Secrets of Nanreath Hall

by Alix Rickloff

  The pages were loose, yellowed or spotted with age. Some quick sketches done in pencil had faded almost to oblivion, while others remained crisp and vibrant as if Lady Katherine had only now laid them aside. There were countless watercolors. Some of places Anna recognized; the stained-glass window in Ward B, the carved stonework above the house’s main door, the stone bridge over the creek. Others were unknown; a meadow purple with heather, a cottage garden set for tea amid a backdrop of summer flowers, the chimney stack of an old tin mine.

  “They’re quite good, aren’t they?” Beside her, Tony leafed through those works she’d already laid aside, pausing now and then with a grunt of approval or a cock of his head, brows scrunched in thought. “Who’s this, do you suppose? It’s not Hugh’s father. I’ve seen snaps of him. He was wiry as a whippet with a square face straight off a Roman coin. I always joke that Hugh must have inherited his good looks from the milkman.”

  He held out a picture of a man in profile leaning against a crumbling archway, staring heavy-lidded out at a gray, choppy ocean, the horizon nearly lost between sea and sky. A cigarette rested in one long-fingered hand, the other was shoved in the pocket of his jacket. “It’s Simon Halliday,” she said softly. “My father.”

  Tony eyed the sketch more closely. “Has Lady Boxley told you any more about him? Or about the circumstances surrounding your mother’s elopement with him?”

  “I’m afraid not. We may have called a truce, but she still eyes me like a plague.”

  “What about the village? I’ll wager you’d find any number of people who’d be happy to gossip about the scandalous earl’s daughter who ran away from home. What else do they have to do around here but talk about their neighbors?”

  Anna perked up. “Of course—Minnie Smith. I nearly forgot about her invitation to tea. You’re brilliant, Tony.”

  “Happy to help, Nurse Trenowyth.” His eyes grew dark and intense again as he brushed the hair back from her forehead. She felt her lungs constrict as his face filled her vision, his expression both amused and something else, something that sent a shivery aftershock through her. Her bones seemed to melt, and she felt herself falling, her stomach floating into her chest as if she were on a downward lift. He leaned in for a kiss, and this time Anna surrendered to her desire. She lifted her face to his, her lashes fluttering closed.

  “Anna.” A scratch at the door threw them apart. “It’s Tilly. Hate to break up the party but Sister Murphy’s on her way upstairs.”

  Tony rose and grabbed up his cap, raking a hand through his hair before settling it on his head. He seemed to fill the room, his smell, his heat, his calloused hand on her cheek. “You realize now that I know how you really feel, it’s going to be very hard to shake me.”

  “Don’t get cocky, Flight Lieutenant.”

  He quirked her a last smile. “Good luck, Sherlock,” before sliding out through the door.

  Foolish, she repeated to herself, hugging her arms to her body against a sudden chill. Bloody foolish.

  But at that moment she didn’t care.

  In fact, it took Anna more than two weeks before she had a spare afternoon to walk into the village. In the aftermath of the army’s chaotic evacuation from Greece, activity on the wards increased as the main hospital at Southampton sent their spillover to Nanreath. Anna’s days were spent at a constant run to keep up with the stream of demands. No sooner had one patient recovered than another would arrive to take his place. Names and faces made no difference to her tired mind as she moved in a fog of rote procedure, pausing rarely for a quick bite to eat or a few hours of sleep between shifts.

  Tony’s whirlwind visit faded into her tired memory, only occasionally surfacing to pinch at her with worry and fear. He would be all right. He had to be. Someone so vital and alive couldn’t simply cease to exist in a split second’s violence. Still, there was plenty of evidence that it could and did happen. More telegrams arrived announcing the deaths of brothers, fathers, husbands, sweethearts. As she’d done after France and in the aftermath of Graham’s and Prue’s deaths, Anna locked the horrors away. It was the only way she could cope without crumbling.

