The Worthington Wife

by Sharon Page

  She remembered Cal telling her about the rag-and-bone cart, making it a challenge. Cal had a lot of pride. “Was he able to succeed?”

  “He was murdered while he was on his rounds, collecting rags.”

  Murdered? “Oh—oh my goodness.” It was all she could say, struck with horror.

  “Two men grabbed him, pulled him down and kicked him to death. I was eight years old then. Cal was eleven. He’d gone out to find Da. He saw the attack.”

  Julia almost sobbed at the slash of pain that went through her heart. Cal saw his father die after a violent attack. A horrible, horrible thing. Then, three years later, he saw the same thing happen to his mother. “Were—were the men caught?”

  David shook his head. “The police never found out who killed our father. Cal was tough. He looked after Mam and me. Said he was the man of the family. I never even saw Cal cry about it. I tried to be as tough as him, but losing Da broke my heart.”

  “I don’t believe Cal was so tough at eleven years of age that he did not cry over his father.”

  “He’s strong. He handled the things we saw in the War better than any man I knew.”

  Julia twisted her fingers in her lap. She knew Cal had been devastated by what had happened to his mother. Surely he must have felt the same about his father. He’d hid that from David. But he’d let her see it. It came out in his pain, his bitterness. She had been right—Cal needed to heal. How did she help him do that? She could make him care about Worthington, but how did she take away the pain of his past?

  She felt a tear drop to her cheek.

  “I’m sorry I’ve upset you,” David said. He pulled at his pocket until he got a handkerchief out. He handed it to her. It was silk, of the highest quality.

  “I’m glad Cal was able to get out of poverty at least,” she said softly.

  “He bought stocks in companies. They made money. He taught me to buy, to sell when you made some money and then invest it again. He got good at knowing how a company was run, and when to figure it might get in trouble.”

  Investing took money, though. “But where did he get the money that he started with?”

  “He—uh, he started working. After Da was killed.”

  “But didn’t he need to support you and your mother? Surely he wouldn’t have had much money left over.”

  “I don’t know how he did it, Lady Julia. Cal’s just a smart man.”

  David looked embarrassed, and she knew she’d overstepped her bounds. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t tactful at all.” She gazed out the window, imagining how Cal felt the first time he saw it. All this wealth when he had lost both his parents...and lost them to the brutality of poverty. No wonder he had seethed with anger.

  In retrospect, she realized he had been remarkably restrained.

  “Has Cal told you about his plans for Worthington Park, David?” she asked.

  “Plans? No. I hope he wants to stay. Having a home—a real home—will be good for him. He had a lot of pain in his past. And he could do a lot of good as an earl.”

  “You understand the situation completely,” she said. “But do you think—do you think we can change his mind?” But could he ever accept this place? Could he ever heal, with Worthington reminding him constantly of his pain? Was she heartless to demand that of him?

  No—she believed he could be happy here. If he healed.

  “Change his mind?” David repeated. “What d’you mean?”

  “Cal wants to sell Worthington Park, and turn out the countess and her daughters. He says now he’ll look after them, but he wants to take their ancestral home away. He wants to put the farmers out of the farms, the tenants from their homes, carve it up and sell it.”

  David went pale. “I didn’t know. I’ve got to find Cal and talk to him.”

  “I want to stop him. But he said he could never live with himself if he lived here as earl—”

  “That doesn’t matter. I’ve got to make him see that doesn’t matter. Would you get him for me, Lady Julia?”

  But when she went to the doorway, she saw Cal had found them. He came into the library. He wore his dirty sweater with the sleeves rolled up. Paint spattered his arms and hands. “I’ve got the food arranged for this swanky ball you want.”

  “Cal,” David said, “I need to talk to you.”

  “You have to have your fancy tea first. Hannah’s been working all day to make cakes, and they’re gorgeous. Éclairs and a Victoria sponge—it’s a cake but that’s what she calls it. She made enough dainty little sandwiches to feed an army.” Cal looked up at her. “Would you want to stay for tea, Julia?”

