Secrets of Nanreath Hall (33 page)

“Is that what you thought?” she asked mildly. “That I drove Kitty off to prevent her from exposing my infidelity?” A dark smile hovered on her lips. “You do have a rather sinister view of me, don't you?”

Anna frowned. This was where Lady Boxley was supposed to explain her actions in a tearful pleading confession. Not take a seat on one of a pair of sofas and beckon Anna to sit opposite her on the other. Not clear her throat with businesslike composure as she folded her hands across her handbag, eyes grave but far from horrified or guilt ridden. Anna felt as if the bombers had struck again and the floors beneath her had shifted under her feet.

“I found the pictures that you tried to hide. And the informa
tion in Lord Boxley's military record confirms he's not Hugh's real father.”

“I wondered where those pictures had gone. I should have known it was you.”

“So you admit it?”

Lady Boxley heaved a tired sigh, her shoulders rounding, as if she bore up against a great weight. “I sent Kitty away when she came home. That much is true. But I sent her away on her father's orders, not my own. The old earl had always been a stickler for society's hidebound proprieties. Kitty's affair with Halliday put all he held dear at risk—his position, his reputation, his connections. When she left, he cut off all communication. It was as if she never existed.”

“Yet, her portrait remains.”

“I returned it to the gallery after the late Lord and Lady Melcombe died. Despite its unfortunate subject, it's a Balázs. His works carry a hefty price tag. I wasn't going to let a potential source of future revenue molder away in Nanreath's leaky attics.” She clasped her hands in her lap, her diamonds winking. “As for William, he guessed long before Hugh was born that he wasn't the father. He chose to overlook it.”

“But that doesn't make sense.”

“Perhaps it doesn't to you, but times were different. Pride and shame in equal measure kept William silent, and since to divorce me would have been a financial as well as social disaster for the earldom, he did the only thing he could do under the circumstances—he ignored his suspicions. In the end, it turned out for the best.”

“But Hugh was the heir. He stood to inherit everything and yet . . .”

“He didn't bear one drop of Trenowyth blood?” Her smile tightened, as if she were in pain. “William was wounded in the war—
I'm sure whatever report you unearthed in London explained just how extensive those wounds were. He would not—could not—sire a child of his own. Hugh was all he had. If it was discovered he was a bastard, the earldom would have passed out of this line of the family to a distant second cousin. So for all those reasons, William ignored what he couldn't change, and Hugh became the earl in due course.”

“Does Hugh know?”

Until now, Lady Boxley's manner had been one of almost relief, but at mention of Hugh, her gaze hardened with its old animosity. “Don't be absurd. I only told you to make you understand what's at stake. My son must never find out. You see how he is; he drinks, he smokes, he runs around with a string of cheap women. All to prove he is still the man he was before he lost his leg. Would you add to his despair by telling him that man was a fiction all along? It would destroy him.”

“Doesn't he deserve the truth?”

“What good would it do now?” She clutched her bag, and a flash of real sorrow knifed her expression before she was once more a mask of complete self-control. “Eddie is dead, Miss Trenowyth. As is William, Lady Katherine, Simon Halliday. Everyone involved in this story are naught but ghosts. I would leave them where they are; in their graves. I would have you do the same. For your sake. For Hugh's.” She stood up, signaling the end of their conversation. “As I said before you went to London, the past is over and done with. We can only move forward as best we can. I tried to do what was best for my son just as Kitty thought she was doing what was best for you when she left you with the Handleys. That is all a mother can do. Muddle through and hope she's not made too big a hash of things. That you turn out well despite our failures.”

Anna looked upon Lord Boxley in his frame; stoic and stiff
upper lip as he prepared for war. She glanced at Lady Katherine, forever young and beautiful and poised to make the biggest choice of her life.

“Will you tell him?” She had never heard such vulnerability in Lady Boxley's voice.

Suddenly unable to stomach this house and its generations of Trenowyths all watching her with what seemed malicious curiosity, Anna rose from the sofa. When had life become so complicated? When had the truth become the enemy and the falsehood the friend? When had right and wrong grown so muddled?

“I don't know.”

