The Benedict Bastard (A Benedict Hall Novel) (15 page)

The older woman slowly dropped her hand, and Bronwyn saw that she was carrying something in her other hand, what looked at first glance like a rock. It was rough-edged and uneven, a weathered-looking gray, and it took a moment for Bronwyn to understand that it was a piece of concrete.

The woman lifted it, and held it up on her two palms. “I hate this thing,” she said, as if Bronwyn should understand what it was she was showing her. “I saw you from my window, you see.”

Bronwyn couldn’t see how the two were related, and she suspected the woman wasn’t quite sane. She didn’t want to be rude, but she really did want to get away before Margot Benedict appeared and exposed her deception. She put her hand on the gate again. “If you’ll excuse me, ma’am,” she began, “I really must be . . .”

In the middle of her sentence, the older woman turned the chunk of concrete over in her palms, and Bronwyn saw the stone embedded in it. Her throat dried, and she stood, wordless, staring at it.

She had seen that stone before. It was a sapphire. He had worn it around his neck, under his shirt. He told her he never took it off, that it had belonged to a Turkish queen, long ago. Even when he—when they were in the garden together—the jewel was around his neck. It had pressed against her, caught between Preston’s body and her own. Its heavy silver chain had been cool against her bare skin. Later, as she had undressed in her half-dreaming state, the imprint of the sapphire was still there, marked into the soft skin of her breast.

“It’s so strange, don’t you think?” the woman said, turning the stone so it glowed in the evening light. “I don’t really believe in such—that is, it never made sense to me, but—Preston likes it.” She gazed at Bronwyn’s face. “Is it you, dear?”

“Is it me?” Bronwyn stammered. “What do you mean?” This woman had to be Preston’s mother. This was Benedict Hall. It was perfectly logical to meet her here, but the circumstances were so strange. Bronwyn raised one hand to her temple and rubbed it, wishing she could understand what was happening. One of them was making no sense, and she wasn’t entirely certain it was the other woman.

“I think it must be you. Preston described you to me, and when I heard all the noise, and looked out of my window, I thought you might be the girl. It’s your eyes, you know. So distinctive.”

“He—Preston described me?” Bronwyn found herself gaping in confusion, and forced herself to close her mouth.

“Oh, yes. Yes.”

“What are you doing with that?” Bronwyn asked, pointing one finger at the chunk of concrete with its buried jewel.

“Oh, the stone! He wants me to bring it to him. I’m going to do that.”

“B-bring it to him? Do you mean, to the cemetery?”

At this artless question, Mrs. Benedict emitted a sudden, incongruous ripple of laughter. “Oh, no, dear! No. That was all a foolish mistake.”

“I don’t understand at all,” Bronwyn said. She dropped her hand from the latch of the gate, and leaned weakly against the cold scrolled iron. “Mrs. Benedict, I know Preston is dead. I read it in the
Times,
all about the funeral and everything. I cried for days.”

The older woman put a hand under her arm, and turned her about. “You look terrible, young lady. Come in. Let our cook make you a cup of tea.”

“Oh, no, I can’t. I—” Bronwyn made a feeble attempt to pull away, but what was left of her strength drained away, all at once, as if someone had pulled the stopper in a tub full of water. The frail hand of Mrs. Benedict wasn’t strong enough to hold her, and she sagged to her knees on the brick path. Her vision blurred, and she put out her hands, searching for support.

The hands that met hers weren’t the cold ones of Mrs. Benedict. They were large and warm and very strong. “If you’ll permit me, miss,” came the deep rumble of Blake’s voice. One of his hands gripped her left hand, and the other slipped under her right arm. He lifted her from the path as if she weighed nothing. She leaned on him, because she had no choice. He felt as solid as a mountain. With uncertain steps, she made her way back up the path, submitted to him assisting her up onto the porch, over the doorsill, into the coolness of the hall.

She heard Mrs. Benedict fluttering alongside, speaking words Bronwyn couldn’t make out. She longed to lie down for a few minutes, to close her eyes, to stop trying to comprehend this bizarre day.

