Death at Thorburn Hall

by Julianna Deering

  Drew thanked the officer and then took Lady Louisa’s arm. “I’m very sorry. Perhaps later on.”

  “Yes,” she said, her mouth a taut little smile. “Yes, later would be better. We both—we both have a great deal to think over.”

  “Naturally. I understand it will be a while before the case is brought to trial. Do you have someone . . . ?” He trailed off, not quite knowing how to make the question any less awkward. Of course, there was no one now. Even so, she always seemed to handle dire circumstances with grace.

  “My sister and her husband have an estate over in Stirling. I’m sure she’ll let me come stay for a while. It’s far enough away from all this, yet close enough for me to help the police with whatever they need and perhaps even come see Joanie when she’s ready.”

  “Madeline and I will have to come back up for the trial,” Drew said. “Until then, if there’s any way either of us might be of service, please don’t hesitate to ask.”

  Madeline took Lady Louisa’s hand. “Drew and I thought you might want to spend some time down at Farthering Place after this is all over.”

  Lady Louisa immediately shook her head. “Thank you, but no. I have to be here for Joanie. She’ll need me once she realizes what she’s done. She’s hardly more than a baby, they have to see that. She couldn’t have meant for all this to happen. It must have been that terrible caddie, leading her on, telling her what to do. Terrible.”

  Drew and Madeline exchanged a look, but neither of them said anything.

  “Perhaps later on, then,” Madeline said. “You know you’re always welcome. Any time at all.”

  They escorted her back to Thorburn Hall and left her in the company of her maid. It didn’t seem appropriate to bother her with their own plans, so Drew and Madeline went to inform Twining that they, as well as Mr. Dennison and Miss Holland, would be leaving the next morning.

  “Here’s my address in Hampshire,” Drew told the man. “There’s really no one but you to look after Lady Louisa now. If she’s in any sort of difficulty, I want you to promise me you’ll let me know.”

  Twining bowed gravely. “I know it is hardly my place to say so, sir, but it’s very good of you. Lady Louisa’s family have stood by my people for nearly three hundred years. I shall certainly stand by the last of theirs.”

  “Good man,” Drew said. “I’ll rely upon that.”

  Before the butler could do more than repeat his grave bow, the pert little maid popped into the drawing room and announced Mr. MacArthur to see Mr. Farthering.

  “Shall I bring tea, ma’am?” Twining asked Madeline, “or will Mr. MacArthur be staying to luncheon?”

  “No, no,” MacArthur said, blustering into the room in his usual way. “Not staying but a moment. I just heard about poor Louisa and what happened with Joan. Terrible business. Terrible. I wanted to see if I could be of any assistance.” He shook Drew’s hand, then bent politely over Madeline’s. “To be honest, I never felt right about the girl, but there was nothing I could ever actually nail down. Never expected anything more than a fit of temper, though. Nothing quite so shocking as this.”

  “Her parents can’t make excuses for her now,” Drew said. “I suppose there’s nothing left for her to do but face the consequences.”

  They were all silent for a moment, and then Mac exhaled heavily. “At least you don’t have to deal with a traitor, as well. My only regret in my part of the business was that Rainsby died suspecting I’d betrayed my country. I know it worried him every time I mentioned how much I admired something Hitler had done. There was a while there I thought I’d pushed it too far and he’d have no more to do with me. I even thought he might have me charged with treason.”

  “Thinking back on what he told me before he died,” Drew said, “I can see that’s what he was hinting at. I suppose he didn’t want to report you to anyone official without some kind of proof, and that was why he called me in.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t have taken you both into my confidence from the beginning, but when a secret is not one’s own to share, well, I’m certain you understand.”

  “Of course we do.” Madeline gave him a pretty smile. “Though I can’t say I liked it very much watching my husband creep into the darkness after you, thinking you might be lying in wait for him around the next corner.”

  “Turns out it was the young lady you should have been worried about,” Drew said with a look of comic regret. “Where is she now, by the way? You both certainly had us fooled.”

