by Brenda Joyce
It was only a quarter to eight.
Rachel wondered if Lady Ellen had awakened yet, and if she knew the fate of her beautiful swan. Rachel wondered if she would grieve in her room or come downstairs. She wondered who could have committed such a gruesome deed.
Rachel heard voices and the front door of the house slamming closed. She leaped to her feet, wringing her hands—she was quite certain she had heard Papa speaking, but his words were low and hushed and indecipherable. Papa and Elgin walked into the room, trailed by Harry and Lionel. Papa was grim. Elgin seemed taken aback. Harry was wide-eyed.
Rachel finally looked at Lionel. His expression was the picture of surprise and innocence.
Papa’s gaze met Rachel’s. “You were right. The swan’s neck was broken. Someone deliberately twisted the bird’s neck to kill it.”
“I’m so sorry,” Rachel whispered.
“No, I am the one who is sorry,” Elgin said. “I am sorry you had to wake up and find such an unpleasant sight.”
“Who would do such a thing?” Lionel asked.
“That is a very good question,” Elgin said, shaking his head. “It must be a prank.”
“Or worse,” Papa returned evenly. “There is so much dissatisfaction now, with entire villages out of work. Perhaps an unemployed worker decided to take out his ire on you, Elgin. The wealthy are an obvious target for the disaffected.”
“I had already thought of that,” Elgin said. “But the north of Wales has not been as hard hit as the south, where unemployment is almost one hundred percent. Still, I think that in this case you may be right.”
“Perhaps a local villager is disaffected not because of lack of employment, but because of some feud with the Llewyllens,” Lionel offered. “This is only the second time you have come to the manor, Father.” Ellen’s maiden name was Llewyllen.
“I have been to Ruthin twice,” Harry said. “My reception was nothing but warm and eager.”
“Well, for the moment, we can only speculate. Do not say a word to your mother. I will speak with Lady Ellen when she arises.” Elgin glanced at his watch. “That will not be for another few hours.”
Everyone nodded.
“I am going in for breakfast,” Elgin announced. “Greene?”
Papa nodded, glancing at Rachel, who had no appetite. “Rachel?”
“I’m not hungry, Papa. I think I’ll see if Sarah and Hannah are up.”
When the men were gone, Harry came over to her. “Are you all right? I must say, you are holding up bloody well. You are a brave girl, Rachel Greene.” He smiled at her.
Rachel flushed with pleasure. “I am fine, and thank you,” she said.
“We’ll get to the bottom of this eventually,” Harry assured her.
“I doubt it,” Lionel said easily. “Unless there is a rash of incidents like this one, we will never know who murdered the swan.”
Rachel stared at him. Murder. That’s what this was. Was he amused by the whole sordid affair?
Harry was speaking. “You are ever the cynic, Lionel.” He shrugged. Then, to Rachel, “We are going hunting. Perhaps you and Sarah would like to join us?”
Rachel blinked. “I don’t hunt.”
“We will teach you how to shoot.”
“I could not kill any animal.”
“We eat the pheasants, rabbit, and deer that we shoot,” Harry said. “We don’t hunt for the joy of killing some innocent creature.”
“I’d prefer not to go hunting,” Rachel said, meaning it.
“I’d like to go,” Sarah said brightly.
Everyone turned. Sarah was dressed and glowing and standing on the threshold of the small salon. She was also smiling—at Harry.
He grinned and strolled over to her. “Do you know how to shoot a gun?” he asked.
“No, but I would like nothing more than for you to teach me,” she said.
CHAPTER 9
Rachel wished Sarah had refused Harry’s offer. Instead, the foursome had gathered up two rifles and ammunition and were now entering the woods, leaving the grounds of the house behind. Rachel felt horribly uneasy. She did not know why. It was almost as if she had a premonition of disaster.
Sarah and Harry walked ahead. Sarah was talking up a storm, entertaining Harry with funny stories about life in the city of London. Harry was grinning and laughing. He had a big rifle slung over his shoulder, as did Lionel. Rachel had never realized before that she hated guns.
