The Tutor's Daughter (31 page)

As they crossed the hall together, Henry said, “You were right again, Miss Smallwood.”

She liked hearing those words more than she should have, she knew. She cherished praise of her intelligence like some women cherished compliments on their beauty.

She whispered, “I wonder if Lady Weston was so eager to credit Julian because she wanted to hide Adam's existence, or if she truly believed such talent could only come from her own child.”

“Both, probably.”

At the foot at the stairs, she turned to Henry and gripped his arm. “Let's not tell anyone. Not yet.”

Henry looked down at her expectantly, and Emma suddenly realized she was still gripping his forearm. And that he wore only shirtsleeves. She felt thick, ropey muscles beneath her fingers. She swallowed and pulled her hand away.

Embarrassed, she risked looking up into his face by the moonlight leaking in through the hall's unshuttered windows. Was it a trick of the shadows or did his eyes darken? Did he lean closer?

Her heart thumped.
Goodness.
She was standing alone with Henry Weston late at night, him in his shirtsleeves and her in her nightclothes. With her in stocking feet, he loomed even taller than usual. He would have to lean down to—

“Have you something in mind?” he whispered, his face suddenly very near hers. She smelled bay rum cologne. Felt his warm breath.

“Yes,” she murmured, her gaze drifting to his mouth.

“Some . . . plan?”

Plan?
She blinked.
Oh, right—Adam.
She took a shaky breath and stepped back. “Not yet, but I am working on it.”

After breakfast the next morning, Emma went up to the schoolroom for some old sheet music she had seen in the cupboard. Then she went to visit Adam.

He recognized her now and seemed at his ease in her company, or at least not distressed by her showing up at his door. He sat in his armchair with a pad and drawing pencil, sketching a new battle scene, but glanced up as she crossed the room.

Softly she began, “I heard you playing the pianoforte last night.”

He looked up at her, stricken. “I'm not to leave my room.”

“That's all right. I was glad to hear you. You play very well.”

Adam set aside his drawing. He rose and went to the table, pulling the chess board front and center.

“Adam,” Emma asked, laying a piece of sheet music on the table before him. “Do you read music?”

He shook his head. “I read books.”

“I know you do. But not music?” She ran a finger over the score. “Does this mean anything to you?”

His glance skittered from the score to the chess pieces. “My mar looks at pages like that when she plays.”

Emma's eager mind and curiosity were roused. “May I ask . . . how do you play the pianoforte if you cannot read music?”

He shrugged, sliding the music back toward her, off the chessboard. “I play what I hear.”

“What you hear?”

He nodded.

“So . . .” She tried to keep the incredulity from her tone. “You heard music played, remembered it, and now can play the piece by ear?”

His focus remained on the chess set as he set up the pieces. “I play with my hands, Emma. Not my ear.”

“Of course. I meant . . . how?”

Again the unruffled shrug. “I don't know.”

“And where did you hear the music you were playing last night?”

Adam thought a moment. “The village hall. My par, Mr. Hobbes, takes me there to hear music sometimes.”

She shook her head in wonder. “That is quite a memory you have. A gift.”

Adam did not seem as impressed as she was but finished setting up the chess pieces.

“Do you ever play the music you hear Julian play?”

He looked up at the ceiling. “Is he the one who plays very loud?”

“Yes,” she allowed.

“It hurts my ears.”

Emma smiled. “Mine too.”

She glanced down at the chessboard. For the first time she noticed Adam had set up the pieces in correct position for a proper game. “Who taught you to set up the pieces like that?”

“Henry.”

That's when she saw it. For a moment she thought it was a trick of the light, or her imagination. But then her hand reached out of its own accord and touched it, and it didn't disappear. She picked it up, astonished and disconcerted. The white queen with oriental features—the one depicted in the bloody drawing. The original
from her own chess set that Henry had taken years ago but said had recently gone missing.

“Adam, where did you get this?” she breathed.

“It matches.”

“I know. But where did you find it?”

He turned and pointed to a valise on the side table. “In my case. Yesterday.”

Emma's mind reeled. How had it ended up in Adam's room? Glancing around at the violent battle scenes pinned to the walls, she swallowed the queasy dread rising in her throat.

Had Adam drawn the beheaded queen after all?

A chill passed over her at the thought.

Emma wondered whether or not Henry knew Adam had the queen. If he already knew, why hadn't he said so?

That afternoon, Lizzie came to Emma's room and asked her to take a turn with her in the garden. The girl was already dressed for the out-of-doors, her large straw hat tied with lace beneath her chin. She stuck out her hands. “Look, I am even wearing gloves.”