She wasn’t sure how much time passed after that. She opened her eyes to find herself in a room that was dim and cool and quiet. Her shoes had been removed, and her wet dress. She was covered by the lightest of blankets, and the curtains were drawn against what remained of the daylight. As she turned her head on the pillow, a voice said, “Oh, there you are, miss! You’ve had a nice lie-down, now, haven’t you? Just be still one more moment while I fetch Mrs. Ramona.”

Bronwyn wasn’t sure she could have moved even if she had wanted to. She no longer felt feverish, but she was thirsty again, parched. Her body felt somehow empty, and her skin was dry and tender. She knew she should get away, leave this place before she was discovered, but she couldn’t summon the energy to do it.

The door to the bedroom opened, and the young woman she had met in the hallway appeared. She had a glass in her hand, and as she crossed to the bed, she gave Bronwyn a sweet smile. “Oh, my dear,” she exclaimed in a fluting voice. “How can I
ever
thank you for finding my little girl? What you must think of us!”

She settled onto the side of the bed, and with a gentle hand, helped Bronwyn to sit up. The glass held orange juice, and Bronwyn, though a little embarrassed at her greediness, drank it straight down before she said a word. She felt better immediately.

“So kind,” she murmured, as the woman set the glass on the bedside table. She was lovely, with finger-waved hair and round pink cheeks. “I don’t know what happened.”

“You fainted,” the woman said. “I think you were just exhausted. You’ll have to explain who you are and what you were doing in the park, but please, please take your time! I’m Ramona Benedict, and I was so frantic about my daughter, I can’t even tell you! It was terrible, just
ghastly
. You’re our savior!”

“Oh, no,” Bronwyn said automatically.

“Oh, yes,” Ramona Benedict insisted. “Blake tells me she fell in the wading pool. She loves that pool, but I never thought she could find her way there all alone! And no one stopped her! It’s just too
devastating
to think about what might have happened. I’m so grateful to you, my dear.”

“Not at all,” Bronwyn said politely. Surely she had never contemplated taking the little girl away with her. She couldn’t have. Like this pretty woman, she was a lady. She had been raised properly, and she would never . . .

But she almost had. And then she had met Mrs. Benedict in the garden. This memory made her sit up straighter, and put a hand to her head. “Oh!” she breathed. “Mrs. Benedict! It was so odd.”

Ramona patted her arm. “I know. Mother Benedict can be— well. Sometimes she says strange things. She’s very sweet, though.” She smoothed the blanket over Bronwyn’s legs. “Would you like some supper brought up? Or better yet, let’s run you a bath, and then you can join us all for dinner if you feel up to it. It’s very late, of course, but Hattie was helping search for Louisa. I can find you a fresh frock to put on. Yours was soaked. One of the twins—that is, one of our maids—will put it right for you, but it will take a little time.” As Bronwyn hesitated, Ramona said with a laugh, “And you
must
tell me your name! I can’t just keep calling you ‘my dear,’ now, can I?”

C
HAPTER
15

Hattie, flustered and perspiring, was struggling with a roast of halibut that had been delivered that afternoon. “It shoulda been marinating all this time,” she lamented. “It’s gonna be ruined, and here we are with company and all.”

“Never mind, Hattie,” Blake said equably. He had put on one of Hattie’s aprons, and was sorting flatware onto a tray. “Dinner will be late. Under the circumstances, I’m sure Mr. Dickson and Mr. Dick will understand.”

There was no one else to help Hattie at the moment. At Mrs. Ramona’s insistence, their unexpected visitor would be staying the night. Thelma had been dispatched, with Loena, to air out a room for her. Leona had gone up to assist Mrs. Edith in dressing for dinner, because Ramona wouldn’t leave little Louisa’s side. The nurse was weeping in the nursery, swearing she didn’t know how it had happened, offering her resignation every five minutes until even Mrs. Ramona, who never lost her temper, snapped at her that if she wanted her resignation, she would ask for it.

