Heaven Sent (40 page)

“
Maybe.” The little girl
didn’t sound precisely positive about it.

“
Or,” Callie said, giving
her a sly glance, “after your papa leaves, maybe I can read you
another scary story by Mr. Poe.”

“
Poe?” Aubrey looked
startled.

“
Oh, yes!” Becky said,
sounding less than ghastly for the first time in two days. “I’d
like that a lot!”

Aubrey frowned doubtfully at Callie.
“You read the child Edgar Allan Poe stories?”

She beamed at him, although what she
really wanted to do was throw her arms around his neck and kiss him
silly. “Absolutely! I loved them when I was Becky’s age, and she
loves them now. Children love to be scared, Aubrey. Don’t you know
that by this time? That’s why they adore hearing ghost stories.”
Because Aubrey’s bemused expression was making her heart palpitate,
she turned back to Becky, trying to look cheerful and chipper—which
wasn’t too hard, under the circumstances. “Isn’t that right, Becky?
Don’t you and your friends enjoy listening to scary
stories?”

Becky nodded, her blue eyes dull this
morning, but her lips smiling at last. “Yes. I love a scary story.
As long as Callie stays with me until I fall asleep.”

Callie was surprised when Aubrey said,
“You call Miss Prophet ‘Callie’?”

“
I told her to,” Callie told
him quickly. In a whisper, she added, “She noticed when you called
me Callie, you see.”

Taking her arm, he led her to the door
and spoke softly, “Perhaps we should tell her about our upcoming
nuptials. Perhaps she’d like to call you . . . Mother.”

Not, Callie noticed,
Mama
, but
Mother
. Well, that made
sense, she supposed, although her heart hurt a little. “Why don’t
we wait,” she suggested, thinking of those damnable letters looming
in her conscience like a mountain. “After she feels better might be
a more appropriate time.”

“
If you say so.” He didn’t
sound concerned, which suited Callie fine. Turning so that Becky
could hear him, he said, “I’ll be back as soon as I can be,
sweetheart.”

“
Bye, Papa,” Becky said in
her hoarse, squeaky voice.

Callie noticed the tears had started
again by the time she got back to Becky’s bed. Poor baby. Even
short, temporary abandonments were hard to take when one was a
small child and feeling poorly. They were hard for grown-ups to
take, for that matter, but adults were at least supposed to have
better control over overt displays of their feelings than were
children.

“
Did you finish taking your
powders, sweetheart?” she asked gently, brushing hair back from
Becky’s hot forehead with her hand. She noticed the empty
orange-juice glass on the night table.

Becky nodded. “Papa made
me.”

“
Has Mrs. Granger brought up
your good juice yet?”

This time the little girl shook her
head. “Papa told her to wait until you got back so your breakfast
wouldn’t get cold.”

“
That was nice of him.” It
was unnecessary, however. Becky’s health was more important than
Callie’s breakfast, although it was a consideration on Aubrey’s
part that Callie hadn’t anticipated.

“
I s’pose he’ll tell Mrs.
Granger you’re back when he goes downstairs,” Becky
added.

“
I suppose he
will.”

He did. It wasn’t long before Mrs.
Granger entered the room with a tray loaded with good things to
eat, Callie’s breakfast as well as morsels to tempt the
invalid.

Callie made a good breakfast. Becky’s
throat hurt too much to allow her to do much more than swallow a
couple of bites of oatmeal with raisins, brown sugar, butter, and
milk. The orange juice stung her ailing throat, but she seemed to
crave it, so Mrs. Granger sent one of the stable lads to the
Venable farm, where Mrs. Venable always kept a supply of fresh
oranges on hand.

“
We’ll give you all the
orange juice you can swallow, Becky,” the housekeeper said. She
looked worried.

Callie wasn’t. She figured it was only
a bad cold. Maybe a touch of influenza. The powders and quinine
would help, and with a lot, of rest and good, fresh fruit and juice
she imagined Becky would be well in a week or two. One couldn’t
rush these things.

