Читать книгу The Worthington Wife - Sharon Page - Страница 11

6

The Missing Girl at Lilac Farm

This was the most exhilarating and terrifying evening of Hannah’s life.

As kitchen maid, she’d made all these dishes before, but tonight she felt like she’d forgotten everything. She checked the soup—not a cold soup as it was early June and not stifling hot yet. She’d made mulligatawny because the spice would cover up for any number of evils. The aspic was setting up properly, but it almost slid off the plate when she set it down and her heart just about stopped.

A pot boiled over and Hannah took off at a run, lifting it off the heat. The salmon! How long had it been since she’d last looked at it? She set down the pot, opened the oven. Not burned, thank heavens.

Hannah set to spooning the mustard sauce over the salmon. She looked over. Tansy was halfheartedly stirring the sauce for the Chicken Lyonnaise.

“Why am I running about like a chicken with my head cut off, Tansy?” she demanded. “I’m trying to do everything while you stir a spoon in a pot. You’re supposed to be taking care of half of these things I’m doing.”

“I am doing things. You’ve shouted at me and ordered me about all day!”

“I’m the cook now! That’s what I’m supposed to do. When I was the kitchen maid, I took orders all the time. And I got an earful if I wasn’t always rushing at full speed. You didn’t finish cleaning the stove after lunch and you forgot to wash half the pots. I would have been sacked for that. You heard his lordship—you’re all supposed to help. I am being nice to you.”

“Well, thank you, Your Highness,” Tansy said, her words dripping with sarcasm.

Hannah sighed. Why couldn’t she be commanding? One word from Mrs. Feathers and they all used to quake. But Mrs. Feathers did it with words as sharp and wounding as her cleaving knife and Hannah couldn’t do that.

Tansy started to hum a jazz song. She swayed back and forth while she stirred, which made the bowl tip precariously.

“Mind. You’ll have it on the floor,” Hannah declared. She hurried over and grabbed the bowl. Hannah hated to think badly of anyone, but she feared Tansy was deliberately trying to make her fall flat on her face tonight.

“I’m just happy. Do you want to know why?” Tansy dimpled.

Hannah hated the sour feeling that came over her. She’d never really thought about how she looked until Tansy came. Her mum had always insisted she look “presentable.” On her afternoon off once, she’d bought a lipstick and put some on, then forgot about it and had gone home to see her parents with her lips painted red. Mum had scrubbed so hard her lips had stung all day. Of course, now Mum and Father were gone and she had no one.

Hannah brushed back a stray hair with her flour-covered forearm. She had plain brown hair and brown eyes. Tansy’s hair was blue-black and she was truly lovely enough to be a film star. Hannah hated the awful feeling of jealousy that now seemed to live in her heart. “Why are you happy then, Tansy?”

“My beau’s going to take me out tonight in his motorcar. He’s going to wait for me and take me for a quick spin when I’m supposed to go to bed. Says he has to see me tonight. He can’t wait any longer. You know what that means?”

“Aye, it means he’s going to expect you to give him something in return for these motorcar rides and gifts. You’ve let him think you’re fast.”

“I’ve not let him do anything more than kiss me! I think he’s going to marry me.”

Hannah’s heart sank. “Oh, Tansy, I don’t think so.”

“He will.” Tansy stuck out her lower lip.

“Who is he, anyway? You’ve never told me his name. Where’d you meet him?”

“Just outside the village. I was waiting for the bus after visiting me family. It was raining something terrible and freezing cold. He offered to give me a ride back here. He’s a gentleman, you know. I think he’s the younger son of an earl. He doesn’t like to talk about it much, but I can tell from his cut-glass accent that he’s a toff. Gloriously handsome and he’s mad about me.”

“What’s his name, Tansy?”

“I call him Geoff.”

“He didn’t tell you the rest, did he? Oh, Tansy, do be careful. An earl’s son isn’t going to propose marriage to a kitchen maid!”