  “I’m not quite certain,” MacArthur admitted, “but it sounded as though she might be going to Berlin to do a bit of reconnaissance for our side. Such a little slip of a girl, isn’t she, to be doing that sort of job, eh? But I suppose that’s why she’s so good at it.”

  “Very brave of her, too,” Drew added. “Can’t help but admire her spirit. She is German, isn’t she?”

  “She is. Devoted to the place, I can assure you, which is why she’d like to see someone other than this Hitler fellow in charge of it, and before there’s the kind of trouble we had back in my day.”

  “Or worse.”

  Mac nodded at him. “Precisely. There are already rather grim signs of what might be coming, especially for her people.”

  Drew wrinkled his forehead. “Her people?”

  “She’s Jewish,” Mac said. “Though I suppose you might not suspect that just from looking at her.”

  “No,” Drew admitted, “not right off. I expect that’s what makes her so valuable an agent.”

  Madeline looked at the older man, just a touch of mischief in her expression. “Then there was never anything between you and her. I mean, anything of an . . . unprofessional nature.”

  Mac chuckled. “You flatter me, ma’am. Miss Shearer is a deuced attractive woman, well beyond my reach even when I was a young blade your husband’s age. But she is also an accomplished actress, and if she wanted to make everyone think we were involved romantically, by George, that was what everyone would think.”

  “Not to be indelicate,” Drew said, “but your wife . . .”

  Mac sobered. “Ah, yes. Amanda.” He stroked his mustache and cleared his throat. “Amanda found someone whose company she preferred to mine.”

  “And you divorced her.”

  “Actually, I agreed to let her divorce me. It was the gentlemanly thing to do, sir. Even if she no longer wished to be, she was still my wife. It was my part to shield her from scandal, even a scandal of her own making, so I allowed her to file suit.”

  Drew nodded. “Afterwards, then, all of that fell in nicely with your little charade. Lord Rainsby was right when he told me at the very start what an admirable fellow you were. With enough chaps like you, and one or two more girls like Lisa, we might somehow stave off the storm that’s brewing in Berlin.”

  “We can try, young man. We can certainly try. So long as you young folk keep your eyes open here at home.”

  Drew shook his hand. “God with us, sir, we’ll do just that.”

  MacArthur made his farewells, and Drew and Madeline were left to themselves.

  “Where do you suppose Carrie and Nick are?” Madeline asked. “She’s going home. I’m sure she is, and I don’t want her to. He can’t let her.”

  Drew sighed. “I know. I know. It’d be a deuced shame if he did. Confound the man, he’s got to stand up for himself. She doesn’t give a hang whether his father’s our butler or the Archbishop of Canterbury. Why they should both be miserable the rest of their lives is something I’ll never understand.” He caught her hand in his. “I believe they’re out in the garden. At least Nick said he was going to look for her there. Surely even he can manage something that simple.”

  “Maybe we should go find them. We can pretend we’ve come to tell them lunch is ready.”

  They were nearly out of the garden and on to the meadow when they finally spotted Nick and Carrie walking slowly along the path that led eventually to the road. There was something solemn and earnest in their faces as th
ey talked. Something almost desperate.

  The two of them were at the stone wall now. No doubt they’d be turning back toward the house in a moment. Drew lifted his hand, meaning to call to them, when Madeline swiftly pulled him into the folly and out of sight.

  “They’re coming this way. Maybe we shouldn’t interrupt.”

  They sat in silence, unable to see the couple now, but it wasn’t long before they heard the rustling of grass and then Nick’s low voice.

  “Carrie, sweetheart, I know I haven’t any right to even speak to a girl like you. I’m not anyone, and you’re—you’re—”

  “Don’t say that,” Carrie replied. “You know I don’t care about that. I just—”

  “Won’t you hear me out?”

  Drew glanced at Madeline. They really should make their presence known. Madeline put one finger to her lips and breathed into his ear, “It’s taken him forever to say anything. Don’t spoil it now.”

  She was right about that much. Drew stayed where he was, his arm still around Madeline in the cool stillness of the folly, and looked through a small opening in the flowering vines.

  “Please don’t go,” Nick said, his voice soft and pleading. “Sweetheart, you can’t.”

