The Woman From Heartbreak House

by Freda Lightfoot

  Kate grabbed Toby by the arm. ‘Leave it, Toby. It isn’t what you think. It was a mistake, just a kiss, there’s nothing between us and ...’

  But Toby wasn’t listening. He seemed to be addressing what he deemed to be an intruder, a defiler of her virtue. ‘I know about men like you, taking advantage of a single woman, seducing anything in a skirt.’

  ‘Not at all. I was invited in. And I was about to remove the skirt, had you not so annoyingly interrupted us.’

  Toby took a swing, a powerful punch that landed full on Theo’s jaw and sent him sprawling to the floor. He flung himself upon the prostrate man, dragged him to his feet by his shirt collar, then knocked him down again.

  Kate was beside herself with dismay. This was terrible. ‘Stop it, Toby! Stop it, stop it, for God’s sake. You’ll kill him!’

  ‘I sincerely hope so.’

  Toby again had him pinned to the ground, clearly about to pummel the life out of Ingram, but Kate was still shouting at him to stop. You must stop this minute before you do something you regret.’ At the sound of her distress Toby seemed to come to his senses and suddenly backed off, dusting his hands as though relishing a job well done.

  Kate attempted to help Theo up. ‘Are you all right?’ She was concerned Toby’s punches might have inflicted serious injuries. He dragged himself to his feet, swaying slightly as he tried to regain his balance.

  Without even glancing at Kate, Toby turned to go, his narrow shoulders hunched as he walked away.

  ‘Toby!’ She called after him, but he didn’t stop or turn around. He just kept right on walking, and somehow the very sight of him, the bitterness of his disappointment in her filled Kate with shame and a deep sense of despair.

  Ingram was furiously brushing himself down. ‘Is he your lover?’

  Kate was relieved to see that he seemed to have suffered little more than a few cuts and bruises, but he was deeply, dangerously angry. ‘No, of course he isn’t.’

  ‘Your previous boss then?’ Theo’s tone was bitingly cold and hard.

  ‘No, quite the opposite. I mean ... Look, will you please leave? There’s no real damage done, although you might have a black eye in the morning. And please don’t come again. This is all too embarrassing for words. I need time to think.’

  ‘So you do care for him. I can see it in your face. Look, whatever there was between the two of you, it’s over. I’m the man for you now, Kate, not that vicious lout.’

  ‘Toby isn’t vicious, nor does he usually go in for punch-ups. He meant well, I know he did. He’s over-protective of me, that’s all. We’ve known each other a long time, been through a great deal together.’

  ‘No matter how long you’ve known him, or what you’ve enjoyed in the past, it’s over. Understand? Haven’t I made it plain how I feel about you? You belong to me now. He has no further rights over you. Forget him.’ Theo was pulling her to him again, stroking her hips, her waist, running his hands over her back. ‘Where were we? Let’s go upstairs, carry on where we left off.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ Kate was wishing Toby hadn’t left quite so abruptly. She tried to push Ingram towards the door, yet still he resisted. ‘Stop it! I don’t belong to anyone. Please stop this at once before I call a constable.’

  He laughed. ‘You’re surely not throwing me out?’

  ‘I am so.’

  ‘Don’t you realise what you are doing by refusing me?’ he snarled. ‘I’m a man of substance, was even considering asking you to be my wife. You’ll never get as good an offer again, not a woman such as yourself with no breeding. Although I dare say you’d be willing enough to allow me into your bed. Women of your sort usually do, so perhaps it’s just as well that I didn’t get round to proposing. Was this chap calling round for a taste of your favours too?’

  She slapped him, hard, across the face.

  ‘Get out! Go on, get out of my house. I don’t ever want to see you again!’

  He took it badly, very badly indeed. He scorned and scoffed, ridiculed and insulted Kate, obstinately refusing to believe that she could resist him. Theo Ingram was not a man to accept defeat easily and his arrogance was such that he couldn’t seem to take in the fact that he was being shown the door. His success with women in the past, usually slightly beneath him in status, and therefore grateful for his attentions, meant that the reverse was generally the case. Love ‘em and leave ‘em, that had been his byword. Now he was caught in the net of this woman’s charms and couldn’t believe she was actually throwing him out.