“These days, gentlemen are a lot more interested in a girl with sex appeal than in marrying some dowdy lady who has a big dowry and a horsey face.” Tansy stuck out her tongue. “You’re jealous. That’s why you’re so hard on me.”

“I’m hard on you because I know the standards of this house and you have to meet them. And I’m not jealous. I have your best interests at heart.” Hannah wagged a spoon at Tansy. “There was a girl I knew. She was the daughter of the people at Lilac Farm. She went out in a car with a handsome gentleman one night. Maybe she ran off with him, or maybe he ruined her and she had to run away for the shame. Either way she disappeared. She was never seen again.”

* * *

Hell, he found himself looking forward to seeing Julia again.

Rain spattered down as her car pulled up at the front door. Cal ran out so she wouldn’t have to get out. He let himself in on the passenger side. Seeing her was like being hit in the gut—and that had happened to him a lot in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood where he’d grown up.

Her lips were painted a darker red. A gray raincoat covered her, but revealed her stocking-clad legs below the knee. She had gorgeous legs. She smelled...probably the way heaven smelled.

“How was your dinner last night?” she asked.

“Great. Hannah did a good job. We had a dessert that I’ll never forget. Fruit and cream and lady fingers soaked in liquor.”

“English trifle.” She smiled at him. “I’m so glad it was a success.”

And off they drove. Along tree-lined lanes that swept up and down hills. Meadows and green fields stretched around them. In the distance he saw a soaring church spire, and buildings nestled among the hills. He had to admit it was pretty.

“This is Lilac Farm.” Julia brought the car to a stop beside a low stone wall. Within the wall, a few stone buildings sat in a cluster with a muddy yard between them. The wall continued along a downhill slope, defining small square fields.

Julia pulled up the parking brake. She strode ahead, opening a wooden gate in the stone wall. Cal followed, and as they stepped into the yard, someone inside the largest stone building shouted, “Damn and blast!”

A stream of snorting pigs spilled out of a barn and headed toward them like an unstoppable wave. Pigs moved a hell of a lot faster than Cal expected.

They were going to be crushed against the stone wall. Planting his hands on Julia’s small waist, Cal hoisted her up, over the wall. Then he jumped over himself.

The animals scurried everywhere, grunting and squealing. An elderly man stumbled out of the barn. Covered in mud, the white-haired man wheezed, “Stop ’em. They’ll get away. Get two of ’em in the front and force ’em back.”

Julia scrambled toward the rampaging pigs.

“Go back,” Cal shouted. “Let me do this.”

He got his hands on one of the pigs but his attention was on Julia. The animal pulled him off his feet. He fell as Julia cried, “Cal!”

Rolling over in the muck, he avoided the hooves and jumped to his feet. Hell, Julia had clambered back over the wall and was waving a scarf at the pigs like a Spanish bullfighter. This time he knew what to expect when he got his arms around one. He held on tight and dug in his heels. Julia flapped frantically and he managed to wrestle the pig so it was facing the barn. Spooked, it ran back toward home. He got a second animal running after the first. Sure enough, the rest began to follow. A splashing sound came as the farmer dumped the contents of a pail into a wooden trough. Grunting, the pigs scrambled over each other for a spot, their desire to escape long gone.

Julia latched the gate, then ran up to him, laughing, gasping for breath. Her shoes sank in the mud. She stumbled forward, hands flailing because her feet were stuck tight. Cal leaped forward and caught her, wrapping his arms around her. It threw him off balance, and he staggered back so they wouldn’t fall—

Their faces bumped. “Ow!” she said and he grunted as she dissolved into giggles. Something he never expected Julia to do, but the sound enchanted him. As he helped her stand up, he looked down.

“Your shoes are ruined,” he said. “You should’ve stayed where I put you.”

She laughed. Rain ran down her hat and coat. “Shoes can be cleaned. I knew it was more important that we herded the pigs. And you got the worst of it, Cal. It’s ruined your rather nice suit.”

