Secrets of Nanreath Hall (18 page)

May 1941

D
espite the black news of the war, spring still came to the English countryside. Fields and high moorland meadows became a sea of wildflowers, and the trees burst into an artist's palette of pinks, yellows, and whites. The icy coastal gales softened to soggy gray drenches that left the landscape veiled behind a slanted misty curtain or trapped in a blanketing fog.

Anna was both amazed and relieved when a letter arrived from Mrs. Willits, recounting the bombing that had left her homeless—again. Seeing it as an omen, she'd promptly returned to London, and only now been settled enough to send word. Anna wrote back immediately, barely able to contain her joy at this unexpected resurrection. It gave her hope there might be similar news from Sophie's Lieutenant Douglas, whose whereabouts continued to be unknown.

Sophie continued to do her work, but there was a new vacancy to her gaze and a bleakness to her smile. She rarely joined Tilly and Anna for evenings of sherry and gossip anymore. Her thoughts of
an overseas posting were abandoned. The beautiful red dress remained packed away at the bottom of her trunk.

“I'm worried about her, Anna. She's barely eating enough to keep a bird alive and I know she's not sleeping. It's been months since Charles—”

“Don't say it, Tilly. He's not dead. He's missing. And until we hear otherwise, that's all it is. He'll turn up. We have to believe it so Sophie will believe it.”

Now that winter's rush of measles, scarlet fever, and influenza patients had been discharged, there was time for a walk into the village of an evening. Tilly and Anna sat at a smoky corner table in the pub, pints of bitter between them. Sophie had declined their invitation, as she declined all their attempts at breaking through the bleak resignation in which she'd wrapped herself.

“Sophie's not a fool,” Tilly argued, lighting a cigarette with Marlene Dietrich sophistication. The tweedy farmer sitting at the bar nearly swallowed his tongue. “Even if he's alive, he's most likely in some German prisoner of war camp.”

“But alive and well and with the hope of return.” Anna scowled. “Say it.”

Tilly sighed, her gaze floating past Anna's shoulder to the pair of airmen just now coming through the door. “Alive and well and with the hope of return.”

“Not exactly with conviction, but it'll have to do.”

Tilly straightened, a smile curving her red lips as she flashed Anna a sidelong look. “Look who just wandered in. Tony dreamboat Lambert and some chaps from the airfield.”

Anna's head snapped around to spy his familiar broad shoulders and sun-bronzed face as he pushed his way through toward their table. Her stomach did that little flip-flop it always did when she saw him, and her heart sped up.

“May I join you?” he asked.

“Please do.” Tilly eyed him up and down as if he were a three-course meal. “I was beginning to think we'd wasted our evening. Nothing but boys and old men here tonight.”

“And every single one of them would crawl over themselves to buy you a drink,” Anna teased.

Tilly smirked. “There is that. Perhaps I'll test your theory out on that cute mechanic over by the dart board. Ta, ducks.” She rose with a feline grace that quieted conversation as all eyes watched her saunter her way across the room.

“She's incorrigible,” Tony commented, watching Tilly in action. “That poor chap doesn't stand a chance.”

“She's honest and uncomplicated. I wish I had half her courage.”

“You have a different sort of bravery, I think.” He sipped at his beer.

The evening crowd thickened as airmen from St. Eval mixed with the local population. Across the room, Hugh ducked beneath the lintel, his golden head like a beacon in the dim, smoky interior. He came alone, though that didn't last as a small group coalesced around him, the women flirting, the men laughing at his ribald jokes.

“Lord Melcombe—the life of every party,” Tony said, placing the glass in front of her. “I just hope I don't have to carry him home tonight. I'm growing weary of babysitting, and Lady Boxley's gotten wise to me. The last time I brought him home, I had to hide in the shrubbery for ten minutes. Now I know how a fox must feel as the hounds bear down.”

“He looks like he's found a new minder.”

Tilly had abandoned her mechanic, and now she and Hugh sat at the bar, laughing over drinks. Anna watched as Hugh's arm came round Tilly's shoulder. She smiled up at him, her eyes sparkling.

