Secrets of Nanreath Hall (27 page)

“I think it's too late for that.”

When the kettle whistled, he fixed her a cup and pushed it toward her. “Why do you say that?”

“She was there. I'm sure of it. Just at the doorway.”

“I didn't see her.”

“You were otherwise occupied.” Steam rose enticingly from the surface and she took a sip. It burned a path all the way to her toes.

“Perfect,” Hugh huffed. “She barely survived the last shock to her heart. I'd better go find her and make sure she's all right.”

“Hugh?” Anna called after him. “I couldn't help but overhear you and Sergeant Greenwood talking. He asked you a question . . .”

An odd look of almost pain crossed his face, his bright eyes vacant, as if lost in thought. Then he offered her a melancholy smile. “I miss the flying more.”

A
nna didn't see Hugh on the wards for the next few days, though she hadn't heard any rumors of Lady Boxley succumbing to another attack of angina. Hopefully, he was merely busy with estate work and hadn't succumbed to his mother's strong-arm
tactics in keeping him away. She tried to convince herself it wasn't her problem—Hugh was a grown man, for heaven's sake. But she couldn't quite forget his self-pitying desolation the night of the New Year's social or the excited spark in his eyes she'd seen recently.

Not that she dwelt on it. Her schedule didn't allow for too much dwelling on anything—a gift disguised as exhaustion. This morning, for example. Her alarm didn't go off, the nurses' showers were broken, and her hair refused every attempt she made to pin it neatly beneath her veil. She'd just enough time to snatch a quick glance at her fading Technicolor bruises in the mirror before she needed to be on the ward in—she checked her watch—three minutes.

She raced from her room, tearing down the steps toward the first-floor landing, her shoes scuffing the carpeted treads.

“. . . should have known it would turn out this way. I'm fine for a few laughs, but not the right sort to bring home to meet Lady High and Mighty.”

Anna sucked in a breath as she dragged to a halt at the bottom step, thankful the carpets silenced her footsteps.

“That's not true. You wait, it'll come out all right. Give it a few more days.”

Tilly and Hugh in hushed conversation. Anna held still, ashamed at her eavesdropping . . . but not too ashamed.

“A few more days? It's been three weeks, Hugh. When do I officially stop playing the fool? She doesn't approve of our relationship. I'm not the right sort for her precious boy.” Tilly was clearly angry, her voice staccato sharp, biting her words through clenched teeth. Hugh soothing as he offered excuses. “I know I'm not like Sophie. I can't trace my family tree back to William the Bloody Conqueror, but, sod all, I'm not some gold-digging slag.”

“She's not as bad as all that. Just . . . hold tight. She'll come around and everything will be tickety-boo. I promise.”

“I'm holding you personally responsible if it's not.” There was a pause and what sounded like a kiss. “Come on,” Tilly said, obviously mollified. “You can escort me back to the wards before Sister Murphy catches me sneaking off again. She'll not kick up too much of a fuss with you there.”

Anna hugged the staircase as the couple headed down the remaining steps and through the baize door to the back passage. She let out the breath she was holding, but the questions lingered as she trailed her way into the main hall. Hugh and Tilly in love? They'd grown close over the last months, but Anna never once suspected things had escalated so far. Why would Tilly keep such a secret?

“Trenowyth!” Sister Murphy's bellow rattled the chandeliers, jolting Anna from her growing anger. “You're late. We've got a dozen beds that need to be stripped and remade by this afternoon. If you manage to get that accomplished without a problem, the ward scullery, duty room, and dispensary need to be scrubbed top to bottom, and the ward floor waxed. I want to be able to eat from the lino . . . or else.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Anna replied, shelving her annoyance to meet the buzz of activity as she jumped into the fast-flowing currents accompanying morning rounds.

An orderly nearly knocked Anna over as he pushed a trolley loaded with bedding, and VADs scurried up and down the stairs with buckets and pails. The sisters moved efficiently from bed to bed, checking medical charts as breakfast trays were removed. Anna found Sophie on Ward B in the midst of fighting with a mattress. If Sophie's breathless cursing and disheveled appearance were any indication, the mattress was clearly winning.

