Heaven Sent

by Duncan, Alice

  “No. It’s not that.” She gulped again and lifted the box.

  “Among other things, it’s this.”

  “Oh?”

  “Or, rather, these.”

  Aubrey put his elbows on his desk, steepled his fingers, and propped his chin on them. She was very nervous. This looked as though it was going to take some time unless he prompted her. “Go on, Callie. Whatever it is, I’m sure we can resolve it.”

  Maybe she was going to confess to having had a torrid affair with someone when she was younger; someone who’d seduced and abandoned her, perhaps. She wouldn’t be the first young woman to suffer such an indignity, and it would explain how she’d managed to remain single for so long. She was too precious to avoid matrimony unless there was a pretty good reason for it.

  Although the thought of Callie succumbing to the lures of some Lothario made Aubrey wince, he decided he couldn’t hold such an affair against her. Not if she truly regretted it. After all, she was an emotional creature, and if she’d been young . . . Well, he would forgive her; that was all.

  But wait. He frowned, recalling that she’d been a virgin when he’d deflowered her. Ergo, evidently he’d been the first Lothario to have taken advantage of her. He frowned, not liking the scenario his brain had just produced. It had to be something else.

  She lifted her chin in that characteristic gesture of defiance that used to irk him and now made him want to laugh out loud. “You know I used to work the postal route in your neighborhood.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I got to know Becky then.”

  “Yes, I know. You told me, and so did Becky.”

  “Yes, well, there’s something I didn’t tell you.”

  Uh-oh. Aubrey braced himself, “And what is that?”

  “You were grieving over your loss.” As if against her will, her chin lowered. She stared at the box in her lap. “Becky started writing letters to her mother, your late wife.”

  Aubrey’s gaze narrowed as he tried to make sense of this tidbit of information. “She . . . what?”

  Callie lifted her chin again and forged onward. “She started writing letters to her mother. In heaven.”

  “Good God.”

  “Yes.” Callie nodded. “I felt sorry for her when she gave me the first letter.”

  “I can see why.” Guilt entered uninvited and began nibbling at Aubrey’s vitals. “I, ah, wasn’t very good company for some time after Anne died.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  He frowned and opened his mouth to deny culpable intent, but Callie spoke before he had a chance.

  “I know you were having a terrible time, but so was Becky. I felt sorry for her, so I took her letters home, read them, and answered them.”

  “You answered Becky’s letters to her mother?” Aubrey gawked at Callie.

  “Yes.” Firmly. As if she were defending her position. “I couldn’t bear the thought that Becky, who is the most darling child in the world, would write letters to the mother she loved and lost and never have them answered.” She turned mutinous. “It’s not as if she could turn to you for comfort, after all.”

  “Touché.” After the first shock had passed, Aubrey began to see some humor—and a lot of pathos—in the situation. “In truth, you probably eased her mind a good deal.” He felt benevolent after he said it, as if he were granting absolution.

  “Yes, well, they did seem to ease her spirits some.”

  “So. You knew my daughter quite well before you came to work here as her nanny, I see.”

  Callie nodded and swallowed. “Yes.”

  This didn’t seem so awfully bad. It pricked Aubrey’s pride some to know his daughter had felt compelled to turn to a stranger for assistance during a time of great stress in her life, but he admitted it had been a God-awful time for all of them. He knew the household staff had suffered, too.

  And, he admitted, he guessed he was glad Becky had found someone in whom to confide—even if she didn’t know it wasn’t her mother, but Callie, who was reading and answering her letters. That was a bit . . . Aubrey couldn’t think of an appropriate word. Underhanded was too harsh. Intrusive, perhaps. But Callie’s interference had been for a good cause, and it had helped Becky, and that was the important thing. He supposed.

  “Well,” he said at last. “I’m glad you found a way to ease Becky’s mind, Callie. That was a bad time for all of us.”

  “Oh, I know it, Aubrey!” Lifting her chin again, she gazed at him earnestly. “And I’d never have done it if Becky weren’t so young to have suffered such a wrenching loss. She was so unhappy. I couldn’t stand to let her wait and wait and wait for answers from her mother. I just couldn’t.” She brushed tears away.

