The Widow of Larkspur Inn (26 page)

“That’s enough, Aleda.” While Mother attempted to soothe Grace, Mrs. Kingston, who appeared to be oddly struggling with the corners of her mouth, said that she would get a towel from the water closet. Philip didn’t know quite where he fit into the picture. On any other day he would have been angry at Grace for wasting something that belonged to him—but this evening he just wanted to get to the town hall. Even if she’d shaved her head, he would probably just ask Mother to cover it with a bonnet and get everyone going.

And as it turned out, that was all she could do, for it would have taken hours to wash the oil out of Grace’s hair. When Mrs. Kingston returned with the towel and Fiona in her wake, Mother blotted as much of the pomade as possible from Grace’s hair and tied a bonnet under her chin.

“I’m sorry, Philip,” Grace whispered as the group left the
Larkspur
’s front door. She had stopped crying, but her expression was one of misery.

“You could have asked, you know,” he felt compelled to lecture.

The corners of her mouth drooped even more so. “But you weren’t in your room. And I didn’t mean to pour out so much. It came out so fast.”

It was impossible to hold any grudge against her.

“That’s all right, Grace,” Philip told her. He thought about Mr. Trumble’s recommendation of the product and added, “It did make you look rather extinguished.”

“What?”

He patted her shoulder. “Never mind.”

Even though they arrived early, the benches in the town hall, a red-brick building with a weathervane of a horse above its steep roof, were three-quarters filled. Miss Hillock’s students were first to receive their awards when the ceremony began. As it turned out, small bronze “Good Citizen” medals were given to every one of the younger students, who each beamed with pleasure upon receiving it. No one seemed to notice anything amiss about Grace’s appearance when she walked up to the platform to join her classmates, and she smiled just as broadly as the others during the applause.

When it came time for the older students, Aleda was awarded a medal for spelling in the fourth standard, as well as a special certificate of recognition for playing the piano during chapels.

Philip was indeed called up on the platform by Captain Powell to receive both the arithmetic and science medals for the fifth standard. He found that making the correct facial expression was not a problem after all. Even though he was expecting some honor, he could not stop smiling his sincere pleasure as the medals were pinned to his coat. Having spent the bulk of his schooling years under the direction of a tutor, he’d never had the opportunity to compete with children his own age and found that he liked it very much.

Penelope Worthy, a factory worker’s daughter and distant relative of the Worthy sisters, was announced the winner of the coveted “Top Student in the Sixth Standard award.” It was the highest honor at Gresham School, for which only students in the final standard were eligible. Any students who had the means and desire to continue their education after that were sent away to preparatory schools.

Philip watched with awe as Captain Powell presented the trophy. It was a silver two-handled cup atop a polished wooden base. On the front of the base was attached a silver plate, upon which were engraved three lines:

Penelope Worthy,

Top Student, Gresham School,

June 1, 1869.

Though proud of his medals, Philip could hardly stop looking over at the trophy that the radiant-faced girl held up for all to admire. His eyes caressed the gleaming metal, and he formed a mental picture of himself cradling it in his arms to the applause of everyone present.
I’m going to win that next year,
he determined. Even if he had to study every minute of his free time, those few minutes of triumph on the platform would be worth it.

Chapter 15

Cambridge
June 2, 1869

Andrew Phelps, rector of Saint Benett’s, sat back in his favorite wing chair and listened to the banter of the two young people seated at the other end of the drawing room.

“You can’t expect me to believe that your uncle brought an elephant all the way to Kensington!” his eighteen-year-old daughter Elizabeth was saying to the well-dressed young man. Her cheeks were flush, her brown eyes alive with life, and Andrew felt a pang at her happiness. It was only a matter of time before Jonathan Raleigh proposed. How did other parents adjust to losing their children?

“Even after you’ve seen proof with your own eyes?” Jonathan argued back.

“That photograph could have been taken in India.”

“You say? And how would you account for the spruce trees in the background?”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Serious as taxes.” The young man chuckled. “I’ll spare you the details of the poor beast’s journey across the channel, however. Suffice to say, his equilibrium did not cope well, especially when a storm whipped the water to new heights.”

“You can’t mean …”

“Well, we have to take my uncle’s word about that. He mercifully took no photograph of the event.”

Andrew frowned at the letter in his hands. It had arrived by post today, bearing no return address.
Someone jealous of Mr. Raleigh,
he told himself again, for Jonathan Raleigh was the type who inspired envy. The nephew of a duke, third cousin to the Lord Chancellor, he was one of those golden students who excelled at his studies and was even captain of the archery team. The upperclassman had met Elizabeth at a church fete and swept the girl off her feet. Even Andrew had been impressed. Mr. Raleigh’s manners were as impeccable as his family credentials, and so he allowed the young man to call upon his daughter.

