Secrets of Nanreath Hall

by Alix Rickloff

  “I hope so. We’ve run out of real paste, and the flour and water glop Sister Louise concocted in the kitchens to use in its stead nearly had me retching my breakfast.”

  Space in a corner of the room was cleared and Hugh, with much shouting of instructions, hoisted and secured the tree in its stand, the top nearly scraping the ceiling. The crisp smell of pine replaced the mingled scents of antiseptic and sweat. Melting snow dripped from its broad green branches.

  “Perfect!” Hugh stepped back out of the way, hands on his hips in admiration, though Anna noticed the way he held himself uncomfortably, as if his leg pained him, and his face bore a grayish cast. “Go to it, men.”

  Like children let free on Christmas morning, the men rummaged through the boxes, pulling out elaborate ornaments in glass, tin, lace, and wood. Laughing and chattering, they jostled for space around the tree as they worked. Trays of cider and biscuits appeared. A gramophone belted out carols. Tilly flirted and teased as she helped drape the paper chains, her easy charm pulling even the grumpiest soldier into the festivities.

  Anna placed a tin soldier in scarlet coat and busby. A delicate robin’s egg–blue glass ball. A set of crystal icicles in various colors. With each ornament, she couldn’t help but compare what must have been her mother’s sumptuous childhood holidays with her own joyful, if frugal, Christmases. Had Katherine, like Anna, only realized the preciousness of those childhood memories once they were all she had left?

  Kneeling beside a crate, Anna pulled aside crumpled newspaper to find a beautifully rendered miniature of a young man framed in delicate woodwork. His solemn gaze seemed at odds with the smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.

  “I haven’t seen that in ages. I almost forgot it existed.”

  Anna looked up to see Hugh standing over her. His hands were stuffed into his pockets, and without the animation of the tree raising, she could discern the tight lines at his mouth, the shadows haunting his pale gray eyes.

  “Your father?” she asked.

  “Yes.” He bent and took it, running his thumb over the glass. “I was four when he died. According to Mother, he was a paragon of every male virtue, cut off in the prime of life, leaving her helpless and alone amid a family of wolves. At least that’s how she portrays her life after his death.”

  “You don’t believe her?”

  “My mother has never been helpless in her life.” His lips curled in a cynical smile. “Grandfather used to hang this ornament himself every year. Wouldn’t let anyone else touch it. Not even Mother. It must have been packed away when he died.”

  “You’re fortunate to have grown up surrounded by people who knew and loved your father. I have so many questions about my mother and no one to ask.”

  Hugh continued rummaging through the boxes. Anna had almost decided their one and only conversation was at an end when he straightened with a glass star in his hand and an odd almost expectant expression on his face. “Is that why you came to Nanreath Hall?”

  “I came because the powers that be have a twisted sense of humor, but if I keep a stiff upper lip and do a good job, they might just send me to the front, where I could be of some real use.”

  “I would think discovering where you came from would have been too good a chance to miss.”

  “Yes, well, I didn’t come from here, did I? I was born and raised in London. And you can see how well the touching family reunion has turned out. You’ve barely spoken to me.”

  “I’m a bloody bastard. Ask anyone who knows me. But it’s not every day one has a brand-new relation spring like magic from the ether.” Together, they began to unpack the box and hang the ornaments.

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “God knows I’ve enough horrid relations as it is without adding to the bunch. Luckily, they all live on the other side of the world.”

  “I don’t want anything from you if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “You’d be disappointed if you did. The earldom of Melcombe is tottering on a precipice built of death taxes and devalued land. A push in the right direction and down we come like so many others of our kind before us. It’s the rising families like Lambert’s with the cash and clout these days.”

  “Tony Lambert?” She paused, the crystal icicle still in her hand.

  “His grandfather shoveled the coal. His father bought the coal mine. If Tony inherited even a tenth of the family’s ambitions, he’ll have the blunt to buy us all by the end.”

  “He seems so . . . so normal.”

  “As opposed to me, the mincing, lisping fop?”

