Secrets of Nanreath Hall

by Alix Rickloff

  “It was very patriotic of Lord Melcombe to donate his house to the war effort, don’t you think?” she ventured.

  He gave a twitch of his shoulders, his gaze fixed on the road. “It was donate or have the government conscript it. Besides, the drafty old pile might as well be used for a worthwhile cause. The family only occupies a few rooms anymore.”

  Anna ran a finger along her locket’s chain. “Are they nice?”

  He shot her a sidelong look, his mouth a thin, stern line. “About what you’d expect from an old aristocratic family clinging to its privileges with every ounce of influence it still possesses.”

  “You don’t sound as if you like them very much.”

  He shrugged again, his face turned away from her and lost in darkness. “I don’t.”

  Anna subsided into silence, letting the rocking wagon ease her into a half doze, letting the pain in her heart bloom and spread. Her face hurt, and her throat closed around a lump the size of a football, but she couldn’t cry. Not even for Graham and Prue. She’d tried in the weeks since she’d departed London, but her tears had dried up. She had none left to shed. Only a dull ache that pressed against what was left of her heart.

  The wagon turned onto a narrow avenue overhung by sheltering lime trees. The growl of the ocean was louder now and the wind snapped at her curls and stung her cheeks. Across a wide meadow, chimney pots and a slice of crenellated roof appeared and disappeared between the curtain of trees.

  “Is that the house?” She turned to see Hugh slumped at the reins, his cap pulled low over his face, as he snored lightly. “Here now, are you mad?” She shook his shoulder. “Wake up!”

  He thrashed, eyes wide and staring, body vibrating with rage and fear. “Shit all! Scotty, look to your tail! Jerries at—” Slowly his unfocused gaze settled on her face with visible relief. “You,” he said gruffly. “You’re determined to stop my heart one way or another, aren’t you?”

  “You could have put us in a ditch—or worse.”

  Hugh wiped a sleeve across his forehead. “Napoleon knows the way home better than I do. Why do you think I take him when I want to go into the village? He’s far less bother than a driver, and he never breathes a word of what I’ve been up to, no matter how Mother might snoop.”

  Anna’s stomach began a slow sink into her shoes. “Mother?”

  “The chatelaine of the lordly manor, Lady Boxley.”

  “Oh dear. So you’re . . .”

  “Host and chauffeur, the Earl of Melcombe.” He tipped his hat. “At your service.”

  Here now, shut that door. You’ll have the ward sister on us for violating blackout rules.” The young woman hurrying down the stairs toward Anna was dressed in the familiar VAD ward uniform of blue dress, white apron, and veil.

  “It’s my fault, Tilly.” Hugh—her very own cousin Hugh—slid in behind Anna. “I thought I’d bring her in the back way so she might snatch a bite to eat and maybe a doze before she faced the onslaught.”

  The change in the woman’s demeanor was immediate. She put a hand to her veil with a coquettish smile, her brisk scurry slowing to a hip-swaying saunter. “Lord Melcombe, I should have known you were up to your tricks again.” She wrinkled her pert little nose as she came closer. “Phew! You smell like a distillery. Your mother will be fit to be tied if she catches you in such a state.”

  “The second reason we came in through the sculleries, my dear. I can slip up to my rooms and none will know the extent of my inebriation.”

  Hugh—should Anna call him Lord Melcombe? No, he had introduced himself as Hugh. He was smelly, drunk, and dissolute, a far cry from what she had imagined a peer of the realm should look like. But he was her cousin. And he had a mother, presumably making her Anna’s aunt. She’d gained two relatives in the space of thirty seconds.

  Tilly gave Hugh a kittenish pout. “You just leave everything to me, my lord.”

  “I always do.” He gave her a quick buss on the cheek before swinging his attention to Anna. “This is where I take my leave of you, Miss Handley.”

  Heat crept into Anna’s cheeks at the reminder of her lie. She thought about confessing, noted his bloodshot eyes and drunken posture and chose to keep silent. He’d probably not even remember her in the morning, much less her last name.

  “Nurse Jones will see you settled and pointed in the right direction. She’s a whiz at avoiding Matron when she needs to.” He winked.

  “But I don’t want to avoid her,” Anna replied, feeling slightly besieged.

