Heaven Sent (29 page)

He rapped sharply twice and dropped
his fist to his side. If she didn’t open the damned door now, he’d
just have to brace himself to spend a miserable, anxious night
without having accomplished his purpose, and try again
tomorrow.

Tomorrow was Sunday. Terrific. That
meant the whole dashed family, including Becky, Miss Prophet, Mrs.
Granger, Figgins, and Delilah, would attend the little Santa
Angelica Methodist church. He’d see all the mothers who’d attended
Becky’s party and have to be sociable to Callie’s brother and
sisters. And he wouldn’t have a moment to be private with Callie
for hours, He wouldn’t be able to ask her to marry him until the
afternoon, after the midday meal, which was the big one on
Sundays.

He didn’t think his nerves would last
until then.

When Callie’s bedroom door opened, he
was so startled he nearly jumped out of his skin. Callie stood,
blinking, before him, her strawberry-blond hair tumbling around her
shoulders, her eyes puffy with sleep, and her cheeks flushed from
her pillow, She stared at him and uttered, “Mr. Lockhart!” in a
groggy, shocked-sounding voice.

“
Miss Prophet,” For the life
of him, he couldn’t think of anything to say after those two words.
All that practicing, and here he stood, tongue-tied as an
adolescent boy at his first dance.

This was ridiculous. Aubrey took a
breath.

“
What is it?” Callie was
holding her wrapper tightly closed at her neck, but she seemed to
be waking up fast. All at once she looked frightened. “What’s
happened? Oh, what is it?”

“
Er, nothing’s happened,” he
said. Hell and damnation. He’d practiced for what seemed like ten
years and now, when he was at the point of declaring his
intentions, all of his carefully rehearsed words had flown right
out of his head.

Callie took a step toward him, and
Aubrey backed up an equal distance, berating himself even as he did
so. This was no way to get the woman to marry him, dash
it.

Looking up and down the hallway,
Callie said, “Is it Monster? Has he done something awful
again?”

“
Monster?” What the devil
was she talking—? Oh, yes. Aubrey remembered. Her damned cat. “Er,
no, it’s not Monster.”

She stepped back until she stood just
inside her room and stared at him some more. “What is it, Mr.
Lockhart? Is something the matter?” Her eyes widened, and an,
expression of dismay visited her face. Her hands tightened on her
wrapper. “Mr. Lockhart . . . ?” She licked her lips and looked
scared.

Good God, Aubrey recognized that
expression. She thought he’d come here for some sort of immoral
purpose.

Aghast, he hurried to say, “Miss
Prophet, I need to talk to you about—”

A piercing shriek ripped through the
air. It was accompanied by a yowl that would have done a lion in
the jungles of Africa proud. Both Aubrey and Callie jumped several
inches.

Callie pressed a hand to her cheek and
whispered, “Oh, my land!”

Aubrey snarled,
“Bilgewater.”

Stopping only to pick up Becky, who
had rushed to her own bedroom door and thrown it open, Aubrey raced
toward the other wing of the house. He heard Callie racing softly
behind him.

“
What was that noise, Papa?”
Becky rubbed her eyes and looked worried. “It scared
me.”

“
I’m afraid it was that
dashed cat,” Aubrey said grimly.

He yanked the hall door open and
barreled through the uncarpeted gallery. He and Anne had planned to
borrow an affectation from British nobility and hang portraits of
their families in this gallery, but they hadn’t got around to it.
Aubrey hadn’t had the heart to do anything with the big, empty room
since Anne’s death.

“
Monster?” Becky’s eyes
widened. “What did he do?”

“
I don’t know, but he seems
to have done it in your great-aunt’s room.”

“
Great-Aunt
Evelyn?”

“
That’s the one, all right.”
Aubrey’s chest roiled with indignation and fury. That damned cat
ought to be flung out a third-story window.

“
Oh, dear.” Callie was out
of breath. “I hope that woman didn’t do anything to
Monster.”

Aubrey, glancing over his shoulder,
could scarcely believe that even Callie Prophet, of whom he’d
learned to expect almost anything, had actually said
that.

Chapter
Fourteen

“
Oh, get it away from
me!”