  Pride was all he had left. ‘It’s all right, I’m going. I don’t care for other’s men’s leavings.’

  Kate was crying by the time he’d gone and she’d slammed shut the door, shooting the bolt in case he came back, tears of shame rolling down her cheeks. And a new self-knowledge bit into her. It was true what he said, she had very nearly succumbed. Her great desire to love and be loved, to belong and to trust in people, had been her undoing, as so often in the past. But he wasn’t the man she wanted.

  From Aunt Vera’s expression you would not have guessed that she was on an errand of mercy. ‘Such a nice young man,’ she’d remarked to her sister as the pair of them had bowled along in the ancient pony and trap to Kendal, driving past Levens Hall with its beautiful topiary gardens, then the ancient walls of Sizergh, feeling a trace of regret that the Tysons had lost their own family seat, albeit a much more modest one.

  The fresh, country breeze brought an unaccustomed pinkness to Vera’s usually sallow complexion and now, faced with the young man in question, the excitement of their small adventure made her cheeks glow all the more, although her expression was as stern as ever. Sterner perhaps, due to the condition he was in.

  They had found Callum not at the factory, nor at his friend’s house, nor even at Toby’s where they’d learned he was lodging now, but in the Rifle Man’s Arms, and very much the worse for wear.

  He’d resisted their polite request to accompany them quietly outside; had turned argumentative when Aunt Vera suggested that he might, just possibly, have taken a glass or two too many of that strong ale and should set aside the tankard in his hand without finishing it.

  He had refused, most vociferously.

  In the event they’d been obliged to take firm action. The two maiden ladies had exchanged a glance then each taking a firm hold of the boy’s collar and the seat of his pants, had frog-marched him down to the river where, without further ado, they’d flung him into the cold muddy water and given him a good ducking.

  ‘Oh Vera, what a shocking thing for us to do,’ Cissie said, as he lay sprawling in the mud, shaking his head and sobering rapidly.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed her sister with some satisfaction. ‘Wasn’t it?’

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Callum floundered about in the shallows, shocked to find in his drunken stupor that he was suddenly, and comprehensively, soaked to the skin. ‘What the bleedin’ hell…?’

  ‘Don’t use profanities in front of us, Callum Tyson. Cissie and I remember you as a child, the dearest, sweetest child imaginable, so you can stop this posturing, this maudlin self-pity and start to think of someone other than yourself for a change.’

  ‘I don’t give a sh –‘

  ‘Callum!’

  Something in Aunt Vera’s tone brought him to his senses and he crawled from the filthy river to lie prone on the bank, and gave himself up to a sound scolding. He knew when he was beaten. Hadn’t he suffered the sharp end of Aunt Vera’s tongue more times than he cared to remember?

  But as she began to talk, the words that came streaming out of her mouth with the sharpness of knitting needles were not at all what he expected to hear. She wasn’t ranting at him, ticking him off for being bad, or not too much anyway. Instead Vera was telling him about Bunty, and how utterly miserable the poor was was, and how she was being dragooned into marriage. ‘She is being forced to go through with this farcical alliance while declaring, nay, shouting to high heaven, her undying love for y
ou.’

  Cissie put in her twopennyworth. ‘If it wasn’t so tragic, it would really be quite romantic.’

  Callum wiped the water from his face with the flat of one hand, sat up, and focused sharply on Vera’s face. He’d never sobered up so quickly in his life, but then he’d never seen the aunts so distressed.

  ‘We cannot go on defending Lucy, not in these circumstances. Perhaps we have made too many allowances for her in the past, for the sake of family pride, but certainly we cannot continue in this fashion to the detriment of poor, dear Bunty’s happiness. Something must be done, and quickly. She despises this man, this Ralph Powney, to such an extent that she is actually prepared to lie, to ruin her own reputation to avoid marrying him. She must either submit herself to a marriage she does not want, or cast herself out as a pariah from society by declaring herself pregnant with your child.’

  ‘What? But I haven’t seen her in months. How can she be?’

  Cissie said, ‘Exactly,’ as if she understood perfectly about such things.

  Vera stoutly continued, ignoring the interruption. ‘Bunty has, in fact, admitted to her mother that she lied, that she is not carrying your child, but swears she’ll repeat the tale tomorrow anyway, in church, as a just cause and impediment why the marriage cannot go ahead. Shout it out loud if necessary, for how can it be proved otherwise, that she is still a maid?’

