English Trifle

by Josi S. Kilpack

  Mom’s cell

  After taking a breath, Sadie hit the button that would dial the number, quickly trying to come up with the best way to ask what she had no doubt would be a very difficult question.

  “Liam,” a woman’s voice said upon answering the phone, causing Sadie to pause until she realized that his phone number would come up on his mother’s caller ID. “How is he?”

  The automatic question only cemented Sadie’s suspicions. “Mrs. Martin?” she asked, then remembered that Violet had married again and Martin would no longer be her last name.

  “Who is this? What’s wrong?” Liam’s mother asked. “What’s happened to Liam?”

  Of course she would assume that’s why someone was calling her on her son’s cell phone. Sadie hurried to explain herself. “Nothing’s happened to Liam,” she said. “My name is Sadie Hoffmiller; Liam has been dating my daughter.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Yes,” the woman responded carefully.

  “I apologize for contacting you like this, and I’m sorry for the abruptness of what I’m about to ask you, but I beg of you to be honest with me and trust me when I tell you it’s absolutely imperative that you tell me the truth.”

  Violet said nothing for a few seconds. “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” she finally said. “Is Liam with you?”

  “He’s here,” Sadie said, not wanting to get off track with this conversation. “Well, not right here, but here in the house—he’s in the library with Breanna.” She paused for a breath before continuing. “Violet,” she began, hoping she wouldn’t offend the woman by using her first name, “were you seeing Liam’s father again?”

  The line was silent for several seconds, long enough that Sadie feared the other woman had hung up or was shocked by the very suggestion, but then she heard a sniffle which turned into a quiet sob. It was all the answer Sadie needed.

  Chapter 40

  ~

  I’m so sorry,” Sadie whispered as Liam’s mother broke down three thousand miles away, her own heart breaking for the loss this woman had experienced. Sadie lowered herself into a leather armchair while she listened to Violet cry. The secret must have weighed a thousand pounds, getting heavier as the earl’s illness progressed. It was almost a full minute before Violet started talking, but then she didn’t stop, telling Sadie how she and William had begun talking every few weeks after Liam’s graduation. Within six months, they were talking every few days. A year later, William came and spent two weeks with her in Virginia. Fourteen months ago, they met in Paris for ten days.

  “He asked me to marry him again during that trip,” Violet said. “He said that we were both grown-up now, that we could simply love one another the way we should have back then.”

  “Why didn’t you tell Liam?” Sadie asked when Violet paused for a breath. “He has no idea. The staff knew the earl was seeing someone, but Liam knows nothing about it, let alone that the someone is you.”

  “We were both just so scared to get his hopes up—anyone’s hopes up, even our own. We took it slowly, knowing that we needed to trust each other completely and have absolute confidence in a future together before we told anyone—especially Liam. We didn’t want to break his heart again if we were wrong about us for a second time.”

  “What did you say?” Sadie asked, watching the first raindrop hit the window. She cast a glance up at the clouds. Once it decided to rain here, it rained buckets. “When William asked you to marry him, what did you say?”

  “I said I wasn’t ready yet,” Violet responded sadly. “But then we talked about living at Southgate instead of London, where we could be away from his sister, away from the noise and intensity of the London life. He agreed; he even moved his office to Southgate. In June we met in New York and he asked me again. This time I said yes.” She sniffled again.

  “June,” Sadie said, trying to calculate everything in her head—June had been more than six months ago. “Did you set a date for the wedding?”

  “February first,” Violet said in a soft voice. “It would have been our thirtieth wedding anniversary. William was going to invite Liam to come out for Christmas, and I would already be there when he arrived. We anticipated a beautiful moment where we would be a family again—it was our Christmas present to Liam and to each other. And then everything went horribly wrong,” she continued. “I had my flights arranged so I’d arrive a few days before Liam would; William and I were talking every day, planning the wedding, anticipating the holiday. Then Liam called me and said William had had a stroke—that’s how William’s father died, you know. Liam had wanted to go right out, but couldn’t arrange for the time off. I wondered if I should go, but with Austin there and Hattie hanging around, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. No one knew about William and me, and for Liam’s sake I thought maybe that was best.”

  “I can understand that,” Sadie said. She’d have likely done the same thing in Violet’s position. Though a grown man, Liam was still Violet’s son, and she would want to protect him from painful realizations. Sadie also noted that Violet still believed William had had a stroke—Liam hadn’t shared either his suspicions or his conclusions concerning his father’s health. Sadie didn’t want to be the one to break the news. “I’m so sorry.”

  Violet sniffled again. “I also worried about Liam if Hattie knew.”

  “Hattie—Lady Hane?” Sadie repeated. “William’s sister?”

  “I can’t stand the woman,” Violet said without hesitation. “And she didn’t care for me either. She saw me as an interloper, a stupid American who had muddied up their blue-blooded line.”

  Sadie’s eyebrows lifted. “Really?” she said. Austin hadn’t given that impression at all, either on his behalf or his grandmother’s. Neither had Liam.