“Anna?” Lady Boxley's use of her Christian name caused her to pause at the door. She turned back to see a fleeting look of entreaty pass over the older woman's face. “I would have thought you of all people would realize that digging up old pains only brings new sorrows. Hugh has grieved enough this past year, don't you think?”

T
urn it off, Nurse. I can't take any more bad news.”

“With allies like these, what's the point? These Russian blokes are as worthless as the bleeding French.”

“Russian bear? More like a Russian bunny rabbit.”

The men's grumbling prompted Anna to snap off the wireless.

“How about a nice game of bridge?” she asked, shuffling a deck of cards.

The men groaned. One stared out at the soggy lawn with longing in his eyes. Another put a record on the gramophone. The first sentimental bars of “London Pride” broke the dismal sound of the wind speckling the windows with rain. It had been pouring for close to a week. Even Anna was beginning to grow bored—and moss. Hugh's decision to visit a friend in Exeter had put any decision to speak with him on hold. Part of her was relieved. Part of her wished
for it simply to be over and done with. She changed her mind at least twice every thirty seconds.

“If nothing else, the foul weather's keeping the bombers on the ground. Let's be thankful for small favors,” she chirped, hoping to lighten their mood—as well as her own. A Ping-Pong ball crossed her bow. They obviously weren't buying what she was selling.

“Heard Portsmouth got it last week. And Bristol night before last.”

“Aye, the ports is getting it the worst. Them and those poor bastards at sea. Blighters running convoy duty are sitting ducks out there.”

“What of them boys up St. Eval way? Aren't they supposed to be keeping the Jerries at bay?”

“Ha. I heard they're close to packing it in. Lost near half a flight over the past weeks.”

Anna picked up a tray of glasses and set them on a trolley for delivery to the sinks downstairs. Cleared away lunch. Tried to hide her shaking hands as she began her twice daily round of ashtray emptying. Tony would be all right. He had to be all right.

“What ho, chaps! What's the latest from the front?” Hugh leaned against the door frame dressed in official-looking khaki, a white-trimmed cap perched on his head at a rakish angle, his usual cigarette dangling from his mouth.

“Sir!” The men straightened from their various poses of ennui to welcome Hugh. “Where have you been?”

“Thought you'd copped it in that jalopy of yours.”

“Or ran off with that blonde you told us about.”

Hugh processed down the passage between the beds like a commander inspecting his troops. All eyes followed him like a roomful of lovesick puppies. “Been away, but I'm back now, so you all have to shape up—or else. That means you, Harris.” He offered a lighter to
a tall, gangly boy with a bad case of stomach ulcers fumbling in the pockets of his robe.

The boy laughed and accepted the light, puffing at his gasper with a sigh of gratitude.

“Where's Rollins?” Hugh asked.

“Sent back to his unit, sir.”

“And that chap with the eye . . . what was his name . . .”—he snapped his fingers—“Stewart.”

“Him, too.”

“Bloody shame. Hell of a good bridge player.”

“Garrett's still here.”

“Of course he is. Never known a chap to have so many illnesses. What is it this time, Garrett? Bubonic plague with a side helping of foot rot?”

The men laughed, including a blushing Private Garrett.

Anna closed the lid on her box of medicines and set it back on the waiting trolley. “Is that a St. John's Ambulance badge you're wearing?”

Hugh did a model's turn in front of her. “It is. You're looking at the brigade's latest driver. I'm headed for training tomorrow.”

“When on earth did this happen?”

“Remember that meeting in London I scuppered out on?”

“Your mother was in a fume over it.”

“I ended in a pub, nursing a pint when in walks an old friend of mine. Apparently, he was invalided out of the navy with a steel plate in his head—not that you could have told the difference. He was always a bit of a clod. Anyway, we got talking and the next thing I know he's telling me about his work with the ambulance brigade. Got me thinking. I made a few calls and voilà . . .”

“I thought you went to Exeter to visit a friend.”

“I did. I just didn't happen to mention he worked as a district first aid superintendent.”

Anna grabbed the trolley and headed for the dispensary. “What does your mother say about it?”

He finished one cigarette and immediately lit another. “When she found out what I intended, she tried to persuade me to get posted to a nice cozy billet in East Dull and Boring, pushing files or answering telephones; something suitably dreary and away from any whiff of danger. But the way things are going, nobody's safe and there's nowhere to hide, so I may as well be doing something worthwhile. I've been stationed in Plymouth. The city needs drivers. I need to be busy.”

