Secrets of Nanreath Hall

by Alix Rickloff

  “Never fear, Nurse. We’ll have them in and out in double time.” Captain Matthews immediately took charge as if he’d done this sort of work for years rather than being routed from his rounds by a frantic phone call just this morning. “Let’s get cracking, Trenowyth.”

  As Anna and the other nurses moved from bed to bed, swabbing arms, administering anesthetic, and hooking up the receiving bottles to each donor, the captain supervised their work and kept up a steady stream of one-sided conversation, as if he were delivering a lecture to a hall full of medical students. “Amazing how far we’ve come since 1917. Conditions in the forward hospitals and clearing stations were crude at best. Always crowded and the stench . . . but we saved lives, we did. Took blood from those less injured and gave it to those with no other chance of survival. Type O usually. Less chance of a cock-up that way.”

  Normally, Anna would have gritted her teeth as she tried to tune him out, but after a full night on the wards, she struggled to stay awake and only the need for responding at the proper intervals kept her from dozing off on top of some unsuspecting patient. She could have kissed the girl who brought her hot tea and a bun about lunchtime.

  “Have a sit-down and let the others have a go,” she said. “You look ready to drop.”

  “Only got off duty at seven this morning,” Anna replied, scalding her mouth on a restorative gulp of tea. “Had an hour of kip before we got the call you needed help.”

  “A damned herd of sheep is what done it. A whole mob of ’em crossing the road. Vera swerved, but it was too late. Into the ditch we went. Never saw such a kerfuffle.”

  By two in the afternoon, the line of donors had dwindled, but Anna kept busy with paperwork while the two VADs and the remaining driver worked on preparing the bottles for shipment in the refrigerated lorry parked outside.

  “Two more for you, Nurse. Then we’re just about finished.” Anna looked up to find the driver working the table out front flanked by Hugh—and Lady Boxley.

  She hastened to plaster a stiff smile of welcome on her face as she rose to greet them.

  “You running the war single-handed these days?” Hugh joked. Lines bit deep into his face, but his eyes gleamed mischievously.

  “Bang-up on the road this morning. We’re filling in,” she answered.

  “I’m sure we are all happy to see Miss Trenowyth so ably managing, but I have a meeting of the Women’s Vestry Society and would appreciate prompt attention,” Lady Boxley said imperiously.

  Hugh made a face over his mother’s shoulder, which Anna sought to ignore as she led them back and settled them each onto a bed before pulling the screens around. She leafed through her clipboard, made a note of Hugh’s Type A and Lady Boxley’s Type O for the attending nurse. “Nurse Ayers will be with you in a moment.”

  “Aren’t you doing it?” Hugh asked.

  “Sorry. I’m up to my ears in forms this afternoon, but you’ll be fine.”

  “It’s not me I’m worried about,” he warned.

  Just then a shout went up from the bed next door, followed by a soothing murmur and then a crash. “Need some help here!”

  Anna abandoned Hugh to find Nurse Ayers struggling with Lady Boxley, who must have gone down like a ton of bricks, taking the screen and a metal folding chair with her. “Didn’t even get as far as the needle. Swabbed her arm with alcohol, and she passed clean out.”

  The two of them helped Her Ladyship onto the cot before Ayers raced off for a cup of tea to offer upon revival.

  “Is it over?” came a weak, groggy voice.

  Anna turned to find Lady Boxley woozy but conscious. Her face was gray as the silk suit she wore. “No, ma’am. You fainted.”

  “Did I? It must have been the heat in here. It’s quite warm and I was kept waiting outside for almost a half hour.”

  “Has this happened before?”

  “Perhaps once or twice.” The color deepened. Was Her Ladyship embarrassed because she fainted or because Anna had been the one to witness her momentary lapse of aristocratic control?

  Here was the perfect opportunity to offer Lady Boxley the same dismissive contempt she’d meted out. Anna opened her mouth to offer her a dose of her own medicine, took a breath, and smiled reassuringly. “Let me get Captain Matthews. He can have a look at you just in case.”

  “I don’t need a physician.”

  “But . . .”

  “Stop fussing and get on with it, Miss Trenowyth.”