  “It’s nearly one in the morning, you’re a wrinkled mess from a long day on the train, and you’re swaying on your feet. None will expect you to report until morning. In the meantime, Tilly can find you a billet, and when you present yourself tomorrow you’ll be spruced up and in fine fettle for the old dragon.”

  “I shouldn’t . . .”

  But Tilly had already grabbed the duffel from Anna’s hands and was making for the stairs. “His lordship’s right. Matron’s gone to bed and the sisters on duty are busy on the ward. Best to come along with me, but be quick. If Sister Murphy catches us, we’ll be scrubbing until our hands fall off.”

  Anna followed as they climbed the narrow stairwell up to the slope-roofed attics.

  “Keep your voice down and step lightly. The floors creak something terrible.”

  An uncarpeted corridor stretched for about fifty feet before branching, a lamp set on a table giving off a stark, ugly light. Tilly hurried Anna down and around the corner, finally stopping in front of the last door before another broader stairwell. “Home sweet home.” She dragged Anna into the small room and flipped on the light.

  Three narrow iron bedsteads took up most of the space, two in various stages of tidiness and one stripped bare to the ticking. A locker and ladder-back chair stood sentinel beside each bed. Someone had managed a dressing table out of four fruit crates and a plank, prettying it up with a piece of frilly fabric in a sickly shade of mauve. A silver framed photo of a young man sat atop it beside a cut-glass bottle of expensive Après L’Ondée perfume and a jewelry case with a gold key in the lock. Thick flannel blackout curtains stretched across a single window. A mirror hung on the back of the door, photographs and magazine clippings haphazardly shoved into the frame.

  “We’ll get your kit sorted tomorrow. In the meantime, that one’s mine.” Tilly pointed to the messier of the two made beds. “Get some sleep. I’ll wake you when I come off duty.”

  “Thank you,” Anna said, eyeing the thin mattress, army-issue sheets, and lumpy pillow with lust in her heart.

  “My pleasure.” With a last friendly smile, Tilly dropped the bag, snapped off the light, and vanished back the way she’d come.

  Anna sat on the bed with a tired stretch. Flopped backward onto the pillow with a whush of spent breath to stare up at the ceiling. She closed her eyes as every muscle slowly unkinked, but her thoughts ran in ever-tightening circles. She pulled the locket free of her blouse and snapped it open. As always she was met by Lady Katherine Trenowyth’s serene and unchanging expression. “I’ve done it. I’m at Nanreath Hall, Mama. Now what?”

  Light roused Anna from her nightmares. Not the soft, seeping light of a new dawn, but the glare of a handheld torch. A hand shook her by the shoulder. “It’s all right. It’s just a bad dream. You’re safe now.”

  Heart racing, Anna struggled up through a soupy fog to find a pert, oval face framed in dark chocolate curls hovering inches from her own.

  “Better now?”

  She sat up, running a hand over her face. “Yes, much. Thank you.”

  The face and the torch withdrew. “You had me worried. I thought you might knock my teeth in the way you were thrashing about in the bed.”

  Anna squinted to see the clock. Three A.M. She’d slept an hour at the most, and that had been a fitful, anxious rest leaving her drenched in a cold sweat, temples throbbing. “Sorry to be a bother. Miss Jones let me stay here. I’m to report to Matron in the morning. I’m Anna, the new
VAD.”

  “I’m Sophie Kinsale. How do you do? Always nice to meet a fellow worker bee.” She spoke in plummy Mayfair tones as she snapped on the overhead. “Are you quite certain you’re feeling well? I’ve seen cadavers with more color.”

  “Much better, thank you. Suppose I’m a little skittish about starting in a new place.”

  “Seemed more than skittish nerves to me.”

  Anna offered her best reassuring smile, an expression she’d perfected after weeks in hospital. “That’s a . . . uh . . . lovely overcoat.”

  Sophie wrinkled her nose. “It’s a flea-bitten mess, but it belonged to my father and reminds me of home. Charles says it’s like hugging a mammoth.”

  She shrugged out of the ankle-length raccoon-skin coat. Skimming off her tunic and loosening the top button on her blouse, she stood in front of the mirror, lip chewed between her teeth as she tilted her head side to side in close examination.