The two men had found their own way home from the office, and now were huddled with their evening cocktails in the small parlor, with the door firmly closed against the feminine ructions above stairs. Blake envied them—not the cocktails, but the ability to shut out the commotion. It had taken some time to calm Louisa down after her adventure, and though Mrs. Ramona had been white with fear for her daughter, it was Nurse who had, in the end, required several whiffs of sal volatile to prevent a bout of nervous hysterics. Blake had overseen all of this, then been called to the front garden to assist the young woman who had found Louisa.

All in all, he admitted to himself, it had been a wearing afternoon, and if Dr. Margot had been here she would probably have ordered him to go to his own rooms and rest.

She wasn’t here, however, and he could hardly leave poor Hattie alone to try to keep order in the house. He placed glasses and salad plates on the tray, and, leaving his cane leaning beneath the rack with his serving coat, he carried everything into the dining room. After he had laid the table, he brought the empty tray back to the kitchen. Hattie glanced up as he backed through the swinging door.

“I guess you givin’ up that cane for good, Blake.”

“You know, Hattie,” Blake said, smiling at her, “I seem to have made a full recovery.”

“Hmmm. Hope you ain’t rushing things,” Hattie said, and went back to chopping sprigs of dill for the fish.

“No, ma’am,” Blake said, chuckling, but he left the cane where it was. It was nice not to have to maneuver it around furniture. It was wonderful to have both hands free. He promised himself he would make a conscious effort to walk without limping. He wondered if it was habit rather than necessity that made him favor the leg. “What else can I do to help?”

“That salad needs tossing, and the butter dishes need filling. Good thing I done snapped those beans before Miss Louisa took it into her curly little head to go explorin’!”

Blake took up the salad tongs as Hattie went on muttering to herself. To distract her, he said, “Tell me, Hattie. Have you heard anything from Miss Allison?”

“She sent me a postcard with a picture of a cable car, which looks like some sort of streetcar. She didn’t say too much, though. I hope being with her parents hasn’t made her unhappy again. That poor chile! Her mother’s home now from that sanitarium, and she’s probably pestering Miss Allison all over again.”

“Maybe not. Maybe the treatments did her some good.”

Hattie threw him a dark look, and shook her knife in the air. “You can’t do good for some people, Blake, and that’s the Lord’s truth. Some people just can’t be helped.”

“Well,” he said, wishing he’d chosen a different topic, “Miss Allison isn’t one of them.”

“No, no,” Hattie said, resuming her chopping, shaking her frizzy curls. “No, Miss Allison is a sweet chile, that’s for sure. Such a sweet chile. Gonna be a fine nurse one day!”

“I’m certain of that,” Blake said as he turned to the icebox for the butter crock.

“Seems to me,” Hattie said, laying down her knife and scooping up the dill to sprinkle over the halibut. “Seems to me every chile out of this house is gonna be fine. All except the one.” She bent to slide the roasting pan into the oven, and straightened with a little
whoof,
one hand on the counter and one on her back. “That’s a sad thing, but that can’t be helped, neither.”

“No,” Blake said with sympathy. He watched as Hattie moved a little stiffly back to her counter. “No, there’s no help for him, I’m afraid.”

Hattie clucked, and shook her head again as she ran water into a kettle for the beans. “Such a pretty little boy, he was. I don’t think I’ll ever get over it.”

“No.” There was nothing to add to this. Hattie had clung to her belief in Preston’s good nature for a long time. She had passionately grieved his supposed death. When they learned he was alive, Blake had feared for her, but Hattie had met that turn of events with an inner strength that sustained her through everything that followed.

Mrs. Edith had not. Even now, more than a year after Preston had been confined, Mrs. Edith behaved as if he were merely in a hospital, as if he, like the other patients there, suffered from a lung ailment or some other treatable condition. She spoke as if one day he would return to Benedict Hall, and she kept his bedroom untouched and his place set at the table, all in readiness. No one argued with her about any of it.

Blake thought that might not be the healthiest thing, but it wasn’t his place to have an opinion.