He looked down. He looked like he used to in the New York slums. Covered in filth. “Damn it.” He rubbed hard at the muck on his trousers, trying to brush it off.

Julia touched his arm. “You needn’t worry about some mud on your pants. Anyway, I thought you rather liked to look bohemian.”

Normally he didn’t care what he looked like. But in front of Julia, he suddenly felt like he was a poor kid in the slums again, with a dirty coat, torn breeches and a dirty face. “Maybe I just did that to shock the countess.” He turned to the farmer and stuck out his hand for a handshake.

“I would like to introduce you to his lordship, the new earl,” Julia said. “This is Mr. Brand, Worthington, and his family has farmed here for almost one hundred and fifty years.”

Brand looked guilty. “Begging your pardon, yer lordship. Wouldn’t have asked you to help with the pigs, if I’d known who ye were.”

“You didn’t object to Lady Julia helping,” Cal observed. “Does she chase pigs often?”

He felt Julia dig him in his side. “Of course not,” she said crisply. “But it is important to pitch in where needed.”

“A right good sport is Lady Julia,” Brand said. “Comes to see me and the missus all the time, she does.”

“Harry!” A panicked woman’s voice came from another stone building. An elderly woman hobbled out of what must be their cottage. “Sarah’s gone. I don’t know where she is.”

Cal hoped Sarah was a pet pig who’d just been rescued. Then he saw tears streaking the woman’s cheeks. He asked, “Who is Sarah? Are you sure she’s missing?”

Julia’s hand touched his shoulder. Just one look and he recognized she wanted to take charge. He might be the lord, but Julia knew these people and they knew her. He stepped aside. Julia soothed the woman and led her back to the small stone farmhouse. They had to step down some stone steps and duck to go through the doorway.

As Julia went in with Mrs. Brand, Cal turned to the farmer, who was sucking on his pipe. “Who is Sarah?”

“She were our daughter.”

“And she’s missing?”

“She went missing in the spring of 1916, before all the lads went to fight at the Somme. The missus gets confused. Some days she thinks Sarah is still here. Or she thinks Sarah has just gone missing. Then she gets upset all over again.”

“Did you never find out where Sarah went?”

“I don’t know what ’appened to ’er. She wasn’t the sort to run off with a man. She was a good girl. Since she never came home, I think she’s gone. Gone to a better place.”

“You think she was killed?” He hated to be brutal, but it seemed to be what the man was saying.

“Even if she just ran away, she were on her own. Prey to the cutthroats on the roads and the scoundrels who ravish girls. If she were alive, she’d ’ave written to me and the missus. The lass never did. No, in my ’eart, I know my Sarah is gone.” The old farmer put his pipe to his lips but tears welled in his bright blue eyes.

Cal pulled out a handkerchief, a fine soft square of linen, handing it to the man. In New York, any woman of the slum neighborhoods knew about Jack the Ripper and the New York murder of a woman in 1891. Cal wouldn’t have expected it here, on an English estate. Maybe the girl just ran away. Maybe she was ashamed to write home. She might have gotten pregnant.

“Is there any help I can give you?” he asked.

“We manage just fine, my lord. You may have heard some sorry tales from Mr. Pegg.”

The farmer looked defensive, and Cal was thrown off by the shift in conversation. Who in hell was Pegg? Then he remembered the lawyer had told him Pegg was the land agent of Worthington Park. Pegg had left before Cal arrived, taking a job somewhere else. Apparently offended to work for the impoverished American heir.

“Pegg was gone before I got here. Is it just you and your wife on the farm? Do you have other children?”

“Another girl, but she’s married. She married a lad from Stonebridge Farm. We lost our boy in the War. At Verdun, my lord.”

“I’m sorry. Many good men were lost.”

The farmer led him to the house. He ducked his head and went into a rough kitchen. A wooden sideboard held dishes. A teakettle whistled on the stove. Julia plucked it off.

