Haunting Miss Trentwood

by Belinda Kroll

  ***

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The baby’s weight in her arms made Mrs. Durham sigh with relief. This was what she had been hoping, wishing, praying for these last months of planning and plotting. This little bit of fifteen pounds that relied on her not dropping it to the floor for its survival. The baby was warm against her breast, and the little white frills that edged his dress seemed to tickle his cheek as he slept.

  Mrs. Durham hadn’t seen the baby’s eyes yet, but she knew the color, just as well as she had known the color of her husband’s eyes. This was Henry’s child. She knew it. He had the same wrinkle in his brow as he shifted in his sleep, the same way he puckered his lips in earnest concentration. His lovely blond hair shone in the sunlight that streamed through the still-open door, which Hartwell had so rudely slammed open in his pursuit.

  “Dear Mr. Hartwell,” Mrs. Durham said, blinking dazedly at him, “would you be so kind as to shut the door? The baby will catch cold.” She lifted her shoulder to shelter the baby from a breeze that blew through the hallway.

  “Indeed, Alex!” Lady Kirkham said, “How could you be so careless? The baby!”

  Hartwell spun on his heel and slammed the door shut, rattling the old hinges. He watched the door rather warily for a moment as if he expected it to crumble.

  Mrs. Durham bit back a snicker. “Your brother is rough with my sister’s home,” she said in a spiteful aside to Lady Kirkham. “Do you know he wasn’t here more than five minutes when he ruined my dearly departed sister’s bell pull? It was the last piece of embroidery Gertrude had worked before her untimely death. Mary was quite inconsolable.”

  Lady Kirkham shook her head, tsking at her brother.

  Hartwell, to his credit, colored and would not meet their eyes.

  The baby’s little fist grabbed Mrs. Durham’s probing finger and she cooed with delight. “What is the little darling’s name?”

  “Henry, naturally,” Lady Kirkham said.

  Mrs. Durham reeled back as though snapping free from a tow line. She clutched little Henry to her chest.

  “Ophelia,” Lady Kirkham said with a nervous chuckle, “you’ll smother him.”

  Her eyes mere slits, Mrs. Durham backed toward the library. “His name is Henry, you say?” Hartwell advanced, and Mrs. Durham’s eyes flickered from brother to sister. “Did you hear, Mr. Hartwell? Your sister named him Henry. That was my husband’s name, you know. It’s a fine name. A strong name.” She yanked the little white bonnet off of Henry’s curls and rubbed her hand against them. “His curls, so like my Henry’s.”

  “Mrs. Durham,” Hartwell said. He had his hand out to her. He sounded as if he was in a cave somewhere. “Mrs. Durham, you must give me the baby now.”

  “I don’t see why,” she replied, holding little Henry closer. “He’s mine now.”

  That grabbed Lady Kirkham’s attention right quick. “Whatever do you mean? Hand me my child at once, Ophelia.”

  Mrs. Durham giggled. “Your child? Your child? You mean my child. You gave him to me.”

  Lady Kirkham swallowed. “I did no such thing.”

  “You handed him to me,” Mrs. Durham insisted, frowning, “and told me to take care of him. He’s my Henry. He’s my Henry’s little Henry. Isn’t that right, Mr. Hartwell?”

  Hartwell flinched when the baby cried out, having sensed the rising tension in the close, dark hallway.

  “Everyone thought I was so stupid, Mr. Hartwell. They thought I wouldn’t see how they looked at one another. It truly was a wonder. Did they not realize I could see when she touched the back of his neck? When he spoke to her, his eyes plastered on her lips? The way they stood and sat beside one another, always claiming to be friends?” Mrs. Durham threw her words at Lady Kirkham like daggers, and every one landed with deadly accuracy.

  Lady Kirkham staggered back, crashing into the stairwell. “What does she mean? What does she mean?”

  “You’re a fool if you think I’m giving up my husband’s child,” Mrs. Durham said. “By rights, it should have been my child. He was my husband, Florence! And you, you were supposed to be my friend.”

  Her voice broke on the cursed word.

  “But you never were, were you? You and my sister, always laughing, having fun, being the flirty fun women I never could be, though I tried so hard, so very hard.” Tears streamed down her face. The baby began to cry in her arms. “See how little Henry cries for his father?”