Emma agreed to join her, pulling on a bonnet and gloves of her own.

As they passed the drawing room on the way to the side door, they heard Henry and Lady Weston arguing within—Lady Weston recommending an acquaintance in Falmouth to care for Adam, and Henry rebutting that a distance of more than fifty miles was too great to allow for regular visits.

Lizzie tugged Emma's arm, pulling her more quickly toward the door, out of earshot of the tense conversation.

“He really vexes her, you know,” Lizzie said, shaking her head.

Emma extracted her arm to shut the door behind them and then followed Lizzie into the garden. “Who does . . . Adam?”

Lizzie turned to wait for her, brushing a breeze-blown curl from the corner of her mouth. “Well, yes. Him too. But I meant Henry. Always refusing to call her Mother, going against her
wishes by bringing Adam here, and now refusing to find a place for him.”

Lizzie took Emma's arm again. Pea gravel crunched under their slippers. Sunlight shone on orange-red poppies, steel-blue globe flowers, and violet clematis, intensifying their vibrant colors.

As the girls strolled through the garden enjoying the sunshine and sweet smells, Emma commented on the first vexation in Lizzie's long list. “I suppose since Henry remembers his real mamma, the one who birthed him, he finds it difficult to call another woman by that name. It's only natural he should miss her and want to remember her. I can understand that, having lost my own mother. Certainly you can as well.”

“Why should I understand it?”

“Well . . .” Emma faltered. “Because you lost your mother too.”

Lizzie snorted softly. “Wouldn't say I lost her, exactly. Though I suppose my father did. Lost her to the excise man.”

Emma frowned. “I don't understand. I thought both your parents were gone.”

Lizzie pulled her arm from Emma's and bent to pick a spent bloom. “I never said so. You simply assumed.”

“No. I distinctly recall you saying your mother had been gone far longer than mine.”

“Gone, yes. But not dead. At least as far as I know.”

“And your father?”

Lizzie sighed. “I never knew my father, but I had a stepfather. Briefly.”

“Oh. Is he . . . ?”

“Alive and well and pulling all our strings.”

Emma gaped at the girl. “But . . . I thought you were here because . . . that you were Lady Weston's ward because she had taken you in after . . .” She let her words trail away.

“Lady Weston did take me in ‘after,'” Lizzie said. “After my mother took up with another man, left me with my new so-called stepfather, and
he
saw fit to be rid of me.” She tossed the spent bloom to the ground. “How naive you are.” She gave Emma a look of world-wise
superiority. “You assumed I was an orphan and
kind
Lady Weston took me in out of the goodness of her heart?”

“Well . . . yes.”

Lizzie shook her head. “That is a fiction. You read too many books, Emma. I have always said so.”

Emma stared at the stranger before her. She barely recognized this Lizzie Henshaw with the blazing eyes, curled lip, and sharp tongue.

“Put that in your journal, why don't you,” Lizzie snapped. She whirled away from Emma, pointing over the garden wall toward the fallen tower, where workmen were already beginning repairs. “And as to the warning tower, Henry went directly against Lady Weston's wishes in having it built.”

Emma blinked and thought quickly to follow this lurch in topic. “But why should she object to that? Henry told me about the villagers' rights to the cargo if there are no survivors, but why should Lady Weston care about that?”

Lizzie slowly shook her head, eyes glinting. “And here I thought you were clever.”

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave . . .
Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!

—William Whiting, 1860

Chapter 21

A
fter her disconcerting talk with Lizzie in the garden, Emma returned to the house.

Desiring a more pleasant encounter, she decided to seek out Henry Weston. She wanted to ask if he knew about Adam having the queen. She knew Henry wouldn't welcome any additional black marks against the brother he did not wish to send away. She would have to make it clear casting blame was not her intention. Perhaps Henry himself had found the piece and placed it in Adam's room to complete the set. Though it was odd that he had not mentioned it.

The drawing room was silent—Henry and Lady Weston were no longer there. Might he be in his study? She went upstairs, but that room was empty as well.

He might be with Adam, Emma thought, and began climbing the stairs. As she reached the top floor, she told herself not to get her hopes up. Henry could as easily be sequestered with his father or Mr. Davies over some estate matter.

She anticipated she would find Adam alone, bent over the tin soldiers with as much singular focus as he had given the dominoes and chess pieces.

But when she reached Adam's door, she heard voices coming from the other side. Two voices.

