Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor (5 page)

“It will be cold.”

“It doesn’t matter.” He helped her stand, and even though it was almost eleven, she relit the candles and peeled back the foil. Then he held out her chair.

“How was your day?” he asked as he served the meat.

She thought about the endless books she’d checked out for children on their summer holiday. And the stacks she’d had to reshelve. And the conversation with Walter that she’d rehearsed over and over in her mind.

It was hardly as riveting as reporting a shipwreck on the coast, but still it was her story.

“Mrs. Bishop keeps coming by to see if we have John Steinbeck’s new novel. I’ve told her repeatedly that it doesn’t release until next month but she thinks I’m being impertinent.”

Walter laughed. “That’s what happens when you’ve met the Queen of England.”

“Queen Elizabeth wasn’t a queen when Mrs. Bishop met her!”

“Don’t remind her of that,” he said before he took a bite of his salad. Mrs. Bishop was married to Harold Bishop, the man who owned the
Clevedon Mercury
. Mr. Bishop spent much of his time away from home.

“It doesn’t matter what I say.” Maggie sighed. “The woman doesn’t like me.”

He tilted his head. “How could anyone not like you?”

She didn’t know how she’d managed to fool such an intelligent man about her character. “She thinks I’m intentionally keeping her from the books she wants to read. Like I’m the book Gestapo or something.”

Walter wiped his face with his napkin. “She doesn’t like me much either.”

“What could you have done—”

“She thinks I’m covering up the most important news in Clevedon.”

She tilted her head. “And what news would that be?”

“I have no idea, and frankly I don’t think she does either.”

She sighed again. “Apparently the two of us are conspiring against her happiness.”

“That’s us, Maggie,” he said with another laugh. “Two grand conspirators.”

She cringed at his words.

Aunt Priscilla had said it was the predisposition of any woman to redirect the conversation to say what she needed to say. If she didn’t ask Walter about moving now, it might be too late.

She reached for her napkin and dabbed it on her lips. “I’m tired of working at the library.”

“I meant to tell you—” He glanced back up from his meal. “Anthony Morton says they have been looking for someone to let two rooms in their house.”

She picked up her fork to stir the strands of cabbage in her bowl. “We can’t live with the Mortons. Baby will be up at night crying the first weeks and I would feel so bad . . .”

“They’ll understand. They have two grown children.”

Maggie looked over at the exhaustion in her husband’s red-rimmed eyes, at his disheveled blond hair, at the smudges on his thin spectacles. The timing might be terrible, but she had to make him understand the dire state of their future here.

“What if—” she began, twirling her fork casually even as she tried to calm the racing in her heart. “Oh, it’s an impossible idea.”

Even though his eyes were heavy with fatigue, he leaned forward and smiled at her. “But I like your ideas.”

“What if—” she started again and then took a deep breath. “What if we moved?”

His smile collapsed into confusion. “But you said you didn’t want to live with the Mortons.”

“I mean—” She put down her fork. “What if we moved away?”

He searched her face intently as if he thought she might be teasing him. “You want to leave Clevedon?”

“I—” she faltered before slowly nodding her head. “Perhaps you could find a more secure position at another newspaper—”

“My position is secure.”

She continued, refusing to be daunted now. “A place where you can earn a higher income.”

He flinched. “I will never earn as much money as your uncle.”

“I don’t expect you to,” she said, trying to collect her thoughts even as her words rushed out. “I just thought it might be a good idea for our little family to start over someplace new.”

“Start over—” His lips pressed together for a moment before he spoke again. “Why would we want to start over?”

Goose bumps bristled across her arms as her mind raced to devise a more compelling argument.

“I thought you liked it here,” he said.

She clenched her fork. This was going all wrong. “Not particularly.”

“Why not?” he probed.

Her gaze turned toward the dark window. “I don’t like the cold air on the coast, I suppose, or the smell of fish, or the way everyone butts into everyone else’s business.”

He tossed his napkin onto the table. “You should have told me that before we married.”

“Everything happened so fast, Walter. My head was spinning.”

“I just assumed—”

“You assumed a lot of things,” she blurted, and then covered her mouth, horrified.

He clutched the edge of the table. “What else did I assume?”

Answers to his question pelted her mind like rapid gunfire, but this time she controlled her tongue.

“I didn’t say that right,” she said, sniffling. “I’m all a mess right now.”

He slowly released his grip on the table. “We’re both exhausted.”

This time she softened her voice, tilting her head slightly again, blinking back her tears. She hadn’t asked much of him since their wedding, but she thought he really did love her enough to give her whatever she wanted. All she wanted now was for him to consider a move, at least until she could come up with a more pressing reason for them to leave. “Will you think about it?” she asked.

“I run the local newspaper,” he said as if he were fastened to the business by wooden stocks.

“Someone else can manage the paper, just as well as you.”

He looked insulted at first, but it turned rapidly into frustration. “I’m sorry, love—” he hesitated again, conflicted, and she hoped he still might change his mind. “But we can’t leave.”

She crossed her arms, tears flooding her cheeks. Walter couldn’t tell her what she would and would not do, like he was her father instead of her husband.

“Thank you for the meal.” He stood and picked up both plates before pushing in the chair. “I have to finish writing this story tonight.”

She listened to the water running from the faucet in the kitchen. Usually he washed their dishes and she dried, but tonight she didn’t move from her chair.

Her aunt said if Walter loved her enough, he would leave Clevedon. Walter might say he loved her, but he didn’t really, at least not more than his newspaper.