“I think it's perfect. You'll do splendidly.”

The back corridor where the dispensary was situated was dark; two bulbs had burned out and never been replaced. The air smelled of carbolic and sweat. A sister and an orderly passed them on her way to the wards. A VAD waxed the floor. “Can we find someplace private?” Anna asked.

“Of course.” Hugh led her to a side door. “What's going on?”

The terrace was chilly in the gray of a rainy afternoon. Or was that Anna's own nervousness lifting the hairs on her arms and at the back of her neck? The boom of the ocean mingled with the deeper distant sound of explosions. Another convoy. Another ship lost to the U-boats prowling the seas off the coast. No matter how many coastal patrols were sent out from St. Eval, it was never enough to keep everyone safe.

Now that she was faced with it, she felt clumsy and indecisive. Should she speak? Banish the ghosts that plagued Nanreath Hall like a fog or hold her tongue for the sake of Hugh and let the dead keep their secrets?

“What's the problem, Anna? Not to rush you, but I have to pack my kit. I leave in a few hours.” Hugh was already checking his watch, anxious to be away.

Inside, a phone rang. Footsteps sounded as someone hurried to answer it.

“It's about your father, you see,” she began.

The terrace doors opened behind her. A veiled head poked out. “Trenowyth? It's a chap by the name of Johnson on the line. Says there's been an incident at the airfield. They want you there right away. Flight Lieutenant Lambert's been injured.”

December 1916

L
ady Katherine, I would say this is a surprise, but I woke this morning with the most delicious premonition that you were coming to see me today.”

It had been so long since I had been called by this name that it took a few moments before I acknowledged her greeting. But her patchouli-scented hug was exactly as I remembered it, as were her clacking beads, her expressive hands, and her shrewd knowing gaze, which summed me up from the top of my felt cloche to the tips of my scuffed half boots, pausing only briefly at the rounded swell of my stomach.

“Minnie! Come greet Lady Katherine after all these long years away.”

Like Mrs. Vinter, her maid of all work Minnie looked exactly the same, though there was a grayness to her tired complexion I instantly recognized. “I'm sorry for your loss, miss. He seemed like a nice man.”

Her awkward compassion touched me, and I blinked tears from my eyes as I hugged her tight, feeling the give of her ribs and the narrowness of her shoulders. “Thank you, Minnie. He was nice—very nice.”

We entered the small sunroom where amaryllis bloomed in the windows and a cat curled lazily on a couch.
Don Giovanni
played on the gramophone. I half expected my portfolio to sit open on the table, pages of drawings scattered for Mrs. Vinter's critique, just as if the past three and a half years had never happened.

“Minnie, bring those scones, and we've last summer's preserves, and tea of course,” she said, her pleasure infectious. “You'll need it after traveling all day and in this nasty weather. It's been a terrible wet autumn. The cold goes right to my bones. Not as spry as I once was.”

“I know I shouldn't have come, but I had no one else I could turn to. I was desperate and well . . . I was afraid if I wrote, you'd refuse me. I thought it better just to sort of . . . turn up.”

“I'm offended. Of course you come to me. I'm not one to sit in judgment on someone else's actions. Too many of my own skeletons.”

“It's about William, you see,” I said as I took a welcome seat in an enormous armchair floating in throw pillows. “I saw the notice in the paper, but that was all. No one would tell me anything.”

“Poor Lord Boxley,” Minnie piped up. “They say he's lost an arm and the rest of him battered till his own mother wouldn't recognize him, and now they've shut him away where none can see him. I'll wager his wife is relieved or she'd have explaining to do, wouldn't she?”

“Thank you, Minnie,” Mrs. Vinter admonished. “I hear the kettle whistling.”

She scurried from the room under her employer's gimlet eye.

“You mustn't mind her. She talks a lot of rubbish, especially these days. I've had the doctor round to see her, but he says it's nothing time won't mend.” She heaved a great tired sigh, as if the world had grown too much for even her adventurous spirit. “It will take more years than I can count to mend the world after this mess, I think.” She turned her shrewd gaze on me. “Though some things are for the good. Women working as ambulance drivers, nurses, running canteens for the boys, factory work; why, I even saw a lady tram driver when I was in London last fall. Imagine that. Things are changing, Kitty. The world is a different place now.”

