“Yes, you were probably overexcited by the events of the day.”
She grew quiet as we continued down the hall, turning twice until we were in the corridor of the wing that ran parallel to mine. This wing was darker, the sun that should have come through the veranda windows blocked by heavy brocade curtains. We passed two doors before she stopped, turning toward me with knitted brow.
“Miss Garrett, I want to prepare you to meet Miss Tabitha, but I’m not sure of the appropriate words with which to do so. She is a very special child, and your sister loved her dearly, of course. But I’m afraid Mrs. Scott found it somewhat difficult to come to terms with her oddities. Perhaps that is why she put off informing you of the child’s existence.”
“Oddities?” I repeated, struck by the use of such a word in the description of a child.
“For lack of a better word, yes. She is five years old, a tiny little thing, and although bright and sharp as a tack in some ways, dreadfully slow in others. She doesn’t walk well, doesn’t talk at all, and according to the doctors may never do the things most children her age can do.”
I tried not to let my dismay at her description show as I straightened my spine and motioned toward the nursery. “I’m sure my niece and I will get along quite well, Mrs. Hartley. I can hardly wait to meet her.”
Long ago, our father had taken Desi and me to visit the home of one of his colleagues. Reverend Dawson’s son was a twenty-six-year-old man with the mind of a child. Though he had been nearly two decades older than we were at the time, my sister and I had sat on the ground beside him, building castles out of colorful wooden blocks and guarding them with his precious collection of toy soldiers. A vivid memory of that summer afternoon came to me now as I stared into the flattened face and bright, almond-shaped eyes of my niece.
“Hello, Tabby, I’m your Aunt Fee,” I said, kneeling before her. She wore a blue dress that matched her eyes, and a wide red scarf secured her in her seat. She grunted what I took to be a greeting as she banged her hands excitedly against the arms of the rocking chair. I wondered if perhaps she thought I was her mother, or if she understood I was not.
“I was just feeding her, miss,” the young maid who sat on the floor beside her told me. I was impressed with how quickly Mrs. Hartley had gotten the maids in order as the girl quickly quelled the spark of unease in her eyes, which I was sure was caused by my presence. “She loves to eat.”
“And what are you eating?” I asked Tabitha, as she grunted at the maid.
“Porridge, miss.” The maid leaned toward me as she spooned some into Tabby’s mouth. “She doesn’t talk, you know.”
“Yes, I know.” I smiled wistfully. “That could be something of a blessing for you. Her mother talked so much, when we were her age, I thought our father would go mad. At times he resorted to stuffing cotton in his ears just to get some peace and quiet.”
The maid giggled, then clasped a hand against her mouth as if remembering this was a house of mourning.
Tears welled in my eyes when I thought of Desi trailing behind my father as he worked in the garden, cotton sticking out from his ears like stuffing from a well-used rag doll.
If he had listened more, would she have stayed close to us? It was the first time I had ever wondered what part my father played in Desi’s follies, and I felt disloyal as soon as the thought entered my mind.
Tabitha made a trilling sound with her tongue, bringing my focus back to her, and I smiled through my tears. This child was my family now, the last remaining relative I had, and she needed me as no one had in many, many years.
I had come to Almenara to say goodbye to my sister and to find answers to my questions about her death. When I left home, I had expected it would all be sorted out quickly and I would be home again within a week, but between Cade’s arrest and Tabitha’s existence, I suspected I would be here much longer than anticipated.
I stayed in the nursery, getting to know my niece and her routine, for several hours, finally making my way downstairs when her nursemaid, Janie, put her down for an afternoon nap. I was searching for Mrs. Hartley, following the same hall Cade and I had taken the day before, and I slowed as I neared the room where my sister lay.
I could no more pass it by than I could change the color of the sky, so I walked toward the casket, my eyes focused on the portrait of Desi.
“Oh, Desi,” I sighed as I picked the portrait up and ran my fingers over the image of her beloved face. “What happened to you?”