  The crush of new patients was only complicated by the ongoing repairs to Nanreath Hall. Hammers echoed the bone-deep hacking coughs, and saws resembled the raspy breathing of men suffering from asthma and bronchitis. No matter where her duties took her, she found herself stumbling over workmen, their loud adolescent innuendo following her from the basement storage rooms as she folded mountains of laundry or scrubbed and boiled equipment for the next day’s use to the second floor’s offices as she filed medical forms and dusted and cleaned the staff dining room. Anna half expected them to pop out at her in the shower huts or when she opened the lid to her locker.

  Hugh surprised everyone by taking charge of the project. He had a knack for channeling the workmen’s reckless enthusiasm. She never heard him barking orders or even raising his voice, but what he asked, they did. Anna hoped this was a hint of things to come.

  By the middle of June, the flood of patients slowed to a manageable trickle, and Anna was released by Matron for an afternoon to do what she wished.

  Like a prisoner emerging after years of captivity, she stepped out onto the gravel sweep, blinking against the glare. Rain puddles sucked at her boots and created rivers of mud from the narrow tracks and lanes, but she ignored the discomfort as she stretched legs cramped from weeks of running in circles and gazed on the wide mackerel skies where summer’s larks and thrushes had replaced winter’s Blenheim bombers from Chivenor and the slow-going Henleys flying in and out of Cleave.

  “Anna. Wait a moment.” Hugh strode around the corner of the house. His bruises had faded to a dull green, but his arm remained bound in a sling. “I was hoping I’d find a chance to catch you alone. May I walk with you?”

  “I’m headed to the village.”

  “Perfect. So am I.” He fell into step beside her. Once the house was lost from view, he pulled the sling off over his head and tossed it behind a bush. “I’ll pick it up on my way home. Mother’s been badgering me to rest my arm one more week, but what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

  “Seems as if you conduct most of your affairs that way.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She shrugged. “Just an observation.”

  They followed the avenue across the park to meet the lane headed south and west. A few military trucks passed by and an ancient Wolseley coupe, but beyond that, they had the road to themselves. The narrow byway followed the turn and curve of the rocky creek until it met and crossed the stone bridge.

  “Anna, I wondered . . . I mean after the bombing . . .” She eyed Hugh curiously, dreading his next words but unable to stop him. “Who is Harriet?”

  Sophie and Tilly had asked her the same question. She kept her gaze on the path, the trees, the line of silver ribbon as it made its way toward the sea. Tried not to let her mind’s eye turn back, but it was difficult and she was tired after so many weeks of frantic work. The memories crept insidious as a storm tide. She couldn’t hold them back. “She was a nurse in France.”

  “She died.”

  It wasn’t a question. The silence filled with ghosts until Anna felt them pressing on her from all sides. The present faded like mist, drawing her back to that long-ago June sunrise.

  “Yes.”

  “And you were wounded in the same attack.”

  The tickle of a thought pierced her confusion. “I survived. Unlike too many of my friends.”

  Her pace increased, her spine brittle, her ribs aching as if she’d been punched. Her throat hurt and her temples throbbed, the memories battering themselves against the inside of her skull.

  “Anna—wait.” He labored to keep up.

  She spun on her heel. “Why bother asking all this, Hugh? You know what happened already. You checked up on me, didn’t you?”

  His eyes gave him away. “Not me. Mother.”

  “Bugger all, Hugh! Di
d she think I was an imposter out to swindle the estate of its teeming millions?”

  “Of course not. She can see the likeness between you and Lady Katherine as well as anyone. Look, if you must know, Mother’s not been well for months, and then you turned up out of the blue. It’s rattled her. She wanted to know with whom she was dealing. When she learned your war record, she couldn’t help but be impressed. We both were.”

  “So glad I passed inspection, but have either of you ever considered I might be just as rattled coming back to a family that doesn’t want anything to do with me? I spent my entire life as ‘that girl.’ Not quite acceptable or decent. The one mothers didn’t want their daughters hanging about with in case my bastardy rubbed off. Every other child had parents with the same last name. Every other child had aunts and uncles and cousins, a family history that didn’t start when they were six. My parents were nothing but two faded pictures in a cheap locket.”

  He took her arm, and they hugged the verge to let a removal van pass. It rumbled into a lower gear as it slowed on its way down the hill into the village. “Anna, I know you don’t think it, but I’m on your side. I know what it’s like to look at a faded photograph and dream about what might have been.”