  Aubrey felt vaguely manipulated, although he knew he shouldn’t. It wasn’t like Callie to stoop to feminine wiles like tears. She’d sooner knock him over the head with a brick as cry in front of him. The thought made him grin. “It’s all right, Callie. I’m glad you answered those letters. They helped Becky, and that’s the important thing.”

  “Yes, well . . .” Callie gulped. “There’s more.”

  “Oh?” For some reason, Aubrey experienced a creeping sense of dread.

  “Um, Aubrey, Becky found these letters some time ago.” Callie lifted the lid of the box in her lap and held up a letter with a hand that shook slightly. “She, ah, had been trying to read them.”

  “Letters? More letters?” All thoughts of Callie and her letters from Anne vanished instantly. His gaze sharpened. “What are those? Not answers to the letters she wrote to her mother in heaven, I presume.”

  She licked her lips. “Um, no. They’re letters you wrote to your wife while she was still alive.”

  For a second Aubrey’s mind went blank. He didn’t comprehend, although the sensation of slithering dread intensified. Squinting, he said, “I beg your pardon?”

  Callie sucked in a breath Aubrey heard from where he sat. She stiffened her spine and looked him in the eye, as if she were gathering her courage like a cloak around her. “They’re letters you wrote to Anne, Aubrey. Love letters. Becky found them and read them at night. They made her feel better after Mrs. Lockhart died, to know that you and her mother had loved each other, and loved her.”

  She seemed to run out of steam. Aubrey still didn’t understand. “Love letters to Anne? From me?” He and Anne had been used to writing each other letters, and Aubrey supposed they might be classified as love letters. He and Anne had assuredly loved each other. He held out a hand. “May see them, please?”

  “Of course.” With a jerky gesture, Callie plopped the box on his desk and shoved it toward him.

  He glanced into the box, open now that Callie had lifted the lid. Frowning, he said, “Yes, I see. What of them? I don’t think I wrote anything indelicate in them.”

  She heaved an exasperated breath. “It’s not that, Aubrey. It’s . . . it’s worse than that.”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Worse than that? What’s the matter, Callie. Spit it out, please, because I’m no mind reader.”

  “I read them.”

  He blinked at her, uncomprehending. “You what?”

  “I read them.” She took another deep breath, “I did more than read them. I kept reading them. I don’t know why. It was wrong of me.”

  All of the good feelings Aubrey had started to harbor about Callie Prophet suffered a magnificent shock and began crumbling around the edges.

  “You read my letters to Anne?” He felt numb.

  She nodded, bowed her head, clasped her hands tightly in her lap, and whispered, “I kept reading them. They—they’re so beautiful. I don’t know why I read them. I knew I shouldn’t. It was like a compulsion. It was wrong of me. Very wrong.”

  Numbness fled. A sense of violation and rage consumed him in a flash.

  “So that’s how you managed to weasel your way into my daughter’s heart.”

  His voice had gone low and cold. He didn’t feel cold. Inside, flames of fury had started to
consume the remnants of his good feelings for Callie. He felt plundered. Infringed on. Burgled. “No wonder you knew exactly how to get around my defenses, Miss Prophet. You knew my most intimate secrets, didn’t you?”

  Aubrey had never seen Callie cower before. She wasn’t the cowering type. Yet she seemed to cower back in the chair now. She also flinched. “It wasn’t like that, Aubrey. Truly, it wasn’t. I—I don’t know why I read the letters. But they were so—so beautiful.”

  “They were written to the woman I loved,” he said in an even voice that chilled the air around him. He couldn’t understand how his voice could sound so cold, when inside, he’d never been so incensed.

  “Yes,” she said in a tiny voice. “I know they were.”

  “You had no business reading them. No right.”

  She hung her head. “I know.”

  “You read my innermost thoughts. You learned exactly how to manipulate me, didn’t you?”

  Her head whipped up, and she stared at him, so pale she appeared ghostlike. “No! No, it wasn’t like that! It’s because—because—” The breath she took sounded like a sob. “It’s because I’d never known a man could love a woman so much. The letters—they were so beautiful.”

