Promise Me This (3 page)

“Easter!” she gasped.

“As soon as we turn a profit, I’ll send for Annie.”

“He has been in that business these many years and not succeeded?” She snorted scornfully, but the fear that he meant to go did not leave her eyes.

He leaned forward. “Do you not see, Aunt? Do you not see this is a chance of a lifetime—for Annie and for me?”

“What I see is that you are foolish and ungrateful, with no more common sense than your father! I see that you are willing to throw away your life on a silly scheme that will come to nothing and that you intend to drag the child down beside you!” Her voice rose with each word, piercing the air.

Owen drew back. He’d not hurt Annie for the world. At fourteen, she was not a child in his eyes; that she remained so in Aunt Eleanor’s estimation was reason enough to get her away from Hargrave House.

Eleanor’s face fell to pleading, her demands to wheedling. “Owen, stay here. I can set you up in your own gardening business, if that is what you want. You can experiment with whatever you like in our own greenhouses. They will be entirely at your disposal.”

Owen folded his serviette and placed it on the tea tray. The action gave him peace, finality. “I’m sorry you cannot be happy for us, Aunt. But it is the solution to our mutual dilemmas.”

A minute of silence passed between them, but Owen’s heart did not slow.

“Leave me, Owen, and I will strike you from my will.” The words came softly, a Judas kiss.

Owen stood and bowed.

“My estate means nothing to you?”

“It comes at too high a price, Aunt.” Owen breathed, relieved that the deed was done. “I’ll stay the night and then must get back to Southampton. I’ll return to collect Annie and her things early next week.” He bowed again and walked away.

“There is something more. I had not intended to tell you—not yet.”

Owen turned.

His aunt folded her hands in her lap. “It was your grandfather’s doing.”

Annie knelt beside the stair rail, her nerves taut, her eyes stretched wide in worry. When at last Owen stepped through the parlor door, she let out the breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

But Owen didn’t move. Annie leaned over the railing for a better look at her brother. His hands covered his head, pressed against the doorframe, and she was certain he moaned. She stood back, biting her lower lip. She’d never heard such a sound from her older brother. “Owen? Owen!” she whispered loudly into the hallway below.

At last he climbed, two stairs at a time, but she’d never seen him look so weary.

“I could hear her shouting all the way up here. What has happened?” Annie met him at the landing and rushed into his arms.

“Come, close the door, Annie.” Owen spoke low, pulling her into her room. “Pack your things, everything you want to keep. We’ll not be back.”

“Pack my things? Why? Where are we going?”

But her brother would not meet her eyes. He pulled her carpetbag from the top of the cupboard and spread it open. He picked up their parents’ wedding photograph from her bedside table. “You’ll want this.”

“Whatever are you doing?”

Owen wrapped the frame in the linen it sat upon and placed it in the bottom of her bag. “I’ll tell you when we’ve settled for the night. Now you must pack, and quickly.”

“Am I going to live with you?”

He shook his head. “Pack, Annie.”

“Is Aunt Eleanor sending me away?”

“She knows we’re going. She—”

They both started when Annie’s door swung wide.

“Jamison!” Annie gasped.

The old butler’s bent frame filled the low doorway. He looked over his shoulder, put a finger to his lips, and motioned Owen closer. “Do you have a place for Miss Annie, sir?”

Owen ran his fingers through his hair. “In Southampton, as soon as I can arrange it. I don’t know what we shall do tonight.”

Jamison nodded and pushed a crumpled paper into Owen’s hand.

“Jamison!” Eleanor Hargrave bellowed from the first floor.

“What’s going on?” Annie begged.

“Take this round to my old sister, Nellie Woodward. Her address is on the bottom. She will do right by you for the night,” the butler whispered.

“Jamison! Come—at once!” Annie heard their aunt rap her cane against the parlor doorframe.

“Good-bye, Miss Annie.” Jamison’s ever-formal voice caught in his throat.

“No.” Annie shook her head, confused, disbelieving, and reached for Jamison. “I can’t say good-bye like this!” Her eyes filled. “Someone tell me what’s happening!”

The butler took her hands in his for the briefest moment, coughed, and stepped back. “God take care of you both, Mr. Owen. Write to us when you get to America. Let us know you are well, and Miss Annie, too.” He nodded. “You can send a letter to my Nellie. She’ll see that I get it.”

“America?” Annie gasped. “We’re going to America?”

Jamison caught Owen’s eye, clearly sorry he’d said so much, and looked away. But Owen wrung the butler’s withered hand. “Thank you, old friend.”

Jamison turned quickly and crept down the polished stairs.

“Owen,” Annie began, hope rising in her chest.

“Don’t stop to talk now, Annie! Hurry, before Aunt Eleanor sends you off with nothing!”

Annie whirled. “America! Where to begin?” She plucked her Sunday frock from the cupboard; Owen grabbed her most serviceable. She tucked in stationery and coloring pencils; Owen packed her Bible,
The Pilgrim’s Progress
, and the few books of poetry their mother had loved.

“You must wear your spring and winter cloaks. Layer everything you can.”

“It isn’t that cold!” Annie sputtered.