Aubrey and Becky screeched to a halt
at Mrs. Bridgewater’s door, which had been slightly ajar when they
arrived. Aubrey had flung it open wide.

Pulling herself up right behind them
and peering around Aubrey’s broad shoulders, Callie didn’t think
she’d ever seen a more pitiful sight. She would, however, have been
hard-pressed to say which animal looked more pathetic: Monster or
Mrs. Bridgewater.

Monster sat hunched in a corner of
Mrs. Bridgewater’s bedroom, his fur bristling, his yellow eyes
glittering. Callie could tell he was upset, although she was pretty
sure she was the only adult watching who felt sorry for
him.

Mrs. Bridgewater sat in her bed, the
bedclothes pulled up to her chin, her hair in wild disarray, the
cap with which she’d covered it falling down around her right ear,
and her eyes bulging. She was uttering tiny, gasping screams,
interspersed with barely coherent words.

“
The cat!” she cried, ending
with a chuff of breath and another gasp. “The cat!”

Callie shoved past the stunned Aubrey,
who still clasped Becky tightly in his arms, and dashed up to the
bed. “What happened?” she cried. “What’s the matter?”

Mrs. Bridgewater took in several deep
breaths, loosened the fingers of one hand from their grasp on her
bedclothes, and pointed one of them, quivering, at the cat in the
corner.

“
That—that beast bit me!”
She sucked in air. “On the ear!”

“
Good heavens.” Callie
turned around and looked at the cat. Realizing that her own wrapper
was open, she fumbled for the ties dangling at her sides, and tied
them without glancing at what she was doing.. “Monster.” She walked
slowly up to the cat, holding out her hand in a soothing gesture.
“What happened here, sweetie?”

“
Sweetie!
Sweetie
! That
animal
bit
me!”

Callie turned her head and frowned at
Mrs. Bridgewater. “Yes, yes, we all know that by this time. But if
you’ll please stop yelling, I’m sure this will be over much more
quickly.”

She didn’t pause as she moved toward
the cat, but she did hear Mrs. Bridgewater’s offended gasp. Too
bad, Callie thought savagely. If the old biddy were a decent sort
of person, Monster undoubtedly wouldn’t have sought her out to
attack when he found himself wandering the halls in a bad-cat
mood.

Aubrey seemed to regain his senses all
at once. He took a step forward. Callie, who wasn’t looking at him,
heard him because his tread was heavy. “The cat bit you? On the
ear?” He sounded as befuddled as might be expected. “But, how . . .
? When . . . ?”

“
It’s my fault,” Callie said
with a sigh. “I should have looked for him before I went to bed,
but I was too tired.”

“
Monster never bites you
anymore, does he, Papa? It’s ‘cause he’s learned to like
you.”

This pointed question and comment came
from Becky, and both were salient, in Callie’s opinion. “Of course,
Monster doesn’t bite Mr. Lockhart anymore, Becky,” Callie said
sweetly. “He only bites people whom he doesn’t trust.”

She heard Mrs. Bridgewater take in
more air, and expected a flood of invective to follow, but Aubrey
intercepted whatever comments she’d been about to speak. “Let’s
just get the animal out of here and get everyone to bed, shall we?”
He sounded ever so stern and disagreeable.

Callie’s stomach crunched up. Lord,
Lord, she hoped he wouldn’t dismiss her after this incident. If she
had to leave Becky—and him—Callie wasn’t sure she’d survive. Though
she’d never say so. “Come here, Monster. Come on, boy. Let’s get
you out of here.”

Monster, who was a very gentle beast
except when biting people, allowed Callie to pick him up. He hung
like a fur cloak or a dead bear from her arms. He probably weighed
twenty pounds, but Callie didn’t even notice his weight. She
turned, knowing she owed Mrs. Bridgewater an apology, no matter how
little she wanted to deliver it. “I’m so sorry, ma’am. Please try
to forgive me. It’s all my fault for allowing him to wander around
the house at night. He usually sleeps in my room, but I frightened
him off earlier and then didn’t go in search of him.”

Mrs. Bridgewater stared from Callie to
Aubrey, her lips working. Callie wondered how her eyes stayed in
their sockets, they were starting so wildly. She certainly was in a
state. The older woman’s frenzy suddenly irked Callie. “It’s only a
cat, Mrs. Bridgewater. There’s nothing sinister in him.”