  “They were private.” Aubrey’s fury was so potent, he shook with it. He didn’t know what to do. He felt betrayed. He felt as if his whole world had been smashed to smithereens—again. Only moments earlier he’d been happy for the first time in two years, and now, with this box of letters and Callie’s so-called “confession,” his happiness, short-lived, had been shattered.

  She lifted her head and watched him warily. “I’m so sorry, Aubrey. I was very wrong. Entirely wrong.”

  “Yes,” he said. “You were.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Tears began to fall from her eyes, and she wiped them away with an impatient gesture. “I was so wrong.”

  As he observed her, he felt as if he were watching a play. Her tears were only part of the act, and he resented them. He felt foolish, as if he’d been handled by an expert puppeteer. A mistress of her art. He’d never have believed Callie capable of such a . . . a wicked deception.

  Yes. It was wicked, the deceit she’d practiced on him. She was wicked. How strange. Even from the first moment he’d met her, when he’d actively disliked her, he’d never have believed her capable of so rank a deception. If nothing else, he’d always believed her to be honest and possessed of a certain integrity.

  Not any longer. Fearing his calm would crack and that he might become violent with her, Aubrey drew the box of letters closer to him and carefully replaced the lid she’d put on the desk. “We’ll discuss this later.”

  “But— Oh, please, Aubrey, don’t hate me. Please!”

  “Hate you?” He gazed at her, his insides in such a turmoil, he couldn’t distinguish one emotion from the other. “I don’t know.” He gave her a grim smile. “I’d just begun to believe I loved you, the more fool I.”

  He could scarcely believe his eyes when she grew even paler than she’d been before. “You—you love me?”

  In the very most icy voice he could summon, he said flatly, “Not any longer.”

  “Oh!”

  It was a cry of anguish, and Aubrey didn’t care. He felt wrung out. Depleted. Crushed. Deceived.

  For the second time in his life, he’d allowed himself to love a woman—and he’d lost her. This loss was as bitter, albeit for a different reason, as the loss of Anne.

  This time he’d been a jackass, and the knowledge was hard to swallow.

  Callie rose from the chair. She looked shaky. He didn’t care about that, either. She was a jade. A doxy. A manipulative bitch, and he hated her.

  “Aubrey . . .” Her voice faded.

  He only looked at her.

  With one last, “Oh!” she whirled around and fled from his presence.

  Aubrey rose from his chair, walked stiffly to his office door, shut it, and turned the key in the lock. He walked back to his chair, sat, and stared at the box of letters for a good two or three minutes. Then, with an anguished, “Oh, God!” he buried his face in his hands and commenced to suffer, feeling the pain, his heart hurting as if it were being ripped in half by sharp, poisonous talons.

  *****

  It had been even worse than she’d feared it would be. Callie ran to her room, shut the door, locked it, and stood leaning against it, her whole body shaking with sobs.

  “Idiot!” she raged at herself. “You should suffer. You were totally at fault.”

  She’d eased Becky’s life and soul, she reminded herself. But she’d used deceit with which to do it. She should have—should have—

  Callie didn’t know what she should have done, but she knew good and well she should never, ever, ever have read Aubrey’s private correspondence to his late wife. It was a despicable thing to have done, and she hated herself for it.

  With a moan, she flung herself face forward on her bed— no, not her bed, Aubrey’s bed. Everything in this beautiful house was his. She had no part of it.

  She might have been part of it. If she’d had the gumption to hand over those fetters when Becky had first told her about them. She oughtn’t to have read them, not even for Becky’s sake. It would have been the perfect time to explain to the little girl that some things were private. Surely Callie could have eased over the situation and still have gained Becky’s love and trust.

  But she hadn’t. She’d sunk to wicked depths of subterfuge, and continued to read those beautiful letters.

  “Oh!” The memory of the beauty contained in Aubrey’s letters to Anne stabbed at Callie heart like tiny pitchforks. Which was no more than she deserved. She hated herself.

  She hated herself almost as much as Aubrey now hated her.

  And he’d said he’d come to love her. The memory of his words made Callie cry harder.