  ‘I’m afraid she’s not that,’ Callum ruefully admitted, and the two maiden ladies exchanged a significant glance. Vera hunkered down beside him, while Cissie settled herself comfortably on a nearby rock. While Vera talked, her sister plucked strands of duckweed out of Callum’s hair.

  ‘If what you tell us is true, Callum, then is it also true about the abortion? You can be honest and open with us. I assure you we will not fall into a decline.’

  Callum took a breath, put a stop to Cissie’s grooming and set about putting his side of the story. ‘Bunty claimed that her mother forced her to get rid of the baby. I blamed her. That’s why I left her, said I didn’t want to see her ever again, because I thought she’d willingly agreed to kill our child.’

  Cissie clucked her tongue in sympathy. ‘It is a shocking thing, I agree: a violation against God. I can understand how hurt you must have been that she didn’t feel able to tell you.’

  ‘But has it occurred to you,’ Vera chipped in, ‘that she might have tried to tell you, and failed? Or at least have badly wanted to. Lucy was determined, at all costs, to keep you two love-birds apart. It would surely not have been beyond her wit to destroy your letters, Bunty’s too.’

  ‘Oh, she must have done, I agree.’ And now Callum looked shamefaced. ‘I accused Bunty of not trying hard enough to get a letter to me.’

  ‘Yet you couldn’t get one to her?’

  He shook his head, looking increasingly hang-dog. ‘No, and apparently Lucy threatened to have me sacked, or horse-whipped, if Bunty did try to contact me.’

  Vera made a sound that was quite indescribable. ‘Then if the poor girl did indeed fall pregnant with your child, and lose it in that despicable manner, then we know - we all of us know - that poor, darling Bunty would never willingly choose such a terrible thing to happen to her unborn infant.’

  Callum was staring at the muddy ground in abject misery. Why hadn’t he seen that for himself, instead of being blinded by rage and remorse? And because of his selfishness, in thinking only of himself and of what he’d lost, he’d very nearly lost Bunty too. ‘Yes, I can see that now. I was too hasty. I condemned Bunty for something she had no control over, when she was perfectly innocent. I should have stopped to think.’

  Again he wiped a hand over his face. This time Vera suspected he was sweeping away tears. Very kindly and quietly she said, ‘You have watched your mother pull herself up by her boot straps more than once, have you not?’ Taking his silence for assent, she continued in a more robust tone, ‘Then you must do the same. You must consider carefully, Callum, what is to be done about all of this.’

  Cissie eagerly added for good measure, ‘Bunty needs your help, dear boy. Do you still love her, that is the question?’

  The power of their combined gaze, the way they each seemed to be holding the same breath, brought his head up with a jerk. ‘Of course I still love her. Love isn’t something you can switch off, like an electric light bulb.’

  Vera sat back on her heels with a gusty sigh of satisfaction. Cissie clapped her hands with joy. ‘Exactly what we hoped to hear.’

  ‘We will need to be move quickly,’ Vera reminded him. ‘There is little time to be lost. Bunty is at this very moment locked in her room, and tomorrow at noon she is to be wed.’

  There was little hope of releasing her from a locked room, not with Lucy keeping a tight hold of the key. Once Bunty reached the church, the deed would be practically done and Callum didn’t dare leave it so late. What if something went wrong and he didn’t get there in time? The aunts agreed. Their best chance to effect a rescue was during the mayhem of dressing and preparation beforehand.

  ‘Guests will be arriving and everyone will be milling around. That must be our most likely opportunity.’

  Vera elected to snatch a moment to whisper a word about their plan in Bunty’s ear, tell her she must find some excuse to take a stroll in the garden where Callum would be waiting. The pony and trap, they decided, was far too slow a means of transport and so Callum was instructed to borrow a motor car. No easy task. Not even Toby was rich enough to own one of those.

  This proved to be a major stumbling block and, in the end, the only solution Callum could come up with was to use Lucy’s own car. Cissie promised to ‘borrow’ the keys which Lucy kept on her dressing table.