  “Of course.” Ayers returned with the tea. “Here’s something to perk you up. Nurse has just made a fresh pot, so it should be good and warm.”

  “I’m not an invalid so you can stop your fussing.”

  “No, ma’am. Of course not. We’ll be very quick, and it won’t hurt a bit. Nurse Ayers has done this millions of times.”

  Nurse Ayers took this as her cue and quickly completed her preparations and left with a promise to return shortly to check all was well. Anna started to follow.

  “Miss Trenowyth, if you’d be so kind to attend me.”

  Anna couldn’t help the surprise on her face, but she took the chair beside Lady Boxley’s cot. “Is there something you need?”

  “I’m concerned for my son. He’s not strong, and I worry he’s jeopardizing his health by giving blood. I’ve told him, but he refuses to listen.”

  “The nurses with the service as well as our MO will make sure he’s well taken care of. You’ve nothing to fear.”

  “Don’t I? You’ve obviously never had a child, Miss Trenowyth. Motherhood is a lifetime sentence of worry and fear from the time they take their first breath until the day they lay you in the ground . . . or God forbid . . . you lay them.”

  “He’s out of the fighting, ma’am. You’ve no more need to fear for his safety.”

  “That’s what they told me when my husband was wounded. He lingered for a bit, but the war killed him as sure as if he’d died on the battlefield instead of his own bed.”

  “I’m sorry. That must have been terrible.”

  “I’ll not let Hugh end the same way. I’ve given up too much for him to see his life wasted.”

  Nurse Ayers’s return prompted an end to this odd tête-à-tête. But not before Lady Boxley grabbed Anna’s hand, pulling her close. “The past is dead and buried, Miss Trenowyth. If you care for my son as I think you do, you’ll leave it that way.”

  “The only past I’m interested in is my own, Lady Boxley.”

  She seemed to be warring with herself. Her eyes speared Anna with a look of decision. “Come see me tomorrow afternoon, Miss Trenowyth. We should speak.”

  Dark walls. Dark furniture. Lady Boxley wearing a black dress barely brightened with a double strand of pearls. And a temperature hovering somewhere between uncomfortably warm and jungle steamy. Any fantasies Anna might have had of a tearful family reunion withered on the vine.

  Dressed in her best pencil skirt and pinched waist jacket, legs decorously crossed at the ankle and hands resting in her lap, she felt a growing sense of claustrophobia as she faced Hugh’s mother across a rather sparse and dreary tea tray. To combat the urge to leap from her chair and throw open the windows to let in a breeze, or indeed even a sad little breath of air, Anna fiddled with her locket.

  “Will Hugh be joining us?” she asked, hopefully.

  “He’s been delayed. A pressing matter to do with a leaky roof, I’m told.” Lady Boxley’s petulant tone reminded Anna of a tired child denied a prize. Her face, despite its stately beauty, possessed a nitpicky, unhappy expression. “Knowing my son’s constitution, he’ll overexert himself and be laid up for weeks, but who am I? Just his mother. What do I know?”

  The silence that followed grew thick. Anna shifted upon her lumpy chair and choked down what passed for a scone in these rationed times. It tasted like wood shavings.

  “I was surprised to hear you’d returned to Nanreath.” If the woman had a lorgnette, she’d be lifting it to her eye to study Anna as if she were a strange form of insect. Her ex
pression was cool and unwelcoming. “I’d assumed my personal assistance would be enough to send you wherever you wanted to go.”

  Anna had a feeling she knew exactly where Lady Boxley wanted her to go. “You were very helpful, my lady. But my parents always taught me running away never solved anything.”

  “Parents?” Her Ladyship uttered the word as if someone had laid a dead mouse among her scones and jam. “I was under the impression you had no living family.”

  Anna clenched her jaw, refusing to display even a hint of weakness in front of this woman. “After my mother’s death, I was fortunate to be taken in by the Handleys, who raised me as their own daughter.”

  “They gave you their home, but not their name. Curious.” Lady Boxley took a bite of her gingerbread, her little white teeth reminding Anna of a neighbor’s terrier who’d once nipped her for coming too close.

  “I had a perfectly good name already.”

