Violet nodded. As was her custom, she took a moment to compose her thoughts and the crowd stirred restlessly. “I only just learned,” she told Warne, “that I am the daughter of Dr. Tyler Stephens.” She sat very still while he repeated what she’d said.
Grandpapa Forrest gave a hoot of laughter. “That’s impossible.” He sounded both angry and embarrassed. “My father’s been gone for years and my mother long before that. You’re too young to be their child anyway. You’re the age of my granddaughters.”
To everyone’s surprise, Caleb Carr rose to his feet, a gesture asking for recognition, but he didn’t wait going ahead to say, “And I was born long before the war between the states. Yet I stand here in 1910 a young man.” He sat down.
Violet couldn’t help thinking she had underestimated the quiet gentleman who had married Betsy. He’d caught on before anyone else had.
“That’s right,” she said. “Like Caleb I was born in another time. It was before your mother and father ever met, Mr. Stephens. My mother was Lady Laura Smythe-Hatton.” Somehow at this moment she found it necessary to address the man she’d known as Grandpapa Forrest more formally.
Slowly and with emphasis Warne said what she’d said.
Forrest rose to his feet. “You’re saying that woman who died here a few days ago was married to my father?”
Violet looked down. This was not an easy thing to admit. Even in her own time, this was awkward information. No doubt back in 1910 it was shocking.
She was tarnishing the reputation of Lavender’s revered founder. “No, Mr. Stephens, my parents were not married to each other.”
Grandpapa Forrest stood to listen to Warne’s reluctantly spoken words. “Not married,” he said and sat down with a loud plop.
Chapter Twenty Seven
Warne felt disappointed and disconcerted to see his friends and neighbors behaving in such a fashion. After they’d heard report of Violet’s claim of parentage and saw Forrest’s reaction, the orderly meeting broke down into chaos.
Everybody and his neighbor tried to talk at the same time, some trying to address the whole meeting while others discussed matters with those around them.
After a dazed moment, Forrest began to bang his gavel and demand quiet. For perhaps the first time in his long life, the people of Lavender ignored him. Some of them began to even surge up the stairs on either side and on to the stage as though to question their leaders more closely.
Anxious for her safety, Warne turned around to look for Violet, only to find her no longer present. He didn’t much blame her for retreating from this alarming scene, but felt so alone without her.
Of course nobody else knew she was gone, so he stood there wondering how he would answer the next question.
But it wasn’t a question. Seeming not at all disturbed by the noisy, out-of-control setting, Zan continued. “It must seem clear to all of us that Violet James has genetically inherited her father’s special ability and an affinity for Lavender and its unique situation. Dr. Tyler knew he couldn’t live forever and continue to protect this community, but he knew members of his family would go on.”
Warne blinked. As so often happened when Zan spoke, he found unfamiliar words and concepts jangling through his brain. Only later and after a great deal of consideration would he even begin to put it all together.
Zan turned to Warne. “Thank Violet,” he said, “and ask her to try to find out anything she can that will help us.”
Warne nodded, not saying that Violet was no longer present. He would pass on the thanks when he had the chance and he knew he didn’t have to ask her to try to help Lavender and its people. This was something she would do without being asked.
A subdued Forrest Stephens got to his feet and, almost unheard, dismissed the meeting. Members of the family, the only ones still listening, strolled toward the exits and, awakened by the motion to the fact that the meeting had concluded, the rest, still arguing, followed.
When Warne went with the others back to the house on Crockett Street, they were greeted by the Clarences, bringing the news that they’d had to abandon their temporary home with neighbors as more land vanished, leaving the farmhouse on the chancy east edge of Lavender.
One minute Violet was hearing loud arguments among the normally peaceful residents of Lavender and in the next Maudie was shaking her awake and yelling that planes were coming.
At first she thought she was back in London where planes overhead were a nightly menace. She actually heard the drone of their engines even as she looked down at Maudie’s slim white, terrified face. “Are we going to be bombed?” the child queried, burrowing under Violet’s coverlet to cling to her side.
Worthington. They were at safe Worthington and no bombers could be lurking overhead. A comforting thought, she realized with dismay, but not necessarily true. No place in this country was safe from enemy bombers. Even beautiful Worthington could be attacked.
She got up and dressed only in her short nightie hurried to push aside the blackout curtains to look out into the light of early morning. Maudie screeched once, then jumped from the bed to follow her, clutching at her hand.
She saw planes overhead and it wasn’t until she fully took in the sight that she realized these were British planes, friendly planes, Hurricanes out to protect their countrymen. “They’re ours!” she told Maudie. “Our planes. Our boys.”