  In the event, Cissie’s courage failed her at the last moment, but she did succeed in keeping Lucy satisfactorily occupied with meaningless chatter that irritated her beyond endurance, trapping her in the hall behind a barrier of noisy spaniels all jumping about excitedly waving their muddy paws while Vera stole swiftly upstairs and lifted the key from the little china tray.

  Lucy was going nearly demented. ‘Cissie, I really don’t have time to stand here and listen to your stupid concerns about leaving your damned dogs for an hour or two! Lock them in the cellar for all I care, but stop them from barking and jumping up at me, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Oh, indeed, I’m so sorry, Lucy.’ And getting a signal from Vera, who had by this time slipped out unnoticed into the garden, keys in pocket, Cissie whistled for her dogs and fled.

  Callum had secreted himself in the hawthorn hedge where he sat shivering on this cold October morning for what seemed like hours. The sky was overcast, a fine drizzle starting and he was racked with nerves. Where was she? When would she step out into this small, untidy garden? What if she was prevented from doing so, for some reason? What if Vera didn’t get hold of the keys? What if the car wouldn’t start? Engines could be so temperamental.

  And then Vera suddenly and silently emerged from the undergrowth, her head swathed in a scarf, and thrust out her hand. ‘The key,’ she whispered hoarsely as she handed it over, then vanished back into the undergrowth, offering no further advice or information. Nothing but a huge wink.

  Callum was impressed by the aunts’ efficiency, but still in an agony over Bunty’s continued absence. Where was she, for God’s sake?

  Unbeknown to him, Lucy and Bunty were engaged in another ding-dong war of words, this time over shoes of all things. Lucy was insisting that Bunty wear blue satin, to match the ribbons on the gown, while Bunty had got caught up in the argument and was insisting on cream suede.

  Vera shot her a furious glance which spoke volumes, a what-does-it-matter-what-colour-the-shoes-are-since-you-aren’t-going-to-go-through-with-this-wedding? Sort of look.

  ‘Right, have it your way then,’ Bunty said, in a fret. ‘Blue it is. I really don’t care one way or the other, and you’re getting me so upset I can’t think. I shall be in tears any minute and then my face will be all blotchy and look horrid
for my own wedding.’

  ‘Don’t you dare to cry, not when I’ve hired a most expensive photographer,’ came her mother’s swift rejoinder.

  ‘I’m going out into the garden then, for a breath of fresh air.’

  Lucy glanced out of the window. ‘It’s starting to rain. You’ll get your hair wet.’

  ‘I don’t care! I just need space to breathe. I feel quite light-headed. And sick. Pregnancy has that effect on people, you know. Do you want me to vomit all down my wedding gown?’

  ‘Bunty, stop this. Behave!’ Lucy had to confess that the stupid girl did not look at all well, fever-bright cheeks set in her ashen face. ‘You should be getting dressed. Put on your gown this minute, then I’ll bring you a glass of something to soothe you.’

  ‘But then I’ll get mud on it when I walk around the garden. There are too many people in this tiny house, too much noise. I need five minutes peace and quiet, that’s all. Five minutes of clear, fresh Lakeland air, then I’m all yours.’ So saying, she marched out of the door, chin held high.

  ‘Daughters!’ Lucy snapped. ‘They really are the very devil.’ She was about to go rushing after her when Vera suddenly pointed out an urgent problem in the kitchen.

  The wedding breakfast was to be held at the County Hotel later in the day, but early guests would be regaled with drinks and appropriate titbits before the ceremony, to stave off any possible hunger and put everyone in a celebratory mood.

  ‘Those canapés you prepared earlier, I believe one of the spaniels ate a plateful.’

  ‘What? Drat those dogs. I’ll have the damned things put down.’ Lucy rushed off to the kitchen, very possibly to carry out her threat.

  ‘Poor Cissie,’ Vera muttered to herself, as she heard Lucy call out her name. ‘Never mind, all in a good cause.’

  Vera could see very little out of the window as it was by this time raining quite hard. Nothing but a blur of colour and movement that seemed to merge into one down by the hedge and remain there for a frighteningly long time. ‘Oh, do hurry, please.’ She sent up a silent, hasty prayer that the pair would not linger in their embrace, but make haste to get away as safely and swiftly as they could. They couldn’t hear her anxious muttering, of course, yet she felt compelled to continue, ‘Bunty, Callum, I beg you, my dears. Run. Run!’