The Thorn Keeper
Page 8
It had only been a week since she’d found Meredith, the memory inducing a shiver. Though she’d witnessed death at the hospital, the tragedy of finding Meredith dangling from a rope and her newborn wrapped in Catherine’s coat stained her heart with a deep ache. Meredith died in the utter helplessness of her position, believing she’d been branded with an irremovable blemish.
Like Catherine.
She increased her pace up Old Rutland, as if the past hurried in pursuit. Jessica’s reservations burned in her ears, a painful reminder and steel cage.
“Wait. Miss, wait.”
A voice called from behind her, echoing from the alleyway to Meredith’s apartment.
“I know you. Stop.”
A woman emerged from the alleyway, dark auburn curls refusing to stay confined beneath her worn, straw hat. Her brown wool coat, frayed at the edges, wore the same weary use, but the woman’s eyes glittered with energy.
“Pardon me?”
“You’re the one who found Meredith.”
She was a swell, make no mistake, with her large, fine hat brimmed with enough flowers to decorate a window box. Annie Feagan took in the sight of Catherine Dougall. She’d seen this woman tending to the baby while the reverend and Gavin, the chimney sweep, took down Meredith’s lifeless body.
She’d seen something else too. Compassion and understanding…from a lady.
Even in the middle of war, with the world turned tipsy, the Crow Cavanaugh kept a steady hand on the social lines of her village, but this woman—the one with the piercing eyes—defied her. That willingness, a kindred boldness or slice of rebellion, strengthened Annie’s courage to cross the well-tended class boundaries. Curiosity provided the final push.
“You’re the one. I saw ya that day. With the babe.”
The woman studied Annie with curiosity rather than the expected condescension, and then she did something completely unexpected. She offered her white gloved hand. “Catherine Dougall.”
Annie stared from the woman’s fingers to her direct gaze. “Annie Feagan.” Annie wiped her palm against her skirt and took the hand. “My room was next to Meredith’s.”
The stoic expression softened with understanding. “You were her friend?”
“Aye.”
The woman sighed, and her ruby lips curved into a smile. “So she wasn’t alone, then.”
“We’re all trying to get by with what we can, but not even the pummies from the table are enough to keep us fed with the war pinchin’ purses all around. We’ve needed each other.” Annie gestured with her chin. “I heard tell you were an American.”
A mischievous glint glimmered to life in her blue eyes. “It makes it easier to be an outcast when you already don’t belong.”
Annie knew charity. It was one of her family’s means of survival after her father died. She knew prejudice too. Besides fighting the usual judgments against her Irish heritage, she’d fought a whole dragon of prejudice when her employer had cast her out on the street, pregnant with his child, and blaming her for his loss of money. Used and discarded.
But what Catherine Dougall presented was something wholly different. Not prejudice…not even charity. If Annie read the attitude and actions correctly, her offering smelled a whole lot more like hope than anything peddled her way in a long time.
Caution rose like a weapon to the defense. “Is that why you helped Meredith? You saw her as an outcast?”
“Partially.”
Ms. Dougall’s honesty sent Annie a step back.
“But more than the outcasts, I couldn’t abide what was happening. Lady Cavanaugh cannot continue to regulate the lives of others as she’s doing. We must find a way to protect those who need protection.”
We? Annie gestured to the street, ready for the partnership. “Well, if its outcasts you seek, there are plenty here.”
“Others like Meredith?” Miss Dougall stepped closer, lowering her voice. “Women who…who need…” Her gaze searched the street and then returned to Annie’s face. “Assistance? Provisions?”
Annie patted her stomach, only now beginning to swell from the life within. “The very same.”
Understanding dawned quickly, and then she took Annie’s wrist, drawing her closer. “Are you making ends meet?”
Meredith had trusted this woman, and Annie was slowly beginning to see why Meredith not only entrusted Catherine with her address, but also with her child. The woman held the ability to pierce one’s soul with a look from those penetrating eyes, to make someone believe in her strength.
“My sewing gets me by during most weeks, but the war’s taken some of my business away.”
“Can you obtain employment?”
“No one will hire me in my state.” She chuckled. “Especially since Mr. Pickernell got finished with me.”
“The banker?”
“Aye, but after he got what he wanted from me, he kicked me out and sullied my name along with my reputation.”
Miss Dougall’s jaw tightened, and she released Annie’s arm, her fingers curling into a fist. “There are too many men in this town who’ve trampled their morals and women underfoot.” She glanced back down the street, air coming in puffs from her nose as if she was trying to hold her fury in check.
Yes, Annie and Catherine Dougall were going to get on just fine.
“To whom do you sell your sewing work?”
“What shops here in town will buy it. Then they go off and sell it for three times what they bought it from me.” Annie waved her finger, pointing in the direction of the thieves’ shops. “I know what Irish lace and Mountmellick costs, as sure as rain. And they don’t pay me a quarter of what they ought for the beading I do.”
The high class lady flattened her palm against her expensive coat, smashing the cloth rosette buttons. “You make Irish lace and Mountmellick?”