  Mrs. Durham’s expression hardened.

  “Don’t cry, my darling. We’ll see your papa soon.”

  ***

  THIRTY-NINE

  Mary blinked and coughed. Pomeroy had broken her fall, to be sure, but not nearly as smoothly as she had hoped. She had tripped on her skirts when she jumped from the window ledge and swallowed a shriek when she went flying at Pomeroy, rather than landing in his outstretched arms. The two of them crashed to the ground with muffled groans.

  They lay there, breathing taking up all their concentration.

  “Satisfied?” Trentwood said, looming over Mary as she blinked at the cloudy sky. He crossed his arms over his chest, one of his brows raised in amused annoyance.

  With a groan, Mary rolled off Pomeroy and crawled to the side of the manor house, where she could pull herself upright. She tested her right ankle, which felt a bit tender.

  Pomeroy sat up, rubbing the back of his head. “Oh,” he said weakly, looking at the sticky red mess he saw on his fingers.

  Mary inhaled sharply. The side of Pomeroy’s white head was turning a dark red color. Blood trickled sluggishly from where he had hit a rock in just the right way. She had hurt Pomeroy. All because she had been too stubborn to ask her father for help.

  She had to stop the bleeding. She had to get cloth to staunch the blood flow. But she hadn’t anything other than what she wore, and she couldn’t very well take off her clothing.

  “A man’s life could be on the line, Marianne,” Trentwood snapped, startling Mary from her panicked ruminations. He joined her at the wall, glaring at her dazed expression. “Seems you got the wind and your wits knocked out of you. Stay still.”

  “What? I—what are you doing?” she gasped as he reached beneath her skirt. A second later she heard a loud ripping noise, and he held half of her petticoat. Her cheeks turned bright red. “You could have asked, at the very least!”

  “Lecture me later, Mary,” Trentwood said, wrapping the torn fabric around his hand so it made a small wad that he could press against Pomeroy’s head. “Tell Pomeroy to put his hand where the cloth is. You need to find Steele.”

  Mary licked her lips. Pomeroy stared at her, eyes wide, mouth slack from terror. She couldn’t really leave him alone with her father, could she? Certainly not when he was so obviously afraid of this invisible hand pressing fabric against his head.

  “Mary,” Trentwood shouted, “Steele is in the garden and he’s hurt. Wake up!”

  Jumping, Mary rushed to Pomeroy’s side. Yes, right. Now was the time to act. She put her hand where Trentwood’s was and felt a chill run the length of her arm. She gritted her teeth and ignored the sensation. “Pomeroy, dear, I need you to hold this.”

  His pupils were beginning to dilate.

  “Pomeroy, I’m going to walk you to the door, and have Mrs. Beeton let you in, and then I’m off to find Jasper, do you understand me?”

  Pomeroy’s eyes rolled up, trying to see the back of his head where Mary’s hand pushed the fabric into his wound. “Your father,” he said.

  Mary ripped another length of her petticoat so she could tie the wad of fabric in place. “Yes. He’s here,” she grunted, tugging Pomeroy’s arm. She used her entire body weight to leverage him to standing. She ducked beneath his arm to support his falling weight and stumbled along the uneven ground to the kitchen door. “He won’t let anything happen to you.”

  Pomeroy chuckled. “More so than what already has? You always were one to get into scrapes, Miss Mary, but you never hurt anyone else before.”
r />   Mouth dropping open, Mary was saved from replying when the door flew open to reveal Mrs. Beeton staring at them with a dripping soup ladle in her hand. A part of Mary recognized the liquid as beef stew, the sort they had been having for two days now, and her stomach turned. When her mother was alive, meals repeated by the month, not the day.

  “Miss?” Mrs. Beeton said.

  Mary cleared her throat. “Do help Pomeroy, Mrs. Beeton. We’ve had a slight accident, and I’m off to find Mr. Steele.” She deposited the slumping Pomeroy to the nearest chair with Mrs. Beeton’s help. She instructed Mrs. Beeton not to enter the main house, for there was something afoot and she didn’t want to see anyone else hurt.