 

Bronwyn found herself, without having actually agreed to it, facing an enormous claw-foot tub filled with lilac-scented water. There was a maid to help her, a middle-aged, gray-haired woman in a black skirt and white apron. They hadn’t had nearly so much staff at Morgan House. It hadn’t been part of Betty’s duties to help Bronwyn dress or run her bath for her. This woman—who had introduced herself as “Thelma, miss,” with a shallow curtsy—held up a wide bath towel and averted her eyes.

Behind the modesty of the towel, Bronwyn stripped off her underclothes and stepped into the tub. The warm water gave her a wave of nostalgia for her own pink-tiled bathroom and towels washed by Betty and dried in the sunshine. She had bathed at the Ryther Home, but in tepid water that rose only to her hips, and she had felt as if she might drown when she tried to wash her hair.

Now, she sank into water over her head, and gratefully used the shampoo left in the tray beside the tub. She scrubbed and scrubbed, and then, reluctant to leave the water, she lay soaking and thinking and wondering what the older Mrs. Benedict had been talking about, and why the sapphire that had once hung around Preston’s neck on an antique silver chain now was embedded in broken concrete. Mrs. Benedict had said, “No, no. That was all a foolish mistake.” Whatever could that mean?

When a soft knock sounded on the door to the bathroom, Bronwyn started in surprise. She didn’t know how long she had reclined in the water, but her hair had started to dry and the water had grown cool. She called swiftly, “Just a moment, please!”

It was Ramona’s high voice that answered. “Of course, Miss Morgan. Take your time. I have a dress for you, and some other things. I’ll meet you in the bedroom when you’re ready.”

Bronwyn hurried to dry herself, to towel her hair and run her fingers through it, and to wrap herself in the borrowed bathrobe Thelma had provided. She let herself out of the bathroom and into the adjoining bedroom.

Ramona was waiting there, seated at the dressing table and fussing with her own hair. She caught sight of Bronwyn in the mirror and gave her a delighted smile. “Oh, you look as if you feel
so
much better, Miss Morgan! Isn’t a bath just the most
marvelously
restoring thing?”

“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Benedict,” Bronwyn said. “This is so kind of you, but—”

“Oh, don’t say it!” Ramona cried. She jumped up from the stool, and stroked the fabric of a dinner dress she had laid out on the bed. It was a green georgette with a low waist and handkerchief hem, and the high neck of the bodice was trimmed in matching satin ribbon. “I know your coloring is different from mine, but I think this will look well on you.” She made a dismissive gesture with her hand, skimming her own figure. “I haven’t quite been able to wear it since I had Louisa, I’m afraid. But you’re so slender, it should be perfect!”

She lifted a little pile of folded things from the dressing table. “Now, here is a bit of lingerie, and a pair of stockings. Borrowed, of course, but all clean, I promise you!”

“Oh, you shouldn’t have,” Bronwyn said.

Ramona set the pile beside the dress, and patted it with her palm before she straightened, and turned a suddenly grave face to Bronwyn. “I can never repay you, Miss Morgan,” she said. “My little Louisa—oh, I can’t bear to think what might have happened if you hadn’t been there. My daughter means
everything
to me.”

The simple statement struck Bronwyn to her heart. She wanted to protest that she hadn’t been the heroine they thought. She wanted to confess to this woman, who was being so kind to her, that she had been ready to carry her child away in place of the one she had lost. She opened her mouth, but no words would come.

Ramona gave herself a little shake, and then laughed. “Everything’s all right, though, isn’t it? Nothing bad happened, thanks to you. No point in dwelling on it!” She started for the door. “Now I’ll go and dress for dinner, and you do the same. I have a hundred questions to ask you, and I know my husband will want to hear them, too. He’ll be so grateful! And you must call me Ramona, all right? If I may call you by your Christian name, too?”

She was gone a moment later, smiling, pulling the door gently shut behind her. Bronwyn was left alone in the bedroom, staring at herself in the dressing-table mirror and wondering, now that she had managed to get herself into Benedict Hall, what she could do to extricate herself before someone found her out.