  “David wants to talk to you about something important. I should go—” A lady would never say what she was about to. She would use subtlety. But Julia couldn’t be bothered with ladylike skill. “David told me what happened to your father. I am so sorry.”

  For a moment, Cal was expressionless. Then he said, “David, I think your cousins Cassia and Thalia are going to have tea. Would you mind if I took you to the drawing room, then escorted Julia to her car? I need to talk to her.”

  David agreed. After taking him to the drawing room, she and Cal walked toward the garage.

  They’d only gone a few steps when Cal said shortly, “So now you know about my father and my mother. Don’t try to tell me I should turn the other cheek. I can’t do it, Julia.”

  “I understand,” she said softly. “I don’t think I could, either. I think—I think you have been a remarkable man to even allow me to try to convince you. You saw both of your parents’ tragic deaths and they were caused by—by the heartlessness of people who did not help you.”

  * * *

  Cal heard the sympathy in her voice and he bristled.

  David had promised he wouldn’t tell her about what Cal had done with the Five Points Gang. He knew his brother would keep his vow. Without knowing about that, Julia wouldn’t completely understand.

  “Don’t feel sorry for me, Julia. But I need to talk to you about something else. Something about David.”

  He wanted to talk about Alice with Julia. He knew he was in the right—but somehow he needed Julia, the woman who cared so much about people, to agree with him. Then he’d know he wasn’t being a bastard.

  She was waiting for him to speak, all attentive.

  “It’s about Alice Hayes, the English girl my brother fell in love with. I know you’ll understand without me having to draw you a picture.” He raked his hand through his hair. “I never thought bringing him to England would mean he’d want to see her.”

  She looked surprised and confused, but she was Julia. She just said, “Tell me what happened.”

  “Alice worked as a nurse at the field hospital in France,” he said. “After my plane was shot down and, by some miracle, didn’t burst into flames, I was loaded on a stretcher and taken there. When I opened my eyes I was looking at the prettiest face I’d ever seen. She had huge blue eyes, and she took good care of me. I fell in love with her, of course. But, as fate would have it, David was brought to the same hospital.”

  “And you didn’t know he had gone to war. It must have been a terrible shock.”

  “I was walking through the ward when I saw Alice tending to a man. She called him Private Carstairs and my heart stopped right at that moment. The sheets were off him, and I saw the bloody bandages around the stumps of his legs. There he was, my baby brother, lying on the bed. Nurse Alice was helping him eat because his right arm was in a plaster cast. I broke down and cried like a child. Actually, I’d never cried like that before. I learned early on not to cry—”

  “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “Your brother told me that you did not even cry when your father was killed.”

  He shrugged, shaking that off. “I watched how Alice took care of
him. She was so gentle with him, and worked to lift his spirits. Some men would’ve wished they’d died. David is the type of man who felt he’d been blessed to live, even with both his legs gone and his arm hurt. The air force was going to ship me back to the front. I wasn’t injured badly enough to go home. But I managed to get a few more days with my brother. He was so doped up for the pain that he didn’t recognize me until two days before I was supposed to go back. The day he remembered me is the day I proposed to Nurse Alice. I had no right to do it. I had no money and no prospects and—well, I had no right. But she said yes, and we were going to wait until the end of the War.”

  “But you didn’t marry her and your brother...”

  “God, I wanted her. I was still in love with her after the War. She’s the kind of woman who makes a man into something worthwhile because he’s got to be worthy of her. But I couldn’t marry her. David had fallen in love with her while she was taking care of him, too. Loving Alice was what kept him going, what kept him alive. I couldn’t take that from him. He lost his legs and he lost his future. I couldn’t take his sweetheart from him, too. So I wrote to her and broke off the engagement.”

  “But if you loved her—”

  “It would have been too selfish to break my brother’s heart.”

  “I am sure your brother would want you to be happy.”

