A Stolen Heart (5 page)

“Goodness. I don’t know which is worse, your arrogance or your cynical view of the world.”

“No doubt that is why I am not a well-liked guest.”

Alexandra had to laugh. “No doubt.” She hesitated, then gave a little nod. “Yes. Yes, I would like to go.”

A
LEXANDRA LEANED BACK AGAINST THE
cushioned seat of Lord Thorpe’s carriage, a small smile playing about her lips. She could imagine the look on her aunt’s face when she told her she was going with a lord to a London ball. Aunt Hortense, who had grown up during the war with England and the incendiary time period before that, had a deep-seated suspicion of Britain and all things British. Her dislike had only been strengthened during the last few years, when the British, in the midst of their war with Napoléon Bonaparte, had been stopping and impressing American sailors and impounding ships that were bound for France. Ward Shipping had lost a number of men and two ships that way. Aunt Hortense had been insistent upon accompanying Alexandra to London, stating flatly that she had to protect and help Alexandra, who would, in her words, be “like a lamb among the wolves.”

Of course, her dislike of the British was not as unswerving as that of Alexandra’s mother, who had argued steadfastly against her making the trip. Alexandra sighed. She didn’t want to think about her mother right now. She turned her mind to what gown she would wear tonight.

When she stepped inside the front door, however, all such pleasant thoughts fled. One of the maids was standing on the stairs, crying, with another maid trying vainly to soothe her, while her mother’s companion Nancy Turner stood apart from them, looking disgusted, her hands on her hips. From upstairs came the sound of pounding, punctuated by her aunt’s voice, calling, “Rhea? Rhea? Let me in!”

“Mercy’s sake, child, stop all that blubbering!” Nancy Turner exclaimed, her voice filled with exasperation. “You’d think nobody’d ever gotten mad at you before.”

The girl’s only response was to cry harder, and her companion said sharply to Nancy, “None of her employers has thrown a teapot at her head before! It’s not her fault. It’s you and your heathen American ways, all of you.”

“Exactly what heathen American ways are those, Doris?” Alexandra inquired icily.

Doris gasped and whirled around. When she saw Alexandra, she blushed to the roots of her hair and bobbed a curtsey. “Oh, miss, begging your pardon. I was—that is, I wasn’t thinking clearly. I’m that distracted. I didn’t mean—well…” She wound down lamely in the face of Alexandra’s coolly inquiring expression. “It ain’t what we’re used to, and that’s a fact!” she declared defiantly.

“Presumably not, if it involves flying teapots. That’s not exactly accepted behavior in the United States, either.” Alexandra turned toward her mother’s companion, a sturdy American servant they had brought with them and who had worked for their family for years. “Nancy?”

“Mrs. Ward didn’t want her tea, miss, and she, well, flung it, but I’m sure she wasn’t aiming at the girl. You know Mrs. Ward couldn’t aim that well.” Nancy sent the snuffling maid a hard look. “It wasn’t even hot—and I must say, I don’t know what she expects when she brings a pot of barely warm tea to the missus.”

“Probably not to have it thrown at her,” Alexandra said with a sigh. “I take it that Mother is in one of her moods?”

Upstairs, the pounding, which had been going on throughout their conversation, grew more fierce, and Aunt Hortense’s voice was sharp as she shouted, “Rhea! Unlock this door this instant! Do you hear me?”

Nancy nodded, sighing. “Yes. Miz Rhea’s locked her door now and won’t let anyone in.”

“All right. I’ll go up and see about her. Doris—you take Amanda down to the kitchen and get her a cup of tea. See if you can calm her. I am sure that my mother meant her no harm. Perhaps she should take off the rest of the afternoon and go up to her bed and rest.”

The maid nodded, put her arm around the other girl and led her toward the kitchen. Alexandra started up the stairs toward Nancy.

“What happened?”

“It was my fault, miss,” Nancy admitted with the air of a martyr. “I shouldn’t have left her alone. But she’s been right agitated all day, and I thought a cup of hot cocoa might calm her down. So I went down to make it myself because she likes it just the way I fix it, you know, and I can’t get that foreign cook to make it right.”