Aubrey returned with the doctor in
less than an hour. Dr. Marshall was a tall, thin, gray-haired man
with a jovial manner and a way with children. He managed to tease a
laugh out of Becky, prescribed fresh juice, salicylic powders every
four to six hours, and a dose of quinine immediately.

“
I’ll return this evening to
check on the invalid. If she needs another dose, I’ll give it to
her then, and I’m going to bring along a medicated salve to rub on
her chest. We don’t

want her lungs to become
infected.”

“
Thank you, Dr.
Marshall.”

The doctor smiled down at Callie, who
was helping Delilah change Becky’s sheets since her fever had made
them damp. “You’re certainly looking splendid these days, Callie.
This job as Becky’s nanny, difficult as it must be, seems to agree
with you.” He tossed Becky a wink to let her know he was
teasing.

Callie grinned back at him. “It’s
rugged, Doctor. Persuading this child to behave is a sore trial,
believe me.”

“
Is not!” exclaimed Becky
hotly, but she grinned.

“
Aye, I’ve heard about her
wild ways.” He leaned over and deposited a kiss on Becky’s head.
The little girl was seated in the overstuffed easy chair in her
room and hugging a stuffed bear to her chest while the grown-ups
changed her bed linen. Monster, who had been sharing her room, had
vanished under the bed as soon as Dr. Marshall entered
it.

“
You rest, Becky, and you’ll
be feeling better in a few days. You have a nasty cold, but it’s
not fatal.”

“
Thank God,” Aubrey
whispered from a corner of the room.

As if he’d only then remembered such
jests weren’t necessarily funny in this household, Dr. Marshall
cast a swift glance at Aubrey, looked embarrassed, then cleared his
throat. “Yes. Well, I guess I’ve done enough damage here for one
morning. You sleep a lot, Becky, and take your medicine, and come
back this evening to make you miserable again.” He shook his finger
at her in a mock show of sternness. “And don’t forget to gargle
with warm salt water. None of your shirking, Miss Lockhart, do you
hear?”

“
I hear,” Becky grinned at
him again.

“
Then I guess I’ll take my
leave now. Got other folks to see. There’s a lot of this nasty cold
going around.”

“
Bye, Dr. Marshall,” Becky
said, sounding as if she liked him even if he was the purveyor of
awful-tasting medicines.

“
Thank you, Dr. Marshall.”
Aubrey came forward and shook the doctor’s hand.

“
Yes, thanks a lot, Doctor,”
Callie called from behind a flapping sheet.

“
Thank you, Dr. Marshall,”
said Delilah, making it unanimous.

As they left the room, Callie heard
Aubrey say, “I think Mrs. Granger has a piece of cake for you in
the kitchen, Doctor.”

The voices faded, and Callie thought
how lucky she was be here, in this household. It was so pleasant to
live in luxurious surroundings, not to have to handle everything
all by herself, to be able to call the doctor any time one needed
doctor, and never have to worry about money. It was to be her fate,
and she was grateful to her Maker and to fate in
general.

She’s love being married to Aubrey.
She loved him. She loved Becky. Life couldn’t get much
better.

The letters loomed like a high wall in
her conscience, and she resolved to take care of that matter as
soon as might be.

Chapter
Nineteen

But Callie’s confession wasn’t made
that day or the next, or the next after that. Becky’s flu got
better slowly, but she was a mighty sick little girl for several
days. Dr. Marshall continued to call twice a day, and Callie didn’t
like to leave Becky’s room for any lengthy period of
time.

Every time Callie left, even for a few
minutes, Becky became fretful, and she herself worried. She even
set up a cot in the room so that she could keep tabs on Becky
overnight.

Monster shared Becky’s room as well,
much to Becky’s appreciation. It seemed to soothe her misery to
have a big, fluffy cat to hug.

Aubrey paid many tender attentions,
both to Becky and to Callie. Callie appreciated them—and him—more
than she could say. He was a genuinely kind man, so unlike the man
she’d initially believed him to be that Callie’s conscience grew
heavier and heavier as the days passed and she didn’t tell him
about the letters.