“You needn't worry, you know,” Tony commented. “Hugh's a charmer, but he's not a rake. He'll not let things get out of hand.”

“Won't he?” She sipped at her beer. “You think Tilly will stop him? She's half in love with the sod.”

“I think Tilly's smarter than you give her credit for. She knows Hugh's game and plays it twice as well.”

“Maybe you're right.”

“I know I'm right. You worry too much. If it's not Sophie, it's Tilly or Hugh. If I weren't such a cocky bastard, I'd be jealous.”

“You needn't be,” she said softly.

He covered her hand with his own. She let it rest there for a moment before sliding free. Her throat went dry, her nerves jumping. He released her without comment, but his second pint went down much faster. “Now that you're back, have you managed to pry loose any of Nanreath's secrets?”

“Oh, just a little something . . . like . . . maybe . . . the name of my father.” She eyed him with a proud smile.

His stare focused with a new intensity. “Did you?”

“His name was Simon Halliday. I had my suspicions, but Lady Boxley confirmed it.”

“You finally spoke to her.”

“It was more like a royal audience, but yes.”

“What else did she tell you?”

“He and my mother met when he came here one summer to assist with portraits of the last earl's daughters and Her Ladyship. According to her, he was brash, arrogant, and without scruples.”

“You don't sound as if you believe her.”

“I should, I suppose, but I can't. Something makes me believe there was more to it than that. He might have been all those things Lady Boxley claims, but I truly believe in his own way he must have
loved my mother.” She pulled the rolled catalog from her bag and handed it to Tony with the page marked.

“Bloody marvelous,” he said on a small, impressed gasp.

“My father painted it.”

“She's . . . very beautiful.” He cocked her a shy smile. “Though she can't hold a candle to her daughter.” He handed her back the catalog. “So why didn't they marry and live happily-ever-after?”

She picked at the table where the wood splintered under decades of wet glasses and dirty plates. “Sometimes love isn't enough. Life gets in the way.”

Forgive my love
.

Anna focused on her drink, the bar, the door—anywhere but at Tony. Tilly and Hugh had disappeared, their stools empty. A raucous game of darts in the corner drowned out conversation. Cigarette and pipe smoke burned her eyes, and she felt dizzy after so many beers on an empty stomach.

“Want to get out of here?”

She nodded.

Outside, she inhaled the fresh, salty air. Clouds obscured the moon, and the street was barely a paler shadow among the thick, cloying dark. They passed a warden making his rounds and a doctor headed on a house call as they meandered down toward the sea, where the shingle crunched under their feet and the water slapped at the fishing boats moored at the harbor's wall. “Why do you suppose she did it, Tony? What would make her pose in such a way for him?”

“You said it yourself. She loved him.”

“Fat lot of good that did her. Do you think she ever regretted her choice? Do you think she ever regretted . . . me?”

He didn't answer at once. But after a suitable weighty silence, he
cleared his throat. “There were plenty of options for women who regretted their choices, Anna, but she did the best she could by you.” He ground out his cigarette under his heel. “I don't think you can ever doubt she loved you very much.”

They sat on the harbor wall, legs dangling above the water. Tony leaned back on his elbows to stare up at the sky. Anna enjoyed the comfort of his quiet presence. She'd come to rely on his friendship despite her intention to keep him at arm's length.

“I can't get used to how dark it is out here,” she said. “I mean, London's dark since the blackout, but it's still different. Here, the sky seems so close and the stars . . . I've never seen so many.”

“Do you know your constellations?”

“Only the Big and Little Dippers, and Orion. His belt is an easy one.”

She felt rather than saw Tony smile. “They're up there.” He pointed above the horizon and off to their right. “Those two stars there are Castor and Pollux. They make up part of Gemini that sinks below the ocean there. And off to the left and above is Leo. See, you can just make out his head and follow it around. There's the star Regulus and his body goes back from there.”

Anna tried to follow his hand as it painted its way across the sky. The beers at the pub left her warm and relaxed as she listened to him explaining the stars and their positions. His voice held a deep, resonating certainty as he spoke. “My dad had a telescope when I was a kid. He was always dragging it out to show us lads what was what up there. Who knew it would come in so handy?”