Since the bombing, the ward's beautiful tunnel of stained-glass windows had been re-glazed in cheap plain glass or in some
instances boarded over completely. The walls bore the carved or penned inscriptions of hundreds of patients, and the hastily erected flimsy plank partition shielding a row of metal sinks wobbled with every swipe of the orderly's enormous bumper as he polished the floor.

Sophie straightened from tucking in the last crisp hospital corner, grimacing as she arched her back and wiped her face. “I feel like a pretzel.”

“How long have you been on duty?”

Sophie looked at the clock. “Since five this morning. I couldn't sleep. I spent a few hours in stores and then I came here.” She bent to begin the next bed in the row.

“Have you had breakfast this morning?”

“I'm not hungry.”

“You're never hungry.”

Sophie shrugged and turned back to her work as an orderly entered, pushing another trolley of bedding. By the time they broke for a cup of tea, the beds were done, anything that could be polished had been polished, and no speck of dust lingered in even the darkest corners.

Aprons limp and gray with dirt, veils askew on hair hanging loose and draggled from their pins, they stood outside the scullery door in the fresh air of the courtyard, sipping from steaming mugs. Anna tried not to look surprised when Sophie lit a cigarette. “When did you start smoking?”

“Does it matter?” Sophie answered dully, sucking in a lungful of smoke.

Anna sipped at her tea. “Has Tilly spoken to you at all about Hugh?”

“What about him?”

“Nothing, really. It's just they seem very close these days.”

“Do they? I haven't really noticed, but you know how Tilly is. She doesn't mean anything by it. And Hugh flirts with anything in a skirt. I wouldn't worry.”

Just then, Tilly rounded the corner of the house, no trace of this morning's encounter with Hugh on her face. “Post's arrived, girls. Thought you might not want to wait until tonight. There's a package for Sophie at the duty nurse's desk from Fortnum and Mason. Mater's been shopping again.”

“Anything for you?” Sophie asked.

“Nothing today. I expect I'll see a bunch come all at once tomorrow. You know how the mail is.” Tilly shrugged, but it was clear she was disappointed.

Anna sifted through her letters. “Two from Mrs. Willits.” She hadn't heard from her in a few weeks and she'd begun to worry. The German bombers seemed to have turned their attention to other cities, but London still bore the brunt of near nightly air raids. She scanned the first of the two letters. “She thinks her daughter Ginny might be able to help me look up Simon Halliday's records at the War Office.”

“Golly. That would be fabulous, Anna,” Tilly said. “A trip to London
and
news about your dad. What do you think, Sophie? Should we go along to keep her out of trouble? I've heard the dance halls are a gas, full of soldiers and sailors from all over. Beats the lot at the pub, I'd wager.”

Sophie didn't answer. She stood frozen, one hand to her mouth, the other clutching a single thin page of pink stationery. Tears ran down her cheeks.

“Crikey! What's wrong, Sophie?” Tilly grabbed her by the shoulders. “Say something. Say anything.”

“Is it bad news?” Anna asked quietly.

Sophie handed Anna the letter. “I've known it for months. I
always felt like I could sense Charles out there somewhere . . . and then one day a few weeks ago, I woke up, and there was nothing. Just a horrible blankness where he'd been.”

“Bloody hell.” Tilly peered over Anna's shoulder, both of them reading the confirmation of Lieutenant Charles Douglas's death as a prisoner of war at an Italian transit camp.

S
ir Giles and Lady Douglas's boy? A sad shame, but at least they have two others and he wasn't the eldest. We should be grateful for small mercies.” Lady Boxley eyed her physician-approved dinner of boiled potatoes with distaste.

Anna clenched her fork to prevent her from jamming it into her hostess and ending this farce of family harmony once and for all. How in the hell had Hugh managed to convince her to join them for dinner?

