Secrets of Nanreath Hall (31 page)

“You think his grandmother told him he couldn't see you anymore?”

She blinked away tears. “I know he was awfully worried about telling her. She's quite old and very particular. Hugh knew about Jamie and me. He'd caught us at the ruins one night, but he kept his mouth shut—for once in his life. Anyway, he asked around for me, but he ran into the same stone wall.” She dabbed at her eyes. “You can call me a twit to fall for that old flyboy's line, it wouldn't be any worse than what I've called myself. But he really was a peach, Anna. So old-fashioned and proper—a real gentleman, not like these swaggering half-pint heroes with their wide smiles and their quick lines. I couldn't help myself. I fell—hard.”

“It happens to all of us.”

“Not to you. You're much more sensible. You've both feet too firmly on the ground to ever let anyone sweep them out from under you like that.”

It was Anna's turn to look uncomfortable.

“I'm so glad I told you. It was killing me to hold it in, but I just wanted to forget about it. Jamie Meadows could arrive on his hands and knees and I'd not give him the time of day.” She rose from her chair, her earlier distress buried under a layer of powder and paint. “Got to run. Me and some of the other girls are hitching a ride with one of the MTC to Newquay. There's a new band playing at the Blue Lagoon. I hear the singer looks exactly like Sinatra. Ta.”

And just like that she was gone in a cloud of Shalimar and hair lacquer.

Anna continued unpacking, using the chore to make sense of Tilly's confession and her own misunderstanding, but she couldn't help but return to Tilly's offhand assertion. Was it really practicality that kept her from giving herself up to love or something else?

At the bottom of the valise lay the file Ginny had brought to the restaurant. Anna sat on the bed, opening Simon Halliday's folder to reread notations she'd long since memorized. Simon Halliday married to Edith in June 1911. No children.

Her mother—and now Tilly—had both given themselves up to love and had their hearts crushed. Was it so wrong to want to prevent the same thing from happening to her? To want to hold a part of herself back from the chance of more and possibly greater loss? It was just good common sense, that was all.

Turning over the page, she discovered a second set of reports clipped underneath—William Algernon George Burnside Trenowyth.

She'd completely forgotten about her request for Hugh's father's file. She started reading entries on service medals, regimental details, medical reports. She read through the facts of his shrapnel
wound in July 1916 exacerbated by the lung-shredding effects of the chlorine gas. Evacuated to a battalion hospital, where he was given a transfusion of Type O blood.

Anna paused before reexamining the report from the doctor in charge. William Trenowyth possessed Type O blood. According to the questionnaire filled out at the blood drive in the spring, Lady Boxley also possessed Type O.

So why did Hugh have Type A?

Anna went to her locker and pulled out the purloined photograph of the blond man kneeling in the grass beside the tumbled remains of the old cliff ruins. Standing with him, chubby with baby fat, his wispy blond hair peeking from beneath a cap, was a very young Hugh. A picture hidden away for years. A scandal that could turn a family inside out.

Same narrow face. Same smirk to the full mouth.

Eddie at the ruins.

Was this her answer?

T
wo days later Anna cornered Captain Matthews in his office after her last shift—or perhaps interrupted might be the better word. The QA sister collecting files from the MO looked positively flustered, her eyes bright as her cheeks. “I look forward to seeing you at the concert tomorrow night, Captain,” she cooed on her way past.

The MO had the grace to look chagrined, but it didn't keep the pleasure from his own earnest gaze. “It will be my honor to escort you, Sister Evangeline.”

Anna watched the exchange with relief. Surely this would end the persistent rumors linking her and the captain once and for all. And if she were to select the perfect woman for him, she couldn't have done better than Sister Evangeline. Unpretentious, level
headed, and endlessly patient, she would make a textbook doctor's wife.

He closed the door with a tug of his shirt collar, a blush creeping up his neck. “Sister Evangeline and I were just archiving old case files. She's very good at organizing, so I thought I'd set her loose on me . . . that is . . . my office.”

“I'm sure she'll do a wonderful job, sir.” In either case, she thought, though she didn't say it out loud.

“Yes, well.” He cleared his throat as he gestured for her to take a seat. “I hope you had a good time in London. When did you get back?”

“Day before yesterday. I had a lovely time.”

“Good. Ready to jump back in? I have a feeling we're going to be busy. Things are heating up and not in a good way for us. Between the Japanese stirring things up in the east and the Russian collapse at the Dnieper, it's looking bleak.”

“We've managed this far, sir. I suppose we can keep muddling on.”