“Do you miss your family?”

“It's just my dad at home and old Mrs. Sinclair, our housekeeper, who keeps him in proper nabob style. One brother's in the navy, the other working in RAF ops outside of London. My sister's married
and living in Edinburgh.” A shadow lay across his face like a crescent, his cheekbone honed to a knife edge. “I miss them, of course. But we'll be together at some point, then I'll wonder what I ever saw in the pesky lot of them.”

Anna gave a soft laugh. “It must be wonderful to have such a big family. It was always just the three of us in Aldersgate. Now, well . . .” She tipped her palm up in a gesture of futility.

“Now you have Hugh and Lady Boxley and mysterious Aunt Amelia and that wild daughter of hers. A whole different family.”

Anna stared up into the sky and kept silent.

Tony seemed to sense the wild sawing of her thoughts. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. Lit one behind a cupped hand, the tip glowing against the dark. “The Lamberts are a noisy, uncivilized bunch. Dad's the first generation who didn't have to scrabble to make ends meet, and it shows. You should have seen the horrified faces when he'd turn up at my school's prize day, speaking like a collier's boolie. He did it on purpose, you know? He thought it was hilarious to shock a reaction from all the old money who looked down on him despite the fact he could buy them ten times over.” He chuckled under his breath. “My family argues and they're messy and uncouth at times, but they're a good lot. Solid, you know what I mean?”

Anna lay back beside him, her hands behind her head, and smiled up at the milky trail of starlight. “I know exactly what you mean.”

I
t was May, and Anna took advantage of the lovely warm spring afternoon to take a blanket, book, and flask of lemonade out onto the lawn. She settled beneath a greening elm tree, her back resting against the trunk, knees drawn up. Clouds pulled thin as candy
floss spread across a milky blue sky. On days such as this, it was hard to believe men were fighting and dying and the world bucked and growled as it sought to tear itself apart.

A nurse and soldier strolled arm in arm along the path leading toward the cliffs. She wore the same uniform as every other VAD, but the gleaming blond chignon and movie-star figure gave Tilly away. Anna was pleased to see her back to normal. She'd returned from a week's leave far too quiet—at least for Tilly, and twice she'd turned down an evening at the pub. Anna hoped it didn't have anything to do with Hugh, who'd been visiting London around the same time. Tony tried reassuring her, but she couldn't help fearing that Tilly would be the one to suffer for Hugh's increasing restlessness.

A group of recovering patients played a game of cutthroat croquet on the lawn by the back terrace, the mingled, laughing voices of Lancashire and Perthshire, Isle of Dogs Cockney and flat Canadian drawl. Hardly more than boys, and when left to themselves reverting to young boys' games and young boys' vocabulary. If she were back home, she'd have been shocked by such crude vulgarities spoken within her hearing. Here and now, it was part of life, and the real vulgarity was playing out in the skies above her and on the far-off battlefields of North Africa.

“Enjoying this fine afternoon, Nurse Trenowyth?”

Anna looked up to find Captain Matthews at her elbow. “Sorry, sir. A million miles away.”

“So it would seem,” he said with a genial smile. “I didn't mean to intrude. A nurse's half day off is too precious to use in chattering away with an old doctor.” He cleared his throat and ran a finger along his thin, pale mustache. “Matron says you have a real aptitude for nursing. That's quite a compliment coming from her.”

“I hope to continue my nurse's training after the war, sir.”

“A worthwhile goal. If you ever have need of my assistance in pursuing the field, let me know. I have contacts at St. Thomas's in London that would be happy to put you in the way of a suitable posting.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

He shifted from foot to foot, swiped a hand through his thinning brown hair, and looked as if he wished to share her blanket but was unsure of his reception.

“What ho, Captain. Nurse Trenowyth.” Anna looked over her shoulder to see Hugh approaching across the grass. His gait remained awkward and crab-like as he traversed the uneven ground.

Matthews stiffened, as if to attention. “Good afternoon, my lord.”