Slowly, she inched the door open and peered in. There sat Adam and Henry, not at the table but on the floor. Coats discarded, knees bent, reclining casually like children in their shirtsleeves. The table must have been too small to contain the large battlefield they had created with many regiments of soldiers, as well as objects placed hither and yon to represent terrain. Perhaps that hat was a hill? And that hand mirror a lake?

Emma watched a few moments longer, the scene gladdening her heart. Deciding not to disturb them, nor to bother Henry about the queen, she slipped silently from the room.

Henry looked at his older brother, more talented than he. More troubled. More vulnerable. He thought of the upheaval Adam had experienced, losing his mother, his home, his entire family. Though Mr. and Mrs. Hobbes had apparently treated him well, Henry wondered if Adam felt abandoned, or bitter, or betrayed. He also wondered if the Hobbeses had taught Adam about God. If they had taken him to church and prayed with him, or if he had been isolated from those experiences as well.

Henry moved a major forward on their pretend battlefield and quietly asked, “Adam, what do you believe about God?”

“God?”

“Yes. You know—our creator. ‘Our Father who art in heaven . . . '?”

Adam nodded. “Mar and Par told me about God. We went to visit him at church.”

“Ah. Well . . . good.” Henry recalled his conversation with Miss Smallwood and determined to tread more carefully. He said, “And do you ever pray?”

Again Adam nodded. “Mar says it is good to pray.”

Henry wondered if prayer was more than a rote act for him. He fumbled for words. “Do you . . . believe God hears you?”

Adam shrugged and moved an ensign forward. “I talk and that is all.”

“You don't . . . feel God's presence?”

Adam's face wrinkled. “I don't know what that means. I don't feel . . . that.”

Henry felt his own brow crinkle in concentration. It seemed as if he were trying to explain an abstract thing—faith—in a foreign language, and one he had only a rudimentary understanding of himself. He said, “It is all right if you don't feel it. Faith is far more than emotion. More than feelings.”

Adam's expression remained flat. Unimpressed.

Henry inhaled deeply and turned his head to look out the window for inspiration. He saw the tallest branches of the turkey oak bending in the southwest wind. He unfolded his long legs, lumbered to his feet, and stepped to the window. “Adam, would you please come here a moment?”

Adam rose and joined him at the window.

Henry asked God to give him the right words. He said, “We cannot feel the wind from here. So how do we know it is real?”

Adam thought. “We see it.”

“You see the wind? What good eyes you have, Adam. Where?”

Adam pointed out the window. “I see it blowing the branches.”

“Right. We can't feel it from here or see it directly. But we know it's there because we see its effects. What it does.”

Adam said nothing, nor did his expression light with understanding as Henry had hoped.

Henry tried again. “Do you see that cedar—that stout tree overshadowing the courtyard?”

Adam shifted his focus and nodded.

“It was planted the day our grandfather was born. For its age, it should be twice the height it is now. But its top has been blasted out by the prevailing winds blowing over the ridgeline. So it has grown out instead of up. The trees have all been shaped by the wind.”

Adam nodded.

Henry continued, “Like you, Adam, I don't always
feel
God listening or speaking to me. But I have seen Him answer my prayers and the prayers of others—though not always as I would like, nor
as quickly as my impatience desires. But I have
seen
the effects of prayer.”

Adam said suddenly, “I asked God to forgive me for all the bad things I've done.”

Astounded, Henry studied his brother's profile. “What bad things could you have possibly done?”

Henry wondered if Adam had done more than sneak into Miss Smallwood's room at night. More than helping himself to their mother's perfume and perhaps the chess piece, though he'd denied the latter, saying it appeared in his valise sometime after Henry had asked him about it.

“You know.” Adam's glance slid to Henry, then away again. “You were there.”

“Was I?” Henry asked, confused.

Adam returned to the soldiers and sat back down on the floor. “They sent me away after.”

Henry stared. “I was not yet four when they . . . when you went to live with Mr. and Mrs. Hobbes. I don't remember very much of those days.”

Adam looked up, his eyes taking on a distant gleam. “We were in Mar's sitting room. Though she was not my mar yet. She had a kettle on the fire for tea. She was called away and was a long time coming back.” Adam shook his head. “I wanted to help her, so I tried to pour. But I spilt it on your arm. How you cried. Mrs. Hobbes said it was a blessing—for if you drank boiling water you'd have burned your innards. Might have died.”

Henry sat down across from Adam and looked at his own arm. The small patch of slightly scarred skin began itching at that moment as if provoked by the memory. “I am fine, Adam. As you see. Fine.”

Impulsively, he reached over and laid a hand on Adam's arm. Adam stiffened, and Henry quickly withdrew it. “It was an accident, Adam. You were only a child.”

