The Thorn Bearer

by Pepper Basham

  “I can start today if I need to.” Kara stood straighter.

  Ashleigh rounded the desk and placed a hand to the woman’s shoulder. Kara winced and pulled back.

  “What is it, Kara?”

  Her eyes grew wide and a red hue blotched under her golden freckled cheeks. “Nothin’ to worry over, Miss. I have myself a new place now.”

  Ashleigh dropped her hand. “Show me.”

  Kara shook her head. “No, Ma’am. Ain’t for the likes of you to see.”

  Ashleigh stepped closer, holding Kara’s gaze. “I’m a nurse. Show me.”

  Kara looked to the floor and unbuttoned the top three buttons of her dress to allow the cloth to slide off her shoulder, revealing an upper portion of fresh, red welts.

  “Oh, Kara,” Ashleigh breathed and leaned closer to examine the wounds. Older scars zigzagged with the new ones, possibly from a belt or stick. Something whip-like, perhaps. “You’ve been lashed?”

  “Tom didn’t like my leaving the place.” Her matter-of-fact tone chilled Ashleigh’s heart, but she knew the steel of nerves. The necessary need to ignore ‘feeling’ to make it through another day. External scars for Ashleigh’s internal ones. Oh yes, she knew the wounds of such reckless malignancy of soul.

  “And I will keep you away.” Ashleigh gently pushed Kara’s blouse back up on her shoulder. “For a new beginning.” She smiled. “Kara.”

  Ashleigh turned the corner of the hallway, arms laden with blankets for a few new arrivals in the hospital. Slowly soldiers trickled in, if they survived the train ride from the front. They formed a sad conglomeration of broken, beaten, and blind young men, lost, wandering, and waiting for the next transition. Melancholy seeped from the gray skies into the gray halls. God, will you help them? Where is Your hope and light in these sad circumstances?

  But even in her makeshift prayer, her mind turned to Kara and a whisper of something sweet offered a response. Hadn’t she been an instrument of hope and light in Kara’s life? Offering her a second chance? A new start?

  She stopped in the middle of the hallway, staring down at the wooden floorboards. All this time she’d been waiting for hope to arrive, instead of recognizing it all around her. Within her. Suffering in the silence of her dark thoughts only kept her near-drowning in them, but what if…what if the desire for the orphanage, nursing, and the care for others were all part of a bigger plan God used to provide the one thing she ached for the most.

  “You look like you could use a hand.”

  Sam appeared at her side, cap on, and grin sending her heart into arrhythmias. What a welcome sight. She couldn’t get used to seeing him every day, watching him mingle among the wounded, helping where he could and disappearing to complete some repair. His whistle usually introduced his presence before he came into view.

  “I don’t know if you’re the best help at the moment.” She examined his body, dust and dirt powder his clothes from shoulders to kneecaps. “What on earth have you been doing?”

  “Repairing the roof.” He made a poor attempt at dusting off his shirt and then tugged a few of the blankets from her. “David really needs more help than I can give. It’s a wonder there isn’t a leak in every room.”

  “Well, he’s certainly grateful for you. As am I. But you really shouldn’t spend your entire holiday working.”

  He leaned close, the blankets separating them. “I get to see my best friend every day and help in the war effort? I think it’s a formidable way to spend a holiday, don’t you?” He removed his cap and scratched his head. “But I think I’m going to be late tonight. I want to finish the east side of the roof before I leave. It’s going to take a while.”

  “Should I send Jackson with some dinner?”

  “I’ll eat something when I get back. There’s no need to go to any trouble for me.”

  “Didn’t you say I was usually up to some sort of trouble?”

  He stared at her, his gaze softening in a way that made her believe he might…possibly…see her in a very different light? And if he did, what would she do?

  Moans from the other room broke into the silence and Ashleigh sighed. So many hurting men, she didn’t have time to fantasize over a daydream.

  “You need more help. Four nurses aren’t enough.”

