Secrets of Nanreath Hall (21 page)

“So glad I passed inspection, but have either of you ever considered I might be just as rattled coming back to a family that doesn't want anything to do with me? I spent my entire life as ‘that girl.' Not quite acceptable or decent. The one mothers didn't want their daughters hanging about with in case my bastardy rubbed off. Every other child had parents with the same last name. Every other child had aunts and uncles and cousins, a family history that didn't start when they were six. My parents were nothing but two faded pictures in a cheap locket.”

He took her arm, and they hugged the verge to let a removal van pass. It rumbled into a lower gear as it slowed on its way down the hill into the village. “Anna, I know you don't think it, but I'm on your side. I know what it's like to look at a faded photograph and dream about what might have been.”

“At least you had your mother's memories of him.”

“And if her memories were truth, they'd have canonized him by now. No, it was everyone else I spoke with who painted the picture I have in my head. Their opinion might be more cynical, but it definitely made my father more likeable.”

“That's exactly what I'm doing. Your mother has done her best to persuade me Lady Katherine was either shameless or gullible. Now I'm on my way to see Minnie Smith in the village. Perhaps she can offer me a new picture.”

“Old Silas Smith's daughter? What would she know of Lady Katherine? I can't imagine they would have ever found themselves in company.”

“I'll let you know after tea.”

He paused, and she realized with a start they'd arrived in front of the pub. A pair of gaffers sat smoking and chatting on a bench beneath the pub's creaking sign. One tipped his hat to Hugh. The other nodded. Both studied her with a knowing eye and a wink.

“My stop,” he said. “An appointment with a builder. Supplies are scarce. And while the government will pay for some of it, there are parts of Nanreath that need more than Churchill is prepared to offer. Mother doesn't like to dicker with tradesmen, she says it's beneath her, so it's up to me to grease the wheels.”

“And your throat at the same time?”

He grinned and dipped his head in a self-conscious gesture.

She rolled her eyes and started to walk away.

“Anna?” He remained in the doorway, leaning a shoulder against the weathered wood of the jamb, his hands in his pockets, eyes pale against his pale skin and the afternoon sun gleaming strands of his golden hair. “Be careful.”

“I'm sure Miss Smith is perfectly harmless.”

“Not her. I'm talking about this search for answers about your mother. Take my word, truth can be a double-edged sword.” He paused, his gaze lifting to the sky. “Be very sure you want to hear the answer before you ask the question. Sometimes it's better not to know.”

L
eaving Hugh to his appointment at the pub, Anna continued on to Minnie Smith's cottage. While repairs at Nanreath proceeded quickly, the village remained scarred and blackened. The vestry hall was a roofless burnt shell, the church windows boarded over and the bell tower leaning dangerously. The narrow, hilly streets leading to the harbor possessed a dingy grayness, and the air hung heavy with rot and mold and smoke. Rope cordoned off a side lane where the occasional timber stuck black and spear-like into the sky amid a jumble of brick, stone, and tumbled ruined furniture.

Anna turned down the lane running parallel to the narrow strip of pebbled beach and the long low harbor wall and followed along until she came to the last stone fisherman's cottage in the row. A beautiful fairy garden had been tenderly cultivated from the rocky patch of ground out front, and the door was painted a lively peacock-blue. She rapped sharply and waited.

The door cracked the width of a chain and an eye peered out. “Who's there?” a man's thin raspy voice squeaked.

“I'm Miss Trenowyth. I've come from the hospital at Nanreath.”

“None's sick here. Go 'way.”

A murmured conversation between people Anna couldn't see ensued, then the eye withdrew to be replaced by Minnie's faded countenance, peering out at her through the crack. “Don't mind my da. He doesn't like strangers.” The chain was removed and the door opened. Miss Smith wore an enormous white apron over a spiffing dress. She grabbed Anna by the arm and dragged her inside. “Come in, Miss Trenowyth. Thought you forgot about me, I did, but then I told myself to be patient. You'd come if you had the time. It's just Da and I don't get many guests. It's hard to wait when it's only his grumpy face I've got to see every day.”

“Thank you for inviting me to tea, Miss Smith.”

“It's Minnie, Miss Trenowyth. Told you all my friends call me Minnie.”