  “That’s not what I meant.” She laughed and continued her work.

  “Lambert’s a good chap. He’s the one who told me what a horse’s ass I was being. Gave me a verbal thrashing until I promised I’d apologize to you, and here I am.” He made a stage bow from the waist complete with a wrist-twisting flourish.

  “Lord Melcombe? Would you like to do the honors?” Tilly held the angel for the top of the tree. “After all, this was your idea.”

  Was it Anna’s imagination or did Hugh tense? Did his expression harden with wild panic before settling into its usual loose smile? “Let Corporal Keller have it. No lords a-leaping for me. I’m not too good with heights these days.”

  Tilly blushed as she handed off the angel to a balding, cherub-faced orderly who scampered up the ladder, wobbling as he leaned over the tree, settling the angel upon her perch to the accompaniment of much cheering and applause.

  “Can you forgive me, Hugh?” she asked with a pitiful begging scrunch of her face that only seemed to enhance her vivacious attractiveness. “It never even occurred to me you’d have trouble with the ladder.”

  He looped his arm with hers. “Which is exactly why I adore you, Tilly, my sweet.” He glanced upward. “Now, if I’m not mistaken, that’s mistletoe.”

  Anna turned her gaze upward. “Actually, I believe that’s a sprig of—”

  Hugh shot her a look as Tilly moved in for a kiss.

  “Never mind,” Anna mumbled. “Must be mistaken.”

  Tilly broke away with flushed cheeks and a twinkle in her eye. “Crikey, my lord. I think I need a drink after that.” She looped her arm in his. “Care for a cider?”

  “Sounds ghastly, but lead on.” Just as Tilly began to steer him toward the tables, he leaned toward Anna. “Mother’s roped me into attending a local fund drive for wounded soldiers on New Year’s Eve. I thought you might go with me. Another Trenowyth to impress the local bigwigs.”

  “They’ll be so busy ogling me, they won’t have time to pester you. Is that it?”

  “Am I that obvious?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well? What do you say . . . cousin?”

  Was this her chance to step into her mother’s world and find out if there might be a place for her? “Are you sure? Won’t it be awkward?”

  But Hugh had already accepted her long pause as a yes and wandered off, leaving Anna queasy with anticipation. She picked up the ornament, staring once more into the handsome frozen expression of the young man lost so many years ago.

  “New Year’s it is,” she whispered.

  Chapter 8

  February 1914

  Come on, Kitty. Get a move on or we’ll be late.”

  The entire basement bedsit in Islington I shared with Doris Price, a young woman working as a typist in the City, was smaller than my sitting room at Nanreath Hall. The only natural light to be had leached in through two grimy narrow windows set nearly flush with the ceiling; the privy was at the end of the back garden, and we had no means of cooking other than a spirit stove that served for tea or a pan of beans, which we ate on toast. Thankfully for our meager coal supply, the winter had been mild. But tonight a thick green fog seeped through every crack and crevice, clinging to the skin and making breathing difficult. Coughing left my stomach achy and my throat sore.

  “If we pool our week’s wages, we have the threepence each for entry and enough left over to get
coffee afterward,” I said as I counted out the precious coins from my change purse with chapped and trembling fingers.

  “Are you all right?” Doris asked as she fastened a small gold cross around her neck. “You look a bit flushed.”

  “Brilliant.” I offered her a game smile. “Now, let’s go. Agnes and Jane will be wondering what’s happened to us.” As a last thought, I grabbed a scarf to wrap around my neck against the night’s damp.

  Doris eyed the square of expensive Liberty’s silk for a moment. “That pretty scrap must have cost a bob or two.” Her derisive tone didn’t completely conceal her envy.

  “A birthday gift,” I replied, not quite meeting her gaze as I felt a stab of dread to add to my already churning stomach.

  Did Doris hold my gaze a moment too long? It was hard to tell. Perhaps I was just being paranoid, knowing her rabid socialist tendencies.