And while that accident might have been the final straw, Henry guessed the reasons for sending Adam away were far more complicated.

“I am sorry,” Adam said, as if a line in a script.

“You have nothing to be . . .” Henry began, then thought the better of it. Clearly this had been bothering Adam for years. He said firmly but gently, “Adam, look at me.”

Adam's gaze flickered up toward Henry but quickly skated away.

“Adam, I forgive you. Do you believe me?”

“Yes.”

Henry's heart ached. He said hoarsely, “Adam, will you forgive me?”

Adam darted a look at him, and before he looked away again, Henry thought he saw a hint of surprise there. “What did you do?”

Looking at his brother's profile, a lump rose in Henry's throat. “Nothing. For far too long.”

The following week, while Henry was out on his morning ride, still a quarter mile from home, a storm blew in from the southwest. The sky darkened and clouds billowed. The rain did not come, although the air felt thick and pregnant with it. The wind rose and howled like a woman in labor pains, but still the rain did not come.

Henry was seized with a sudden and terrible dread. What was it? Was Miss Smallwood in trouble, or . . . ? An image of his tower flashed in his mind like a premonition.

Although usually calm in any weather, his horse, Major, snorted and shied, perhaps sensing Henry's alarm. Henry urged Major into a gallop across the top of the headland, toward the tower they had rebuilt and upon which he had installed the bell only two days before.

Ahead of him, near the point, he saw Miss Smallwood, Lizzie, and Julian clustered around Rowan's easel, helping him pack up his supplies before the rain hit.

Henry rode past them to look over the edge. There, as he feared, was a ship, struggling to navigate the choppy seas to enter the haven.

His heart thumped. His pulse raced. This was it—the “next time” he had anticipated. There was no time to waste.

Emma Smallwood had run to the cliff's edge to see what had
drawn his attention. Seeing the ship tilting dangerously, she pressed a gloved hand to her mouth.

He called down to her, “Ring the bell. Hard!”

She nodded and whirled toward the tower. He turned Major's head and spurred him onward, galloping down the path toward the harbor.

Emma started toward the tower to do his bidding, but Lizzie caught her by the wrist, her face a sudden mask of hard lines and determination.

“Don't,” she commanded.

“But . . . I . . . ” Emma sputtered. “You heard what Henry said. He wants us to ring the bell.”

Lizzie's eyes widened in apparent disbelief. “I didn't hear him say that. Not over this wind.”

Emma tried to pull away, but Lizzie held her with a surprisingly tight grip.

“What are you doing? Let me go.”

“I won't.”

“Don't you understand—the ship is in trouble. Lives are at stake.”

“What is that to us?”

Lizzie's cold voice, her casual disdain of life, struck Emma hard. Why had she thought she knew Lizzie Henshaw at all? Emma struggled against the girl's grasp. Though Lizzie was several years younger, she was strong. By comparison, Emma's daily routine of reading and teaching had done little to strengthen her arms.

Lizzie turned and shouted toward Rowan and Julian, several yards away. “She's trying to ring the bell. Come and help me.”

Emma looked over her shoulder at them. Were they all in league together in . . . whatever this was?

Abandoning the easel, Julian came running, bounding across the grass. Rowan followed close behind. Emma knew that once they laid hold of her. She would never get loose. It was now or never.

She quit struggling for a moment, pretending to give up. She hung her head as though defeated. As she'd hoped, Lizzie's grip loosened
fractionally. At this, Emma gave a great lift and downward lurch, as though bringing down an axe on a chicken's neck.

Lizzie cried out and reached for her again, but Emma reeled and slapped her hard across the face. The girl reared back and stumbled but kept to her feet, cradling her injured cheek with both hands.

Emma turned and bolted the few feet to the ladder and began climbing up as quickly as she could.

“You cow!” Lizzie yelled, shock and venom in her voice.

Emma didn't look down but felt Lizzie's hand raking at her cape hem. She jerked away, cleared the last rung of the ladder, and mounted the platform. She grasped the bell lever and pulled hard, over and over again until her ears rang and her head began to ache.

“I think you can stop, Miss Smallwood,” Julian called up pleasantly. “The whole village has heard you by now.”

“The whole county, I imagine,” Rowan added wryly.

Would they trap her up there? Push the tower over with her atop it?

“You must forgive Lizzie,” Julian said. “She was only concerned about our well-being. She knows whoever knocked down this tower before might come after us all looking for revenge, should they be deprived of a rich wreck.” He sent a fond smile toward the irate young woman, still holding her face. “Isn't that right, Lizzie?”