Removing her apron and smoothing her hair, she led the way into a tiny front room where Anna stopped dead in her tracks. Four ladies with cups of tea and sandwiches were already seated on the lumpy, doily-covered furniture.

“You remember Mrs. Crewe.” Minnie nodded toward the plump, middle-aged woman with a Marcel wave and a friendly smile. “That's Mrs. Polley and Mrs. Thompkins in the corner there.” Two graying ladies looked up from their half-completed scarves, which trailed from their needles, over the chair arms, and across the floor. “And of course, you remember Miss Dawlish.” The steel-eyed woman looked no happier to see Anna now than she had at the New Year's social.

“Very nice to see you all again. I'm afraid you've caught me a bit off guard. I didn't expect a crowd.”

“You never invited her without telling her we'd be here, too,” Emmaline Crewe complained. “That was poorly done.”

Mrs. Polley tsked her distress. “Ambushed right and proper.”

“Thought this was a rum do.”

“Minnie Smith, you're as daft as a day-old fawn. Not a straight thought in that head of yours.”

“Oh, it's fine. Really,” Anna said, hoping to ease the dagger looks being shot in Minnie's direction. “I'm just happy to see you all came through unscathed.”

“Unscathed? If that's what you call it,” Miss Dawlish complained. “I'm staying with my niece and her five children. I'm ready to stick my head in the oven.”

“It's just for a bit, Louise,” Mrs. Crewe soothed her with another biscuit. “Just until the authorities tell you it's safe to go back.”

“And when is that supposed to be? I've been waiting two weeks and not a soul's even come round to inspect the damage.”

Minnie offered Anna an apologetic look over the heads of her chattering guests. “As soon as I told them you were coming, they fell over themselves to be here.”

“I had no idea I was such a celebrity.”

“Aye, not much doings in the village since . . . well . . . since your mother.” She giggled. “I'd have had a houseful if I wanted, but Da don't like company, so I kept it to these four. They all knew your mother real well. Mrs. Crewe and Mrs. Polley were in service for the old earl as maids, Mrs. Thompkin's family farms a tenant holding. I worked as maid to Mrs. Vinter, who owned a house at the bottom of Cliff Lane. Doesn't sound like much, but Lady Katherine spent more time there than she did at her own home, so I couldn't help but know what was what.”

“And you, Miss Dawlish?” Anna asked.

The tall, thin woman looked up from her cup of tea. “My father was a chemist here in the village. Lady Katherine and I shared a mathematics tutor one summer. I was intended for university.”

“And Lady Katherine?”

“For marriage, I assume, though she bollixed that up pretty thoroughly.” She added a grudging, “Good at figures, though . . . for someone of her ilk.”

“What did you study at university?”

“I didn't go. The war came and I enlisted in the FANY. Drove ambulances. By the time hostilities were over, university seemed the height of self-indulgence. I just wanted to be left alone.”

Mrs. Crewe and Mrs. Thompkins moved aside for Anna, who settled between them with tea and a plate heaped with sandwiches.

Minnie hovered like a giddy mother hen. “The bread's not much
and it's only margarine, but the strawberry jam's from a batch I put up last summer, and there's real egg in the egg and cress.”

“What have you brought in that case?” Mrs. Crewe asked between clicking needles and finger sandwiches.

“Lady Katherine's portfolio. I've heard she was an aspiring artist.”

“Aye, she was,” Mrs. Polley confirmed. “Always carrying that dingy old bag about with her or squirreled away in a little attic room she took as her studio. Paint under her fingernails and smelling of linseed oil and varnish no matter how many baths she took.”

“Remember the time her mother found her behind the dairy sketching that old tinker from up Boscawen way?”

“Lordy, the ruckus. You'd have thought the old badger was going to kidnap her for the white slave trade, the to-do that went on.”

“And what about the time she went off the morning before the village fete and never come home. Beaters out looking for her with lamps after dark.”

“And there she was at the Cheswick farm having supper just like she'd not been given up for dead.”

As Mrs. Crewe and Mrs. Polley reminisced, Anna opened the case, laying out some of the pictures on a table. All the women craned their necks to see.

“Why, that's the old mine near Witch's Edge.”