  Mrs. Beeton was already busy bandaging Pomeroy’s head and forcing a glass of whiskey down his throat. “Of course, Miss. Is it Mrs. Durham, Miss? Pomeroy had been telling me he didn’t think she was aright.”

  That comment sent Mary running in the direction of the garden. That was three people, now, warning her about her aunt, and nothing good came of anything said in threes, or so her mother had told her when she was young. She held her skirts high, almost to her knees, as she bounded down the tumbling rock stairs to the overgrown garden.

  “Jasper?” she cried. Where was Trentwood when she needed him? What was it he had said? Steele was in the garden. Which garden? The garden, of course, the one they never had to mention by name. The one in which her mother had died.

  Mary pressed her lips together as her brows furrowed with determination. This was not to be Steele’s last moment on earth, not if she had anything to do with it.

  Winding her way through brambles, half-dead rose bushes, and mud puddles, Mary couldn’t find Steele. Perspiration beaded on her nose, though it was cold enough she could see her breath in the air. She tripped on a gnarly tree root. Too winded to cry out, she fell on her knees and the palms of her hands, scraping them against dead brambles along the path.

  Mary stayed there on the ground, trying to catch her breath. If she didn’t slow down, she wouldn’t be any use to Steele if she found him. Not if. When. When she found him. She closed her eyes. She gulped air and winced at how it scraped its way down her throat. When she opened her eyes, she realized there was something odd about the mud puddle she had just barely avoided.

  It was smaller than the others, and darker, more ominous. It looked like dried blood. “Jasper?” She heard a stifled moan from the other side of the hedge.

  Mary crawled around the corner to find Steele propped against a Grecian pedestal, hands and feet tied together, mouth bound. His impeccable hair was matted to the side of his head with the same dried blood that had alerted her to his presence. His eyes were dull as they watched her untie him, and he was shivering uncontrollably.

  “How long has she kept you here?” Mary asked, fearing his answer. He threw his arms around her, hugging her tightly.

  Mary knew it was from relief at being found, and wanted to reciprocate. He had been through an awful night, if she understood things correctly. Somehow her aunt had cajoled him outside to the garden, the same way she had been cajoled to the library.

  “I’m glad I found you,” Mary whispered.

  Who knew what could have happened if she hadn’t found Steele? He shook in her arms. It was almost as if he was holding onto her in order to steady himself.

  Mary waited for the rush of affection, relief, passion to overcome her. She waited, and it did not come. Instead, her thoughts returned to the manor house, where Hartwell and his family were with her dangerous aunt.

  “Jasper,” she said, pulling away from him, “we need to go inside. Now.”

  ***

  Forty

  Hartwell followed Mrs. Durham into the library, his eyes not leaving baby Henry. The window in the back of the room was gaping open, leading Hartwell to believe that, yes, Mary had indeed jumped in order to save Steele. He only hoped Mary had landed safely. Perhaps that was why he felt Trentwood’s presence. Trentwood knew Mary was safe and so had come to protect him. Yes, that was what Hartwell chose to believe, rather than the nausea-inducing suspicion that Mary had snapped her neck.

  Hartwell shook his head. He would find out if Mary was all right after making certain Mrs. Durham no longer had her hands on his nephew. One thing at a time.

  “Make her give me my baby back!” Lady Kirkham’s smooth voice adopted a dreadful tone that raked across Hartwell’s nerves.

  “Quiet, Florence,” he snapped, “you never care about that baby until he makes you the center of attention, so you can stop with the doting mother act!”

  She drew herself up to her full height, which was very nearly Hartwell’s height. “How dare you speak to me in such a manner! I am a lady of the realm!”

  He rolled his eyes. Enough was enough. “You’re the wife of a knight; stop putting on airs you’ve no right to.” Lady of the realm. What nonsense, when it only lasted as long as her husband’s life and wouldn’t be passed on to his children. Ridiculous.

  Lady Kirkham’s eyes bugged out and her lips slammed shut as if she had just realized she had swallowed her tongue. Hartwell wished she had. Then he wouldn’t have to hear her babble on about how her marriage had pulled the Hartwell name up from the mere, recently-displaced, landed family they were.