“Do it,” Owen insisted.

They stuffed all they could into her carpetbag and a pillow slip. Ten minutes later they turned down the lamp, slipped down the servants’ stairs, and closed the back kitchen door softly behind them.

“Well, then—” the widow Woodward clucked her tongue—“you’re away for good and all to America, are you, Miss Annie?”

Annie drew in her breath, looked helplessly toward her brother, desperate for an explanation, and finally shrugged. “Yes, I think we are.”

But Owen turned away.

Nellie Woodward raised her brows as she poured their tea. “Her ladyship won’t like that, now will she?”

Forty-five years Jamison had worked for the Hargraves. Annie knew there was little the butler did not know about their sad and wealthy family, and she suspected there was nothing he’d not told his sister over Sunday-afternoon tea those many years. Still, she was not at all certain where confidence ended and propriety began. She kept her peace.

The moment the widow left the room for plates and scones, Annie pressed her brother. “When do we leave for America?”

Owen slowly set his cup in its saucer and covered Annie’s fingers with his hand. Annie saw the lump in his throat go up and down as he swallowed, then swallowed again.

“Do you remember Father talking about his brother, Uncle Sean—Uncle Sean and Aunt Maggie, in America?”

Annie nearly laughed out loud. “Surely! They invited us to join them in America after Mother died.” She clasped her hands. “So that’s where we’re going!”

“That is where I’m going.”

Annie’s laughter died in midair. “You?”

He nodded.

She flicked her head, positive he jested. “That’s not funny, Owen.”

“I’ll send for you as soon as I possibly can.”

Annie felt the floor drop beneath her. She stared blankly at her brother.

“I must make certain this is a good move for us before I take you across the world. Aunt Maggie wrote that Uncle Sean is not well; they need my help. I know every bit of gardening that Father ever taught me, and I’ve learned a great deal more these last years, even developed my own strains of Old World flowers and roses. I’m certain I can help them.”

“I can help too! I’m a hard worker!”

Owen cupped her face in his hands. “You’re the hardest worker I know, Little Sister. But you must finish your education. I promised Father, on his grave, that I would take care of you.”

“How can you take care of me from across a vast ocean?” Annie pushed him away, her voice rising.

“By making certain you’re safe here.” He took her hands again and spoke quietly. “Father believed Uncle Sean had a fine venture started, that he only needed more help from his family to make a go of it. I want to believe all that Father told me. I want to get our own piece of what they call ‘the American dream.’ But I need to make certain it’s more than a dream before I plop us both down in the middle of it.”

“Don’t do this, Owen. Take me now. Please, please take me now.”

“Six months—a year at most—and I’ll send for you. Just as soon as I know the business can turn a profit.”

“But—”

“I’ve enrolled you in a boarding school in Southampton with a good lady—Miss Hopkins. She’ll watch over you just as she does all her young ladies.”

“Southampton? I’ll be near you, then?” The first flicker of hope sprang in Annie’s chest.

“Until I sail. Until Easter week.”

“Easter!”

“The important thing is that you’ll be away from Aunt Eleanor. I cannot leave England knowing you’re trapped in her house.”

Annie sat back, refusing to believe him, desperate to give his words some other meaning, unable to imagine being left on the same island, alone, with Aunt Eleanor. “You can’t just go,” she whispered.

Owen spread his hands.

Annie saw the pain in his eyes—pain she could not bear . . . or bear to cause. “She’s worse of late.”

“Jamison wrote me as much.” Owen seemed relieved, if only to divert the conversation. “I’m sorry. I should never have left you with her.”

Annie drew a ragged breath. “It couldn’t be helped. But she dotes on you so. Still, she’s hateful to me when you’re not there.” Annie shook her head, bewildered. “I don’t know what makes her so. I don’t do anything to her.”

“Grandfather modeled hatred. It’s all she’s ever known.”

“But Mother wasn’t like that.”

“No, Mother was love itself. It was something she and Father shared. Aunt Eleanor despised her for leaving, for finding happiness with Father—courage and happiness she couldn’t begin to understand.”

Annie picked at her serviette. “Last week she called me by Mother’s name. She did not say it kindly.”

“That’s why you can’t stay, either.” Owen pushed a stray wisp from her forehead.

“I don’t wish to stay. I only wish you would take me with you.” Annie’s eyes filled again.

“Soon, Annie,” Owen vowed but turned away. “Just as soon as I can.”

The next morning Annie placed her hairbrush inside her carpetbag. She’d long dreamed of going away with Owen, of leaving Aunt Eleanor and Hargrave House forever. But she’d wanted a new life, not an enforced holiday with strangers. There had to be a way to make Owen stay until he could afford for them both to go. And if it required every ounce of tears and wheedling she possessed, she would use it to change his mind. She’d seen Aunt Eleanor use those feminine tools with great success.

But when she descended the stairs, she overheard the widow’s whispers.

“I’d offer you to leave the darling girl here, Mr. Owen, but you know it might get back to Miss Hargrave, and then where would my brother be? No one can tell her mind till she’s spoken it, and it ain’t always laced with kindness, now is it?”