  “No. It would have been impossible. I’ve come to terms with that.” Funny—he hadn’t thought of Alice since Julia had started taking him around to the tenants. “But David is still in love with her. Except he can’t have her.”

  “Why not?”

  Cal stared in disbelief. “What woman would marry a man who has lost his legs? It would break his heart if she turned him down to his face. I’m scared that he might do something bad if he was hurt like that.”

  “Do something bad?” Julia repeated.

  “Take his life.”

  “But he isn’t that kind of man, Cal. I’ve only just met him, and I know that. And he wishes to see her. Or is it that you can’t face seeing her again?”

  She wasn’t agreeing with him. Hell, what was she thinking? She was wrong.

  “I think he should see her. Perhaps—”

  “No,” he growled. “I know you believe you can help everyone, Julia. You can’t fix this. David is strong and he looks on the bright side, but getting your heart broken is something else entirely.”

  “I know,” she said.

  She’d had her heart broken before, but he realized she was also having it broken by his suspicions about Anthony. Damn, he felt like a heel.

  “I see no harm in inviting her,” she said. “I could find her. They could talk and he would know—”

  He stopped her by grasping her wrist. “Leave this alone, Lady Julia. You can rescue any family on the Worthington estate you want—but leave my family alone.”

  “Cal—”

  Suddenly, he kissed her. Not a hard kiss, but a soft one, one that made his heart hurt as he did it.

  She pulled back abruptly and he felt worse. She didn’t want his kisses. “Promise me you won’t do this, Julia. Promise me,” he said.

  * * *

  Cadmium red. Vermilion. Cobalt Blue. Sexual frustration made Cal paint harder and faster and wilder than he ever had in his life.

  He painted until dawn blushed the sky through the high windows of the attic. He’d done this for three nights in a row, barely sleeping more than two hours. Tonight—or rather, in the early morning—the canvas swum before his eyes.

  Yawning, he took his brushes to the table where he kept a basin of water, jars of turps—dirty and clean. He washed out the brush in one of the dirty jars, rinsed it in the clean. Blinking against the fumes, he carefully shaped the brush, wiped the excess solvent on a clean rag. He left the palette to dry. He didn’t clean it, just wiped it and let the paint residue harden.

  After that, he slugged down the rest of the brandy he’d poured earlier. Then stumbled downstairs to his room on the second floor. Christ, he was tired.

  He’d argued with David after dinner. David had told him he loved the house; that he should keep Worthington Park. That it was tradition. Hell. Cal had said he wanted to go back to Paris. Give this life a chance, David had said.

  He couldn’t do that. Talking to Julia the other day about Alice had brought all his memories back.

  Cal collapsed on his bed, fully dressed.

  He was happy in Paris. It was the only place in the world he’d been happy...

  Later that day, he was awoken by his curtains rattling open. Wiggins stood there—Wiggins was acting as his valet, whether Cal liked it or not, because he’d let St. Germaine go.

  “My lord, you need a proper valet. Those trousers are creased beyond repair.”

  “I doubt that,” Cal muttered.

  “And the state of your shirt. Either you were stabbed with a letter opener while you slept or that is red paint on your shoulder.”

  “It’s paint. I wanted to work on the portrait and I forgot to change my shirt.”

  “I fear it will never come out.”

  “Christ, Wiggins, that isn’t something to be afraid of. I’ll use it when I paint from now on. Don’t you English people have more important things to worry about than clothing?”

  “While you do not have a valet, it is my job to worry about your clothing, my lord.”

  Cal’s head pounded. “Would you mind bringing me a cup of coffee? My throat feels like it’s full of cotton.”

  “I shall have a footman do that.” Wiggins sniffed and left.

  Cal swung out of bed. He must have drunk more brandy that he remembered. He wanted to put on his own damn clothes, without someone fussing over him. He pulled open the drawers of his underclothes. Stuff made in Paris—made of silk and fine fabrics.