“I'm sure Sophie doesn't see it that way,” Hugh admonished as he sipped at his wine. He had a bit of a hostile gleam in his eye, as well. Perhaps he was having the same violent thoughts.

“Would she have preferred to have him back horribly burned or disfigured?” Immune to the dagger glances being shot her way, Lady Boxley continued as she started. “Better a clean death than to linger on crippled and unable to function. What would Miss Kinsale have done had she been tied to such a man for life?”

Hugh placed his wineglass carefully on the table, his knuckles white, his face horrifyingly blank of expression. “I'd hope she would love him for the man he was—and is, even scarred or crippled.” A gleam lit his eyes. “As you did when my father came home from the last war maimed and sick.”

Anna felt like a spectator at a tennis match.

“That was different. I was already married to your father when he was wounded. What else could I have done but care for him?”

“Would it have been different had you not been married? Had you not loved him?”

Lady Boxley stiffened, her shoulders squaring before she dropped her gaze to her plate, suddenly very interested in her potatoes. There was a drawn-out silence as if the room held its breath.

“Miss Trenowyth. I hear you're heading to London,” she said, smoothly turning aside the question.

“I have a friend who works in the War Office. She's going to help me sort through the old military records.”

“To what purpose?”

“I'm hoping I might be able to learn more about Simon Halliday.”

“Are you so dissatisfied with your mother's side of the family, you must hunt for relatives on the other side of the tree? It's obvious they wanted nothing to do with you, otherwise they'd have stepped in when your mother died.”

“Neither side stepped in, though, did they?”

Lady Boxley pushed her boiled spuds around her plate and ignored the question. “I don't like it. London's not safe. Bombings nearly every night. People living in their cellars. Hugh, tell her she shouldn't go. She won't listen to me.”

Hugh shrugged but tactfully remained silent on the matter.

“What about that boy of yours—Lambert?” Her Ladyship persisted. “What does he have to say about you leaving to pursue a pipe dream? Or how about that military idea of a physician? He can't want a dearth of nurses at such a busy time.”

Her spine straightened. She hadn't told Tony. For some reason, confiding her plan meant she'd be admitting to herself that she cared for him. Denial meant she could continue pretending he was just another bloke and nothing special. “It's none of Tony Lambert's business what I do.”

She must have sounded sharper than she intended. Hugh shot her a curious look across the table. She met it with a smile and continued. “And the MO and Matron have both signed my travel warrant, so I'm all set. I promise to be careful if it makes you feel better, ma'am.”

“It doesn't. Not at all. Just when things are settled, I'm to be turned all inside out again. It's always thus. My feelings are never taken into consideration. I'm the last to be advised and never heeded.”

“London's my home, ma'am. I won't abandon her now that she's lost her luster any more than Sophie would have turned her back on Charles if he'd come home injured.”

Lady Boxley threw up her hands. “So I'm to have that thrown back at me, am I? I should have known I'd be outnumbered. Forgive me for seeing the practical within the tragedy. Life goes on and must be lived whether it suits us or not. The girl has suffered a grave loss, and I'm sorry for it. But she can't simply surrender to her grief.” She pushed her plate away, her ringed hands barely trembling. “I lost your father, Hugh. But I didn't wallow and fade away to nothing. I had you and your future to think of. It kept me going and made me look beyond my own loss to something bigger. Perhaps Miss Kinsale can find the strength to do the same.”

Hugh ran a tired hand over his face, shoulders slumped. “Perhaps she can, Mother, but give the poor thing time to grieve before you shove her back into the fight. It's only been a few weeks since she received word.”

“Oh no, Hugh. I made that mistake once.” She looked at him steadily, her hand barely trembling. “Now I begin to see what damage unchecked time and grief can do.”

June 1916

O
ne night was all we had. Simon had been given a week's leave but spent most of it in Lincolnshire with his parents, only returning to London the last evening before his ship was due to depart. I didn't even try to argue with him this time. I knew by now it was a hopeless cause.