  Another snap. Another condescending look that spoke volumes.

  Anna’s temper began to fray. She’d given up her precious half day for this inquisition? Even Sister Murphy’s sour personality would have been preferable to this. “I know you’re unhappy I’m here, ma’am, though why, I can’t imagine. It all happened so long ago. Surely it’s water under the bridge.”

  “Is it?”

  “I don’t want to stir up trouble. I just want to learn what I can about my mother.”

  “You know nothing of the scandal that drove her from Nanreath Hall? Or the reason for her estrangement from the family? Or . . . anything?”

  “There was a man.”

  Seeming to relax, Lady Boxley gave a soft, unhappy laugh. “There always is. It’s a regrettable but oft-repeated story.”

  “Did you know Lady Katherine, ma’am?”

  “Of course I knew her. Katherine was barely eighteen when I married her brother, and already overly indulged and headstrong. I could see which way the wind was blowing as soon as that young man walked in the door, but no one heeded me. Heads in the sand, the lot of them. It was the summer before the war. Our world was perfect and we thought nothing could change. We were wrong.” Lady Boxley poured herself a cup of tea. Her hands shook very slightly, sloshing it onto the silver tray. It spread slowly across the tarnished surface.

  “Here. Let me do that.” Anna took the pot from Her Ladyship and proceeded to fill her own cup. “Milk and sugar?”

  “Milk only.” She watched while Anna prepared her tea and handed it to her. Accepting it with a curt nod. “We live in graceless times, Miss Trenowyth. I used to have a maid to serve. Now I must do it myself. The ungrateful girl up and left. Chose a dirty, noisy factory over working in service to the family.”

  Anna sat back with her own steaming cup. “Perhaps she felt the need to do her best for the war effort.”

  “Girls did their best in the last war, too.” Lady Boxley plucked another gingerbread from the plate and nibbled daintily. “Here you are to show for it.”

  Manners aside, enough was very much enough. Anna set her teacup down with a decided clatter, her blood pushing hard and fast until she flung herself out of her chair with reckless abandon. “Look here. I may not be your idea of what a proper young woman should be or even what you would wish for a relation. But if you think I’ll sit here and allow you to insult me, you’re much mistaken.” And because she’d been taught to respect her elders, she added a grudging, “Good day, ma’am.”

  She started for the door, already angry with herself for losing her temper but refusing to be made a fool of for another minute.

  “You’ve the look of your mother, you know,” Her Ladyship said with an almost wistful note in her otherwise imperious voice.

  Anna paused at the door, a hand upon the knob, a breath held against the knot in her chest. “So I’ve been told.”

  Lady Boxley continued worrying at her pearls, rings flashing in the velvet-shrouded gloom of her sitting room. “It’s that hair of yours, the very same shade of red as Katherine’s. I always envied her that luxurious mane. She would brush it out and it would reach almost to her waist, so thick and curly. Mine always took ages to crimp.”

  Anna knew she was being toyed with. Knew it as soon as Lady Boxley tossed her that scrap of information, like a bone to a mongrel dog. But she couldn’t help the lift in her throat and the thrill at even this tiny reminiscence. She turned from the door, though her hand remained on the knob.

  “Are you waiting for an apology?” Lady Boxley pouted. “Fine. I’m sorry. Now, come sit down. There’s a draft in the corridor and I wish you to slice the sponge cake.”

  Anna pushed the door closed and crossed back to her chair, unable to walk away, yet not willing to accede complete surrender. “I’ll stay for now, but don’t think I shan’t walk out if you continue as you’ve started.”

  “Impudent young woman, aren’t you?”

  “Not normally, but these are unusual circumstances.”

  Lady Boxley’s lips twitched in what might, for someone more congenial, pass for amusement. “To put it mildly.” She accepted a slice of cake, though it remained untouched as she stared sightlessly into the distance. “Who would have thought we’d be fighting the Hun again? I lost two brothers, a dozen cousins, and I can’t count how many friends to the Germans last time around. My husband was injured at Bazentin. Hugh was barely three when it happened. He was four when William finally died, his lungs shredded by gas.”

  “He told me.”

