her hand the way he did when he was worried or afraid. How Clara wished the boy had a role model, someone to teach him how to be a man, but a good one.
    Mr. Finley doffed his tall beaver hat and smiled quite handsomely. Behind the benign expression, though, was the very clear belief that she should be falling at his feet, flattered at his attentions. He was too arrogant by half. “I only wished to give you good day,” he said.
    “Good day.” Clara returned the greeting as a farewell and moved quickly around him, Edmund clinging to her like a bat to the eaves.
    “I do not like him,” Edmund whispered to her.
    “Neither do I.” Why couldn’t the world just leave her be?
    “There is Alice.” Edmund pointed ahead of them.
    Clara followed his gesture and, sure enough, saw Alice, hands clasped to her mouth, laughing. Her tiny giggles gave way to fits of uncontrolled laughter.
    “Alice,” Clara called out to her.
    Alice spun at the sound and, still laughing, toddled back to her. Clara knelt on the ground before her. “You know you are not to run off, dearest.”
    “So funny.” Alice sputtered through her fingers.
    “Dearest.” Clara attempted to chide the wayward girl, but Alice’s laughter had infected Edmund. In the next moment, Clara laughed herself, though she was at a loss to explain why. “Just what, Alice, is so funny?”
    “Mister,” she answered through another sputter.
    “Mister?”
    “Funny.”
    “And who is Mr. Funny?” Clara asked, her own laughter impossible to hold back now. Alice had a laugh that instantly sent others into fits of hysteria.
    “Mr. Jonquil, I believe.” Mr. Finley’s voice answered the question.
    Why couldn’t the infuriating man simply take his leave?
    “Yes,” Mr. Finley continued. “Mr. Jonquil can, at this moment, only be described as excessively funny.”
    Clara looked up at that, not at Mr. Finley but in the direction from which Alice had only just come. Mr. Jonquil stood there but not at all as she remembered him. When he had come for tea, he had been quite appropriately inconspicuous in his appearance, his clothing the subdued colors considered quite suitable for a gentleman. Indeed, his dress had always been unexceptional.
    But there, in the churchyard, stood Mr. Jonquil, clad in a severely cut coat in a surprising shade of bright blue, paired with a waistcoat of orange-and-blue stripes. His watch chain must have held a half dozen fobs. His shirt points all but eliminated the line of his jaw.
    “Mr. Funny.” Alice giggled. Edmund laughed as well.
    Clara only barely managed to bite down an answering laugh but could not keep a smile from reaching her face. He really did look utterly absurd, and Alice’s infectious laugh was not helping.
    Mr. Jonquil’s look became instantly tenser, his brows knit, mouth turned down in a frown. Clara wanted to laugh simply at the sourness of his expression but found she could not.
    “It appears, Jonquil, you have been taking lessons from your brother.” Mr. Finley chuckled the way children did when taunting their playmates. “You look every bit as ridiculous as Lampton does on a daily basis.”
    The tenseness around Mr. Jonquil’s mouth increased with each word Mr. Finley spoke. Clara felt unexpectedly compelled to speak up, regardless of how ridiculous Mr. Jonquil actually looked. She despised bullies.
    “On the contrary, Mr. Finley,” she said. “I do believe Mr. Jonquil looks very well in blue. A man with brown eyes, for example, would look quite unhandsome in