  “Idiot,” she cried into her bedclothes. “Fool! Wicked, deceiving fiend!” In fact, she didn’t spare herself a single epithet as she continued to rage against herself.

  Callie had been acting as nursemaid to Becky for a week now. She hadn’t slept much, and she’d suffered agonies of worry for Becky’s sake, and her own. The guilt she’d piled up during the last week, since she’d agreed to Aubrey’s proposal of marriage, had interfered with her waking and sleeping hours almost more than Becky’s illness.

  She’d also been deprived of Monster’s comforting presence, since he’d abandoned her room for Becky’s. Callie believed it was no more than she deserved for being such an evil, wicked person. She wouldn’t blame the whole world if it despised her.

  Eventually she sobbed herself into a restless sleep. She woke slightly when Mrs. Granger knocked at her door, but she didn’t stir. She didn’t want to talk to the kindly housekeeper. She didn’t want to sully Mrs. Granger’s presence with her evil essence.

  After another light knock and another pause, Callie heard Mrs. Granger mutter, presumably to Delilah, “Poor lamb, she must be dead to the world. She’s worked so hard lately.”

  Callie couldn’t hear Delilah’s answer, but from the tone of her voice she knew the maid was agreeing with Mrs. Granger’s opinion of her. If they only knew.

  If they only knew, they’d hate her, too.

  On that note, she shut her eyes and slept some more.

  When she awoke again, night had fallen. Callie staggered to her feet and made her way to the window, where she pulled the curtains aside and gazed outside. There was no moon tonight, and fog, which occasionally crept over the landscape, seemed to thicken as she watched it.

  Callie knew what she had to do. The knowledge had come to her as she slept.

  “I’ll write a note to Becky, and one to Aubrey,” she decided.

  The electric company had turned the power off, so Callie presumed the night was far advanced. Lighting the lamp on the mantel, she squinted at the clock. “Three-thirty.”

  So. Dawn was a little less than a couple of hours away. She could write her notes, pack, and make he
r escape before the household stirred. Good. Callie didn’t think she could face Aubrey again. And she knew she couldn’t take leave of Becky. Such a parting would be too painful for both of them.

  “Notes. I’ll write notes.”

  She’d also leave Monster with Becky. It was going to be hard enough on Becky to lose her nanny. Callie wouldn’t deprive her of her cat, too. She might be wicked, but she wasn’t quite that bad.

  It took Callie an hour to write her notes because she wanted to be sure to phrase everything just so. That didn’t leave her much time to pack. She managed, imperfectly, and with no regard for wrinkles. At a quarter to five, she crept down the back stairs of the beautiful mansion she’d come to love. She still had forty-five minutes to make her escape. Aubrey didn’t get up until seven-thirty or eight, so, even if Mrs. Granger would be up and about at six, nobody would know she was gone until Becky awakened. She’d been sleeping late because of her illness.

  Callie knew she could get away completely before she was missed.

  It was a cold, miserable, foggy walk down the long, long drive to the road to Santa Angelica. Callie had no idea what she’d tell people when she turned up back at her family home.

  She’d think of something, but she knew it wouldn’t work very well. Everyone would wonder. Rumors would probably fly.

  With a sigh, Callie decided that was no more than she deserved for deceiving Aubrey for so long.

  Not that she’d really deceived him, she told herself. At once, her conscience slapped her.

  “You did, too, deceive him, and you know it, Callie Prophet. You had no business reading those letters. And if you felt compelled to read them once, you ought to have turned them over after that one time. For heaven’s sake, it’s a felony to tamper with the U.S. Mail! You did worse than tamper.”

  Again, the less principled side of her nature tried to give her an excuse by reminding her that Aubrey hadn’t used the U.S. Postal Service for most of the letters, but had left them for his wife. There were no postmarks on them.

  “Stop caviling this minute, Gallic Prophet!” Callie sniffed, disgusted with herself.

  “Merciful heavens, it’s foggy,” she muttered, trying to keep her feet on the road and not wander into the woods. The fog had become so thick it made the trees look as if they’d been wrapped in cotton fluff, and it muffled every sound. Callie could neither see nor hear anything through the heavy cloak of thick, gray, dismal moisture.