  Carrie lifted her chin. “Do you think I ought to stay here and have you always involved in his murders? Do you want me to stand by and watch you be killed?”

  My murders? Drew caught an indignant breath, but Madeline squeezed his arm to silence him.

  “What do you want me to do?” Nick asked. “Leave Farthering Place? Leave England? I’ll do it for you.”

  She bit her lip. “Would you? Would you really?”

  “I would,” he said, and then he looked grieved. “Yet I still couldn’t promise you nothing would ever happen to me. Even if I were a very dreary chartered accountant who lived in a flat only a quarter mile from my office and never went anywhere but there and to the greengrocer’s round the corner and the church across the road, I couldn’t promise you I’d never be hit by a bus or come down with double pneumonia or have a piano dropped on my head from an upper floor. But suppose that’s not for another year? Or ten? Or fifty?”

  “Nick . . .”

  “At some point we have to trust God with our lives, don’t we? Otherwise we spend our days huddled in a corner afraid to take a step outside. But what a waste that is when there’s so much we’re meant to do with the time He’s given us.”

  She looked away from him, eyes brimming with tears, and then she blinked hard and put on a tight smile. “Madeline told me what you said about the sheep.”

  Nick gaped at her, and she nodded.

  “About how they’re only stupid when they’re afraid.”

  He swallowed hard. “They can be taught and remember what they’ve learned, like—like which kind of pail has their food in it and that sort of thing. It’s only . . .” His voice cracked, and he brought her gloved hands to his heart. “Oh, Carrie, don’t do something stupid just because you’re afraid.”

  “I don’t want to go. I don’t want to leave you.” Her breath came in a little hitching gulp and she broke into sobs. “I don’t want to go back home when there’s nobody there anymore. I don’t want to go when home is wherever you are.”

  “Then stay.” He gathered her in his arms and pressed his cheek to her red-gold hair. “I’d rather have one day, one hour, with you and nothing more rather than never having even that. Please, Carrie, sweetheart. I can’t promise you a set number of days or years, only that I’ll spend every moment I’m given loving you. That much—” his voice broke again—“that much I can swear to.”

  Madeline’s grip on Drew’s arm tightened, and he looked down at her. There were tears standing in her eyes.

  “Darling,” he breathed, but she only shook her head and again put a finger to her lips.

  He kissed her temple and then looked back through the folly’s flowering vines. Nick was still holding Carrie in his arms, waiting, desperate. Don’t let her go, old man. Make her see what she’d be throwing away.

  Carrie gazed up at him, fear and distress and something else less definable in her eyes, and then she looked away. “Nick, I can’t—”

  He snatched her up against him, her toes barely touching the ground as he silenced her with a kiss.

  “Well, that’s one way,” Drew murmured, and Madeline ducked her head against his shoulder to cover a giggle.

  Carrie clung to Nick, one hand gripping his lapel, the other sliding up to caress his bruised face.

  “Tell me you don’t love me.” His voice was low, urgent. “Tell me you don’t love me and I’ll let you go.”

  “Nick—”

  “Just that and I won’t say another word.”

  “Nicky,” she said softly, smiling despite the tears that sparkled in her eyes. “I was going to say I can’t—I can’t let you go. I can’t tell you I don’t love you, because I do. More than anything in the world. And if that means staying here while you and Drew and Madeline track down thieves and murderers and con men and international spies, then I guess it does. It doesn’t mean I won’t be afraid for you, for all of you, every time you get mixed up in something like this, but I guess if I had to go back to South Carolina and end up married to Kip Moran my whole life, well, I’d just kick myself for the next fifty years.”

  She brought his mouth down to hers, and with Nick’s expression equal parts astonishment and delight, they kissed again.

  “Satisfied?” Drew whispered to Madeline.

  “I think that will do very nicely,” she whispered back, beaming.

  “They’re not likely to notice much of anything at this point,” Drew said. “Shall we make our escape?”

  She took the arm he offered, and they scurried toward the meadow into the cover of the trees.