“That is the question of the day, is it not?”
Startled, I spun around, the frame falling from my hands and shattering on the floor at my feet.
“Forgive me for frightening you, Miss Garrett,” a lovely, statuesque blonde said as she crossed the room to the bell pull. The red and white dress she wore was low cut, with a small matching cap that rested atop her curls. “I thought perhaps you heard me approaching.”
“No, I’m afraid I didn’t.”
“One of the maids will do that.” She waved her hand in dismissal as I bent to pick up the frame, and before I could straighten with it in my hand, a maid appeared. She genuflected before entering the room, saw the glass, and hurried away, presumably to retrieve a broom and dustpan.
“The help at Almenara are a superstitious lot,” the blonde drawled, her hands resting on her shapely hips. “Most of them refuse to enter this room at all. They’ve always been so certain the house is haunted. Now, more than ever. As if Desdemona would still be here now that she’s finally free of this godforsaken place.”
“Lorraine?” A female voice sounded from the hallway, and the woman turned toward the door. I tried to remember the names of the family Mrs. Hartley had given me the night before and settled on Lorraine as Calvin’s wife.
“Yes, Eleanor?” Impatience tempered the woman’s voice.
“Have you found her yet? I checked the nursery, but she isn’t there, and Janie claims to have no idea where she might be.”
A pretty, rather plump brunette in a morning dress of royal blue stopped talking as she appeared in the doorway, and after a brief moment of perusal, hurried toward me, embracing me warmly.
“Miss Garrett, it is so nice to finally meet you.”
“I’m sorry, but you both seem to have me at quite a disadvantage,” I told her, still clutching the picture in my hands.
“Oh, no, don’t tell me Lorraine didn’t have the courtesy to introduce herself.”
“I hardly had time, Eleanor. You found us quite soon after I entered the room.”
Eleanor chuckled and waved her hand toward Lorraine. “I am Eleanor Scott, and this is my sister-in-law, the highly esteemed Lorraine Walden Scott.”
I gasped involuntarily and Lorraine gave a brittle laugh. “So you recognize me now, do you? Lorraine Walden, stage actress extraordinaire. Hardly highly esteemed, as Eleanor puts it, but well known all the same. Although, to be fair, it was for talents unrelated to the theater.”
A decade before, Lorraine Walden’s affair with a prominent judge had spread through the newspapers like wildfire. My father had hidden the daily paper for weeks, trying to keep the worst of the innuendos and gossip from our impressionable prying eyes. He hadn’t been a huge success, however, as we’d found where he stashed them and snuck them into our room, where we regaled each other and our friends with dramatic and emotional readings of the endless updates. My father might never have known had it not been for one particularly melodramatic rendition that sent us into fits of giggling that woke him and brought him to our room. Had Desi remembered that incident when she met Lorraine for the first time?
I could feel Lorraine’s hard stare, and I gave myself a mental shake. My father would be as appalled by my rudeness as he had been by our secret readings.
“It’s my pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Scott, and you, Miss Scott.”
Eleanor laughed. “Oh, please, you must call us by our given names. If we stood on such formality, we’d never know who anyone was talking to. Not with thr
ee of us having the same surname.” She cringed and tears welled in her eyes. “Two now. I’m so sorry, Miss Garrett.”
“Call me Fee, please,” I told her.
“Fee?” Lorraine repeated. “What an odd name.”
“It’s short for Ophelia.”
“Ophelia and Desdemona? Othello and Hamlet?” Lorraine seemed amused and Eleanor unfazed by the connotations of our names.
I was saved from any further explanation by the sound of masculine voices outside the room. I recognized Cade’s voice immediately and, still clutching the picture of my sister in my hand, I rushed into the hall.
“Cade!” I stopped myself just short of throwing my arms around him. “You’re free.”
“Not really. I’m just no longer being housed at the jail. My cousin and I reached an agreement,” he said, without elaborating, but Calvin Scott’s smug smile let me know it wasn’t an agreement that sat well with Cade.