  “We’ll make do for now.” Ashleigh shrugged and walked toward the doorway. “David has written a few letters to recruit more help, even women from the village are encouraged to volunteer. I tried to convince Catherine, but her interests are focused elsewhere.”

  “I never thought of her as similar to my mother, but I can see the path – the dangerous path my mother traveled. Catherine isn’t who I thought she was.”

  He rarely spoke of his mother but the wounded boy she left behind when she abandoned her family years ago appeared on the hurt in his face. The little boy still sought answers. “I don’t know what happened, Sam, but I…pray she keeps her head.”

  “I’m sorry to say this out loud, Ash, but I don’t think your sister is using her head to get what she wants.” He shook his head and sighed. “I can’t believe I almost married her. Is that what happened to my father? He married my mother, oblivious to her true nature until it was too late?”

  She hated how the truth unearthed in such a painful way. Poor, dear Sam. How could Catherine reject Sam, wound him, of all the men in the world? Perhaps Catherine’s string of poor choice would teach her a solid lesson of gratitude.

  Guilt pinched a nerve. The last time Ashleigh had wished for retribution Michael went down with a sinking ship. No, she couldn’t keep harboring resentment toward Catherine.

  Oh God, forgive me. Forgive her? The thought stilled her and merged together with Fanny’s analogy of the napkins. The ache deepened into throbbing pulse of awareness in her spirit. She needed forgiveness…as much as her wicked father?

  Ashleigh flicked her attention back to the present. “I’m sorry, Sam. I know she hurt you. You deserve much better. Someone who will love you fully.”

  He didn’t respond with words, but the softening of his gaze had her wondering about the direction of his thoughts. Fully? Her heart would love him fully. She looked away, too willing to fall into the madness of possibilities.

  “Catherine has a strong will. She is going to do as she deems necessary.”

  He ran a hand through his hair, upsetting his curls. “Whatever the cost?”

  “I hope not.”

  “A woman’s reputation is sacred. Once stained, it’s almost impossible to recover. She’s playing a dangerous game.”

  Ashleigh squeezed the remaining blankets close to her chest, keeping her face as emotionless as possible. “I suppose even a stained woman needs the opportunity for redemption, don’t you?”

  He tucked the blankets under his arm and shot her an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. I’ve turned the conversation in an unpleasant direction and that’s the last thing you need in this place. There are enough worries within one ward of this building to last a year.” He tipped his head toward the door. “Wanna see the garden benches I’m building for those convalescing so they can enjoy some fresh air?”

  “You’re building benches?”

  “And a walking path with a railing so the ones who are blind can find their way.” He’d always grown energetic with creativity – whether from wood working or photography, and the childlike giddiness was almost contagious.

  “You’re remarkable. Are you certain you can’t stay for much longer? Forever, perhaps?”

  His smile stilled and his eyes took on a look she dared interpret as interest? Attraction? She swallowed through her tightening throat.

  “You never know.”

  She followed him to the door and tried balance the war of emotions at his words and glances. How would he stomach her stains? Even if she hadn’t given herself away, the same corrosive loss tinged her past, her body. Would he reject her if he knew her reputation lay nearly as marred as Kara’s? As she looked into those eyes she’d grown to love, a s
liver of hope took flame. If she could trust anyone with her secret, anyone who would love her beyond her stains, if would be Sam.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Sam stepped out of the hospital, every muscle in his body aching from a full day of hard labor on the hospital roof. At least the soldiers would stay dry in their recovery –his consolation for the sore muscles screaming in his back.

  He massaged a hand into his shoulder and looked down the street for a waiting car from Roth Hall. A cool summer breeze tossed loose leaves along the cobblestone, bringing a scent of wood-burning and frying bacon from the café across the street. Sam’s stomach gave a responsive growl and he quickened his steps toward the Dougall car waiting up the lane. He’d only made it a few steps before the heady scent of lilac and a familiar laugh stopped him.

  A couple stood huddled at the corner of a darkened alleyway, barely visible in the dim streetlamp. Sam turned his face away from the pair, uninterested in viewing the indecency, but the tenor of a familiar female voice slowed his forward momentum.