It was cooler out in the woods, where the growth was dense and few rays of sunlight could penetrate. Birds sang overhead. Squirrels and chipmunks raced along the leafy branches of trees. They passed a small glade where a doe and her fawn were grazing; both animals took flight at once.
“I hope we are not going to kill one of those beautiful deer,” Rachel whispered nervously.
Lionel glanced at her. “Surely you’ve had venison? The meat is delicious.”
“No, I have not, and I do not intend to,” Rachel said more tersely than she intended.
“We will shoot hare,” Harry said, smiling over his shoulder at her. “But first I will give Sarah a lesson in marksmanship.” He had paused. “This meadow looks like a good place to practice.” He pointed at a wide, stunted tree. “We can use that oak as a target.”
“This is exciting,” Sarah said eagerly.
Harry gave her a fond glance, loading his rifle.
“I wonder how excited you will be when Papa finds out what we have been doing this morning,” Rachel said. Papa would be furious. He was a pacifist in all things. He would abhor the idea of his daughters even touching a gun.
“You would never tattle on me,” Sarah said, and she was right.
Lionel hadn’t moved. He carried his rifle casually, with the stock pointed at the ground. Harry finished loading, the rifle making an ominous click, and he glanced at his brother. “Why aren’t you loading your gun?”
“It’s already loaded,” Lionel said.
Harry stared. “You know that’s against the rules. We are to load the guns only when we are ready to use them.”
Lionel shrugged. “Father will never know.”
Dismay crossed Harry’s face. “Sometimes I wonder about you,” he said.
Lionel smiled. “Don’t we all wonder about others?”
Harry shook his head and turned away.
Rachel looked at Lionel. The exchange just increased her apprehension. “Sarah? We should let the boys hunt by themselves. I think we should leave.”
“I hope that’s a joke,” Sarah said as Harry came to stand beside her. She wasn’t even looking at Rachel.
Rachel’s heart sank.
“They’ll be fine,” Lionel said softly in her ear.
She jumped and moved away from him. “I’m worried,” she admitted nervously.
“You think too much,” Lionel said. He smiled. “But that’s what I find so charming about you.”
Rachel blinked and felt herself flush. To hide her loss of composure, she turned back to Harry and Sarah. She was hardly trying to impress Lionel. She had decided that he was far more than enigmatic, he was peculiar.
Harry was explaining to Sarah how one placed the rifle in one’s hands, how to support its weight against the shoulder, how to sight carefully, and then how to gently squeeze the trigger. Sarah was wide-eyed with fascination. Rachel knew Harry was going to fire the gun, but nothing could have prepared her for the sound. It was deafening. She leaped, crying out.
Lionel chuckled and patted her shoulder. The gesture was patronizing.
“Sorry,” Harry said with an apologetic glance. “I forgot to mention how loud the shots are.”
Sarah was running toward the tree, holding her skirts high. “You hit the tree!” she cried breathlessly, inspecting the thick old oak.
Rachel crossed her arms as Sarah laughed and hurried back to Harry. If she wanted to be the center of attention, she was succeeding; both boys had been gaping at her legs.
“Your turn,” Harry said, a flush
high up on his cheeks.
“This is not a good idea,” Rachel managed, hugging herself.
“Oh, posh,” Sarah said as she accepted the huge rifle from Harry. “This is so heavy!”
“Here.” Harry helped her position it and then hold it correctly. Rachel noticed that for him to do so, he had to stand with his body behind Sarah’s, so that his weight supported hers. She felt herself blushing. The two of them were almost glued together—an embrace could not have been more intimate.
“Is that better?” Harry asked, his tone oddly husky.
Sarah turned her head to look back at him. “Perfect,” she whispered.
Harry coughed. “Look through the sight, Sarah. Look very carefully down the length of the rifle.”
Sarah obeyed. “All right.”