  “At least you had your mother’s memories of him.”

  “And if her memories were truth, they’d have canonized him by now. No, it was everyone else I spoke with who painted the picture I have in my head. Their opinion might be more cynical, but it definitely made my father more likeable.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m doing. Your mother has done her best to persuade me Lady Katherine was either shameless or gullible. Now I’m on my way to see Minnie Smith in the village. Perhaps she can offer me a new picture.”

  “Old Silas Smith’s daughter? What would she know of Lady Katherine? I can’t imagine they would have ever found themselves in company.”

  “I’ll let you know after tea.”

  He paused, and she realized with a start they’d arrived in front of the pub. A pair of gaffers sat smoking and chatting on a bench beneath the pub’s creaking sign. One tipped his hat to Hugh. The other nodded. Both studied her with a knowing eye and a wink.

  “My stop,” he said. “An appointment with a builder. Supplies are scarce. And while the government will pay for some of it, there are parts of Nanreath that need more than Churchill is prepared to offer. Mother doesn’t like to dicker with tradesmen, she says it’s beneath her, so it’s up to me to grease the wheels.”

  “And your throat at the same time?”

  He grinned and dipped his head in a self-conscious gesture.

  She rolled her eyes and started to walk away.

  “Anna?” He remained in the doorway, leaning a shoulder against the weathered wood of the jamb, his hands in his pockets, eyes pale against his pale skin and the afternoon sun gleaming strands of his golden hair. “Be careful.”

  “I’m sure Miss Smith is perfectly harmless.”

  “Not her. I’m talking about this search for answers about your mother. Take my word, truth can be a double-edged sword.” He paused, his gaze lifting to the sky. “Be very sure you want to hear the answer before you ask the question. Sometimes it’s better not to know.”

  Leaving Hugh to his appointment at the pub, Anna continued on to Minnie Smith’s cottage. While repairs at Nanreath proceeded quickly, the village remained scarred and blackened. The vestry hall was a roofless burnt shell, the church windows boarded over and the bell tower leaning dangerously. The narrow, hilly streets leading to the harbor possessed a dingy grayness, and the air hung heavy with rot and mold and smoke. Rope cordoned off a side lane where the occasional timber stuck black and spear-like into the sky amid a jumble of brick, stone, and tumbled ruined furniture.

  Anna turned down the lane running parallel to the narrow strip of pebbled beach and the long low harbor wall and followed along until she came to the last stone fisherman’s cottage in the row. A beautiful fairy garden had been tenderly cultivated from the rocky patch of ground out front, and the door was painted a lively peacock-blue. She rapped sharply and waited.

  The door cracked the width of a chain and an eye peered out. “Who’s there?” a man’s thin raspy voice squeaked.

  “I’m Miss Trenowyth. I’ve come from the hospital at Nanreath.”

  “None’s sick here. Go ’way.”

  A murmured conversation between people Anna couldn’t see ensued, then the eye withdrew to be replaced by Minnie’s faded countenance, peering out at her through the crack. “Don’t mind my da. He doesn’t like strangers.” The chain was removed and the door opened. Miss Smith wore an enormous white apron over a spiffing dress. She grabbed Anna by the arm and dragged her inside. “Come in, Miss Trenowyth. Thought you forgot about me, I did, but then I told myself to be patient. You’d come if you had the time. It’s just Da and I don’t get many guests. It’s hard to wait when it’s only his grumpy face I’ve got to see every day.”

  “Thank you for inviting me to tea, Miss Smith.”

  “It’s Minnie, Miss Trenowyth. Told you all my friends call me Minnie.”

  Removing her apron and smoothing her hair, she led the way into a tiny front room where Anna stopped dead in her tracks. Four ladies with cups of tea and sandwiches were already seated on the lumpy, doily-covered furniture.

  “You remember Mrs. Crewe.” Minnie nodded toward the plump, middle-aged woman with a Marcel wave and a friendly smile. “That’s Mrs. Polley and Mrs. Thompkins in the corner there.” Two graying ladies looked up from their half-completed scarves, which trailed from their needles, over the chair arms, and across the floor. “And of course, you remember Miss Dawlish.” The steel-eyed woman looked no happier to see Anna now than she had at the New Year’s social.