Maudie threw her arms around Violet’s neck, this time shrieking for joy. Until this minute she had not realized how frightened the little Lavender farm girl had been during her days in London and she couldn’t help thinking of children in all the warring countries who lived with fear like a shadow hovering over them.
Some had been sent from the city to safer places like the Worthington estate and the nearby village. She’d worked with those who already had evacuees in their homes in her brief time here and knew that plans were made for a whole school full of little girls to be sent to this very house.
But this wasn’t Maudie’s war, nor her people. Dr. Tyler had sacrificed and schemed to bring his townspeople into a peaceful island in the midst of a rapidly changing world. Maudie needed to get back there before something terrible happened to her in a place where she would never have been except for Violet.
Rising from the girl’s frantic embrace, she saw Mrs. Rolfe standing behind them, her gaze fixed on the sky where the fighters had just flown overhead. Her face troubled, Violet guessed what she was thinking. Bombs could come to her own Worthington. No place in England was safe.
They went out of their way to be cheerful and as normal as possible over breakfast in the kitchen, enjoying the rare treat of muffins and slices of Worthington ham with big glasses of fresh milk.
The thought that she must meet with Dr. Tyler and Lady Laura uppermost on her mind, Violet went about the day’s chores as quickly and efficiently as she could.
Fiercely she chopped down weeds and impatiently she fed cows and pigs and chickens, gathered eggs and helped give homemade cough syrup concocted from wine and honey to a sick baby on one of the farms.
It was a long day, full of tasks that must be done if the people of Worthington were to be fed, housed and their ills treated. By late afternoon she drove mother and baby into the village to see the community’s over-worked doctor, who shook his head, diagnosing pneumonia and sending baby and mother to the next town and the little hospital there.
Violet went back to help the household’s oldest daughter, who was only a few of years older than Maudie, get supper and see to the evening chores. Once they were tucked in bed she paused to talk with the girl who was temporarily in charge.
“I don’t think it will happen,” she hedged, “but in case enemy planes came over, in the unlikely case of an attack . . .” She smiled to show she didn’t really think this was going to happen. “In that case, where would you and the children take shelter?”
The girl smiled back. “Oh, Mama has that all worked out. When war broke out she had a neighbor boy brace up th
e old root cellar. We’ve all got our gas masks and we’ve practiced running down there real quick. Each of us olders takes one of the little ones. We know what to do.”
Violet nodded approval and walked back to the house. This was why England would never allow herself to be defeated, not with their men off fighting as hard as they could and women and children like these at home.
Maudie, accustomed to farm hours of working with the sun and going to bed at dark, lay sleeping in her bedroom next to Violet’s and Mrs. Rolfe was in the kitchen listening to the wireless with the cook and her daughter so, finally, Violet felt free to retreat to the library.
This time she saw them shimmering into existence. This time they were no longer the young couple she’d encountered on two previous occasions, but looked to be somewhere around mid-life, his hair graying around the edges, hers as black as ever, but tiny lines etching her eyes.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Dr. Tyler said, laughter in his own eyes, though his mouth remained unsmiling.
“If it were a matter of choice, I’d not bother taking time out from my busy schedule to see you at all, Tyler Stephens,” Lady Laura informed him in her plummy voice.
He laughed out loud. “Good to see you too, Laura my dear.”
Both sets of eyes rested on Violet, her feet drawn up under her in the big chair placed opposite to the two they’d always occupied. She expected Lady Laura to scold her for her unladylike sitting position, but instead both looked at her as though they would keep looking forever.
She realized that, oddly enough, this unlikely pair actually loved her in their own way, even though they’d done little to see to her well-being and in Dr. Tyler’s case, had only learned of her existence late in life. She felt a little shiver at the knowledge that both were gone now and that these visits into time past would continue only briefly. They’d jumped decades since the last visit. The end must be close at hand.
“Lavender is in trouble,” she said without preliminary, afraid she would run out of time before the essential questions were asked. “The edges are chipping away into mainstream time.”
Lady Laura pursed her mouth, looking to Tyler. He nodded. “Time erosion is not unexpected.”
“That’s all you have to say,” Laura chided. “You talked and talked about little Lavender and how people turned against each other during wars and how if they were cut off in time, things would be different. And now your daughter tells you it is in danger and you simply say it’s to be expected!”
He held up a hand. “Expected but not inevitable. Something can be done and it is all up to Violet.”
A loud knocking at the library door sent them back to wherever they’d come from. Violet sat stunned as the knocking continued. Her da had said something could be done and she was the one to do it.
Annoyed at the interruption, she went to open the door, anxious to deal with whoever was there and get back to Lady Laura and Dr. Tyler.
