Ashton Park (11 page)

“You have a red rose North England beauty. It’s rare.”

“Sir. We shouldn’t be talking like this. It will come to nothing. We don’t know each other. You’re of noble birth.”

“Don’t you believe attraction can sometimes…cross boundaries of class and race and religion?”

The hood brim shadowed her eyes. “I don’t know, sir. You shouldn’t be dallying with me. I’m dirt-poor. My family’s dirt-poor. It’s the ladies from the manor houses you’ll want. The ones with the estates.”

Edward stepped closer and slipped the hood back from her face and hair. The color and beauty of her eyes and lips and skin rushed over him again. Still he held back. Her mouth parted at his touch and she did not push his hands away.

“I was a dead man,” he said. “I’m still a dead man. You know that.”

“I’ve seen the pain in your face since you’ve come home. Yes.”

“And you’ve prayed?”

“I have.”

“And watched me from windows?”

There was a small smile. “Yes.”

“Do you…feel something for me? A dead man the sea gave back twice?”

A strong white hand closed over one of his.

“I do feel something for you,” she said. “But I have nothing to give. I’m no lady. Just a simple girl from the Pendle Hills.”

“In ten minutes you’ve made me feel more of a sense of beauty and grace than I’ve felt in the nine months since the sea battle. It’s as if I can breathe.” He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “Do you believe me?”

“I…I don’t…oh, nothing can come of it, sir. It’s just a moment in a hut in a storm.”

“Or something more.”

“No, sir, it can’t be more—please, you know that.”

“I don’t want to stop feeling alive.” He began to draw the long pins from her hair and drop them at his feet. “It’s been cold and black and wretched. Your eyes are a light.”

Her hair was loose and dark and shining. He kissed it. He kissed her. Softly—then with strength. At first she only yielded to his kisses. But suddenly she responded with a burst of energy of her own, putting her arms around his neck and kissing him with a ferocity that stole his balance and his thoughts. Then she stopped and stepped back, dropping her arms.

“I’m sorry…that’s too much…I don’t…”

He twined several strands of her hair on his finger. “Don’t stop. Don’t imagine stopping.”

“We ought to be done with this nonsense now, sir. I care for you, but…”

Edward kissed her white throat and she closed her eyes. She put her hands under his arms and over his back, gripping him tightly once again, as his lips moved over her cheeks and mouth.

“You are the most radiant soul in England,” he murmured. “The most beautiful woman in Europe. You must be. Why else would I feel this way? A shooting star arcing over the sea in the dead of night.”

She laughed and took a handful of her hair and brushed it over his face. “Now you’re a poet. I suppose sailors can be poets. But you’re teasing me. You can’t feel that, sir.”

“Edward.”

“All right—just the times we’re alone…if there will ever be another time…”

“Months and years, Charlotte.”

“Char, then. But you can’t mean that. Don’t say those things. It only spoils it. Just tell me that you care for me right here in this wooden shack. That will be enough for the rest of my life.”

Mr. Seabrooke scurried toward the front door of the manor. The March wind tugged at what was left of his hair and at the bundle of newspapers he carried in his arms.

He entered a side door and was immediately downstairs in the manor and a few feet from the office he shared with his wife.

“Ah, there you are, Mr. Seabrooke,” his wife greeted him. “And you have the papers?”

“I do. I’ll take them upstairs to the library directly after we’ve had a look.”

She pulled a copy of the
Times
out from his bundle and began to read the casualty lists from the weekend. “Warton. Welke. White. Whitely. No, there’s nothing. He’s not there.”

“Well. That’s why we have the other papers, Mrs. Seabrooke. Sometimes even the
Times
misses a few.”

“Let me see the Liverpool papers. You can glance over the other ones from London.”

They sat in their chairs scanning the newspapers. Mrs. Seabrooke made a face as if she had eaten something bitter as she put a third one aside.

“Nothing. It’s been almost a year.” She picked up a cold cup of tea that rested by her elbow and sipped at it as if it were hot. “I still maintain Ben Whitecross was killed on the first day of the Somme last July first. So many young men lost their lives that day. It only stands to reason he was among them.”

“His name wasn’t on those casualty lists either.”

“The unknown dead. There are scads of the unknown dead. He could be one of them.”

Mr. Seabrooke grinned, exposing black and crooked teeth. “If he never shows up at Ashton Park again then I expect you will be proven right.”

Mrs. Seabrooke sniffed and sipped her tea. “If he never shows up at Ashton Park again it will be none too soon as far as I am concerned. I’ll request a special service of thanksgiving at St. Mark’s.”

In the past, Ben Whitecross had always driven Victoria into Liverpool and been supportive of her suffragette marches. Now she had to rely on Old Todd Turpin, aged sixty-one, whose dark silences told her exactly what he thought of the protests and demonstrations. Her parents’ disapproval had never amounted to them forbidding her to march so Old Todd waited glumly by Lime Street Station while she joined others in the streets, often taking horse-drawn cabs to different locations.