I’ll throw it in the fire,
Andrew thought. Anyone spineless enough to send an anonymous message such as this was surely no one who could be trusted. Instead, he folded the page and held it. The five lines had contained only an address on Locke Street in the seedier part of Cambridge and a warning that Jonathan Raleigh was seeing the wife of an army sergeant there.

Thirteen-year-old Laurel came from upstairs and perched herself on the arm of Andrew’s chair. “Have you been missing anything lately, Papa?” she asked.

He had to think about that one, for he had a tendency to misplace things. “Why, not that I can recall.”

She grinned and drew his favorite pen from behind her back, the one he had long given up hope of recovering.

“Where did you find it?” he asked as she handed it to him.

“In the dirt under the garden swing. Along with two shillings. May I keep them, Papa?”

“Well, I suppose a reward
is
in order.”

“Thank you!” she said, giving him a quick embrace. Like Elizabeth, Laurel had her mother’s dark brown eyes and delicately carved oval face. Andrew felt grateful, for his daughters’ sakes, that both had inherited most of their looks from Kathleen. In fact, his only contributions toward their appearances were the dimples in their cheeks and the straight, wheat-colored hair. Most people were unaware of his own set of dimples, however, for he’d worn a beard ever since he was a young curate.

He was fully aware that he could never be regarded as a handsome man in the classical sense. For one thing, his height was too nondescript at five feet eight, and his body, though solid, was thick almost to the point of stockiness. His nose, once broken by an errant paddle during his university days on the rowing team, would appear more natural on the face of a prizefighter than of a man of the cloth. But since he seldom looked in a mirror except to make sure that he’d parted his hair correctly, it didn’t matter.

“What have you there, Papa?” Laurel asked, reaching out to scratch his bearded chin.

Andrew slipped the folded page in his waistcoat pocket. “Nothing that would interest you, Pet. I thought we were going to have to send someone up for you. Dinner is almost ready, Mrs. Orson says.”

“I was studying and lost track of time. Where is Grandmother?”

“She’s at one of those ladies’ meetings—’The Society to Promote Hummingbird Table Etiquette’ or something of that sort.”

Laurel giggled. “I’ll tell her you said that.”

“To your peril, if you do,” Andrew said, feigning severity. He could tell that she wasn’t the least bit alarmed and wondered for the hundredth time since Kathleen’s death if he were doing his girls a disservice by not being a sterner parent. His own father had been eager to point out the character flaws of his six sons. Too eager, Andrew had thought while growing up, but he could see now that the criticism had made him strive to become a better man, if only to prove his father wrong.

But the feminine mind was still such an enigma to Andrew. He wasn’t certain if his daughters’ delicate egos could take the severe regimen by which he had been raised. Blessedly, Elizabeth and Laurel were tender-hearted children, eager to please, and had never tried to take advantage of his mild discipline. He had visited households, in the course of his duties, where children had been permitted to become little tartars, ruling parents and servants with self-important contempt. One could only imagine what sort of disagreeable adults those children would become, and chiefly because the parents failed to exercise a restraining hand.

The only times Andrew could remember being in the company of his own parents were when the boys were brought down to the drawing room for brief evening visits before bedtime, or to recite for guests. Andrew did not consider himself deprived during those early years in Gloucester. His nanny was kind and attentive, and besides, it was the same way with most families of the upper classes. At the age of eight he was sent to join his older brothers at a boarding school in Huntingdon. That was when a longing for the attentions of a loving mother and father took root in his heart and began to grow.

And that was the other reason Andrew could not bring himself to be as stern as he knew he should be. Perhaps the primary reason. A sudden attack of apoplexy had taken his beloved Kathleen from them six years ago. He felt great empathy for his daughters, growing up without the tender ministrations of a mother. Even his widowed mother, who had agreed to come to live with them in Cambridge, could not fill the void that Kathleen had left.
But God hasn’t sent anyone into my life to take her place.

“Father?”

Realizing he’d drifted off into one of his “hazes,” as Elizabeth called them, he looked at Laurel again. “Yes?”

The girl motioned toward Elizabeth and her beau, both heads bent over a globe. “They don’t even realize I’ve walked into the room, do they?”

“ … of the elephant’s journey was by rail,” Jonathan Raleigh was explaining to Elizabeth. “My uncle hired a whole steerage car.”

“I’m afraid they don’t, Pet.” Andrew agreed. He cleared his throat, and the two heads turned in their direction.

“Will you stay for dinner, Mr. Raleigh?”

The young man gave a reluctant shake of his dark head. “Thank you, sir, but I’m afraid I’ve already been invited to dinner. One of those stuffy faculty-student affairs. In fact, I should be leaving now.”

When Mr. Raleigh was gone, Andrew sat to dinner with his daughters, himself at the head of the table, Elizabeth on his right and Laurel his left. The pocketed letter was a hot brand on his chest, and he wondered again why he was unable to dismiss it as petty jealousy. Perhaps it was because Elizabeth seemed to be so completely in love.