I heard Simon's pocket watch chime midnight as I slid from under his arm and left our bed to pad across the bare floor. Light shone ghostly silver from a full moon that scraped the sky and gilded a few ragged scraps of cloud. It poured through the grubby window to fall on Simon's face like a spotlight as he slept.

Curling in a chair by the window, my journal open on my knees, I sketched the dagger-sharp line of his jaw, the sloping cheekbones, the arched brows beneath the muss of his dark hair. He was no longer the affable idealist I had fallen in love with. War had changed him. Boiled him down to a concentrated nihilism that seemed always at the edge of fury . . . or passion. Even if he survived, I
wondered if he would ever completely recover his zest for life. He had seen too much death. Experienced too much horror. Ghosts crowded his once bright gaze.

The light dimmed, casting a veil across Simon's face. Outside, the rooftops were edged in long shadow, though no windows glowed with life. As I watched, a long dark shape blotted the moon like an insidious eclipse. There was no sound as it passed high above the city, at least none reached my ears, but that only made its approach more terrifying.

“Simon,” I whispered, as if speaking aloud would draw its attention. “Simon, come and see.”

“What is it?” he said, instantly awake, his body vibrating like a plucked note.

“A zeppelin.” I found myself reaching for my journal, my heart thundering, my skin prickling with excitement and fear.

He joined me at the window as searchlights suddenly speared the sky like swords. The behemoth seemed to turn, and as my hand raced across the page, explosions rocked the ground and the thin silver clouds were met by plumes of red-laced black smoke.

“A mere taste of the horrors our soldiers gorge upon daily.” Anguish burned in Simon's voice.

The zeppelin disappeared as quickly as it arrived, floating gracefully east and north. We were too far away to hear the sirens or see the destruction, but now lamps shone from every window and voices could be heard in the once quiet street.

From behind, Simon put his arms around me so that I stood cradled in the circle of his embrace. I felt his tremors quick and sharp, his breathing labored and rasping hot against my shoulder. Panicked like a wild thing caught and frozen by the hunter's lamp.

I turned so that I faced him, pressed skin on skin, chest to hip. He shivered as if he were cold or aroused. Or both. I felt his racing
heart beneath my palm, laid a kiss to the hollow at the base of his collarbone as he plowed both hands into my wild crop of hair so that I must lift my face to his.

“Come, darling.” I led him back to bed, knowing only one way to combat death in the dark hours of the night.

Afterward, he lay on top of me, his head upon my breasts as he traced the line of my ribs with one finger. “‘Doubt thou the stars are fire, Doubt that the sun doth move, Doubt truth to be a liar, But never doubt I love,'” he quoted softly.

I answered with a kiss. “Shakespeare.”

He laughed but it was without humor, only a dull resignation. “He's not the world's greatest poet for nothing. I was dead before I met you, Kitty. I existed, but I didn't live. You changed that. You changed everything.”

“‘For where thou art, there is the world itself
. . .
And where thou art not, desolation.'” I brushed the hair back off Simon's forehead. “The man had a way with words.”

“You don't understand.” He rolled up so that I was pinned between his arms, his gaze hot as a brand on my bare flesh. “This isn't the war talking. Or rather the war has only made me realize how stupid and selfish I've been. It's too late to go back and make things right, but I want you to know . . . I need you to know . . . I love you, Kitty.” His coiled intensity pulsed the air until I felt myself stirred to take him between my legs once more. “I've spent so long chasing an elusive dream when all along it was right in front of me. You were right in front of me, and I was too foolish to realize it. You are my dream.” He looked away, but not before I caught the almost desolate ferocity in his gaze. He hung by a single unraveling thread. “Can you ever forgive me?”

“There is nothing to forgive,” I soothed. “Whatever happens,
these few years have been the most wonderful gift you could have given me. I wouldn't change one second of them.”

That seemed to comfort him. He relaxed, his face losing some of its wild desperation. “I'd be lost without you,” he said quietly.

I smiled through my own tears. “Then it's a good thing I'm not going anywhere.”

By dawn, the bed was empty, and last night might have been a dream but for the drawing in my journal and the eight people killed in the bombing of a tram.