Just as with Ellen Lambert, Lady Julia was making tea for a farmer’s wife. No airs and graces. No snobbery. Never once did she behave as if she were too good to make a cup of tea or too good to help these people.

Cal went to Julia and stood behind her as she poured tea in a pot. He had to ask her this privately, so he lowered his lips so they almost touched her ear. This close he could see the skin on her exposed neck looked satin-soft. “What’s wrong with Mrs. Brand? Has she lost her mind?”

* * *

His warm breath. The closeness of his body. In the Brands’ kitchen, Julia felt her knees go weak.

She was very close to crying—seeing the poor Brands always brought her to tears. For some mad reason, she wanted to press tight against Cal’s broad chest. She wanted him to hold her.

But she had been raised to always be cool and composed. To never break down, except in private. And to never fling herself into a man’s arms. She had never done that. Not even with Anthony or Dougal. She had been kissed but she’d never been comforted by a man.

She turned with the hot kettle of water, which forced Cal to step back.

Thank heaven. She could barely think with his hot breath on her neck. She hoped he thought it was the weight of the kettle that made her tremble.

“I do know the poor thing has been confused ever since her daughter’s disappearance,” Julia murmured to him as she poured hot water into the teapot.

“Brand told me that some days she believes Sarah is at home. Or she relives the time when Sarah first went missing and she lives through the pain all over again.”

“Yes.” Julia could understand how such pain could make you go mad. When she had lost Anthony, it hurt dreadfully. Then there was loss upon loss. All the other young men she knew who never came back from war. Will’s death. Her father’s passing. Her heart broke and broke.

Oh, she had been strong and stoic. She never let anyone see how much her heart had been shattered. But all that was left of it was bits and pieces inside her.

The only difference between her and Mrs. Brand was that the poor woman’s broken heart had broken her mind, too.

“Is there any way to make her understand what happened?” Cal asked.

“I explain it over and over, as gently as I can. But then she forgets what I’ve told her.”

“She just can’t face the fact her daughter might be dead. Maybe if she could be snapped into reality—”

“No!” Julia grabbed his arm. “What if that snapped her mind altogether? What if it made her so depressed she did something drastic? That would destroy Brand.”

But Cal left her. Frightened, Julia watched him walk to Mrs. Brand.

He dropped to one knee and clasped her hand. “Do you know where Sarah is?”

“Don’t do this,” Julia hissed at him. “Please don’t.”

Slowly Cal told the woman who he was. “I’m so sorry to tell you that your daughter is missing. She might have gone away. That’s what we hope. I’m going to find out what happened to her. For you. I promise.”

He couldn’t promise that. How could he find out now, so many years later?

He was gentler with Mrs. Brand than she expected. She had to admit that. He had been that way with Ellen and Ben. Kind. She could see they all liked him.

Of course, they had no idea what he planned.

She bustled forward and gave out cups of tea. “His lordship is worried about you trying to manage the farm,” she said to Mr. Brand. “He wonders if you would be happier to leave it. You could be given a cottage—”

“Pensioned off?” Brand exclaimed. His cup rattled, spilling tea. “Nae, I’d not like that at all. This is our home. I won’t leave until they carry me out. Brands have farmed this land for over a century. It should have gone on to me son—”

“We can’t go.” Mrs. Brand looked up suddenly. “We can’t! We have to be here for when Sarah comes home! We can’t have her come home and we’re not here. She’d never find us! If I leave here, she’ll never come home to us!”

Julia saw Cal soothe the woman, a look of raw panic on his handsome face. She wanted him to see what it would do to these people to be forced out. Though she hated to make them upset.

“You won’t have to leave,” Cal said. “Don’t worry about it.”

Mrs. Brand stared at him, shaking. “Who are you?” she demanded. “I don’t know you.” The woman looked up helplessly. Then saw her. “Lady Julia! Good afternoon, your ladyship. Is the wedding to Lord Anthony going to be soon? I saw him yesterday. Driving his fancy horseless carriage, he was. All the silver on it shone in the sun. Brilliant red, it was, like a ripe apple. It’ll be a lovely wedding, I’m sure.”