  Nick and Carrie were married by special license the next day in a small, cluttered, and abominably stuffy registrar’s office in Edinburgh. Afterward, following a lavish wedding supper at the grandest hotel in town with just Drew and Madeline in attendance, they retired to the bridal suite. Drew and Madeline, with Bonnie in their charge, settled into their own just slightly less grand accommodations on the next floor but one.

  “I suppose Carrie will one day regret not having a huge bash in a real church,” Drew observed once Beryl and Plumfield had finished their duties and vanished into their own quarters.

  “They’re not everything.” Madeline stood at the dressing table, an alluring picture in her peignoir of ivory silk and antique lace, and touched her fingers to the flowers that lay in a bowl of water before the mirror. She had worn the violets and tea roses as matron of honor. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Bunny and Daphne’s big wedding lasts longer than their marriage. Besides, if Carrie had wanted all that, she could have come to stay with us at home until the arrangements were made. And that would have taken considerably longer than waiting three Sundays just so the banns could be read.”

  He tossed his dressing gown across a chair, careful to avoid the sleeping kitten, and stretched out on the deep, downy bed. “I thought all you ladies wanted the trappings and pomp of your special day.”

  Her eyes turned soft and warm. “I think all she wanted was him.”

  “Hmmm, and you made me wait six months.”

  That made her laugh, a sweet, silvery sound he never tired of. “We’d known each other only six months by then. I think the ladies in Farthering St. John are still scandalized. Carrie and Nick have known each other for three years now. I can understand why they didn’t want to wait for all the fancy things. Besides, their wedding was lovely just the same.” She sighed happily. “I’m so glad you were able to arrange everything so they didn’t have to wait at all.”

  He pulled her down onto the bed beside him. “It never hurts to know an archbishop or two.”

  “They’ve had to wait long enough as it is without adding another three Sundays to it.”

  “True. Well, Mrs. Farthering, are you ready to go home at last? We’
ll have a good deal of explaining to do when we come back without Nick, you know. Denny will think he’s been mislaid somewhere between Edinburgh and Hampshire.”

  Madeline giggled. “Nick sent him a telegram saying he and Carrie were married and they’d be going straight on to Paris for two weeks. Denny wired back just two words: High time.”

  “Ah, well, that’s been seen to then. All we’ll have to face is Minerva, Eddie, and Mr. Chambers. They will no doubt adopt decided and unfavorable opinions about Bonnie. You know how cats are.”

  “They’ll get used to her,” Madeline said. “They got used to each other, didn’t they? And before long the honeymooners will take her with them to Rose Cottage.” She sighed again. “Oh, weren’t they a lovely bride and groom? I hope they’ll be as happy as we are.”

  He was silent for a time, studying her as she lay drowsing against him in her silk and lace, with her hair falling in dark rills over his shoulder. “You look rather a bride yourself in that, you know.”

  She turned and put her arms around his neck, the languor in her eyes becoming something a bit warmer. “A bride who’s ready to go home and stay there for a while.”

  “I’m ready to go home, too. Our own home. Our own room.” He touched his lips to hers. “Our own bed.”

  Drew pulled his wife closer and then closer still, thinking as he kissed her that he, too, hoped Nick and Carrie would be as happy as they were. But somehow he couldn’t imagine any mere mortal could possibly be.

  Not even close.

  Acknowledgments

  To David Long, Luke Hinrichs, and all the incredible people at Bethany House who make Drew’s adventures possible. Has it been six books already?

  To all my writer friends, who understand what this life is like.

  And as always, to my dad, who valiantly tried to teach me to play golf. Even if I could never hit the ball, I still learned to appreciate the game.

  Thank you and bless you.

  Julianna Deering, author of the acclaimed Murder on the Moor and Dressed for Death in the DREW FARTHERING MYSTERY series, is the pen name of novelist DeAnna Julie Dodson. DeAnna has always been an avid reader and a lover of storytelling, whether on the page, the screen, or the stage. This, together with her keen interest in history and her Christian faith, shows in her tales of love, forgiveness, and triumph over adversity. A fifth-generation Texan, she makes her home north of Dallas along with three spoiled cats. When not writing, DeAnna spends her free time quilting, cross-stitching, and watching NHL hockey. Learn more at JuliannaDeering.com.