“An agreement?” Even without turning to look at her, I sensed Lorraine’s barely controlled excitement as she spoke.
“Yes, my love, an agreement that allows Cade to be home with his child yet assures the townspeople that a dangerous criminal is under the control of local authority.” Calvin stepped around me and offered his arm to his wife.
Lorraine practically purred as she moved to his side, and with Eleanor following quietly in their wake, they turned the corner at the far end of the hall.
Cade and I faced each other awkwardly. I couldn’t lie to myself and say that my attraction to him had lessened over time. Even with the deepening lines of worry around his eyes and the dark changes I sensed in him, I found him to be heartbreakingly handsome.
His gaze swept over me, and I thought he looked almost relieved when his eyes settled on the picture in my hand. Was he as glad as I that he found something else to catch his attention?
“You’re bleeding, Fee.” He took my wrist and lifted my hand for a better view of my wound.
I hadn’t realized I was grasping the frame so hard that a small shard of glass had sliced the length of my thumb.
Cade gently removed the frame from my hand and set it on the ornate table beside us. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blotted at my thumb. This required me to move somewhat closer to him, and I breathed in the masculine scent of him as he bent his head to study the cut.
“It doesn’t look like there’s any glass left in it. Does it hurt?”
“No. It’s fine.” My voice sounded breathless, and I felt heat rise up in my face. I pulled my hand away from his but couldn’t quite bring myself to step away from him. I forced myself to remember why I was here. My sister was dead, and I had learned almost nothing about her death since my arrival. “How did Desi die, Cade?”
He lifted his head, his face mere inches from mine. Emotion clouded his gaze, and he opened his mouth as if he meant to answer me. Instead, a low moan escaped him and he caught my mouth in the hungry kiss I had dreamed of for six years’ worth of lonely nights. For just a moment, the reason for that loneliness was completely forgotten.
A cry rent the air, and I jerked away from Cade, guilt and alarm whipping through me in equal measures as I turned to stare at the maid who had finally returned with the broom and dustpan.
“Oh, Mr. Scott, forgive me, please.”
“No need for apologies, Susan,” Cade said, bringing the woman’s stammering apology to an end. He looked at me, his eyes shadowed with pain. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I’ll see you at supper, Ophelia.”
I was left standing in the hall with the maid, who stared at me with open disdain. Her voice was sharp and cold when she spoke.
“I thought you were Mrs. Scott, you know. Kissing her husband like that. It made me think Kathleen was right and she had come back from the grave after all.”
“People don’t come back from the grave, Susan,” I retorted, hoping my haughtiness hid my shame. If Desi were to come back to haunt the halls of the home where she’d died, I was fairly certain what I’d just done would be reason enough for me to be her target.
Chapter Five
I was still reeling from Cade’s kiss and my own wildly guilty conscience when a knock on my bedroom door announced the arrival of Mrs. Hartley and a pretty red-haired maid I guessed to be a year or so younger than I.
“Miss Garrett, this is Dory. She will act as your lady’s maid during your stay at Almenara.”
Having lived alone for the better part of five years, and with only my father for the year prior to that, the thought of having a lady’s maid was somewhat ludicrous.
“That’s really not necessary, Mrs. Hartley,” I protested. “I’m quite used to taking care of myself.”
“And everyone else,” Cade said as he came through the door. The three of us looked at him in surprise. It was far from acceptable for him to enter my room, but he waved away our silent disapproval. “I haven’t come here for any nefarious purpose, ladies. I saw Mrs. Hartley and Dory coming up the stairs and suspected you’d have some objection to having a maid. So I followed them, hoping I could talk you into going along.”
“Cade, you know I have no use for a maid.”
“When I met you, you had a lady’s maid.”
“When you met me, I was a different girl.” I hoped it wasn’t bitterness that made my voice sound so sharp.