Julia hated this moment. She didn’t want to remind the woman that Anthony died in the War. That would lead Mrs. Brand to remember she’d lost her son, too. But she must be honest.

Then Cal said, “I’m afraid Lord Anthony was killed in the War. He was a brave young man. I am the Earl of Worthington now, Mrs. Brand.”

“But you’re Lord Anthony. I see it now. You’ve changed so much, but I do see—”

“No, Mrs. Brand. I’m not Lord Anthony.” He gently squeezed her hand. “I’ll find someone to help you here, with the farm. How does that sound?”

“We’ve got our son. And Laura and Sarah. We’re just fine.”

Cal flashed a helpless look. Julia mouthed: You can’t do anything.

He stood and reiterated to Mr. Brand, “You need help around here. I’ll see that you get it.”

He was lying to Brand, surely. And she hated that. As they left, she whirled on Cal. “You aren’t going to get them any help. Your plan is to sell their farm out from underneath them. It will probably kill them.”

“And it’s better to let them die there?”

“I look in on them almost every day. Though, I do agree they need help.”

“I will look after them. I gave them my word. And, when I sell this place, I won’t leave innocent victims.”

“You were kind to Ellen and to the Brands. I can see you really do care about their welfare. You could be a good lord for Worthington Park.”

He grimaced, as if in pain. “I couldn’t live with myself, angel, if I stayed here and lived like an earl.”

* * *

Rain came hard that night, slamming against the paned windows of his bedroom. Cal undid his right cuff link and tossed it into a silver dish on the dresser. By rights, he would be undressing Lady Julia right now, exposing her lush, creamy skin, kissing every delicious inch of her. But she kept taking him places where he had no right to be thinking about seduction.

He was going to have to fix that.

Removing his other cuff link, he tossed it, but it bounced out of the dish, landed on the polished floor and skidded beneath one of the wardrobes.

Cal squatted down, reached under the decorative wood skirting and found his cuff link. But his fingers touched something else and he pulled that out, too.

A small photograph, faded and curling.

He looked at it and almost dropped it in shock. Lady Julia gazed back at him with parted lips and enormous innocent eyes, and she was wearing almost nothing at all.

Cal rubbed his eyes. Sure enough, it was not Julia. It was a grainy photo of a black-haired young woman in a corset. The corset gave the woman a generous swell of bosom and the picture showed a stretch of fleshy bare thigh. Her hair was loose and thick. All that dark hair and the huge eyes made the woman look like Julia.

The photograph probably dated from the War, from the look of the corset.

Julia had said John Carstairs was just a boy during the War. So had this naughty photo belonged to Anthony? He flipped it over and there it was—written in careful handwriting. A, with love. No initial or name for the woman. Considering he’d sketched and painted dozens of naked women, Cal had to smile. He could imagine a repressed Englishman being titillated by the picture—

“My lord, when do you wish to begin a search for a new valet?”

Cal looked up. He held the photograph in his hand, and Wiggins stood in the doorway. “I told you I don’t need one. I’m capable of taking off my own clothes.” He held out the picture. “I found this under the wardrobe. Lady friend of Lord Anthony’s?” He was teasing, expecting to make the butler blush.

He was surprised when Wiggins turned white. “I apologize, my lord. I did not realize the apartments had not been thoroughly cleaned. I shall have Mrs. Rumpole reprimand the maids for their carelessness.” The butler yanked the picture out his hands. “Let me dispose of this, my lord.”

Cal didn’t want to see a maid getting in trouble. “It’s not a problem.”

“It is my duty to deal with the matter, my lord. If you will excuse me, I will take my leave.”

Wiggins retreated so fast that the door slammed behind him. Lightning forked outside the window, illuminating the room in a flash of silver-blue, then thunder boomed.

It was then he realized that Anthony had never been earl, so had never slept in this room. So why was his picture under the earl’s wardrobe?