“It still feels like the same old tired world to me.” I accepted a cup of tea and a sandwich from Minnie, who returned bearing a tray loaded with more food than I could eat in a week.

“I've been worried about you since I heard about Mr. Halliday and your rather complicated situation.” She said this without the usual nervous sideways glance I had grown familiar with since I started showing.

“I'm fine.” I hastened to add, “Or rather as fine as I can be under the circumstances. Can I ask you a question, Mrs. Vinter?”

“Of course. Anything.”

“Can you love someone and hate them at the same time? I feel like my heart's been torn in two. I despise the lies Simon told me, but I can't despise him. I'm not half certain that I wouldn't have done just the same even if I had known the truth. He was everything to me.”

“You can't turn love on and off like a cold water tap, Kitty. ‘The heart wants what it wants or else it does not care.' Emily Dickinson wrote that. For an old spinster, she summed it up perfectly.”

“That's it exactly. I suppose I should be hiding away from the world, ashamed of the child I carry, but I can't. Is that wrong of me?”

“To face up to your choices and make good on a promise, even if
it's just a promise to yourself? That's never a reason to be ashamed.” She patted my ringless hand. “Now you say you're here to see your brother. I wish I could offer you more, but it's as Minnie says. None have seen him since he arrived home. Only the doctor and the vicar, and both tight-lipped about him, as if guarding state secrets. Makes the village uneasy, not knowing what's what. You should hear the old biddies at the village shop. A coopful of pullets couldn't cluck as much as them.”

“He's alive, though. That has to count for something.”

“He is, though he may not be the same man who went away to war.”

“None of them are. But we're not the same, either, are we? There's no going back.”

“No, we can't go back. We can only hope we never repeat it.”

As we finished off the last scone and emptied the pot of its last drop of tea, Mrs. Vinter asked, “Are you still painting, my dear?”

I gripped my hands, my knuckles white. “No, I haven't been able to since Simon died. My mind just refuses to . . . see things as I used to, and my hands fumble and tremble. I finally stopped trying.”

For the first time that afternoon, Mrs. Vinter's lined face sagged in something that looked like defeat. “Ahh, that's a shame. You were good, Kitty. You were damn good.” I hated the sense of disappointment I saw in her dulled eyes.

Minnie scurried into the room, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “It's Lady Boxley, mum,” she hissed. “She's asking to speak to Lady Katherine—alone. I've put her in the parlor to wait.”

We all exchanged wary glances, but of course I followed Minnie out into the hall where I stopped her with a hand on her arm. “Minnie, what did you mean when you mentioned that Lady Boxley would have some explaining to do?”

“Did I say that, milady? I didn't mean nothing. Mrs. V is always
scolding me for prattling on when I should be quiet and know my place.”

“But in this case, I want you to speak. Have you seen her with someone? Is that it?”

She eyed the floor with grim determination, mouth pursed tight.

“Please, Minnie. I'll not tell anyone you told me. You're perfectly safe.”

She grudgingly nodded, her eyes still on the floor. “Aye, miss. Up at the old ruins. Thought it was His Lordship.”

“Did they see you?”

“No, miss. My father would have killed me if I was caught up there with a boy. We slunk off quick and quiet.”

I tried not to remember my last sight of Cynthia in the arms of the blond officer in St. James's Park or the tears she shed as she released him with a kiss. Or William's avoidance of Nanreath Hall in the years since Hugh's birth. I tried to comfort myself with innocent scenarios and reasonable explanations, but the conclusions I continued to return to were anything but comforting. Still, whatever suspicions I harbored, I couldn't let Minnie's doubts continue.

“Perhaps it was one of Lady Boxley's brothers come for a visit. She has four of them.”

She gave a quick sharp jerk of her head. “Does she? I had four brothers, miss. None left but me now to take care of my da.”

“I'm so sorry.”

She shrugged off my pity. “Maybe it's as you say, miss. Maybe it was her brother up there in the ruins with her.” She opened the door to let me pass into the parlor, her final words spoken under her breath. “But I'd not wager on it.”