She saw Aubrey jerk his head to look
at her, and she sensed he wasn’t pleased with her. So what else was
new? She pressed her lips together and vowed she wouldn’t say
another word unless goaded beyond endurance.

“
I have never,” said Mrs.
Bridgewater, her voice shaking, “been in such a house.”

“
Well, you needn’t ever be
in one again,” Aubrey pointed out reasonably.

Surprised by his callous words, Callie
shot him a quick glance. He looked fairly callous, too. Good
heavens, what did this mean?

Bilgewater took in air again. “Aubrey
Lockhart,” she quavered, “I am appalled at your indifference, bath
to the state of my nerves and to general appearances. Anne would
have been horrified.”

It was the wrong thing to have said.
Callie saw it instantly, if Bilgewater didn’t. Aubrey’s eyes
flashed fire. “Don’t you dare,” he said in a measured, deadly
voice, “bring Anne’s name into this. If you were any kind of
benevolent force in the universe, this would never have
happened.”

That might not be strictly true,
Callie thought, but she decided not to mention the fact that
Monster did actually tend to bite people rather often. Most of the
time, he was a darling, but he did seem to take dislikes to certain
people. Not that she blamed him in this case.

“
And now,” Aubrey went on
before anyone else could speak, “let’s all get to bed, shall
we?”

“
I’m real sleepy,” Becky
announced, rubbing her eyes again.

“
Yes, sweetheart, I’m sure
you are.”

Aubrey turned and left the room.
Callie, glancing one last time at Mrs. Bridgewater, opened her
mouth to offer a final apology, saw that her breath would be
wasted, and lugged Monster out of the room. Although her arms were
full of Monster, she took care to shut the door so that the cat
couldn’t return if he decided to finish his meal and dine on Mrs.
Bridgewater’s other ear. No sense in inviting further
catastrophe.

She hurried to catch up with Aubrey
and Becky, who were halfway to the gallery by this time. “Mr.
Lockhart! Please, wait a minute.”

“
I’m taking my daughter to
bed.”

Oh, dear. His voice was cold and
impassive, and Callie feared it boded no good to her. She hurried
faster. “But, I wanted to say how sorry I am, Mr.
Lockhart.”

She heard his sigh, but he didn’t turn
around. “It’s quite all right, Miss Prophet. I’m sure this is no
more than we’ve come to expect in the past few months.”

“
That’s not fair, sir!” Or
maybe it was. It stung, though, and Callie didn’t appreciate
it.

He opened the gallery door and stood
aside, holding it so that Callie could pass through before him. She
did so, trying to look as dignified as possible in her nightgown
and wrapper and with a fuzzy black cat dangling from her
arms.

“
No?” He smiled politely.
“You’ll have to explain to me what’s unfair about it.”

She pinched her lips together. “I
shall.”

“
Good. But perhaps we can
postpone the discussion until tomorrow. It’s rather
late.”

Drat it. He was right. “Very
well.”

It wasn’t until Becky was retucked in
her bed and Callie had retreated, with Monster, to her own room,
that she recalled the incident immediately preceding Mrs.
Bridgewater’s terrified scream. Now why, she asked herself, had
Aubrey Lockhart been knocking at her door? She lay in her bed,
trying to relax, and worrying about it for a long time.

Had he been going to try to seduce
her? Callie’s heart shriveled at the thought. She’d never have
believed him capable of such a thing. No matter how many things
Callie had against Aubrey, they all centered around what she
perceived as his abandonment of his daughter. Callie had always
until now—and she wasn’t sure about now—believed him to be an
upright, moral man with high principles.

She was feeling quite blue when she
finally got to sleep.

*****

Mrs. Bridgewater left the Lockhart
mansion before breakfast the following morning. When Callie and
Becky descended the stairs to eat breakfast before going to church,
Becky’s great-aunt was gone. Aubrey sat at the dining table,
glancing at a newspaper when the two of them entered the room. He
looked up and smiled at Becky. He didn’t seem to notice Callie at
all. She sighed, her heart heavy. And yesterday had been such a
nice day, too. For the most part.