  Violet continued. “It was something William and I fought about a great deal when I was still in England. I swore Hattie was working against me, gossiping about me to people in our social circle so that no one would let me in, throwing me into situations where I didn’t know how to behave. Back then William defended his sister—insisting I was using her as an outlet for my own frustrations. I came across as spoiled and pouting, when I was really just overwhelmed and so horribly out of my element that I did nothing rather than risk doing something wrong. Lately, he’s come around to see that it’s entirely possible I was right. Hattie was definitely one of the reasons I left—only, I thought William would follow me.” The sadness had returned to her. “I didn’t understand how much England was a part of him. It took a long time before I realized that I had given him an impossible decision—me or the earldom. I would not let him have both, and he could not respect a woman who didn’t honor what he felt duty bound to fulfill.”

  “But he was duty bound to you as well,” Sadie added. “He was a husband and father.”

  “I’m not saying he was right,” Violet clarified. “But neither was I, and once our differences began to burn we both threw so many logs on the fire that it was our own Guy Fawkes Day—with a blaze we simply couldn’t put out until all the fuel was burned away. When we met up again at Liam’s graduation, we understood ourselves and each other better than we had before. We were able to build on that this time, rather than tear one another down because of it. I felt strong enough to come back to England—Hattie and all—and William was prepared to stand up for me this time rather than tell me to stop taking things so personally.”

  “But you were worried about Liam if Lady Hane found out about the two of you,” Sadie said. “Why?”

  “William and I could have cushioned him from anything Hattie might have said or done in response to the fact that we were getting back together. But William’s stroke left both of us powerless. Liam’s the heir and Hattie can’t do anything about that, but he didn’t need her anger directed toward him. There is no doubt in my mind that Hattie was enraged by the fact that her husband’s title went to a distant cousin, while her father’s title would land squarely on Liam’s shoulder
s—she treated him well enough, but I believe that she never considered Liam worthy of the title. He wasn’t a real Englishman in her eyes and he never would be.”

  Sadie absorbed all of the information. “Violet,” she said, choosing her words carefully, “did you ever think Lady Hane would hurt him?” She implied that she was talking about Liam, but she meant William as well. Someone had orchestrated this conspiracy, but finding a motive had been tricky. Yes, Austin had a management position and a relationship with a kitchen maid to protect, but was that enough to warrant all of this? Grant had said they were forging documents—could that have been Lady Hane’s idea instead of Austin’s?

  Violet was quiet for a few seconds. “I don’t know,” she said. “When her husband died, Hattie was left with less financial support than she’d have liked. William generously supplements her income so that she’s been able to retain her lifestyle. He’s also allowed her to live in his London house. I don’t think she’d do anything to jeopardize that. However, there is something sinister about that woman—and I don’t say that only because she didn’t like me. There’s simply a conniving way about her, a quiet watchfulness that is usually interpreted as simple aristocratic arrogance. William was beginning to see it for what it was, though—anger and resentment.”

  “Really?” Sadie asked. “What exactly did he see?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” Violet said. “He was very protective of me that way, but there was something he was looking into, something important that he said would bring big changes to the earldom.”

  “Did he ever mention the Martin family Bible?” Sadie asked, wondering if perhaps that was part of what he was figuring out.

  “Well,” Violet said thoughtfully, “not recently, no.”

  “But he’d mentioned it before?”

  “Oh, years ago,” Violet said in a tone that implied she couldn’t imagine how it would be important now. “After we returned to England, when his father was dying, he wanted to put Liam and me in the Bible but couldn’t find it.”

  “Seems like an important item to just come up missing.”

  “I guess so,” Violet said. “But then Hattie had had that big Book of Heraldry put together, so the information was still on record even without the Bible. I don’t think anything was lost with the Bible—other than the sentimental value.”

  Sadie paused and moved the phone to her other ear. “I wonder if Lady Hane would have used the family Bible to get the information for the genealogist who put the compiled book together.”

  “Maybe,” Violet said. “She had the book done before William and I were married—she said that was why I wasn’t in it. I know William had talked to her about the Bible and she didn’t have any idea where it was—said she hadn’t seen it for ages, or something like that.”

  And yet Hattie’s daughters were listed in the book of remembrance with their husbands and children—even Austin had been there. Austin was younger than Liam, which meant that additions had been made to the book after Violet married William. Sadie wondered if Lady Hane oversaw that as well and had left Violet and Liam out of the book on purpose.

  “I don’t think what William had discovered before he had his stroke had anything to do with finding the family Bible again—I think he’d have told me that,” Violet said, taking the subject back to the present. “But whatever it was ‘explained a lot’—that’s how he said it.”

  “A lot about what?” Sadie asked, wishing she had her notebook so she could be writing all this down.

  “It had something to do with Hattie insisting William apprentice Austin in the managing of his properties, and why she seemed to be questioning William’s decisions more and more. I told him it was her way of saying that William wasn’t doing a good enough job, that ever since her husband died she had less people to put down.”

  “Was he planning to confront her with whatever it was he’d discovered?” Sadie asked, wanting to be sure she got ample clarification. “Would he have told her about you and whatever it was he had found out?”