  Simon had introduced me to Doris over cups of thick sweet tea at a Lyons just off Islington Green. He had offered her a story of solidly middle-class parents in Cornwall displeased at their daughter’s decision to leave home for work in London. Being the first in her family to leave service on a northern estate, Doris had understood familial expectations and immediately sympathized with me. But in the two months we’d lived together, she’d made very plain her resentment of the upper classes and their life of parasitic privilege. I was certain that if she ever realized the truth about me, I’d lose her friendship and my accommodations in one cruel blow.

  Just as I thought she must have unraveled my secret, she smiled as she checked her reflection in the mirror, pinching color into her cheeks. “Any word from Simon?” She shot me a teasing look over her shoulder.

  Heat flooded my face though I continued to shiver with cold. “Not since yesterday.”

  Simon had departed for Italy with Mr. Balázs, who had commissions that would keep the pair away from England until spring at the earliest. It had been difficult waving him off at Southampton docks after an idyllic few months spent almost continuously in each other’s company. His letters had become a rare bright spot amid an otherwise dismal winter of chilblains, aching muscles, and the degrading realization that all I had learned to this point in my life was of absolutely no use to me. A child of five knew more about how to get on than I did; a fact reiterated at least ten times a day by my employer.

  “Be careful, Kitty. You know what they say about those artist types.” Doris fanned herself as she batted her lashes.

  “You’re mad.” I clutched my handbag and tried to sound natural and easy. “Quick! There’s the bus!”

  The conversation was dropped in our race to catch the bus that would take us to Upper Street and the new cinema that had just opened. By the time we joined Jane and Agnes outside the movie house, I was laughing and chatting as we made our way through the evening crowds to our seats.

  I had yet to grow used to being unremarkable among a population who cared nothing for my imperfections of carriage or conversation, didn’t gossip over my matrimonial prospects or leap on the smallest social gaffe with malicious glee. The independence was exhilarating and unnerving at the same time. As far a cry from the quiet streets and velvet-draped drawing rooms of Mayfair as my new friends were from the simpering, sulking debutantes I’d associated with up to now.

  Jane and Agnes both worked as mannequins at Madame Duchamp’s, showcasing the fashionable Soho couturier’s designs to her wealthy, influential customers. They were worldly-wise in a way I could never hope to be, and their racy stories always left me blushing, even as I pretended to laugh along with them.

  “You should have seen the young gentleman who came in yesterday with his sister. The son of a duke.” Jane giggled.

  Agnes shook her head. “You’re such an innocent, Jane. That woman was no more his sister than I am. His fancy piece, more like.”

  Jane gave a dreamy smile. “I don’t think I’d mind being a kept woman. Not if it were by the son of a duke. All those lovely clothes and jewelry and a motorcar and a sweet little flat in Kensington with a maid and a cook all for a bit of how’s your father now and again.”

  “Well, if you find a duke’s son ask him if he has three well-to-do friends then, will you?” Agnes advised. “Though I might settle for an earl if you come across a handsome one.”

  We all laughed, though mine came out a little shaky as I imagined Agnes and William together. She might not know the proper use of a fish knife or who took precedence going in to dinner, but she was kind and amusing and down-to-earth—all things Cynthia was not. She’d have made William a good wife; or at the least a loving one, and surely, love must rate higher in selecting a mate than wealth and position.

  I sank onto the theater’s wooden chair with the same relief I might once have reclined on a plush chaise longue. Even among the crush of the audience, I clutched my coat tighter around my shoulders against the pervasive chill that seemed to settle in my very bones. The others didn’t seem to notice. Perhaps they were more used to drafty auditoriums and thin cotton coats, but I sighed with relief when the lights dimmed and the flickering glow of the cinema drew everyone’s attention. If Doris suspected I was under the weather, she’d insist we return home, and our rare evening out would be ruined.