  “Very nice to see you all again. I’m afraid you’ve caught me a bit off guard. I didn’t expect a crowd.”

  “You never invited her without telling her we’d be here, too,” Emmaline Crewe complained. “That was poorly done.”

  Mrs. Polley tsked her distress. “Ambushed right and proper.”

  “Thought this was a rum do.”

  “Minnie Smith, you’re as daft as a day-old fawn. Not a straight thought in that head of yours.”

  “Oh, it’s fine. Really,” Anna said, hoping to ease the dagger looks being shot in Minnie’s direction. “I’m just happy to see you all came through unscathed.”

  “Unscathed? If that’s what you call it,” Miss Dawlish complained. “I’m staying with my niece and her five children. I’m ready to stick my head in the oven.”

  “It’s just for a bit, Louise,” Mrs. Crewe soothed her with another biscuit. “Just until the authorities tell you it’s safe to go back.”

  “And when is that supposed to be? I’ve been waiting two weeks and not a soul’s even come round to inspect the damage.”

  Minnie offered Anna an apologetic look over the heads of her chattering guests. “As soon as I told them you were coming, they fell over themselves to be here.”

  “I had no idea I was such a celebrity.”

  “Aye, not much doings in the village since . . . well . . . since your mother.” She giggled. “I’d have had a houseful if I wanted, but Da don’t like company, so I kept it to these four. They all knew your mother real well. Mrs. Crewe and Mrs. Polley were in service for the old earl as maids, Mrs. Thompkin’s family farms a tenant holding. I worked as maid to Mrs. Vinter, who owned a house at the bottom of Cliff Lane. Doesn’t sound like much, but Lady Katherine spent more time there than she did at her own home, so I couldn’t help but know what was what.”

  “And you, Miss Dawlish?” Anna asked.

  The tall, thin woman looked up from her cup of tea. “My father was a chemist here in the village. Lady Katherine and I shared a mathematics tutor one summer. I was intended for university.”

  “And Lady Katherine?”

  “For marriage, I assume, though she bollixed that up pretty thoroughly.” She added a grudging, “Good at f
igures, though . . . for someone of her ilk.”

  “What did you study at university?”

  “I didn’t go. The war came and I enlisted in the FANY. Drove ambulances. By the time hostilities were over, university seemed the height of self-indulgence. I just wanted to be left alone.”

  Mrs. Crewe and Mrs. Thompkins moved aside for Anna, who settled between them with tea and a plate heaped with sandwiches.

  Minnie hovered like a giddy mother hen. “The bread’s not much and it’s only margarine, but the strawberry jam’s from a batch I put up last summer, and there’s real egg in the egg and cress.”

  “What have you brought in that case?” Mrs. Crewe asked between clicking needles and finger sandwiches.

  “Lady Katherine’s portfolio. I’ve heard she was an aspiring artist.”

  “Aye, she was,” Mrs. Polley confirmed. “Always carrying that dingy old bag about with her or squirreled away in a little attic room she took as her studio. Paint under her fingernails and smelling of linseed oil and varnish no matter how many baths she took.”

  “Remember the time her mother found her behind the dairy sketching that old tinker from up Boscawen way?”

  “Lordy, the ruckus. You’d have thought the old badger was going to kidnap her for the white slave trade, the to-do that went on.”

  “And what about the time she went off the morning before the village fete and never come home. Beaters out looking for her with lamps after dark.”

  “And there she was at the Cheswick farm having supper just like she’d not been given up for dead.”

  As Mrs. Crewe and Mrs. Polley reminisced, Anna opened the case, laying out some of the pictures on a table. All the women craned their necks to see.

  “Why, that’s the old mine near Witch’s Edge.”

  “There’s Pete Kelly’s boat. See here with the blue trim and always him going out with his old dog.”

  “Heard he liked that dog better than his wife.”

  “She was a Wesley, wasn’t she? All those Wesleys are mean as badgers.”