True Story (The Deverells, Book One) (12 page)

With winter coming the woman needed a
new pair of walking boots. No doubt, many more things
besides.

He directed the point of his riding
crop toward the door. "Let us make haste before my greedy calf
devours it all. He must be ravenous since we delayed breakfast to
wait for you."

"For me?"

"Of course. While you lay snoring
snugly abed, the inhabitants of the house tip-toed about for fear
of waking you. Sims was instructed to hold breakfast until you
finally came down, and as you can see it has made him most
irritated. So, to the dining room, if you please."

With those "innocent and capable"
fingers she clung to the pleats of her dull skirt. "But I should
eat in the kitchen...surely."

"Why? Do you have some dreadful habit
you don't want me to see? Wooden teeth to take out before you
eat?"

"I meant that I am a member of the
staff, Mr. Deverell. Not family."

"I do not stand on ceremony here at
Roscarrock. This is my kingdom, and we live by my rules." He
smirked. "Or lack of them."

Again she hesitated, fingers
restlessly rearranging and smoothing down the world's ugliest
frock.

Too hungry himself to wait
any longer, he said, "Remember, Mrs. Monday, there is no room for
contention on this island. When I make a command it must be
followed. Should I steer you onward with the crop?" He swung his
arm toward the door again. "
Cush,
cush,
as they call to herd the cows. Did I
just hear your dignified insides let out a rumble,
madam?"

Her eyes flared. She took a deep,
noisy breath and, with her head held high, she followed Sims out of
the room.

* * * *

Damon Deverell was already
seated at the table and he looked only faintly surprised to see her
there. He did, however, stand when she came in, which showed he had
acquired
some
manners from somewhere.

"Fog's lifting, father," the boy
muttered, dropping back to his seat and stuffing another slice of
ham into his mouth. A slice which slid down so speedily it did not
impede his speech at all. "So the coach shouldn't be held up.
You'll be rid of me before noon."

"Excellent. You can take—" His father
caught Olivia's eye and after a short pause continued, "some of
Mrs. B's seed cake back with you. She told me yesterday that she
was making one for you, spoiling you as usual."

The two men were soon involved in a
conversation as if she was not there. Apparently Damon had damaged
a curricle belonging to one of the masters at his school. His
father, rather than reprimand the boy, muttered, "I'll send you
back with some money to recompense the fellow. Enough so he can
cease his whining and buy himself a half-dozen blasted
curricles."

After that, they spoke of horses and
the sport of racing, soon completely losing Olivia in that
jargon.

She slyly perused his son's face and
marked all the similarities between the two men. Both were dark in
coloring— apart from the very slight advance of silver visible at
the father's temples. Both had sharp features that gave them a very
distinctive profile. Theirs were the sort of faces one saw at
museum exhibits— tough, merciless, awe-inspiring Roman Generals
carved for posterity in marble. They were both loud, and had a
habit of speaking before the other had finished a sentence. She
suspected that neither really listened to the other, each too
determined to get their own point across.

Damon is the younger of my
two sons by a mistress, Emma Gibson.

What must it be like, she wondered, to
grow up knowing one was illegitimate? Not only that, but to be
raised in such a family where one's father — who was occasionally
shot at—made a fortune from gambling, and where a scandalous
divorce was procured at great cost, played out in all the papers.
It could not have felt very stable and secure for the boy. Olivia
knew, from her own experiences, that everyone needed stability,
every soul searched for that elusive somewhere to
belong.

"Why did you take this post, Mrs.
Monday?" the young man abruptly demanded.

She hastily dragged her mind back to
the present. "It was recommended to me by a gentleman who worked
with my father. In a solicitor's office."

"It is unusual for a woman of your
class to take employment, is it not? What happened to your
husband?"

It would be futile, no doubt, to wait
for his father's intervention. Deverell had already made some
attempt himself to dig out her reasons for being there, so he would
hardly prevent his son's bold interrogation. Olivia set her coffee
cup down. "My last husband died over a year ago. Once I was out of
full mourning I did not wish to continue being a burden on my
relatives and when this opportunity arose, I took it."

"Your last husband? There was more
than one?"

Inside Olivia a small groan erupted
and was quenched. "Yes. I have been married three
times."

"And all are dead?"

Still his father made no attempt to
halt the questioning. In fact, he looked at her with even keener
curiosity than his son.

"Yes."

"Were they very old?"

"Not particularly. The deaths were all
accidental."

"Forgive me, Mrs. Monday,
but you do not act in the manner expected of a grieving widow,"
Inspector O'Grady of the London Metropolitan Police had remarked
when he found her cleaning mashed potato from the hall
tiles.

"I was not aware I had an
expectation to fulfill. Do tell me how I am supposed to act and I
shall, of course, try to comply." And she scrubbed harder at those
tiles, grinding her teeth.

"I have not seen you shed
a tear, madam."

"If you knew me,
Inspector, you would know I'm not the kind of woman to melt in a
paroxysm of tears unless I'm chopping onions."

Her father had never cried. It was not
the done thing in her family. One simply took the blows and carried
on.

"Crikey," young Damon exclaimed,
finally pausing his greedy consumption of ham.

She picked up her coffee again,
ignoring the sickness that suddenly twisted inside at the memory of
William Monday's puffy, ashen face staring up from the murky green
water of the lake into which he'd fallen when the old wooden
footbridge broke under him. The Coroner's theory was that the weeds
became tangled around his vestments and dragged his body under. At
such an early hour no one else had been passing, no one heard his
cries for help.

