An Honest Heart (11 page)

She reached out and held the board in place with her free hand. “I was wondering when you would get around to asking for assistance.”

He glanced at her, surprised to see the amusement in her gaze. “I suppose I am accustomed to working with assistants—nurses—who know when to offer help without being asked.”

The angle and depth of the doorway meant tight quarters. Neal tried his best to maintain distance and avoid physical contact with Miss Bainbridge . . . no matter how much he wished otherwise. He tapped the first nail in—and he felt her cringe at the noise.

“Are you ill? Feeling faint?” He was ready to set down the carpenter’s tools and ply the trade for which he’d trained.

“No. I just hope that Mother and the others will sleep through this.”

He should have guessed. The more time he spent near her, the more he realized that she never thought of herself before others. “If the break-in did not wake them, I doubt this will.”

It took all three boards to cover the two panes that had been broken out, and by the time Neal started tapping the last nail in, the sky had lightened considerably.

Caddy shifted from foot to foot, biting her bottom lip.

Ignoring the need for quiet, Neal pounded the last nail in. Any time now, their neighbors would be rousing, setting about their morning routines before opening up shop for the day. And if he was seen leaving Miss Bainbridge’s at dawn . . . he did not want to imagine the gossip that would start. Of course, they could assume he’d come here to see Mrs. Bainbridge again. But he did not want to risk the daughter’s reputation over the hope they would.

As soon as the head of the nail was flush with the wood, he opened the door. “Will you be all right if I—?”

“Yes, yes. Thank you. I don’t know what I would have done without your assistance.” She leaned out the door and looked up and down the street.

“You need your rest. Please, try to get some sleep.” He reached to tip his hat, then remembered he wasn’t wearing one. “Good . . . morning, Miss Bainbridge.”

A smile stole over her features, hiding her frown. “Good morning, Dr. Stradbroke.”

Swinging and spinning the hammer in his hand, Neal whistled quietly as he jogged across the street and up the stairs to his flat.

He went straight to the front room and pushed back the curtain to gaze across the street. The lamp he’d left her with made enough of a contrast inside the dress-and-notions shop that he could see Miss Bainbridge’s feminine silhouette still moving about—no doubt having gone back to sweeping up the glass, since he’d interrupted that task.

He watched until the dawning light outside made it impossible to see even her shadow moving inside the shop. Letting the curtain fall, he did something he hadn’t done in years. He prayed, asking God to watch over Miss Bainbridge.

At the first stirrings from upstairs, Caddy stashed the broom in the small supply closet behind the counter, doused the lamp, and dashed up to her bedroom. Girding herself with a deep breath, she opened the blinds and turned toward the small, round mirror over her washstand.

She groaned and turned away from the reflection. Papa had been fond of sensational stories of the American frontier, which he’d read aloud to her until one particular story gave her nightmares for weeks. The dream about being scalped still came occasionally. After seeing the strips of white muslin wrapped around half of her head, she had a feeling that night terror would return.

The bedstead creaked when she sank down onto the edge of the mattress. Explaining the injury didn’t worry her nearly as much as telling Mother the thief had made away with the strongbox that contained the week’s earnings—including the large sum she’d been paid at Chawley Abbey. She’d considered taking it straight to the bank, but she made her deposits once a week, and she saw no need to change that pattern.

Had the burglar known her schedule? Had he been watching her and known she’d delivered two fancy dresses on Friday and been paid for them?

Who would have such intimate knowledge of her business?

She lay back on the bed, head throbbing. A few minutes’ rest and then she would face the day—and the curious stares and questions she knew she would encounter.

A monstrous shadow engulfed her, hitting her head again and again with a pounding rhythm that would not cease. She tried to pull away, but it was as if she were bound, unable to move, unable to run.

A distant voice called her name. She tried to respond, but she could make no sound.

Something warm and heavy covered her shoulder, pulling her away from the shadow. A familiar yet foreign scent filled her nostrils. Spicy, laced with a hard-edged medicinal aroma—and an unmistakable undertone of a hard-laboring man. Through the dark, she lifted her hand, her fingertips meeting the hard, square jaw covered with a day’s growth of beard. She sighed in relief.

He was here. “Neal.”

“Wake up, Miss Bainbridge. You are dreaming.”

No. She wasn’t dreaming. That was his voice—his deep timbre sending shivers down her spine. But she needed to see him to be sure. The left side of her head fought against her will, but she dragged her eyes open and blinked a couple of times to clear her vision.

Neal Stradbroke hovered above her, his hair—a mix of blond and brown locks—falling forward over his forehead. Her fingers rasped against his new growth of beard. Dark shadows circled his eyes, and he looked like he could use a good, long nap.

“You came to rescue me.”

The skin around his blue eyes crinkled as the corners of his lips twitched up. The movement of his cheek under her hand sent a bolt of lightning down Caddy’s arm. For a moment, she allowed herself to enjoy it—and then she realized what she was doing and where they were. She let her hand drop to the mattress at her side.

If anyone saw them alone together in her bedroom . . .

“Is she coming around, Doctor?” Mother’s voice trilled from behind him.

Caddy closed her eyes and let her breath out slowly, trying to still the embarrassment that wanted to race through her chest and climb into her face.

“Yes, ma’am, I believe she is.” Neal’s voice came from farther away.

Caddy peeked through her lashes and saw that he’d straightened. One large hand rubbed the back of his neck as if it pained him.

She pushed herself up. The room spun, and she grabbed for the post at the foot of the bed. Her hand came in contact not with carved wood, but with muslin covering a warm, solid mass. His arm. Mortification coursed through her.