  She laughed.

  Catherine.

  She stood too close to some man, his hands resting much too familiarly at her hips. Sam didn’t stop to consider his choice.

  He bolted forward and took Catherine by the arm. “What are you doing?”

  He shot her a wilting look and pulled her away from the man he now recognized as Mr. Cavanaugh. “It’s nearly nine o’clock and you’re out on the streets alone with this man? In an alleyway?”

  Catherine shook off his hold and turned back toward Drew, only to see the man slithering back down the alley out of sight.

  “Drew?” Catherine’s voice disappeared into the shadows with Drew’s retreating form. Coward. She blinked as if stunned and turned to Sam. Her red gown billowed around her like the blush he wished she had the sense to experience. She ought to be ashamed.

  “No one was supposed to know we were meeting. Not yet, of course. He needs to prepare his family.”

  “Catherine.”

  His whisper drew her gaze up. “It’s not what you think. He plans to marry me. He’s told me as much. Promised, actually, and a Cavanaugh never goes back on his word.”

  “Get in the car, Catherine.”

  She hesitated.

  “Now.”

  With chin up, she marched to the humming Model T and slid inside. Sam drew in a deep breath as he rounded to the other door, praying for enough self-control not to ring her stubborn neck. He slammed the car door so hard, Catherine jumped.

  “We’re ready, Driver.”

  The car rumbled forward. Sam kept silent until he thought he could keep his voice calm, and low enough the driver couldn’t hear. She stared out the window, occasionally casting him a glance and then away.

  Sam leaned toward her. “If Mr. Cavanaugh cared about you and your reputation, he would never ask to meet you alone in town at night. Those are not the actions of a gentleman.”

  “You’re being ridiculous and antiquated in your prudery, Sam. The world is changing.”

  “Respect doesn’t change, no matter how much the world does. No gentleman regardless of decade, would place a woman’s reputation at risk.”

  “And who are you? My rescuer? Last I heard, you weren’t interested in what I have to offer.”

  His jaw tightened. “As your friend, I take a continual interest in your welfare, Catherine. Our past, your choices, do not change that fact. Even if I must protect you from yourself.”

  Her gaze glistened in the moonlight and her smile turned feline. She slid close and pressed a lingering kiss to his cheek. “What a dear you are to worry about me so. Are you certain I can’t give you a reward for your valiant rescue?”

  He pulled back from her and stared down into her face. Clarity hit him like an anvil. Did she always use her body, her passions to sway men? Their shared kisses, their prolonged embraces… she’d used her emotions and body with him too. What had she already offered Drew? What was she doing? Somewhere behind the aspiring debutante hovered an insecure little girl. “Catherine, what are you doing?”

  She flinched away from him as if she knew the direction of his words.

  “A man should care for you to the point where you don’t have to use your body to influence his decisions. He should enjoy talking to you, being your friend.” His hand clutched hers and raised it to her face. “Or merely holding your hand. Mr. Cavanaugh is not treating you carefully, Catherine. He’s not treasuring the person you are. Don’t play this dangerous game.”

  “I have to do this.” Her whispered singed the darkness between them. “You don’t understand.”

  “No, I don’t understand. Why should you have to throw yourself at men – or manipulate them into doing what you want?”

  He tried to grab hold of little truths he could remember. Maybe rescue her from the choices which led his mother to ruin his father’s life. He paused. But his father’s life wasn’t ruined. His heart had been broken, but his Father’s strength came from something…Someone much greater than the circumstances. He’d forgiven his mother. Even, against Sam’s wishes, responded to his mother’s correspondence over the past year. How could he do that? What hidden power broke through the pain of betrayal and found hope?

  His father’s words broke into Sam’s rush of confusion and settled around his heart.

  When you recognize how much God loves you, it teaches you how to forgive. How to love beyond the pain. To see yourself as precious. I don’t have to prove myself anymore. I can let it go.