Inspector O'Grady of the London
Metropolitan Police— as he always introduced himself, no matter how
many times he paid a visit—could not believe it happened that way,
and neither could Lord Frost, the local magistrate, who had called
O'Grady in to investigate the death. They both seemed convinced
that Olivia had some part in her husband's demise.

"A young woman with three husbands
buried," O'Grady had muttered, "seems more than a coincidence,
don't you think, madam?"

To which she had replied, "Perhaps,
when I married them, I should have asked for a guarantee of life
expectancy. Men just don't last the way they used to."

Inspector O'Grady of the London
Metropolitan Police was not amused.

Neither man at the breakfast table
said how sorry they were or gave Olivia any of the usual
platitudes. She found it something of a relief.

"How long were you married?" her
youthful interrogator continued.

"Twelve days the first time. Three
months the second. Almost five years the last time."

"And you have no children?"

"No. None."

"How did you manage that? Didn't you
want any?"

At last his father intervened. "That's
enough, Damon!"

"I was merely trying to understand why
a respectable woman would risk her reputation by coming here to
work for you and wondering why there was no one with the sense to
stop her, not even a child to keep her at home and out of your
way."

"Well, don't be such a damnably nosy
brat. It's none of your business. Now, apologize to Mrs. Monday for
distressing her. She's a proper lady. I know you haven't had much
experience of those, Damon— none of us have— but now she's here
this is your chance to learn how not to make a fool of yourself.
She knows it's too late for me, but your clay isn't dry
yet."

The boy's face flushed scarlet and he
snapped out a sullen, "I am sorry, madam. Do forgive
me."

Olivia nodded. "That's quite
alright."

"No, it isn't. Don't let him off that
easily! It's not his place to ask you impertinent, personal
questions." Deverell gave her a sly grin. "Those are for me to
ask."

Tense silence fell over the table. She
watched the young man buttering his toast with vicious slashes of a
knife blade.

Clearing her throat she said, "As a
matter of fact, I would have liked children, Master Damon. But God
did not see fit to bless me with any."

The boy's gaze flashed across at her
with something like surprise and gratitude. He fidgeted in his seat
and stole a sideways glance at his father. "Hmph. Odd, isn't it,
how some people who want children can't have any, while others have
a surfeit that they didn't want and don't know what to do
with."

Her employer opened his lips to speak,
but Olivia beat him to it. "God works in mysterious ways. He knows
what is better for us, even if we don't know it for ourselves.
Perhaps God saw that Mr. Deverell needed so many
children."

"For what purpose?" the boy
exclaimed.

"Oh, to keep him busy and teach him
patience, perhaps. Make him look where he's going."

The man at the end of the table
exclaimed, "And you needed no lesson in the eyes of the almighty,
eh, Mrs. Monday? No such occupation to keep you out of
trouble?"

"Certainly not. I've always been
perfect. Never put a foot wrong."

She caught True Deverell's eye and saw
an odd flicker of something she'd never seen in anyone's regard
when they looked at her. Whatever it was, it kept him from replying
and he quickly hid his lips behind the rim of a coffee
cup.

It left her feeling slightly
breathless.

* * * *

God works in mysterious
ways, eh
? He'd heard that before. Did that
account for what happened to her three husbands too? How did she
explain those deaths being the providential work of her benevolent,
all-knowing god? Now, perhaps, was not a good time to ask. She
seemed in a better mood this morning and he'd prefer to keep her
that way. Let his son ask the questions and take the
blame.

She was certainly entertaining Damon.
It was a while since they'd had a woman about the place, as Jameson
had observed.

He scowled, pushing a piece of ham
around his plate. What was he going to do with this woman who was
so unlike the one he'd asked for? Sending Mrs. Monday back to
Chiswick would mean having to find another secretary willing to put
up with him, and it took Chalke over a year to find this one.
Irksome.

His thoughts were soon torn away from
that dilemma, however, by the arrival of a letter. Sims carried it
to him on a silver tray, announcing solemnly, "Mrs. Blewett brought
this over with her this morning, sir, from the farm."

It was unusual for important letters
not to be carried across by his first-born illegitimate son, Storm,
who managed the mainland farm belonging to Roscarrock Castle.
Unless the letter contained something that Storm knew would put his
father in a rage, then he wisely avoided handling the missive
himself and sent it over via the cook, who divided her time between
farm and castle— and who couldn't read a word, so she was
blissfully ignorant of anything such a note might
contain.

A sense of unease immediately settled
over True as he reached for the sealed letter. When he recognized
his former wife's handwriting the sick feeling in his gut
multiplied. Storm would have recognized it too, and a letter from
that woman could only ever contain bad news.

"Well, I'll be off father," Damon was
saying. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Monday. I do hope your
stay here with my father won't be too trying. Do not believe a word
he tells you, for he enjoys tall tales."

Preoccupied by the letter in his hand,
True mumbled a goodbye and waved his son off with a mechanical
reminder to behave himself and write if he needed more money. He
was vaguely aware of his secretary rising to bid the boy a safe
journey.

Meanwhile, he stared at the words
slanted viciously across the paper, their spiteful news no doubt
bringing great glee to the woman who had written them. One by one
he absorbed those syllables and all the vitriol they contained.
Like poison it writhed and burned in his stomach.

He looked up to find Sims still
waiting beside him, tray tucked under one arm. "Sir, shall
I—"

"Yes, clear the breakfast things, will
you?" True bounced to his feet, crumpling the letter and forcing it
down into the pocket of his riding jacket. "I must go at once to
the farm and tend to some business."