“Mm,” he grunted. “But for how long, is the question.” He rubbed his forehead, as if it ached, before reaching for his pipe. “I don't suppose you sought me out in my office to talk about the war. What can I do for you, Trenowyth? Though if it's about Sister Murphy, my hands are tied. I've suggested she be parachuted into Berlin on a one-woman crusade to take out the top brass. If anyone can do it, she can.”

“No, sir. It's not Sister Murphy. I wondered if you might explain blood typing to me. I mean, I have a general idea of how it works, but I want to be certain.”

Obviously relieved to be back on a professional footing, he lit his pipe and sat back in his chair, once more in firm control. “Of course. Always happy to educate. What do you need to know?”

“The genetics of it. It's like hair and eyes, isn't it? I mean, certain traits get passed down through the parents.”

“That's right in a nutshell. There are four main types; A, B, AB, and O. Two As have an A child, Two Bs have a B child, Two Os have an O child.”

What if one parent has one type and one has another?”

“Well, in the case of an A and a B, the child will have AB type blood.”

“And in the case of O and another type?”

“The O is a recessive trait so the child would end being A or B.” He eyed her curiously. “Why all the questions? Still thinking about my offer to set you up with a recommendation to St. Thomas's? They're in need of qualified nurses, and with your wartime experience, you'd do well.”

“No, sir. I was just curious.” He continued to regard her oddly, making her scramble to come up with a convincing explanation. “You see, while I was in London, I was telling the story about my afternoon filling in with the blood transfusion service, and it got me wondering about the science of it. That's all.”

He smiled. “Well, not to sound selfish, but I'm glad you're not planning on leaving us just yet. Now that Kinsale is gone, we've few staff with extensive experience.”

“There's always Sister Murphy, sir.” Anna rose to leave.

He shuddered. “By the way, did you and Lady Boxley ever come to a détente?”

“I think so, sir. For now.”

“I'm happy for you. She's a hard woman, but in times like these, we must cling to family with both hands. You never know, do you?”

But Anna knew. She knew everything. Now she just had to decide what to do with the information.

November 1916

“K
itty?”

I didn't answer. Instead, I continued to paint, throwing color on the canvas, shade after shade, layer after layer, until the canvas dripped with thickly spattered gobs of cadmium red and crimson, vermilion, carmine and rose adder. My smock was covered, my face and hair speckled while my hands were sodden up to my wrists.

“Kitty? Please come away. It'll be all right. You'll see.”

I knew Jane and Agnes stood in the doorway. I could feel their concern, could picture them sharing worried glances as they pleaded with me. I slapped a gob of earthy brown sienna that cut across the brighter shades like a bayonet slash, an open wound.

Was this what it felt like to go mad with grief? I'd heard the phrase before; who hadn't in these last few years of annihilation, but I'd always assumed the women who tore their hair and slashed their wrists in their agony were a weak, overly dramatic bunch given
to hysteria simply to gain attention for themselves. Now I began to understand the truth. This had nothing to do with anyone else. This was a storm within that could not be contained no matter the humiliation. One had to simply give in to this howling, wild, insatiable fury. It could not be stopped, merely aimed.

My only release came with sleep, and so I spent hours in my bed, curled beneath the blankets with my face buried in one of Simon's old shirts. I tried to forget for those long hours, tried to pretend all was as it had been before the war, before I knew the truth.

But solace was not so easy to find, even in oblivion. In my dreams, we lay entwined, his lean strength cushioned between my legs. He would laugh away my sorrows and explain his betrayal. Their marriage had been a loveless contract wrought from duty and convenience, which neither had been sorry to set aside in order to pursue independent lives. He anticipated a life dedicated to his art in London. She happily pursued her charitable works in Lincoln. All was easy until we met and fell in love, then he'd been forced to make a choice: tell the truth or live a lie.

My dream always ended with his tears scalding my breasts as he asked what choice I would have made had the decision been mine. I would wake before I could answer him, cold and cramped and nauseated as our growing child spun within my belly, but with the question ringing in my ears as if he had only just now whispered it.

I grabbed up a handful of bright canary yellow, smearing it in long, thin, snaking streaks like tears. I looked at my paint-covered hands, fisting them so the paint oozed out the sides to fall to the floor in large, ugly, wet plops.

“Kitty! Stop it now!”

The voice froze me in place, still feeling the cold, glutinous colors slick between my fingers. I turned to see Doris, her familiar features haggard now and pale with losses of her own. She took off her hat
and coat, as if coming into my flat was a daily occurrence, though we'd not seen each other in years. “Agnes, fix a pot of tea. Jane, run down to the grocers and purchase bread, cheese, and a good thick slice of ham if they have one.”