  Something was sitting on top of one of the drawers. A lock of blue-black hair, tied with a pink ribbon.

  “I found that in one of my drawers. There was an old Bible in there, and that was pressed between two pages.”

  Surprised by the voice behind him, Cal jerked around. His brother, seated in his wheeled chair, was at the doorway. “I put it in your room. I thought maybe Lady Julia gave it to you.” David grinned.

  “It’s not Julia’s. At least—she didn’t give it to me.” Cal fingered the hair. The Oriental bedroom had been John Carstairs’s bedroom. Why had this been in a drawer, hidden in the Bible?

  Then he knew. Sarah Brand, Eileen Kilkenny and the maid, Gladys Burrows, had hair as blue-black as Julia’s.

  Cal got dressed in his room fast, told David he would be back quick, drove out to the retired chauffeur’s cottage. Found out that John Carstairs had gotten lessons from Anthony on how to drive before Anthony had gone away to War. John had been fifteen at the time—too young to enlist. But he’d been tall for his age, as tall as his brother, Anthony. Also awkward, spotty, pudgy and overlooked by girls who’d liked his brother better. For the rest of the day, and the next day, the day of the ball, Cal drove around the estate. After seeing the shovel in the trunk of that car, he knew, in his gut, the women were dead. But he needed to find the truth. Find the bodies. It would hurt their families, but it was better than clinging to false hope for a lifetime.

  But Worthington Park had thirty thousand acres of land. How would he find where the bodies were buried? There had to be places on all this land that were pretty isolated.

  John and Anthony could be innocent. He had to consider that. Someone else from the estate could have taken the car out secretly.

  Either way, both Anthony and John were dead and beyond the grip of the law. So, if he found out one of them had been a killer, what was he going to do?

  Smoking a cigarette, Cal looked out over the valley and Lower Dale Farm. Sheep rambled and bleated. A cow mooed from the depths of th
e stone barn.

  He would know that the Countess of Worthington had had a killer for a son.

  He thought of that photograph and how sick the butler now looked. How nervy the countess was. He ground his cigarette under his boot heel and got back into the car. He drove back to Worthington and went down to the kitchens to see how Hannah was coping with preparations for a ball and elaborate dinner.

  Cal was pleased to find she had everything under control. The girl glowed with excitement—this was her first major event and she was attacking it with all the fervor and drive of a titan of American industry. That was one good thing—he’d made a good decision to promote her.

  The housekeeper, Mrs. Rumpole, caught him as he was heading for his study.

  She looked like she’d sucked on a toad. “My lord, the countess always attends to the details of balls and dinners. She has always overseen the invitations, the menu, the hiring of musicians, the preparation of the house. But this time, you have done all things traditionally carried out by the countess.”

  “Yeah, I have.”

  “It is most unorthodox. Do you intend to do this in the future?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I won’t be around in the future. Maybe I will.”

  She looked at him as if he were crazy.

  “Delegation and position are the hallmarks of a successful household,” she declared. “It is my job to ensure you are not troubled with staff problems, with the myriad decisions involved in running a household.”

  Position. Hierarchy. Just like a big business. Just as Julia had said. Julia was right—making them afraid for their positions wasn’t proving anything, except what a bastard he could be.

  “In the future, I’d like this place to run smart,” he said. “I’ll talk to you about what the jobs are, how they’re done. Maybe I need to learn.”

  Mrs. Rumpole’s brows shot up in surprise. “Very good, my lord.” She turned and left.

  He kept walking and went into his study. There, through the window, he saw the strangest sight.

  David was outside. Diana, her skirts blowing around her legs in the breeze, had wheeled out his chair and she was pointing at things. He’d thought Diana selfish, vain, and he knew she was having an affair with a married man. To him Diana had represented the thing he hated about the aristocracy—they had no damn morals but they were happy to throw stones through their glass windows. They were happy to condemn his mother, who had done desperate things to keep her sons from starving, when they did immoral things just for fun.