“Course I do. Learned it a long time before I ever learned how to work as a secretary for Mr. Pickernel. Though I worked for him five years.” Annie nodded toward the side of Ms. Dougall’s coat. “And I can fix the tear in your sleeve and put the ribbons back.”
“You do ribbon embroidery too? This material is fragile. It will take a well-trained hand.”
Annie’s palm went to her hip. “Miss Dougall, can’t you tell I ain’t no maiden? I’ve been workin’ with more fragile material than that since I was a babe.” Her grin twisted wide. She waved the woman forward. “Come on, then. Let me show you what I can do.”
Miss Dougall fingered the loosed ribbons at her sleeve, a small hint of fragility turning down the corners of her rose lips. “It’s not a lost cause then?”
“I don’t believe in lost causes. But I do believe in opportunity. Setting one’s mind to finding opportunity keeps the hand of hopelessness away. We’re all here for a purpose, miss.” Annie turned back to see Catherine following her down dusty Old Rutland. “Maybe yours is to help outcasts and vagabonds.” She chuckled. “And maybe mine is to make sure you dress well for the task.”
Chapter Nine
“What did you do to Jessica Ross?”
Michael’s question brought Catherine’s head up from her Grandmama’s desk as she packed the years of correspondences into another box. She’d snuck into the house through the kitchens, sliding into the orphanage wing without Mother or David spotting her. With a quick check on Nathanael and then some persistent urging to Michael, she’d acquired his help to fit Grandmama’s old study for hospital use.
“I survived the Zeppelin attack, I suppose.”
Michael dropped the filled box in his hand on top of a stack of two other such boxes and quirked his brow. “She doesn’t seem like the sort of person who would actually wish for your death.” Michael looked up to the ceiling, contemplative. “But she has enough of a temper to cause it. Whew, fire and a whole lot of anger in that woman.”
Catherine returned her attention to the envelopes. “She’s concerned I might use my feminine influence to steal her brother off the straight and narrow.”
His eyes grew wide in mock-horror.
“Shut up.” Catherine tossed a crumbled paper at him.
“Besides, it takes him forever to make any major decision, so I wouldn’t even consider a chaste kiss for at least….hmm….six months?”
She laughed. “But with my powerful skills of manipulation, you never know. Five months? Four, even?” She sobered and shook her head. “She won’t believe that I have no intention of swaying her brother’s heart.”
He propped his elbow up against the boxes. “You’ve never been truly malicious, Kat. Just selfish and scared.” He shrugged and tipped his grin. “Like me.”
She hoped her dead stare communicated her thoughts. “You’re quite the encourager. Remind me to seek camaraderie elsewhere in the future.”
He feigned a wound to the chest. “You don’t want to be like me?” He chuckled and dropped his hand. “I’m much better now than I used to be.”
“Oh, Michael.” Catherine tossed another envelope in the ‘keeper’ stack and slid another stack off the desk into her last box. “I’m more like you than you know.”
He crossed the room, his limp a constant reminder of the external wounds he bore from his past. Surviving the sinking of the Lusitania and getting caught in the crossfire of a war that wasn’t his…yet. He waited for her to close the box before lifting it into his arms, his muscles tensing beneath his shirt, showing off the product of all his hard work on the house and grounds. No, he was a different man from the self-consumed playboy he once was, evidence of a past and a heart-change they both shared.
“You were flirtatious, and you decided to make friends with the wrong people. But that’s not enough to cost you your future. It may mar your social standing a little, but those sins…” He shifted the box in his arms and sighed. “They’re not obvious. Not like mine. I have a three-year-old to show for my past. He’s the best thing to come out of my mistakes, but he’s pretty obvious.” Michael sighed. “And busy. I can barely keep up with those hands of his.”
She smoothed her fingers over the envelope, Grandmama’s familiar handwriting bringing sweet consolation. “My sins will be quite apparent soon enough.”
He stopped in his walk to place the box with the others and turned slowly. His gaze moved from her face to her stomach and back again, as if digesting the information. Understanding dawned in his hazel eyes, and he set the box down on the floor as he took a seat near her.
When he did look up, the warmth of his compassion took some of the bite from her confession. “I’m sorry, Kat.”
The gentleness in his reaction, the softness of his words, drew the ache from Catherine’s heart like drawing out an infectious fever. Tears blurred her vision, and she grappled for control with a slippery hold. Compassion. Such a blunt contrast to Jessica’s reaction.
“How soon?”
She swallowed the sudden tightening in her throat at the admission. “April, I think.”
He stood from his chair and knelt in front of her, taking her hand. “Truly, I am sorry.” He pulsed his words with a squeeze to her fingers. “But you’re not alone.”
Madame Rousell’s words from earlier blended with his in overwhelming tenderness. The tears loosed.
She shrugged off his fingers and smiled, swiping at her face. “Well, you know what mother is always saying about me. My headstrong passions get me into all sorts of trouble. But once the news emerges, and it’s only a matter of time, the people I love will be tainted by association, just like those poor women in town.”