  “I don’t know,” Violet said and Sadie could hear her frustration. “She was coming down for Guy Fawkes Day—I know that much—and he wasn’t looking forward to the visit. Whether that was because he just wasn’t in the mood for company or because he planned to talk to her about something important, I really don’t know. His title and family were a sore spot for both of us, and something we avoided discussing if we could.”

  “But you and Liam were coming out for Christmas. Would William have told Lady Hane about that early on, so she could get used to the idea?” She paused before continuing, aware that she was treading on fragile emotions and yet recognizing that if she wanted to uncover the truth, she had no choice but to continue. “And what if he had? What if he’d told her about the two of you? How would Lady Hane have reacted?” To herself she asked another question: How far would Lady Hane go to prevent it?

  “How would Hattie react?” Violet repeated, seeming to pick up on the thoughts going through Sadie’s mind. “You’re American, so perhaps it’s hard for you to understand how seriously some of the British view the Peerage. But for Hattie, I have no doubt that there are few things that would be more devastating than the fact that me—Violet Sorenson—was going to become the Countess of Garnett once again.”

  Sadie let that roll over her and mingle with the other things she was putting together—Lady Hane overseeing the Book of Heraldry that, without the family Bible, stood as the official documentation of the family line; Austin being in the book, but not Liam; and the fact that Violet was once again going to have an English title—something Lady Hane would be very much against.

  “I have one more question,” Sadie said. “Did William ever mention having a floor safe put into the library?” She held her breath, hoping and praying that unlike all the things William didn’t tell Violet, that he’d have told her about this.

  “Oh, yes,” Violet said easily. “He said he wanted a place all his own that no one knew about but us. I think he stored our letters and things in there. I thought it was very sweet and romantic. Why, is it important?”

  Chapter 41

  ~

  Liam,” Sadie said when she entered the library a minute later. There were so many thoughts exploding in her brain that she worried she wouldn’t be able to focus on a single one of them. Breanna and Liam were looking through papers spread out on the desk. Sadie held out the phone toward Liam, knowing that before she moved forward, Liam needed to hear what she had just learned about his parents and that he should hear it from Violet. “Your mother wants to talk to you.” She forced herself to accept the time-out for just a few minutes—despite her fingers itching to get her hands on the safe.

  “Mom?” he asked, looking at Breanna briefly as he came around the desk, his eyes on the phone in Sadie’s outstretched hand. “She called?”

  “Sort of,” Sadie said, giving him a soft smile. He reached out and took the phone. She let her hand rest on his arm, and smiled at a confused Breanna as Liam lifted the phone to his ear. Sadie wished she could whip up a batch of her Butterfinger cookies—Breanna said Liam loved anything peanut butter and no matter what nutritionists might say, sometimes food was the perfect company for emotional overload, as Sadie knew from experience.

  “Hey, Mom,” he said into the phone as he walked toward the far end of the library. His words were soon too far away to be heard, but Sadie watched him sympathetically.

  “What’s going on?” Breanna asked, causing Sadie to look away from Liam and meet her daughter’s eyes. For a moment she considered waiting and letting Liam tell her—but that moment passed. If she’d ever held more incredible information than this, she certainly couldn’t remember it. By the time she finished telling her story—well, William and Violet’s story—Breanna’s expression was one of pure surprise.

  “Do you think that’s why this happened?” she asked. “Would Austin and Lady Hane have gone to these lengths to keep William and Violet apart?”

&n
bsp; “It’s hard to imagine, isn’t it?” Sadie continued. “But after hearing Violet’s side of things, it doesn’t seem that far-fetched.” She headed for the bookshelf where Liam had put the Book of Heraldry last night and pulled the long rectangular book off the shelf, opening it to the pedigree section and looking at the information with a bit more detail. Not sure what exactly she was looking for, she used her finger to trace the line of earls back from William to the very first one—Percible Edward Martin. There had to be a connection between this pedigree and the conspiracy against the earl.

  She tapped her foot with anticipation and looked over to where Liam was sitting, taking his time while Sadie and Breanna waited for him.

  “She didn’t know the combination, did she?” Breanna said, sounding disappointed.

  “Oh, she knew it,” Sadie nodded. Saying it out loud made her even more eager.

  “What?” Breanna replied, her eyebrows shooting up. “Then let’s open it.”

  “Don’t you think we should wait for Liam?” A final holdout for doing the right thing and making sure Liam was a part of it.

  Breanna lifted one eyebrow. “Um, no,” she said bluntly.

  It was all Sadie needed to hear. “Oh, thank goodness!” she said with relief, then turned and fairly ran for the safe. “Violet thinks it’s the date they were going to get remarried—February first of next year. It was their thirtieth wedding anniversary.”

  “Oh, that’s so sweet,” Breanna said as she caught up to Sadie and knelt next to the hole in the floor.

  Sadie waved off the sentiment as she too lowered herself to the ground—it hurt. Between falling out of the vegetable cooler and all these blasted stairs, her joints were screaming at her every time she did much more than stand up straight. She grabbed the dial, spun it a few times to make sure it was cleared, and then carefully turned it to the number two.