  Doris rose before dawn each morning so she could commute by Tube and bus to her office in the City and sometimes didn’t return home until eight or nine at night. My job as a kitchen girl in a café was only two streets away, but sometimes the effort to rise, dress, and make it to work before the breakfast rush was almost too much to bear. Having no marketable skills whatsoever, it had taken me longer than expected to find work. I had only gained this position through sheer luck—the previous girl had taken ill. The days were interminable; hours spent on my feet as I scrubbed the endless stream of dishes and glassware from the dining room along with the mountains of dirty pots and pans that seemed to always fill my enormous stone sink. My hands grew red and chapped, blistered, broke, and callused over. My knees and feet ached, and my shoulders seemed locked in a perpetual hunch. Had William come upon me now, he’d have passed me by without a second glance. My silk scarf was all I had left of home.

  Doris leaned over and offered me some peanuts from her bag. Agnes and Jane giggled over the handsome young man seated three rows in front of us. I sat quietly and tried focusing on the screen. My head hurt, and the piano music vibrated around my skull like an entire pit orchestra.

  “You really don’t look well, Kitty.” She put a hand to my forehead. “And you’re burning up. I knew you were ill.”

  By now all I wanted was my bed. I nodded dumbly.

  “Come on. Let’s get you home.” Doris rose from her seat and took me by the arm while Agnes and Jane hailed a cab.

  “It’s too expensive,” I argued.

  “Well, I can’t shovel you onto the bus the way you are now so there’s no help for it.”

  “I have to be at work tomorrow by six,” I moaned through chattering teeth. “What on earth will I do?”

  “You’ll rest in your bed until you’re well. That’s what.”

  “They’ll sack me.”

  “So you’ll get another job. You won’t be a lick of good to them as you are now, will you?”

  I wanted to argue, but that would take energy I didn’t have so instead I let Doris lead me to the waiting cab. The lights and excitement of the cinema were left behind as I leaned against Doris and closed my eyes.

  An arm wrapped around my trembling shoulders. I snuggled closer to try and warm myself. “Are you here to take me to Nanreath, William? Did Mama and Papa send you?”

  “Aye, Kitty,” a voice whispered back. “I’ll see you get home safe.”

  I wanted to believe, but I knew I’d never see home again.

  It turned out that what I thought was merely a bad cold turned out to be scarlet fever. I lay in my bed, too tired to do more than sip at the hot sweet cups of tea Doris fed me, my hands too shaky to even hold the mug. By the time I began to feel a
s if death might have passed me by, the position at the café had been filled by a young, able-bodied girl just off the train from Lyme, and I was out of a job. I sold my scarf and paid Doris as much of the rent as I could, but I had nothing of value left.

  A girl in the upstairs flat suggested a suitable occupation for someone with naught but the clothes she stood up in. When I began to seriously contemplate her suggestion, I surrendered to the inevitable, tucked my tail between my legs, and returned home to South Audley Street.

  Mother and Father welcomed me back into the fold, though they made very sure I understood the depth of their compassion at forgiving such a wicked and ungrateful daughter. Within a week, I was whisked north to Glasgow to be sequestered away from the public’s eye while I repented of my appalling behavior and regained my strength.

  And if I happened to meet someone of the right sort—meaning wealthy, of good family, and willing to overlook my shameful reputation—all to the better.

  That potential future husband’s name turned out to be Sir Lachlan McKinley, who was tall, broad, and weathered as the mountains ringing Aunt Adelaide’s house in Strathblane. He’d been to dinner almost every evening in the three weeks since my arrival, recounting tales of his years as a minor military attaché in India’s Punjab province. He was home, now that his prospects had unexpectedly improved upon the death of his cousin and his sudden elevation to a baronetcy.

  I wasn’t stupid. I knew exactly what was in the works, especially after he cornered me in Aunt Adelaide’s conservatory, pressed his sweaty pink hand against my waist in a vain attempt to steal a kiss, and murmured his happiness at our “understanding.”

  I taxed Aunt Adelaide with his actions after the guests had left—Lachlan and his sister, as mountainous as her brother; the local doctor and his wife; and the vicar—because apparently it’s obligatory to have at least one vicar at every dinner party.

  “Did my parents arrange this with you?” I asked.