“There's Pete Kelly's boat. See here with the blue trim and always him going out with his old dog.”

“Heard he liked that dog better than his wife.”

“She was a Wesley, wasn't she? All those Wesleys are mean as badgers.”

“Careful, Miriam. Dom Wesley's a cousin of mine on my mother's side.”

“My point exactly.”

Minnie gasped, her weathered face breaking into a grin. “Why, there's me. Ha, don't I look smart . . . and ever so young.” She pulled a loose page from under another. Her hand paused above the sketch, a slight wrinkle between her brows. “Look at this, girls. Should have known there'd be a drawing of the ruins.”

“The ruins? Are they nearby?” Anna asked.

“A few miles up the cliff, north of the village,” Mrs. Crewe replied. “It's a lonely spot, but very romantic.”

“If you like old, mossy stones and sloppy kisses,” Miss Dawlish commented.

Minnie pointedly ignored the comment. “All the young 'uns do their sparking there.” Her tongue flicked to the corner of her mouth, a troubled expression shadowing her features. She dropped the sketch back to the table, as if wanting to rid herself of it. “Lady Katherine had a real gift, didn't she? Mrs. Vinter always said that she did.”

“Do you know why she didn't pursue it professionally?” Anna asked.

“Mrs. V wanted her to, but girls like Lady Katherine didn't work at dabbing at pictures, did they? They married a swell and had lots of rich babies. If they doodled a bit, it weren't to be paid for it.”

“But Lady Katherine didn't marry her swell.” Anna laid the picture of Simon Halliday on the table.

Mrs. Polley sighed. “He was a handsome bloke, wasn't he? No wonder she fell in love with him.”

“You know who this is?”

“'Course I do. That's the chap that ran off with your mother. Only saw him when he was here that summer before the war, but he was a hard one to forget. All the maids were half in love with him.”

Minnie giggled. “I can still see Mrs. V facing down the old earl
when he come barreling down to her house by the sea, threatening all and a hatchet for her part in corrupting his daughter. She never even blinked. Tough as nails, she was. Not an ounce of give in her.”

Anna leaned forward. “Why would the earl have come to Mrs. Vinter?”

“Why, it was her that set the girl to pining for art school when the old earl and his wife forbid it. That's what started the whole mess, if you ask me.” Minnie seemed surprised Anna didn't know this already.

“Nah, it was that painting that did it. Flaunting herself with no clothes on was just asking for trouble,” Mrs. Crewe declared.

“You mean
The Red-Haired Wanton
?” Anna asked. “The painting Simon Halliday did of her?”

“Don't know the name, but remember the stink,” she said. “I traveled to London that fall with the family. The hullabaloo when they found out, dearie me. The rows and carryings-on, weeping and slamming of doors. Lady Katherine marched out and never a backward glance.”

“And then later, she run off with him. Could have knocked me down with a feather when I heard. Never thought she'd bolt the traces. Always such a good girl, if a bit scattered.”

“A shame it didn't last.”

“'Course it didn't. What girl would stay, knowing the man she left her whole family for had a string of mistresses.”

Forgive my love.
Anna's hand closed around her locket.

“Well, I saw Lady Katherine with my own eyes when she come back to Nanreath carrying Miss Anna here,” Minnie said with authority. “She was a woman who'd lost her greatest love.”

“Sentimental hogwash,” Miss Dawlish piped up.

“Are you saying I'm making things up?”

“I'm saying she should have known better than to take up with
a shiftless nobody. What did it bring her in the end? Scandal, ruin, exile, and a pointless death without anyone from her family by her bedside.”

“You're just sour, Louise, and have been for over twenty years. It wouldn't be the first time a girl's fallen in love with a man what's not good for her,” Minnie said angrily. She took up the picture of Simon Halliday once more. “He sure was fine-looking and so young. They were all young, though, weren't they, Miss Trenowyth? Your da . . . the old lord's son . . . so many who died in that war.”

“I thought Lord Melcombe's father was invalided out,” Anna said.

“Aye, gas tore up his lungs. That's why your mum came back. She wanted to see her brother before he died.” She stared blindly into her teacup. “But they sent her away.” She looked up, memory sheening her eyes with tears. “It wasn't right not letting her in to see the young lord. Not when they were so close.”