Alexandra nodded sympathetically, resisting the urge to point out to Nancy that she was the foreigner here, not the English cook.

“But then, when I get down there, they tell me they already sent up a cup of tea—and after all the times I’ve told them that Mrs. Rhea doesn’t like tea in the middle of the afternoon! Not only that, that silly twit Amanda took it, and she’s enough to make anyone throw something at her, I say. Always blathering on in that little voice of hers, and you can’t even understand half of what she says. By the time I got back up the stairs, I hear a crash, and Amanda comes flying out of your mother’s room, crying up a storm, a big wet spot all down the side of her dress—where that tea was, I’ll warrant the pot didn’t come anywhere near her head—and then Miz Rhea slams the door and locks it. She’s been in there for twenty minutes, refusing to come out, and Miss Hortense can’t make any headway with her, it seems like.”

“Oh, dear.”

“She’ll open it for you,” Nancy went on confidently.

Alexandra wasn’t so sure. There had been one or two times since they’d been in England that her mother hadn’t even seemed to know who she was.

However, she continued up the stairs and strode with more confidence than she felt toward the door where her aunt stood, red-faced, her hand poised to knock again. When Aunt Hortense saw Alexandra, she let out a sigh of relief and started toward her.

“There you are. Thank heavens. Maybe you can get through to her. Rhea’s locked herself in and won’t come out. It’s bad enough when she acts like this at home—I don’t know what she’s thinking, behaving this way in front of a bunch of Englishmen.” Her tone invested the term with scorn. Alexandra’s aunt was a sturdy, middle-aged woman in a sensible brown dress with a plain cap covering her hair, and her features, now frowning, were usually pleasant.

“I’m afraid she doesn’t think about such things, Aunt Hortense—or care, either. Why don’t you go down to the sitting room, and I will see what I can do. Oh, and, Nancy, get her some of that cocoa now. It might just do the trick.”

Alexandra waited while her aunt and the other woman walked away, giving her mother a moment of silence. Then she tapped lightly on the door. “Mother? It is I. Alexandra. Would you let me in?”

There was a moment’s silence, then her mother’s voice said faintly, “Alexandra? Is that really you?”

“Yes, of course it is, Mother,” Alexandra replied pleasantly. “Why don’t you unlock the door so we can talk?”

After a moment there was the sound of the lock being turned, and then the door opened wide enough for Alexandra’s mother to peer out. Her face was drawn and worried, her eyes suspicious. Her expression lightened a little when she saw Alexandra. “Where have you been?” she asked as she opened the door wide enough to allow Alexandra in.

“I had business to conduct. I told you that this morning. Remember?”

Rhea Ward nodded vaguely, and Alexandra was not sure that she remembered at all. “Why do you have on your hat?” Rhea asked in a puzzled voice.

“I haven’t had time to remove it, I’m afraid.” Alexandra reached up, untied the ribbon and pulled the hat off, continuing to talk in the soothing voice she used with her mother. “I just walked in, you see, and I came right up. Aunt Hortense was rather concerned about you.”

She studied her mother unobtrusively as she spoke, taking in her untidy hair and messy appearance. Several buttons were unfastened or done up wrong, and stray hairs straggled around her face. Remembering her mother’s once neat, trim appearance, Alexandra felt her throat close with tears. What had happened to the gentle, sweet woman she had known in her early years? Though she was still a pretty woman, even in middle age, her face was becoming lined beyond her years, with an unhealthy puffiness that was echoed in her once petite figure. The degeneration was due, Alexandra was sure, to Rhea’s obsessive worries and her unfortunate, secretive dependence on bottles of liquor.

“Mother, what’s the matter?” Alexandra asked, her worry showing through her assumed calm. “Why did you lock the door against Aunt Hortense?”

Rhea Ward made a face. “Hortense was always a bossy soul. You’d think the world couldn’t run without her.”

Certainly their household had been unable to run without her, at least in Alexandra’s youth, she thought wryly, but she kept the opinion to herself. One of the things that her mother frequently despaired about was her own lack of ability.

“But why did you lock the door? I don’t understand. Was Amanda rude to you?”