The two jumped to her bidding as Doris eyed me as a mother might a child she despaired of. “Look at you. You're an absolute mess. Let's get you cleaned up.”

She guided me to the lavatory at the end of the landing. Plunged my hands under the faucet. The water was icy cold. My fingers ached. The bowl of the sink turned red and pink as Doris scrubbed me clean, the paint swirling toward the drain. I closed my eyes, sickened at the bloody, frothy mess. “I was sorry to hear about your husband.”

She had married a rabble-rousing socialist, a writer for a trade-unionist paper. The marriage had lasted barely six months before he'd been killed; one among thousands pounded into dust along the Somme in July. She waved off my sympathy. “I'm sorry, too, but it won't bring him back or keep bread on my table, will it?”

She guided me back into the tiny cramped rooms I'd taken in Fitzrovia when I could no longer pay the rent on the more spacious flat in Ralston Street. Pushing aside the pile of letters strewn across my wobbly dining table, she sat me down with a cup of tea and began to rummage efficiently through cupboards for the makings of breakfast.

Soon enough, I was eating a soft-boiled egg with toast and a bowl of porridge. I found myself surprisingly ravenous and ate every morsel, sopping up the last of the yolk with my bread in a manner that would have horrified my mother's idea of good manners.

“When was the last time you had a proper meal? Or a proper rest?”

“I don't know,” I answered honestly. When I dreamt it was of
Simon. And food had lost its flavor, my stomach constantly uneasy so that anything that went in soon came up again.

Her gaze fell on the letters, the handwriting growing increasingly messy and hard to decipher, as if the writer was losing patience with each unanswered missive.

. . . never know how sorry I am . . .

. . . loved you beyond measure . . .

. . . for God's sake, please write and say you forgive me . . .

“It's been three months since you found out about his wife. From the look of this mess, he must have written you every day. Did you ever answer him?”

“What was there to say? Nothing would have changed.” I picked at the edge of the table where the veneer pulled away. Paint remained under my nails and in the creases of each knuckle.

“Yet you kept them, Kitty,” she said quietly, forcing me to meet her gaze. “All of them.”

“I won't receive any more.” I went to the desk scattered with unpaid bills and returned with a single bloodstained envelope, which I handed to Doris. “This came two days ago.”

She pulled free the nearly ruined pages, bringing with them a thin gold chain and locket that fell onto the tabletop.

“One of Simon's friends found the letter among his things after he . . . he died in hospital,” I explained, my eyes unable to pull free of the dull glint of cheap metal worn smooth by the dirt and sweat from his chest where it had lain against his heart. “He sent it on to me with a note enclosed. It was a belly wound. It took Simon two days to die. At least he wasn't alone. It's little enough comfort, but it's all I have.”

Doris read the pages slowly before laying them aside. “He loved you very much.”

I couldn't help but recall our last night together and his almost tearful declarations, the ferocity in which he sought to convince me of his undying passion. Had that been as false as all the rest, or was that the truth amid all the other lies? Was love enough to justify deception?

“I don't want to talk about it anymore, Doris. I just want to put it—and him—out of my mind.”

“You can't just push the last years aside like they didn't happen.”

“I have to try or I'll go mad. Simon wasn't ever mine, not really. No matter how many letters he wrote to me. He belonged to her.”

“Will you give up the baby?”

My hands caressed my stomach where the flutterings of tiny limbs rippled like waves. “No,” I answered, almost daring Doris to argue. “Whatever happens, this baby belongs to me.”

“Right, easy enough to manage with so many widows these days. None will ever question it.”

My head came up sharply. “I won't lie.”

“Simon's gone, Kitty. You have to think of yourself . . . and the baby that's coming. Do you want the neighbors to whisper? It's not hurting anyone. Who's to know?”

“I'll know.” I pushed my tea away. “Lies started this. I won't . . . I can't . . . keep pretending.”

“It'll be harder.”

I took up the locket, unclasping it to reveal the photos. On the left was the stiff, sour-faced picture of myself taken over a year ago. But on the right had been added a grainy shot of Simon in his uniform. He looked tired but stoic. His hair was shorter and his face thinner, but I smiled through my watering eyes at the familiar slash of dark brows and the long, knifing cheekbones beneath a shadow of beard.

“Perhaps, but not nearly as hard as this.”

I snapped the locket closed, running my thumb over the inscription he'd added before he placed it in the envelope to be sent home to me:
Forgive my love
.

There was nothing to forgive. And, God help me, but despite it all, I loved him still.