Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor (2 page)

As her muddied mind cleared, her heart seemed to numb, sucking away her fear. She reached for the railing that separated the promenade from the harbor and wrapped her hands around it. Stepping onto the bottom rung, she imagined the waves sweeping her body into the depths of the channel, all her fear washed away.

When she didn’t return, the villagers would pity her aunt and uncle for their loss. There would be no shame, no remorse for them, only a brief sorrow and perhaps curiosity at her disappearance. No one would ever know about the baby.

She leaned against the wind, her hair whipping her cheeks, sand and water piercing her face. Her mind screamed for her to run, to escape the gale, but she willed herself to push into it. It would be better for the baby. For her aunt and uncle.

For her.

The sea was the only way out.

Another wave smashed into the wall. The surge shot straight up, entangling her, and she lost her grip on the railing. Her body began to teeter over the seawall, toward the bay.

“Maggie!” a man shouted.

At the sound of her name, her numb body wakened. Flailing, she grasped for the wet railing.

But it was too late to stop her fall.

JANUARY 1954, CLEVEDON, ENGLAND

T
he saltwater was supposed to sting Maggie’s cheeks, the current pulling her down to the depths of the channel. Instead, strong hands encircled her waist and yanked her back from the railing, away from the angry sea.

Spinning around, she saw Walter Doyle gazing down at her, his hazy blue eyes more intense than she’d ever seen. He released her waist, but one of his hands folded over the sleeve of her blouse as if he was afraid she might blow away.

Anger warred against gratefulness inside her.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, his voice battling the noise of the wind.

How could she tell him she’d wanted to escape into the sea?

But he didn’t wait for her answer. Instead he glanced back out at the churning water and quickly led her away from the seawall, back into the corridor of shops, to the portico at St. Andrews. When she began shivering under the awning, he wrapped his coat over her shoulders. With Walter beside her, the promise of freedom slipped away.

“You must be more careful, Maggie,” he chided, like he was decades older instead of only twenty-six years to her nineteen.

“I was just—” She hesitated. “I wanted to feel the wind.”

“Those waves will swallow you whole.”

Frustration raged inside her again. That was exactly what she’d wanted the waves to do.

He reached for her hand, his wet fingers encircling hers. “Let’s get you home.”

She yanked her hand away. “I can walk by myself.”

“I’d never forgive myself if something happened to you.”

She wanted to shout at him,
Too late!
Something had already happened, and he’d stopped her from making it right again.

“The storm’s only going to get worse,” he said, imploring her.

“The worst has passed.”

“Maggie—” he paused, and she saw the serious creases that ran like rivulets under his glasses. He was handsome enough with his light blond hair and clean-shaven face, but she’d always thought him dull. Nothing like the daring sailors who came to their town from France and Italy. Nothing like Elliot.

“What is it?” she asked.

He lowered his voice, barely audible in the wind. “I sure wish you’d marry me.”

His words slapped her with cold reality, a jarring reminder of all she’d tried to escape. She studied his face, waiting for him to laugh at his joke, but he was in earnest. She shouldn’t be surprised. He’d asked her to marry him last summer, when they’d picnicked with friends at the cove, but she had told him no. Back then, she’d wanted to marry for love.

He squeezed her hand. “Maggie?”

She glanced back at the rain drumming the asphalt, his words echoing in her ears. Perhaps there was another way.

She took a deep breath, shivering again as she tugged on the lapels of Walter’s borrowed coat, pulling it around her chest. “You are supposed to get on your knee.”

His eyes creased again. “What?”

She inched up her chin in a weak attempt to calm the racing in her chest. “It would be indecent for any woman to accept a proposal of marriage when the man is standing before you.”

He dropped down to one knee and grasped her hands. “Maggie Emerson, would you give me the pleasure of becoming my wife?”

She nodded. “Right away.”

A VEIL SHROUDED MAGGIE’S FACE,
and she hoped the lace hid her trepidation from the man standing before her. Walter looked quite dapper in his gray flannel suit and maroon tie, not a bit of fear reflected in his face. Only admiration and excitement. If she kept her secret, he would never find out about Elliot.

She’d always been good at making up stories, but not so much at acting. Aunt Priscilla only had to glance at her face, and she could read every emotion, but Uncle Timothy was so distracted by his work that he never questioned her.

She hoped her husband would be more like her uncle.

Walter’s gaze softened as the rector began to read their vows. If only she could bask in his love like the day-trippers from London did with the summer sun . . . but his love would dissipate if he ever discovered what she had done.