  “I think you’re safe,” Anna offered finally.

  Sophie stiffened, meeting her gaze in the mirror. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your neck. It’s fine.”

  Sophie spun round, cheeks flaming red. “Please don’t say anything. Matron would have my head.”

  Anna leaned back on her pillows, her nightmares naught more than a vague unease now, though she knew if she closed her eyes they would return. They came every night without fail. Dark and insidious, dragging her back to the chaos of France when the world seemed on fire. “Your secrets are safe with me.”

  Sophie’s shoulders slumped in relief. “You must think me a horrid flirt or worse, but I’m really not a Sodom and Gomorrah type, I swear. Charles . . . that is . . . Lieutenant Douglas is shipping out. Tonight was our last night together. I suppose we got a bit carried away.” She undressed, neatly tidying away each article of clothing before donning a pair of silky pajamas straight out of a Hollywood picture.

  “It’s hard saying good-bye.”

  Sophie dabbed at her eyes with the edge of her washrag. “I didn’t realize how hard until I left him standing alone at the railway station. In that moment I would have happily thrown my reputation away for five more minutes.”

  Anna felt a leaden weight choking off her breath. If only she’d opened up to Graham and Prue during that last visit. If only she’d shared her heartbreak and her fear. If only she’d told them she loved them one last time.

  With quick, deft strokes, Sophie removed her makeup and began the arduous process of brushing out her hair then putting it up in curlers. “You’re a real sport. Matron would rake me over the coals for breaking the rules.”

  “What would she do to you?”

  “I don’t know, but she once caught a nurse and a young man in a broom cupboard. Sent the young woman packing.”

  “What did she do to the young man?”

  Giving her scarf-covered curlers a final pat, Sophie snapped off the overhead and slid into bed. “Oh, he returned to his outfit and was shot down during the Norway campaign. Lost his leg.” She paused and drew a soft, sad sigh. “Now he drinks too much, smokes too much, and when he’s not behaving outrageously, he putters about this rackety old place like a lost soul.”

  Anna’s hands curled around the edge of her blanket. “Are you talking about Lord Melcombe?” That explained his awkwardness around the wagon tonight, and why he wasn’t in uniform now.

  “So you’ve met him, then.” She gave a helpless sigh. “Hugh’s always been a bit wild—he was a positive fiend in London before the war—but it’s grown worse since he lost his leg. Charles says he needs to get away from Nanreath before his mother swallows him up. That this place will pull him apart bit by bit if he lets it.”

  “He knows Lord Melcombe?”

  “The two of them were at Eton and then Cambridge together.”

  Of course they were. Sophie oozed wealth and breeding. She probably took tea at the Savoy, wintered in Biarritz, and played badminton with princesses, too. And now she served meals, scrubbed floors, and gave sponge baths. Just like Anna. War united them in common purpose. Bombs and bullets didn’t discriminate. Rich and poor bled equally.

  “Luckily, Charles is a third son so he doesn’t have the weight of an earldom hanging round him like an anchor,” Sophie said, her voice already heavy with sleep. “Hugh has been carrying Nanreath Hall like a burden since he was four.”

  “What happened to his father?”

  “He was wounded and gassed in the last war. Never regained his health and died shortly after. The family never recovered. Scandal, debt, and now poor Hugh. It’s enough to make you wonder if the Trenowyths are cursed or something.” Sophie’s eyes closed, her breathing slowed. “Wake me at six, would you . . . uh . . . what did you say your name was again?”

  Even as Sophie relaxed into slumber, Anna rolled over, her face to the wall. “It’s Trenowyth.”

  Chapter 4

  London

  October 1913

  Mr. Balázs’s London art studio inhabited a narrow, redbrick creeper-covered building in the Grosvenor Road. The ground floor was taken up with sculleries, offices, and storage, from which seeped the acrid aromas of glazes and varnishes, paint, linseed oil, and turpentine. On my way up the stairs to the first floor where he lived and worked, I caught teasing glimpses of canvases stacked three deep, easels, and long sink counters cluttered with bottles and jars, brushes and old rags—an Aladdin’s cave of artistic riches.

  “Welcome to my abode, Lady Melcombe,” he said with a continental bow and a kiss for my mother’s hand. “Please, make yourself comfortable. I’ve sent for some refreshments.”