His dark eyes searched mine, wistfulness and regret so evident I was certain the other two women could see. I knew he was remembering the girl I had been at nineteen. Only half a decade separated me from that girl, yet I felt as if I were centuries away from her.
“She wasn’t my maid,” I continued. “She worked for Mrs. Dupree.”
He sighed and took my hands in his.
“Please, Fee. I know you aren’t used to it, but it won’t hurt you to be pampered a bit. Eleanor and Lorraine both dress quite elaborately for dinner.”
“This is a house of mourning, Cade. Out of respect for Desi, there should be some downplay of fashion.”
He dropped my hands and stepped away. His eyes turned cold, hard, and unfamiliar.
“I’m sorry, Ophelia, but you won’t find much respect for your sister amongst those who live here. You may mourn her passing, but you do so alone.”
With that shocking declaration, he turned and left the room.
I looked toward the two women who still stood beside me. A multitude of questions danced through my head, but I could hardly speak them to the housekeeper and the maid.
Taking a deep, fortifying breath, I motioned toward the wardrobe where someone, presumably Dory, had hung my clothes this morning.
“I have several appropriate dinner gowns, Dory. You can pick which one I wear. Then perhaps you could help me with my hair.”
Following my lead, the housekeeper excused herself, shot a quick look of warning at Dory, and bid me call her should I need anything further.
As Dory went to the wardrobe to pick my dress, I took a seat at the dressing table and pulled the pins from my hair. She remained silent as she laid the dress across the bed and began to brush my long black tresses. As she brushed, I mulled over the day’s events, especially Cade’s kiss and his avowal that I was alone in mourning Desi’s passing. Even if no one else in the house mourned her, shouldn’t her husband have included himself in those who did?
A shiver rushed up my spine when I thought of Cade’s dark, cold eyes. Could he really care as little as he seemed to?
“It isn’t right, them not caring about Mrs. Scott being dead,” Dory suddenly blurted out, the brush stopping in mid-stroke. She met my eyes in the mirror, and her voice dropped. “She’s still here, for goodness’ sake.”
That was my sentiment exactly. Maybe none of the inhabitants of Almenara were heartbroken that she was dead, but with Desi’s body still laid out in the ballroom, it seemed to me they should at least keep up some pretense of grief.
“Why don’t they care?” I asked her, unconcerned that I was stepping over a line in discussing family business
with a servant. I needed answers more than I needed to remain within society’s bounds.
“Oh, miss, you can’t imagine the way it was when she was alive. She and Mrs. Lorraine were always sniping at each other, and Mr. Calvin just leered at the both of them. Mr. Cade and him were always furious at each other. There’s no love lost between any of them, as far as I can tell.”
“But they are family.” As if I were still foolish enough to believe family couldn’t hurt one another.
“My mama says Mr. Cade and Mr. Calvin have been fighting since the day they met each other. She says there’s no one can hurt you as bad as those who know you best, and jealousy makes men pigheaded and blind.”
I remained silent, battling my own need for answers. I reminded myself again that it simply wasn’t acceptable for me to learn such things through the backstairs grapevine. Dory ignored my reticence as she continued.
“She says Mr. Calvin’s always wanted what Mr. Cade had, and he’s ate up with envy over Mr. Cade being the heir to Almenara instead of him. And having an acceptable wife, of course.”
As the daughter of two second children who inherited nothing but the education and upbringing afforded the offspring of genteel parents, Desi wouldn’t have been an acceptable wife for many wealthy households. At Almenara, however, where there were no longer any preceding generations alive to pull the strings of matrimony and future lineage, and where the only other wife was a former stage actress and infamous paramour, Desi must have been quite elevated in her acceptability.
I stood up and walked to the bed, my mind full of thoughts of Desi and how much she must have loved her place in this circle of the world. If there was one thing my sister had always dreamed of, it was to escape my father’s modest way of life. I had often wondered in the years since she’d married Cade if she did so out of love for him or for the life he could offer her. I had always suspected that an equal mixture of the two drove her.
When Swallows Fall Page 3