She never should have listened to her aunt.

In the hours before dawn, as she lay in bed next to Walter, she could hear the deep breathing of his sleep. This riff between them tonight was invisible, nothing like the aftermath of a trawler crashing into the rocks, but she’d felt a tear separating her from her husband.

What would he do if he found out the truth about their baby?

Living on the coast, she knew well that it only took a small leak to sink a ship. And if a ship, no matter how strong, ran aground, everything onboard could be lost.

She didn’t know what to do next, but she would do everything she could to keep their little ship intact.

Y
ellow rapeseed fields glittered like stamps of gold leaf among the prim and quite proper plots of green and brown. Her nose pressed against the window, Heather scanned the English countryside as the 757 flew low over the farmland and then Windsor Castle in its approach into Heathrow.

Her daughter was flying from Dulles, and if all went as planned, Ella’s plane would touch down about fifteen minutes from now. They planned to pick up their rental car together before driving the two hours over to the vacant cottage in Bibury.

It was the last time she’d ever have to visit the place where everything went awry.

Heather’s father had been gone from this world for almost four months now, but it seemed like much longer—decades even—and she missed him. Her parents had sent her to an independent girls’ school for her primary and secondary education, but when she was home, she’d loved spending time with her dad. Walter Doyle was a man of honor. A man who stuck to his principles when others let theirs slide. He’d been the postmaster in Bibury for more than thirty years, and as a child, she had been proud of his discipline and reputation in their village and the surrounding towns.

On the summer evenings Mum worked as a hairdresser, earning extra money for Heather’s boarding school, he would entertain her with the most wonderful tales. It seemed like he knew a little about everyone’s business, but when he told her what he’d heard, he would put wings on the stories and make them bigger. Grander.

The childhood that started idyllically, however, began to sour in the latter part of her secondary school years. And then, after what happened with Christopher—

She’d left to attend a university in London though really she’d been running away—from her parents and Christopher and the big, gaping wound she thought would heal with time. For years the wound stung, the rejection from her first love slashing through her core. Over the years, it left behind an ugly scar, but even now, she sometimes felt as if her wound had never fully healed. The thought of reopening it terrified her.

Her father had never forgiven her for eloping with Jeffery during her second semester of college, and none of her visits back to England had repaired the rift that separated them. Unlike the artwork she restored, there were no paints or paste or tools to mend the ragged gap in their relationship.

Regret and shame haunted Heather during her years with Jeffery. She’d tried to forget the young man she’d loved deeply back in Bibury, but her heart warred inside her. It wasn’t her love for Christopher that slowly severed her marriage. It was her anger at Christopher—and anger toward herself.

When Ella was six, Jeffery decided to leave, and he never returned. Heather knew she’d made some lousy choices in her struggle to grow up, but she never once regretted being Ella’s mother.

She glanced out the window again at the sprawl of London that stretched like the threads on a cobweb. As if it wanted to capture her and her heart again.

Heather’s mum had been disappointed when Heather told her that she and Jeffery had married . . . and were expecting a child. But during the last three years of her life, Mum had loved her granddaughter dearly. Ella attended the service for her grandmother back in 1992, but she hadn’t been back to England since then. She and Matthew had been on their honeymoon the week of her grandfather’s memorial service.

Having Ella here now would keep Heather focused on the task at hand. For the next two weeks, she was determined to put her past behind her and honor her father by caring for his things.

And she was determined to avoid Christopher Westcott and his family.

Once she set the cottage in order, she would hand the keys to a real estate agent and return to Portland. In the rhythm of her work back in Oregon, her ordered life, peace would be restored.

The plane’s wheels touched down, jolting her back to her reality.

She found Ella by the window in the Terminal 4 lobby, texting her husband even though it was three in the morning Phoenix time. Ella looked like she was still in high school, with her short strawberry blonde hair pushed back behind her sunglasses, not the least bit frazzled after her long flight.

“How is my son-in-law?” Heather asked as she slid into the seat beside her.

Ella turned and squealed before wrapping her arms around her in a giant hug. “He says he’s afraid I’ll love it so much here that I won’t come home.”

“I have no doubt you’ll love it, but I think you love him a bit more.”

“That’s what I keep telling him.” Ella reached for her backpack and strapped it over her shoulder. “I can’t believe we’re finally here!”

“Me neither.” Heather smiled at her beautiful daughter. “I’ve sure missed you.”

Ella grinned back at her. “The last time I was here, I was like two.”

“Actually, like three.”

“I don’t remember a thing.”

Heather stood up. “Then let’s see England together.”

They rolled their luggage out to the parking garage, and when they found their rental car—a compact Volkswagen—Ella opened the door on the right side and started to climb inside.

Heather leaned against the door behind her, holding up the keys. “You want to try it?”

Ella backed away from the vehicle. “I’m not driving on the wrong side of the road.”

“It’s not wrong over here.”

She hurried to the passenger side of the car and buckled in before Heather insisted she try.

As they cruised slowly out of the airport, Heather regaining her confidence in driving on the opposite side, Ella talked about her new job as an account executive and all the weekend trips she and Matthew had planned for the summer. Heather would never tell Ella, but some days she missed her daughter so much, her heart ached. After Jeffery left, some days—and some months—it had been hard raising a child alone, but she and Ella had leaned into each other like two hearty trees that had sprouted from different roots, their trunks entwined into one. And they’d remained there until Ella began growing her branches. Then the winds of life blew her daughter in a different direction.