“Now the point is to try not to jerk the gun when you fire it. Remember, there is a kickback. When you fire, the power of the shot will jerk the gun in your hands. So hold tightly, that’s right, and now, slowly, squeeze the trigger.”
Rachel put her hands over her ears.
Sarah fired. The gun jumped visibly in her hands, but Harry had never let it go, and he steadied it. “Did I hit the tree?” Sarah cried breathlessly.
Harry smiled at her. “No, sweetheart, you did not.”
The endearment seemed to have just slipped out. Sarah ceased smiling. So did Harry. They remained standing together, staring at each other. The gun was lowered, and suddenly they were kissing.
Rachel did not know what to do. She turned to look at Lionel in shock. He shrugged, laughter in his eyes. Clearly he did not give a whit about propriety, or about what was happening before their very eyes.
“Sarah Greene!” Rachel shouted, marching over to the pair. “Enough! How shameless can you be?”
Harry and Sarah slowly broke the kiss. It was as if they hadn’t even heard Rachel, for they stared at each other like two lovesick idiots.
“We should go,” Rachel continued fervently. “This has been a terrible idea from the very start.”
Sarah faced her, hands on her hips. “You can’t tell me what to do, Rachel,” she said.
Rachel was at a loss. “Please think about what you are doing!” she finally said.
“What am I doing, Rachel? You are making a big to-do about nothing at all. I am learning how to fire a gun, that is all.”
Harry stepped forward. He seemed rueful. “This is all my fault. Rachel is right. We have not behaved the way that we should. I apologize.” He looked directly at Rachel. “It won’t happen again.”
Rachel wasn’t relieved. The problem was hardly a single kiss. Harry was a wonderful young man, sincere, intelligent, and ethical. He would be so perfect for Sarah—if the gulf of religion and class did not separate them. But that gulf did exist, and it was very real. Rachel was afraid that it was too late, that they had already fallen in love. The outcome could only be tragic.
She knew Papa could not live through another marriage like his and Mama’s. She wasn’t sure that she could, either.
“She can’t tell us what to do, or how we should feel,” Sarah said to Harry, appearing mulish and cross. “She is afraid we will fall in love like Mama and Papa did.”
Harry was grim, absorbing that.
“That would definitely be the end of the world,” Lionel remarked.
Harry looked at him angrily. “Of course it would not be the end of the world.”
“Look at how poor Helen lived,” Lionel said calmly. “Penniless and cut off from everything she loved.”
Rachel stiffened. “We are not penniless, Lionel. And Mama was not cut off from everything she loved—she loved Papa and she loved us.”
“Did you know that until her death, Helen wrote Father frequently, begging him to accept her again? Her heart was broken when my grandparents and Father disowned her. She said so. She begged for their acceptance.”
“That’s enough!” Harry snapped, pushing Lionel.
Rachel was rigid with dismay. “She loved us and she was not heartbroken.” But she kept recalling Mama’s tears.
Lionel had lost his balance, but he hadn’t fallen. “I think she wanted to come home. I think she wanted her life as Lady Helen Elgin back.”
Rachel gasped.
“What has gotten into you?” Harry shouted. “Why are you trying to upset everybody again? Aunt Helen was happily married to Benjamin Greene, and you know it.”
“I know nothing of the sort,” Lionel said with a defiant tilt to his chin.
“Mama was happy,” Sarah said, ashen. “But she would have been happier if your family hadn’t been so rotten as to disown her for marrying the man she loved.”
“She wasn’t disowned because she eloped with your father,” Lionel said.
“Lionel,” Harry warned.
“She was disowned because she became a Jew,” Lionel finished, and there was a note of triumph in his tone.
Tears came to Rachel’s eyes. Sarah started forward, but Rachel restrained her. “Let’s go back to the house,” she said.
“No. He’s a horrible boy. A horrible little boy.”
“I’m like Father. I’m a fascist,” Lionel said.
Rachel thought he was teasing, but she could no longer be sure.
Harry stepped between the girls and his brother. “What you are is mean,” he said. “You killed that swan, didn’t you?”