Several arrests had been made during the protest rally against the war that morning but, as usual, she had not been touched. She was in one of her black moods regarding Ben being coerced into the frontline trenches and would have welcomed being manhandled and hauled off. She could have kicked some policeman in the shins and felt better. Instead she began to look about for a cab to take her back to Todd. She had just begun to wave at one when a hand brought her arm down.

“Not yet, dear. There’s someone wants a word with you.”

Victoria recognized the woman, one of the protest leaders. “Oh, hullo, Mrs. Shakespeare. What’s that?”

“Come with me. There’s someone important wants to see you.”

Victoria followed her across the street and down an alley to a door that looked half rotted through. It was locked. Mrs. Shakespeare opened it with a small key from her pocket and they stepped into a corridor that was black, Victoria thought, as two in the morning. But Mrs. Shakespeare seemed to know where she was going and did not hesitate, marching briskly ahead and turning left. There was another door that Victoria could just make out set into one side of the hall. At this door Mrs. Shakespeare did a strange kind of knock. A rough woman’s voice asked who it was.

“Ella Shakespeare. I have the young Danforth woman with me.”

“Send her in and be on your way.”

The door opened from inside. Mrs. Shakespeare had already vanished back into the dark of the hallway. Slowly Victoria stepped into a room lit only by a small lamp with an even smaller flame. A tall woman in a black dress sat in a chair in the shadows, a veil covering her face so that none of her features could be distinguished.

“I’m sorry for the veil.” It was the rough voice but not quite so harsh. “It’s for your protection as well as mine. Miss Danforth, I’ve had my eye on you for some time. I have great admiration for your father.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

“But he does not go far enough, does he? Ireland should have independence, not Home Rule. The war should be stopped, Britain should unilaterally withdraw her troops from the continent and bring them home—it is not a question of fighting the war to a successful conclusion, for there can be no successful conclusion when humans are slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands.”

“I…I feel the same way.”

“I was sure of it. I have heard you speak of these matters and others have reported back to me conversations with you as well. You take our cause seriously.”

“I do, ma’am.”

“That is why I have chosen you for a most important task. Others do not take us seriously, Miss Danforth, and we need to change that.”

“I understand. What is it you want me to do?”

“Later this week a man will meet you at Lime Street Station and give you a suitcase. It will be large but not particularly heavy. You are a strapping young woman who will handle it without a problem. We need you to take it to a particular location and set it down.”

“That sounds easy enough.”

“The man will give you a key for the locks on the case. Once you have set it down at the correct place you will turn the key in each lock. This will engage the mechanism inside.”

“Pardon me?”

“You will have primed the bomb, Miss Danforth. It will explode ten minutes after you have done this. Plenty of time for you to get safely away.”

One part of Victoria’s mind seemed to stop. “A bomb?”

“Every day hundreds of German, British, French, and Canadian boys are blown to pieces or lose arms and legs. But out of sight is out of mind for the British public. If we bring the war home to them they may change their thinking on keeping troops in France for another five or ten years. Let them see what the explosion of a shell is like firsthand. Let them see what a human body torn apart looks like. Let them see the color of blood. Then they will demand Britain make a speedy exit from the conflict.” The woman paused. “But perhaps I was mistaken? Perhaps you are not the right person to perform this important task? It may be that you lack the moral fiber to do what is necessary. If so, please tell me, and you can be on your way. There are other promising candidates who will take your place.”

Victoria was silent as she let everything the woman had said work its way through her. She saw Ben ripped up by a shell, possibly killed weeks or months ago, unidentifiable because he had no face. She thought of Emma at her cozy vicarage in Ribchester, where Jeremiah had just been assigned the church—safe and secure from all alarm, as the old hymn put it. And there was Mrs. Seabrooke, fussing with her ledgers, her husband fetching her cups of hot tea from the kitchen that she let sit and grow cold before she drank—Mrs. Seabrooke the witch. How quaint an existence Emma and Mrs. Seabrooke led. How far from the roaring guns and screaming shells they had forced Ben to endure.

“Well?” came the tall woman’s voice. “Speak up, young lady. Arrangements must be made for this important mission. If not you, it will be someone else. On occasion, I am wrong about someone’s character. You may be perfectly suited to the marching and shouting and not committed to—”

“Yes.” Victoria heard her voice as if it were coming from another body on the other side of the room. Her heart beat faster as she spoke. “I will have no trouble doing what you need me to do with the suitcase.”

The tall woman smiled. “I knew we could depend you. Your effort will save many lives. Yes, many lives.”

Victoria envisioned only one life that she hoped to save—that of Ben Whitecross. She would do this for all the others whose lives would be saved, but it was Ben whose life mattered most.