 

Thelma and Leona had come down at last, and were helping Hattie to plate the salads and fill the silver baskets with rolls. Blake exchanged his apron for his serving jacket and white gloves, and was on his way to check the dining room’s readiness when Loena came flying down the hall from the back staircase. Her red hair was falling out of its pins to trail on her collar, and her apron was twisted halfway around.

Blake stopped and gazed at her in consternation. “Loena,” he said, frowning. “Is Mrs. Edith all right?”

Loena skidded to a stop in front of him. “Mr. Blake, I was looking for you! I didn’t know what to do when she showed it to me, but I don’t think Mr. Dickson would like—” She broke off, out of breath, and pressed a hand to her chest.

“Who showed you? And what?”

“Mrs. Edith! She has that—that awful stone, the one Mr. Preston. . .” She dropped her hand, and seeming to realize the disarray of her appearance, began straightening her apron. “She’s been keeping it in her room all this time, looks like!”

“That damned sapphire,” Blake muttered, winning a look of shock from the maid. She had never heard him swear. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he had uttered a curse word, and certainly not in front of the staff. Just the same, if there were any circumstance that deserved hard words, this had to be one.

“I hope you’ll pardon me, Loena,” he said. “You surprised me. I was under the impression that stone was out of the house for good.”

“She’s been hiding it in a drawer,” Loena said. Her eyes were wide with excitement, and her freckled cheeks were flushed. “But now it’s on her bureau, with all that concrete around it. I saw it when I was dressing her, and she said she’s takin’ it to Mr. Preston. Is she going to see Mr. Preston? I thought Mr. Dickson said—”

“That’s enough, Loena,” Blake said firmly. “We do not talk about the family that way, as you know very well.”

“Yes, sir.” Loena dropped her gaze to the floor.

“Now,” Blake said. “Please tidy your hair, then go into the dining room to help Thelma set out the salad plates.”

“Yes, sir.” Loena fumbled with her hairpins, but she glanced up from beneath her sandy eyelashes. “Are you going to tell Mr. Dickson?”

“Never you mind, Loena,” he answered dismissively. “This is not something for you to worry about. Go, now. We have a guest, and Hattie’s trying to hurry dinner along. She needs you.”

“Yes, Mr. Blake.” Loena spoke demurely, but there was another inquisitive flash of blue eyes before she smoothed the last wisp of hair underneath a pin, and tripped off to the kitchen.

Blake, despite his concern, felt a smile tug at his lips. Loena had suffered at Mr. Preston’s hands, but she had made a full recovery in both body and spirit. He tried to be firm with the twins, but he—and Hattie, too—were awfully fond of them. They would one day marry and leave Benedict Hall, he supposed, but he would miss their quick steps on the stairs and their light voices, chattering together as they went about their work.

He sighed, and drew himself up. He would have to speak to Mr. Dickson after dinner. He wished he had taken charge of the sapphire himself, and disposed of it properly. It was all delusion, of course, part of Mr. Preston’s illness, but it had haunted the Benedicts since he brought it home from the war. All that was required for an object to have power, he supposed, was for someone to place their faith in it. It was irrational, but Mr. Preston had not been rational for a very long time.

Mrs. Edith’s delusion was proving to be every bit as persistent as Mr. Preston’s. Blake hated to burden Mr. Dickson with this latest evidence, but he couldn’t see a way to avoid it.

 

The dining room of Benedict Hall was everything Bronwyn had imagined it would be, and more. The table was twice as long as the one her family used. A silver candelabra stretched down the middle, fitted with slender white candles. A vase of white roses mixed with cut ferns rested on a sideboard. There was a large chandelier, but the electricity was off, and the curtains partly drawn so the room remained cool. Still, the silver sparkled, and the pale flowers and candles gave a sense of lightness to the scene, augmented by the white linen tablecloth and snowy napkins. It made the dining room of Morgan House seem darkly Victorian by contrast.