Lionel looked at him. “That’s absurd.”
Rachel was stunned, and she saw that Harry meant it. She looked from brother to brother and thought that Lionel was telling the truth. This had gone too far. “Sarah, we must go.”
“I saw the pamphlet in your valise,” Harry continued, flushed with anger. “The one about the Blackshirts. What are you doing, reading that kind of bloody trash?”
Lionel shrugged. “Capitalism is collapsing.” He smiled at Rachel. “You see? I agree with your father on that point.”
Harry gaped. “Don’t tell me that you think fascism is the answer?”
“You said it, I didn’t.”
“Do you know what they’re doing to the Jews over there?” Harry said, pale. “Jews can’t run for political office or even serve in the government, they can’t teach in the universities, they can’t become lawyers or doctors! Even those who are lawyers and doctors can no longer serve their professions. Jews can’t even marry non-Jews if they’re German. They’re starting to take their homes and possessions away from them. It’s insanity!”
“Who cares?” Lionel said.
Silence fell over the group.
Rachel realized she had taken Sarah’s hand and was clinging to it. She hadn’t known that the Nazis were doing those things. This was the very first she had heard of such atrocities. She glanced at Sarah and saw that her sister was as upset as she was. “Let’s go, please, Sarah,” Rachel whispered.
Sarah nodded. “I haven’t had breakfast.” She smiled sadly at Harry. “We’re going back to the house.”
Harry was alarmed. “Sarah! Please, don’t go—”
“I’ll see you at the house.”
“Don’t go like this!” Harry cried. “Lionel is always doing this. He’s always ruining everything for everyone!” Harry grabbed Sarah’s hand. “Please, Sarah, do not be upset!”
She let him hold her hand for one moment before gently disengaging it. “Thank you for the shooting lesson,” she said softly. A tear slipped down her face.
Rachel and Sarah turned to leave, Rachel fighting the urge to cry for Sarah and Harry and stunned that her sister had come to her senses. As they headed toward the path that would take them back to the house, they heard Harry say angrily, “Now look at what you’ve done!”
Rachel cast one last glance over her shoulder. Harry faced Lionel, his face etched with anger.
“I am going to hunt a deer,” Lionel said. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and disappeared into the woods.
The doe was grazing quietly by a small pond in the glade they had passed earlier. Lionel froze, bec
oming as still as a statue, standing behind a thick tree. The doe continued to graze, unaware of his presence. He was upwind, he knew.
The doe reminded him of Rachel. As he stared at it, he saw his cousin instead, with her wide, honest eyes—eyes that looked at him and could not hide their confusion and mistrust. Lionel smiled to himself and slowly lifted the rifle.
How innocent and good she was. How pure and kind. She was also so beautiful, far more so than her older sister, who was nothing but a whore. Lionel had stayed up most of last night thinking about Rachel. He found her purity fascinating; he could sense when purity was genuine and sincere. What made a human being so holy? So worthy? What life experiences had she had to be so kind and caring, so compassionate? What was her motivation? Was it God? Or did she seek to please her father? It was very curious, very interesting.
Rachel would hate it if he killed the doe. He had been somewhat amazed by her reaction to the death of Ellen’s swan.
Thinking about his stepmother brought disgust. Lionel sighted down the scope of the rifle. Now he saw Ellen there instead of the doe. His blood thrummed in his veins. He would not grieve if his stepmother met with an accident. It would be a case of good riddance. Of course, she wasn’t the doe now trapped in his sights. And that was too bad—the doe would have to do.
He began to squeeze the trigger. And then Rachel said, as if she stood beside him, You’re not going to hunt deer, are you?
The doe lifted its head, listening intently, as if suddenly aware of an intruder.
Lionel did not move.
But someone was crashing through the woods. And just before Lionel pulled the trigger, the doe leaped away to safety. It disappeared in the woods on the other side of the glade.
Lionel lowered the gun, staring in the direction the doe had gone. He knew who was in the woods. Harry had interfered with his kill.