“The people who really know you and love you will bear the burden with you, Kat. Believe me, without Sam and Ashleigh’s support from my past, I couldn’t have become who I am today. The shame burns and can easily steal any hope for a good life. A happy life. They forgave me for my deception…for leaving Ashleigh without a reason as to why I couldn’t marry her.” He took her hand again. “And you have that here. People who love you. Who believe in you.”
She stared at him in silence, wishing his words could penetrate the doubt darkening the sliver of hope she clung to like breath. “No one in England knows your story, Michael. To them, you’re a poor widower who lost his wife on the Lusitania and left a sweet little three-year-old motherless. They have no knowledge that you only married her a few weeks before boarding the ship. Your secret is safe with the ones who love you best. I’ll not have your anonymity.”
He sighed, another swell of silence passing between them.
“When I return home to North Carolina someday, everyone will know, but most importantly, I know what I did. I hold the shame.” A glow in his eyes brought out more the gold than the green. “But I also know how greatly I’ve been forgiven.” He tipped his head, his gaze growing intense. “Just like you.”
She dashed another tear away. “And what happens when every person in Ednesbury knows and it hurts the ones I love? The ones to whom I owe so much?”
He shrugged. “You can’t change what other people do, or how they respond. You know I’ve dealt with my reputation my whole life. My dad gave me little choice but to be known as the son of the town drunk who accidentally killed his own wife. With Father in prison, my grandparents had little use for me, so I lived up to my reputation with a vengeance. Sam’s father and your grandmother showed me what love really was, but how did I repay their kindness? I stole money from them to pay debts, and broke their hearts by abandoning my fiancée. And what did they do?”
Catherine leaned her chin against her folded hands on the desk in front of her, the warmth of a smile touching her lips. “They loved you anyway.”
“And they always have.” He nodded and stood, stretching out his back. “Because that’s what love is all about.”
She studied him, his body strong and lean from the hard labor of carpentry and stone masonry needed to patch the crumbling manor house. As children and then youths, growing up in the small town of Millington, North Carolina, she’d seen him as Sam’s tag-along friend, far beneath her attention due to his miserable parentage and circumstances. But now, in the light of her own fallen state, a kinship had bloomed. He’d grown into a true friend.
He leaned down and picked up the box he’d left in the middle of the floor. “Do you remember my story of the family who pulled me from the sea after the sinking?”
Catherine searched her memory for his reference. “Yes.”
“They said when you realize you’ve ruined your life and someone offers you a second chance...” He glanced to the ceiling and smiled. “And when you recognize the second chance for what it is—hope and grace—there’s a sense of gratitude that gives you strength and clarity, and understanding that you can do much more with this second chance than you ever did with your first, because you recognize its value.” He stopped at the door and held her gaze. “Any man, Saint David included, couldn’t find a woman who would love with more honesty, whole heartedly, or, I daresay, with more appreciation than you, because loss teaches gratitude if we let it.”
David caught sight of Michael as he entered the main hospital ward and made a straight line toward him. He’d been in search of Catherine all afternoon, unable to bear the thought of leaving her with his sister’s words echoing in her head. It was inexcusable. Unkind.
“Michael, do you know where I could find Nurse Dougall?”
Michael’s brows rose, and he hesitated. “Have you been looking for her?”
“Yes, actually, I needed to discuss something with her regarding…regarding an earlier conversation.”
“Is that it?” Michael looked around the room. “I’m in need of an extra bed. Do you have one?”
The change in topic caught David by surprise. “Pardon?”
“If you want to talk with Catherine, then help me move a bed down the hallway, and I’m pretty sure you’ll find her.”
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“The office, that’s right.” David ran a hand through his hair. “She’s been preparing it for Clayton.”
“She’s true to her word, Doc.”
From the poignant expression on Michael’s face, his words carried an undercurrent of hidden meaning, but David already bore the guilt of Catherine overhearing his sister’s slight. He didn’t need a reminder of Catherine’s change of heart.
“Of course. I’ve been preoccupied with surgeries this afternoon and forgot. Let me assist you.”
Michael entered the office first, and Catherine’s voice rose with excitement from within. “Michael, I…I have an idea. There are dozens of contacts in these old letters of Grandmama’s. Surely some would willingly contribute to the hospital and the orph—”
Her words stopped as soon as she caught sight of David entering the room.
“Carry on.” David nodded her way, tagging a smile onto his gentle command.
She stepped back, crinkling the papers in her hands against the front of her blouse. “I think the bed should go by the window, don’t you? We can display Mr. Clayton’s awards on the wall above his bed…there.”
She gestured across the room to a spot by one of the floor-to-ceiling arched windows. The view overlooked the back garden and then stretched out over the rolling countryside, easily one of the best spots in the house.
Michael guided the bed to the assigned place with David following behind. “You were saying? Contributors?”
She shot David a cautious glance which served him right. He should have defended her in front of his sister, set things in order right away, and he hadn’t. “Yes, well, I discovered a large number of correspondents in Grandmama’s files. Some of the names I recognize from childhood, acquaintances and family members all over the country. I think they might be willing to help.”