Dr. Stradbroke grabbed her elbows and assisted her back into a prone position. “You should stay in bed for today. You need rest in order to recover from the blow you took.”

“Blow? She took a blow?” Mother’s voice sounded even more shrill than normal. “What happened?”

Caddy closed her eyes and checked the bandage to ensure it had not shifted and revealed the extent of her injury to Mother.

“Mary, will you see to Miss Bainbridge?” Neal’s voice moved toward the door as he spoke. “I will accompany Mrs. Bainbridge to the kitchen.” After a bit of rustling, the floorboards creaked out in the hallway, and then footsteps faded away toward the stairs.

Caddy opened her eyes. Mary stood at the side of the bed, chewing her thumbnail. “It’s a right fix you’ve gotten yourself into, miss. You know Ma’am will not rest easy until she learns every detail of what happened.”

“The doctor can tell her about it better than I can. He was awake for the entire ordeal, whereas I . . .” Caddy touched the bandage again.

“Let’s get you into a nightgown, shall we?”

Caddy moved slowly, allowing Mary to help her disrobe. She’d never felt such relief at having her corset removed. As she returned to the bed, coverlet drawn to her chin, pillows plumped behind her head, Caddy promised herself that she would make sure Mary received a raise in pay. The middle-aged woman’s nursing skills were nothing compared to her ability to coddle without coming across as coddling. As soon as she was able, she would go to the strongbox and—

The intruder! Caddy sat bolt upright, heart pounding—which made her head throb all the more. She started to throw off the covers, but Mary restrained her with strength surprising in a woman so small.

“Miss Caddy, you cannot get out of the bed. You heard the doctor. You need your rest.”

“I have to know—have to find out—” But the dizziness and nausea wouldn’t allow her to rise, and she sank back against the pillows again. “Mary, I need to see Phyllis, please.”

“I shall fetch her—but only if you promise to stay put and don’t try to get up again.”

“I promise.” Caddy let her eyes drift shut. She was on the verge of sleep when footsteps brought her back to consciousness.

The shop girl entered, eyeing Caddy’s bandage warily. “The doctor told us what happened.”

Caddy made a mental note to thank him next time she saw him—even though words would never be enough to express her gratitude for his assistance through this ordeal. “Will you please check the strongbox and see if last night’s trespasser found it—and if so, how much he made away with?”

Phyllis pressed her lips together as tears welled in her brown eyes. “I’m sorry, miss, but the strongbox is gone.”

Mr. Howell had warned her that she needed a safe, but Caddy hadn’t listened, feeling that a locked strongbox would be deterrent enough. The small cast-iron chest weighed at least twenty pounds. But now it, and all the money in it, were gone. The quarterly rent. Mary’s and Phyllis’s wages. The bills she had planned to pay with the income from the gowns for Lady Carmichael and Miss Dearing. The apothecary and grocer bills.

Panic wrapped around Caddy’s windpipe and cut off her breath. In less than a month, she planned to go to London—not only to attend the Great Exhibition and see fabrics and colors and patterns from around the world, but to acquire as much as she could for the shop. All the money in her small private account, saved for this purpose, would now have to go to covering the expenses the strongbox money had been meant for.

She cleared her throat twice before she found her voice. “Thank you, Phyllis. That will be all.”

The nineteen-year-old looked as if she wished to say more, but left silently.

Caddy lay staring up at the rough planks of the ceiling between the heavy beams supporting the floor above.

Where was God in this?

She’d been raised to believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing Creator who loved and protected His children. But her parents’ religious devotion made her feel constrained as she grew up, and when she went off to finishing school, she mocked their beliefs to the other girls. While working her apprenticeship at a shop in London, she’d been exposed to people with different ideas than she’d heard in the country parishes her father had served in as rector all her life. Intellectuals who tried to prove the existence of God through reason. Atheists who tried to do just the opposite. She’d met people from every religious order imaginable, along with those who claimed no religion at all.

She’d felt mature and worldly stepping away from the faith of her father and mother. Until she struck out on her own, opened the seamstress shop, and tried life as an independent woman.

Loneliness had driven her back to her father’s church. Ten years after they sent her away to school, Caddy realized how empty she’d been inside. She’d embraced each new idea that had come her way, but none of them filled her with contentment the way listening to her father’s homilies and to her mother’s gentle hand at the pump organ.

Father. He’d had an apt Scripture verse for everything. She didn’t have to think very hard to know which one he would have applied to her current situation.

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

The words from the eighth chapter of Romans had become a familiar refrain during the months before his death—that along with his pleas for Caddy to take care of her mother, who, even then, had not been strong.

How did being robbed work for her good? Or was she not one of the called? Perhaps God had not forgiven her for the years of cynicism and mockery.

Twin tears trailed from the outside corners of her eyes and into her hair. She had no choice but to ask God to help her—and trust Him to do so. Because this was a situation she could not handle on her own.

C
HAPTER
N
INE

O
liver crossed his arms and slumped low in the pew. As his mother did, the Buchanans insisted their houseguests attend church with them every Sunday. And, if possible, the rector of the Wakesdown church was even older and more long-winded than the one in the Chawley parish.

He exchanged a wry grimace with Doncroft, assuming he, too, secretly cursed Radclyffe for using the excuse of a visit home as an escape from the boredom of sitting in the cold, drafty sanctuary for a couple of hours—meaning neither Oliver nor Doncroft could do the same.

Heaving a sigh, he stood with relieved poppings of his joints as the last hymn started. Next week, after the ball on Saturday night, he doubted anyone, even the family, would feel much like getting up early to do their religious duty.