  Her Ladyship refocused on Anna, leaning slightly forward in her chair, brows lifted. “Did he? What else did my son tell you? I must say, it’s disconcerting thinking an absolute stranger knows your family’s secrets.”

  “That’s just it. I don’t know anything at all. My mother never spoke of her life before I was born. It was like this place and her family never existed.”

  Now she was sure that Lady Boxley relaxed, her tension sliding from her squared shoulders, her face losing its closed harshness. “I see. Well, that does change things, doesn’t it?”

  For the first time Anna sensed Lady Boxley’s internal battle between distaste at being faced with an old family scandal and curiosity at what that scandal had wrought. Perhaps Anna’s efforts at reconciliation weren’t doomed to complete failure. “It’s rumored the Trenowyths are cursed.”

  “Is that so?” Lady Boxley sniffed and sat back, the mask of frozen civility slipping to expose a more unguarded vulnerability. “I suppose we’ve had our share of misfortunes, though we weathered them all.” The uncertain light tossed shadows across her features, highlighting the sag along formerly sharp cheekbones, the droop of a once firm jaw, the faded gold of her hair. “Until now. Look at us, Miss Trenowyth—intruders in our own home. Shoved aside as if we don’t matter while this uncouth rabble runs rampant.”

  “I thought you donated Nanreath Hall to the government.” Anna felt herself worrying at her locket in an instinctive gesture of nervousness.

  “That was my son’s doing, not mine.” Gone was the milder expression of fragility. Perhaps it had only been a trick of the dim light or Anna’s own wishful thinking. She clamped her hand around the locket, the edges digging into her skin. Just when she thought perhaps . . . just perhaps . . .

  “Really, Miss Trenowyth, must you fiddle about? It’s most disconcerting. What have you got there that has you so itchy and unpleasant?”

  “Nothing.”

  “It’s obviously not nothing. Let me see.”

  “It’s my locket.”

  Lady Boxley leaned closer. “An ugly little cheap thing, isn’t it? Like something won at a fair.”

  “It was my mother’s.”

  “Was it? Let me see it more closely.” When Anna hesitated, Lady Boxley glared at her. “I’ll not steal it, Miss Trenowyth.”

  Reluctantly, Anna drew the chain over her head and handed it to her.

  Her Ladyship pulled a pair of glasses from a case on the table beside her and settled them on her nose. “‘Forgive my love’? What i
s that supposed to mean?”

  “I thought you might know.”

  Lady Boxley unsnapped the locket. Her brows nearly disappeared into her hairline. “Who on earth did her hair? And that dress. Kitty never did have proper fashion sense. Always tossing on whatever suited her with no idea of personal style. But him . . .” She sniffed again, her expression grim. “Even in a uniform, he looks exactly the same.”

  “You recognize him, don’t you?”

  She looked up from her study of the photographs. “Of course. I’d not forget that slippery customer. All shallow flash and pleasing smiles—just what a sheltered young woman would fall for. Didn’t I tell you I was on to him as soon as he stepped foot in Nanreath’s drawing room?”

  Anna licked her lips, trying to draw moisture into a mouth gone suddenly dry. She swallowed. Her heart fluttered. Her stomach tightened with nerves. “Who is he?” she asked, though she thought she knew the answer already.

  Lady Boxley removed her glasses to look into Anna’s face. While the rest of her had faded into middle age, her blue eyes pierced with a tensile inner strength. “You mean to tell me you’ve gone through life not only without a father, but without even knowing who the man was?”

  “My mother never spoke of him to anyone.”

  “Not surprising. He was hardly a catch for an earl’s daughter, was he? A would-be artist without tuppence to rub together. And Kitty throwing herself at him like a wanton. Enough to make one ill to see them carrying on. ‘Forgive my love,’ indeed! He ruined her life.”

  “Who is he, Lady Boxley?” Anna heard the quiver in her voice and didn’t care. So long she had stared at the photo of the dark-eyed soldier, imagining his laugh, the way he smiled, his strong shoulders carrying her as a baby. She thought she knew, but she needed the confirmation of her growing suspicions before she’d truly believe it. “Tell me, please.”

  “His name was Simon Halliday.”