  “Children, are you bickering again?” came Dame Hartwell’s cheerful tones from the hallway. “I always thought you two would grow out of such childishness, but I suppose not.” She sauntered into the library, patting Lady Kirkham’s cheek along the way.

  Dame Hartwell was a small woman, with delicate features and a propensity to smile. Her insignificant stature and overall pleasantness belied the iron pole she had for a spine, and the way her voice could cut through a humid day like a pail of ice water. She wore a gray suit for traveling, which complemented her soft tones nicely: her blue eyes snapped, her gray hair gleamed.

  She, unlike her daughter, insisted on her proper moniker of Dame, for she had also married a knight of the realm and delighted in old traditions. Her daughter, she felt, put on airs by insisting she be called a lady. Ladies were married to viscounts, earls, and dukes, not knights.

  But that was neither here nor there. By this point, Mrs. Durham had backed up to the open window, where the wind blew fiercely through the sole access point to the interior of the house. She clung to baby Henry, madness alight in her eyes.

  “Alexander,” Dame Hartwell said, “I told you there was danger in Compton Beauchamp, and you were to put a stop to it.”

  Hartwell’s mouth dropped open. “Excuse me? You said no such thing!”

  “I did, I said exactly what Mr. Trentwood asked me to, and yet here we are, with Mrs. Durham—it is Mrs. Durham, isn’t it?—with my grandson.” Dame Hartwell’s clipped London tones seemed to wake Mrs. Durham out of her trance.

  “Your grandson?” Mrs. Durham said.

  “And my nephew,” Hartwell chimed in, much to the apparent annoyance of his mother, who glared at him.

  “But he’s my son,” Mrs. Durham murmured, dabbing a bit of spittle away from Henry’s mouth. “He’s my little Henry.”

  Dame Hartwell shook her head. “He’s our little Henry. Yours and ours. We neither of us want to see him hurt.”

  Hartwell closed his eyes against the sight of Mrs. Durham backing ever closer to the open window. When he opened his eyes, she was pulling herself up onto the ledge. He jumped forward, arms out to catch her as she wobbled while finding her balance.

  “Henry and I,” Mrs. Durham warbled, “are going to visit his father now.”

  “What do you mean? What can she mean? Alex!” Lady Kirkham cried.

  Hartwell’s back was to his sister as he and his mother advanced slowly on Mrs. Durham. He imagined Lady Kirkham wringing her hands, tears streaming, being her usual useless self. He allowed the uncharitable thought of mucus dripping from her nose, just because it pleased him in that way of feuding siblings.

  Trentwood?

  “Right here, my boy,” Trentwood said, j
ust to his left.

  “So glad you’ve returned, Mr. Trentwood! I was beginning to think I had imagined you,” Dame Hartwell said warmly, though her eyes also never left Mrs. Durham and Henry.

  Mrs. Durham’s eyes danced from Hartwell to his mother and back. “What are you on about? Mr. Trentwood is dead, as dead as my Henry.” She lost her concentration, and though she clenched the side of the window, began to fall backward.

  Hartwell heard screams from his mother and sister. He saw the baby flying through the air. He winced at the thud of a body landing five feet to the ground. At the crash of a skull hitting an unfortunately placed rock. Or fortunately, depending on one’s perspective.

  The sound of Mary, screaming.

  ***

  FORTY-ONE

  Later, Hartwell realized Trentwood had snatched the baby from Mrs. Durham’s flailing arms, which was how little Henry came to be in Hartwell’s hands. He stood in the library, staring at that open window, hearing Mary screaming outside.

  “Why would she jump?” Mary kept sobbing.

  Hartwell, with a squirming Henry in his arms, moved his right foot and then his left until he stood at the window, staring down at Mary. She rocked back and forth, Mrs. Durham’s lifeless body in her arms.

  Steele leaned against the manor house, resting his elbows on his knees, his forehead in the palms of his hands. He watched Mary, unblinking.

  Mary must have felt Hartwell watching her. She looked up. Her eyes were bloodshot, her hair completely free of any binding or bobby pin. Her hands looked scratched and bloodied, her skirts a tangled mess. The accusations in her flooded eyes made Hartwell step away from the window.

  Mary buried her face in the crook between Mrs. Durham’s snapped neck and shoulder.