“Amanda? Who is that?”

“The maid who brought your tea.”

“Her!” Rhea scowled. “Always sneaking in here. Spying on me.”

“I’m sure Amanda wasn’t spying on you, Mother. She was just bringing you your tea.”

“I don’t want tea! I told her that, and she acted like I’d grown horns. Nancy had gone to fetch my cocoa. That was what I wanted.” Tears were in the woman’s soft brown eyes, and her face started to crumple.

“Yes, dear, I know.” Alexandra put her arm supportively around her mother’s shoulders and led her to a chair. “She’s getting you some right now.”

“I don’t know what’s taking her so long.” Rhea’s mouth turned down in a pout.

“She heard the commotion and came running upstairs. You know how loyal to you Nancy is. She was afraid you needed help.”

“She was right. I did. They’re always watching me, and I know they laugh at me behind my back.”

Alexandra thought with an internal sigh that her mother was probably right about both the laughter and the curiosity, after the odd things she had been doing since they got here. Was it possible that her mother had been drinking this early in the day? It had proved more difficult to keep liquor out of her mother’s hands since they had been in London, where it was always easy for Rhea to find a street urchin or some peddler who would fetch her a bottle for a few extra shillings.

“Don’t worry about them,” Alexandra told her mother firmly. “Why, we don’t even live here. You won’t see them again after a few more weeks.”

Rhea did not look much encouraged by Alexandra’s words. She sat for a moment, frowning, then jumped up, went to her dresser and opened a drawer. She took out a small cherry-wood box that lay within and caressed it, then carried it to her chair and resumed her seat, holding the box firmly in both her hands. Alexandra suppressed a sigh. Her mother’s fascination with this box had grown worse the past few weeks, too. She had had the box for as long as Alexandra could remember, and she kept it locked, the key on a delicate chain around her neck. No one, not even Aunt Hortense, knew what was inside it, for she adamantly refused to discuss it. When Alexandra was young, her mother had kept the box hidden away on a shelf in her wardrobe. The mystery of it had so intrigued Alexandra that she had on one occasion stacked books on a chair and climbed up them in order to reach the box on its high shelf. She had been discovered trying to pry the thing open, and it had been one of the few times her mother had ever spanked her. Alexandra had never tried to open it again, and it had remained inviolate on its shelf. But in recent years her mother had taken the box down and kept it in a drawer beside her bed, locking the drawer, as well. She had brought it with her on the trip, and nowadays she seemed to have it in her hand most of the time.

“Mother, what is distressing you so?” Alexandra asked softly, reaching out to take her mother’s hand.

“I don’t like it here!” Rhea pulled her hand out of Alexandra’s grasp, replacing it around the small wooden box. “It’s always cold, and the people are odd. They don’t like me. None of the servants like me.”

“They don’t dislike you,” Alexandra assured her, not adding that they were more scared of Rhea than anything else. “They just have a different way about them. There are so many wonderful things yet to see. Why, we haven’t even left London yet! There’s still Stonehenge and Stratford-on-Avon, and Scotland. It’s supposed to be beautiful there.”

“Here we go, Miz Rhea.” Nancy entered the room briskly, a small tray in her hand. “I’ve got your chocolate all ready.”

Rhea brightened, turning toward the servant and reaching for the cup of steaming liquid.

“Now, I reckon that will hit the spot,” Nancy went on cheerfully. “And then, if you like, I can loosen your hair and rub lavender on your temples, and you can have a nice little nap before teatime. How does that sound?”

“Just the thing,” Rhea murmured, a smile beginning to touch her lips.

Alexandra decided to leave her mother in Nancy’s capable hands and made her way downstairs to the sitting room, where her aunt was installed, working away at a piece of embroidery.

“Hello, dear.” Aunt Hortense looked at her. “It sounds as if you succeeded.”

“I got her to open her door, if that’s success.” Alexandra sank into a chair near her aunt. “Oh, Auntie, I’m afraid I made a terrible mistake in bringing Mother here. Perhaps I should have left her at home.”

“Oh, no, dear, she would have been so lonely.”