  The anger breathed out through his sigh. He softened his tone, searching for something important to say – to teach her. “You are worth much more than this choice. There is someone out there who will love you and take care of you without manipulation and secrecy.”

  “You’re wrong, Sam. I don’t have any other choices. Life hasn’t dealt so favorably with my family to allow for such choices.” She crossed her arms in front of her chest and stared ahead. “And I have no desire to hear of your pious resolutions. We’re not in Asheville anymore and I’ve made my decision. One you can never understand.”

  Sam ran a hand over his face and groaned. He knew Catherine well enough to know when she set her mind to something nothing would stop her. Unfortunately, this choice might prove to be the first step to her losing a lot more than her heart.

  †††

  Roth Hall had always rested in the shadow of Edensbury Court and the massive reputation of the Cavanaughs. The grand home doubled the size of Ashleigh’s family estate, and with the added property Grandmama had sold to the Cavanaugh’s, it might even triple the size. Oh, what a sacrifice Grandmama made to keep the house intact.

  The fact Lady Cavanaugh agreed to see Ashleigh so early was another benefit. It gave Ashleigh time to finish with her meeting and arrive at the hospital for her shift.

  Lady Cavanaugh, in true countess style, sent a car complete with dour chauffeur. She snuck another peek at him from behind her windscreen, his expression as somber as the cloudy day. The car ambled down the Court’s long drive, oaks lining the way toward the imposing gray house.

  The chauffeur opened her door and she emerged, best hat pinned in place paired with one of her most high quality day suits, linen and lace, as a matter of fact. Grandmama would have approved. However, it was Lady Cavanaugh’s approval and provision which provided the stamp of approval for her purpose with the orphanage, and would also afford support for other benefactors to follow her example.

  And allow the orphanage to grow? Without the amount Ashleigh had expected from Grandmama, expanding the orphanage beyond the ten beds in the east wing of the hospital couldn’t happen. She removed her motoring duster from her hat and took off her goggles then met the butler at the door.

  “This way, Ms. Dougall.”

  He took her things with little ceremony and then Ashleigh followed the tall man through the reception hall. They moved through a maze of large adorned rooms, passed a massive spiraling staircase, until they entered a sp
rawling drawing room walled in with yellow paper. Windows lined one side, with dark drapes combating any faint light from the overcast sky. Each piece of elegant furnishing spoke of refinement and money.

  An elderly woman, face as foreboding as the shadows in the room, sat perched on the edge of a chair, her gray gown in contrast to the sunny wall color. She stood and gestured to a chair with a slow sweep of her hand, her expression as welcoming as a thundercloud.

  “Ms. Dougall.” Her lips twisted into a knot as she spoke the name. “Do sit down.”

  Any confidence Ashleigh possessed fluttered directly out the window into the dreary day. She took her seat and offered her calmest smile. “Thank you for seeing me, Lady Cavanaugh.”

  She offered a ceremonial bow of her white head, face emotionless. “To be perfectly candid with you, Ms. Dougall, I only conceded to meet with you at the urging of my great nephew, Dr. David Ross. Otherwise, I have little to do with your people.”

  Ashleigh hands tightened in her lap. “My people, Madam?”

  She looked down her nose and blinked. “The Dougalls have been a thorn in this family’s side for decades. It was our hope you would stay in America and pollute that part of the world, but no. A year now, and the black ink of your family is already tainting mine.”

  The woman’s dark eyes tried to force Ashleigh’s gaze away, but she wouldn’t flinch. “I have no idea to what you refer, Madam. All I know is at one time our two families were friendly and helped the people of Edensbury together. Grandmama even says—”

  “Don’t.” The woman’s harsh command slammed Ashleigh’s words to a full stop. “I will hear nothing of Emily Dougall.”

  “Very well.” Ashleigh’s own chin tilted up, hoping to display more courage than she felt. Her knees trembled beneath her skirts. When would the bitterness end? “Let us discuss the reason for this meeting. Your support would not be in favor of the Dougalls, but rather in the endorsement for destitute children of war – a most charitable contribution to the war effort, don’t you think?”