Mrs. Granger bustled in and out of the
room several times each day, bringing food, medicine, glasses of
warm salt water, juice, sympathy, and platitudes. Aubrey had told
her the good news about his impending marriage, and she was fairly
bursting with pleasure, both for Callie’s sake and the sake of the
Lockhart household.

“
Because, you know, Callie,
the poor man’s been in such a state during the past couple of
years. You’ll be good for him. You’ve already been good for him and
Becky. And for the household, as well.”

“
Thank you, Mrs. Granger. I
hope I’ll make him a good wife.”

“
Nonsense, child. You’ll
make him a fine wife. I know he loved his Anne, but he needs
someone to take care of things for him, and he’s quite fond of
you.”

Fond, Right. Exactly what Callie
wanted to hear. She took the tray Mrs. Granger had prepared for the
invalid. “Thank you.”

Not that she expected anything more
from Aubrey. He respected and liked her. She’d known for ages that
she wasn’t the type of woman a man could cherish. At least she’d be
able to share Aubrey’s consideration and affection.

So why, she wondered, did her heart
feel so heavy as she carried the tray up to Becky’s
room?

*****

During Becky’s illness and
convalescence, Aubrey had a lot of time to think about things. He
thought about Becky, he thought about Anne, he thought about his
life in general, and he thought about Callie. A lot.

Every time he saw her, a jolt of
awareness and desire washed over him. At first, he chalked up this
strange phenomenon to the fact that he and she had recently shared
a very satisfying sexual liaison. It was the first sexual liaison
Aubrey had experienced since long before Anne died, and he’d been
more than ready for it.

As the days passed and he observed
Callie and Becky, and Callie and Mrs. Granger, and Callie and Dr.
Marshall, and Callie and Delilah, and Callie in general, he came to
the slow and reluctant conclusion that it wasn’t mere sexual
passion that so fascinated him about Becky’s nanny.

If he didn’t watch himself, he’d be
falling in love with the woman.

The first time that idea struck him,
the Saturday after he and Callie first made love, guilt followed so
swiftly on its heels that he had to run away and hide in his
library office.

For heaven’s sake, he’d loved Anne. He
couldn’t possibly love Callie Prophet. She was nothing in the
remotest degree like Anne.

Aubrey, dear, use your
common sense for a moment, please
.

Anne’s voice wafted through his brain
as clearly as if she’d spoken the words herself. Aubrey stiffened.
He even glanced around his library, wondering if someone might be
playing a nasty trick on him.

But he was alone in the room. Anne’s
voice had been a curious aberration in the atmosphere and nothing
more or less than that.

Or perhaps it had been a particularly
strong memory. But why would she tell him to use his common
sense?

He’d remembered not long ago that Anne
had told him to remarry. On her deathbed, yet. Was it possible
that, had she lived, she also would have told him it was possible
for a man to love two dissimilar women at different times in his
life? Aubrey knew full well that his love for Anne remained as
strong as it had ever been. Could he love another woman—Callie—as
passionately as he’d loved Anne, even though they were as different
as night was from day?

“
Good God.” He paced to the
window behind his desk, yanked the curtains aside, and peered
outside.

Autumn had fallen, accompanied by the
season’s first hard freeze, and the leaves had turned a couple of
days ago. They were falling in waves from the trees today. Aubrey
watched mulberry leaves catch the sun and drop like flakes of gold
to the yellow grass. He employed a team of gardeners who raked the
lawns daily, but they couldn’t keep up with the steady rainfall of
autumn leaves.

The almonds and walnuts were ripening.
A hard wind would come along soon and start knocking them down.
Then Mrs. Granger would begin making fruitcakes and cookies for
Christmas. Becky was particularly fond of a cookie Mrs. Granger
made that featured both nuts and bits of chocolate. Aubrey liked
them, too. Those cookies were a highlight of the entire year in the
Lockhart household..