His insight surprised her. It was not what she’d have expected in his sort. “My father believed so.”
“Her behavior doesn’t trouble you?”
“Because she insults me?” Johanna smiled. “She can’t hurt me, Mr. Quentin. I am her doctor. My only concern is for her welfare. And she is by no means the most ill of our residents.”
The sound of water rushing from the pump in the kitchen interrupted her words. “Ah. I believe that the Reverend Andersen has come in from the garden. Shall we go see him?”
Quentin followed her into the kitchen, where a thin, raw-boned man with sandy hair bent over the washbasin, furiously pumping water over his hands. As they watched, he picked up a bar of soap and lathered his hands until they were completely submerged in suds, and then rinsed them off again. He repeated the action five more times before Johanna spoke to him.
“Lewis,” she said. “May we have a moment of your time?”
He spun about as if startled, hands dripping with soapy water. His gaze twitched from her to Quentin.
“Pardon me,” he said. He returned to the basin, reached for the soap, stopped, and rinsed his hands instead. He dried them thoroughly on a towel hung beside the basin and pulled on a pair of white gloves. Only then did he turn his attention to Quentin and Johanna.
“I was working in the garden,” he said in a clipped, irritable voice, not meeting their eyes. He lifted his hands and stared at them, as if he could still see specks of dirt invisible Jo anyone else. Quentin couldn’t smell anything on him but the residue of soap, the cloth of the gloves, and well-washed human skin. The man’s spotless clothing bore the faint scent of growing things, but no telltale earth. If he had been in the garden, Quentin doubted that he’d touched the ground with anything but the soles of his shoes.
“I am sure the garden is in much better condition for your labors,” Johanna said. “Lewis, this is our new resident, Quentin Forster. Quentin, this is the Reverend Lewis Andersen.”
“Not now,” Andersen muttered. “I must cleanse—” He held his arms out from his sides and looked down the length of his body. “So much sin, filth…”
Johanna didn’t react to his curious pronouncements. “Would you care to join us for tea in the parlor?”
“The china… it is not clean.”
“I assure you that it is,” Johanna said gently. “Please trust me, Lewis. You have nothing to fear.”
He finally looked at her, hunching his bony shoulders. “Very well. A few moments.” He started for the door just as Quentin turned to follow Johanna, and their sleeves brushed in passing. Andersen flinched as if he’d been struck.
“Pardon me,” Quentin said. Andersen scuttled past him into the parlor and up to the vast stone fireplace at the end of the room, where he stared with horrified fascination into its dark recesses. He shuddered, backed away, and sat down in a chair in the farthest corner. He no longer seemed to notice the presence of anyone else in the room.
“Mr. Andersen has been with us for five years,” Johanna said quietly. “Lewis, what do you think of the roses this summer?”
He huddled in his chair, turning his hands back and forth in front of his face. “I have tried and tried to make them perfect, but I fail. I fail.”
“If you’ll forgive me, Mr. Andersen,” Quentin said, “I caught a glimpse of the roses. I’ve never seen any so beautiful. Your cultivation of them is quite extraordinary.”
Andersen stared at Quentin. “You are British.” His thin lips stretched in an expression of aversion, and Quentin felt as though he were being judged from the high pulpit of some vast London cathedral.
“You are a sinner,” Andersen said abruptly. His eyes bore a hint of fanaticism, but it was more distressed than threatening. “What is your sin?”
The jokes that came so naturally to Quentin’s mind seemed very wrong under the circumstances. This man wouldn’t understand his levity. “All men sin,” he said. “I’m no exception.”
“You run from them, but you cannot escape. I know.” He locked his fingers together in a grip that must have been painful. “You cannot run from God.”