  My mother nodded graciously as she took a seat on a velvet-covered sofa, arranging her skirts in a pose of patient serenity. One I could never duplicate in a thousand years.

  “And Lady Boxley? She is well?” he inquired politely.

  “Much improved, now that we are assured of the child’s survival.”

  Perhaps if one’s definition of improved included wild swings between sullen indifference and smothering attentiveness. I smothered my cynical snort in a bout of coughing until Mama shot me a stern look.

  Hugh Xavier James Roland Mannering Trenowyth had been born far earlier than suggested by the specialist Papa had hired as an accoucheur. Barely bigger than a kitten, he hardly stirred in his cot or made a sound, and for some weeks, we hovered in a painful state of expectation and dread.

  “Lord Boxley must be so proud,” Mr. Balász proclaimed. “A man’s son is his guarantee of eternity.”

  Besides a flicker behind her eyes, Mama’s mask never wavered. “He is the most satisfied of fathers.”

  More coughing. Mama handed me a peppermint and then studiously ignored me.

  In fact, William had returned to Nanreath Hall only briefly after Hugh’s birth. A whirlwind visit that left no one satisfied. He spoke little and nothing of consequence, though I pressed him more than once. He would laugh and turn aside all seriousness, as if he’d not a care in the world, though there were moments I caught him staring at the baby with a look of confused sorrow, as if facing a calamity that left him without hope.

  “I expect Lady Katherine’s final sittings won’t take too long.” Mama’s imperial command was couched as a polite request.

  “No time at all, my lady.” Mama started to rise, but Mr. Balázs motioned for her to relax. “I do not like distractions as I work, you see. We will leave the door open, and she will be well looked after, I assure you.”

  Mama subsided, and I followed him into a bright, airy room lined with north-facing windows. A large easel took up one corner, the canvas hidden from my view. In the middle of the room, a simple straight-backed chair had been placed.

  “I wore the same gown as you instructed,” I said as I removed my wrap and draped it over a convenient column to reveal the gaudy confection of sea-green silk. In the autumn chill of his airy studio, I felt goose bumps rise along my bare arms and up the back of my neck.

  He moved quickly and efficiently,
arranging palettes and brushes and small jars on his worktable. “Would you like to see what I have accomplished so far, Lady Katherine?”

  “Oh yes, please,” I said, my discomfort forgotten.

  The portrait set me in Nanreath’s rose garden on a white metal bench. Even unfinished, one could sense the drowsy peace and muted late-summer colors in the meticulous strokes of his brush. But I saw nothing of myself in the roughed-in charcoal sketch of the girl almost glaring out at the artist, her hands twisted in her lap as her hair lay twisted against her head, chin hard, lips thin. Did I really look like this? So . . . unhappy?

  “You don’t like it?” he asked mildly.

  “I suppose it’s always a little surprising to discover how the world views us, isn’t it?”

  “And it is perception as much as observation. So much of what we believe is hidden is actually visible if one has the eyes to see.”

  I thought of Mrs. Vinter’s comment on my picture of William; she had spoken of my ability to capture emotion with my pencil, the spirit rather than the facade.

  “If I’m not mistaken, you understand when I speak of these connections between the soul and the mask,” Balázs said quietly.

  “I understand. I only hope my father does, as well, or you’ll be minus your commission. No offense intended, but he’s not likely to hang me among the family’s elite looking as if I’ve been sucking lemons all day.”

  Balázs continued watching me for another long, penetrating moment then laughed, his mustache wobbling in amusement. “Perhaps you’re right. And I certainly wouldn’t want to deny you your place among Melcombe’s generations. We shall bend honesty a bit and in the doing make Lord Melcombe pleased as a pig in mud.”

  A clatter from the outer sitting room followed by the murmur of conversation caught my attention.

  “I’m just back, sir.” Simon Halliday, windblown, paint spattered, and incredibly handsome, poked his head round the door, carrying a paper parcel. His face stiffened when he saw me. “Good afternoon, Lady Katherine.”

  I remembered those lips touching mine, the cautious exploration that left me breathless and yearning before sense reasserted itself. The way his heart beat under my hand, the pulse in his throat and my own swaying of limbs.