It seemed as if the entire population of Clevedon had crowded into the sanctuary to watch the Frasers’ foster niece and the local newspaper editor wed. She felt the stares of the congregation on her back, but she couldn’t look at Uncle Timothy, Aunt Priscilla, or their three children. Couldn’t bear to see the excitement in their eyes—a different kind of excitement than Walter’s in that they were finally parting with the evacuee who’d come to them by train almost fifteen years ago and never left.

She smoothed her fingers over the cool satin that hid her stomach, and guilt coursed through her veins again as Walter smiled down at her. When she agreed to marry him, he hadn’t wasted any time in helping to arrange the wedding, as if he was afraid she might change her mind.

But now, standing here at the altar, the whirlwind of wedding plans complete, she prayed she hadn’t made a mistake. The Germans had taken her family, but she would do her best to make a new one with the man standing before her.

Walter took her hand, and she turned toward the rector, a middle-aged man with graying hair and a white robe that fell to the tile floor.

“The vows you are about to take are to be made in the presence of God, who is judge of all and knows all the secrets of our hearts,” he said, his voice heavy with the weight of his words. “Walter and Margaret, if either of you knows a reason why you may not lawfully marry, you must declare it now.”

The rector studied Walter’s face and then his gaze penetrated the lace of her veil. She wished she could shrink into herself, disappear, but she forced herself to hold steady.

Her lips opened, but words didn’t come out, and she felt trapped, her nerves tangled inside her. The baby wasn’t Walter’s child, but she’d already made a bad choice with Elliot. She didn’t want to make another one by turning back now.

The rector had moved into their declarations, and Walter promised before her and God to honor and protect her, to be faithful to her as long as they lived.

Then the rector returned his gaze to her.

“Margaret, will you give yourself to Walter to be his wife: to love him, comfort him, honor and protect him; and, forsaking all others, to be faithful to him so long as you both shall live?”

Maggie glanced back at Mrs. Doyle—Walter’s mother—on the front row. She wore an elegant pastel yellow and white dress, and joy radiated from her face as if she were the bride. Walter’s dad had died in the war so Mrs. Doyle traveled almost two hundred miles alone by bus to watch her only son marry.

Walter gently squeezed Maggie’s hands, bringing her back to the reality that the entire congregation was waiting for her to respond. In that moment, she decided she would do everything possible to honor this man and their marriage. “I will.”

Likely no one else heard Walter’s sigh of relief, but it pounded like thunder in her heart. Then they began to say their vows.

Over his shoulder, through the clear glass among the stained, the sea called to her. Instead of answering, Maggie silently vowed to remain strong for the baby growing inside her even as she promised Walter to love and cherish him, for better or for worse.

When they finished, the rector pronounced them man and wife, and Walter took her hand, guiding her down the long aisle, past the smiling faces and eyes critiquing the details of her white gown.

She knew all these people, but very few were friends. Her childhood friends had been other war evacuees who’d returned to their families after the bombings stopped in London, and her school friends had either married or left Clevedon for college. She’d wanted to attend a university, but her aunt and uncle felt they’d already done more than society and even God required of them. And she didn’t have the income to pay for an education on her own.

She and Walter wouldn’t just provide food and a place for their child to sleep, but an environment with love and laughter and an education so her child—and their other children—could go wherever they pleased.

That thought made her smile.

As they emerged into the sunlight outside the church, she blinked. Walter opened the door to the Rolls-Royce he’d borrowed from her uncle, and their chauffeur—a friend of Walter’s—pretended to ignore them in the backseat.

“The best day of my life,” Walter whispered as he put his arm around her.

“Mine too.” A white lie, spit and polished, so it wouldn’t hurt either of them.

Then he pulled her close and kissed her. Their first kiss.

There were no fireworks in her heart like when Elliot kissed her. No danger.

She told herself that she wouldn’t miss the danger. She was secure now, and she would savor the security.

He took her hand again as the car crawled through the narrow streets in town.

God was the only one who knew her secret, and she hoped He would guard it well.

W
heat starch and a few drops of water were all Heather Toulson needed to fix the torn painting of Mount St. Helens. She dabbed the white paste onto the back of the ripped paper and gently edged the pieces of pale-blue sky against the dark fringe of leaves until they were a coherent image again. The watercolors captured the reflection of the volcano in a mountain lake, sixty years before the snow-capped peak erupted and left behind a gaping wound of rock and ash.

The painting wouldn’t be worth anything in the art world, but it was invaluable to her client, the tenacious Mrs. Young. And Heather happened to think tenacity was a virtue.

Mrs. Young’s mother had painted it in 1922, and after Mrs. Young moved into a retirement village in Southern Oregon, she’d stored her prized painting in her son’s basement. Then his washing machine overflowed. Even though the painting was behind glass, the delicate paper had been no match for the moisture. When her son took the glass off, he’d torn a piece of the tree branches that framed the lake and mountain. Mrs. Young had been devastated.