She flung open the door to find a shivering Maudie standing there, pathetically slim and small in her long nightgown. “They’re coming, Violet,” she said, sobbing as she spoke the words. “They’re coming to bomb us.”
Her anger melted. Poor baby. No doubt she’d wakened from a nightmare brought on by her experiences in London. Pulling the child into her arms, she began to murmur soothing words of comfort. “It was only a dream, Maudie. We’re safe way out in the country. Bombers won’t come here. You’re safe, baby.”
Wet tears soaked Violet’s nightdress. “I want my mama and my papa. I want my sisters and my cat.”
Violet rocked the girl in her arms. “We’ll find them. We’ll get to them. Soon. Soon.”
The promises she made might be impossible to fulfill, but she meant to do everything she could to set Maudie’s world to rights again. “Where’s your piggy?” she asked, reaching out for the only comfort close at hand. “She’s probably missing you.”
Maudie pulled back. “I left Ernestine by herself in the bedroom,” she said in sudden horror at the realization of her own abandonment. “She’s probably scared.” She ran for the closest stairs, Violet limping heavily from fatigue as she followed.
They heard the piglet squealing from the floor below and when they got to Maudie’s bedroom Mrs. Rolfe was about to open the door, her face concentrated in frown lines. “Swine do not belong inside a proper house,” she told them.
Maudie grabbed her hand as though she feared that the piglet was about to come to harm. “Earnestine is a good pig. She only squeals when she’s really scared.”
She was so emphatic that Mrs. Rolfe stepped back to allow her to enter first and the two women stood watching as the girl grabbed up the rounded little creature, which continued to sound off even as she cuddled her. Ernestine seemed beyond consolation.
Then Violet heard the distant roar she would have recognized anywhere. Planes flew toward them.
The normally composed Mrs. Rolfe gasped, then quickly said, “Probably some of ours again.”
And then they heard the big bell begin to ring from the nearby village. Spotters, men too old for war, kept watch even at this distant location and everybody knew that a constant ringing of the church bell, the sound pealing out over the countryside, meant that attack was imminent.
Quivering Maudie petted her now silent pet. “Ernestine knew,” she said. “She tried to warn us.”
Violet was more of the opinion that the pampered little animal, finding herself abandoned, had staged a pig-type tantrum. Anyway, there was no time to argue.
“Mrs. Rolfe,” she said. “See that Maudie and the others get safely to the fallout shelter under the house.
“Ernestine too,” Maudie insisted, her eyes huge with fright.
“Ernestine too,” Violet agreed, already on the way out the door.
“But where are you going , Miss?” Mrs. Rolfe called after her.
“The Herriot children are alone over at their farm and after a hard day’s work, I’m not sure they’ll even hear the bell. I’ll see them into their cellar.” She ran, cursing the right leg that would not move as fast as she desired, but willing herself to ignore the pain.
The village could be clearly seen in the distance by the light of a huge full moon. Bomber’s moon, she remembered the phrase with a chill. Even slowed by her damaged leg, it took only minutes to run from the main house to the closest farm with its modest cottage and tidy out-buildings gleaming in the moonlight.
The door wasn’t locked but she fumbled with the handle, shouting even as she rushed inside, “Children! Get up quick! The bombers are here.”
She could hear them furiously thundering as they came overhead and panic pounded her heart as the two older girls, tugging at their little brothers, ran barefoot and clad only in their night clothes to join her.
“Quick,” the oldest said. “To the shelter.”
Violet pushed them in front of her as they ran to the old cellar, the oldest girl pulling up the door. She waited only until the others were inside before pulling the heavy door shut behind them.
Through the final view as the door came down, Violet saw the flash of lights and heard the scream of the descending bombs, but they were all huddled deep in the old, musty smelling cellar before they heard the thud and then the explosion of bombs as they hit the ground.
“That was close,” said the oldest girl, whose name Violet was finally able to remember was Deborah.
The darkness in the cellar lay heavily across them, but though Violet could see not even the faintest crack of light, she had only to reach out to touch the children who formed one mass of humanity, drawing comfort from their presence.
Deborah was right. At least one bomb had landed somewhere close. She only hoped it was not on the Worthington great house.
Chapter Twenty Eight
Betsy turned over in bed and sensed that, like her, Caleb still was awake. “I was proud of you today,” she whispered.
“I’m always proud of you” his deep voice rumbled the w
ords.
“That’s not what I mean . . .I mean . . “
He pulled her close for a kiss. “I didn’t feel part of things here in Lavender until today,” he spoke in a low voice as the children were asleep in the dressing room next door and only a thin wall lay between. They’d had a long evening of trying to get Ben to settle into sleep.
He kissed her again. “This wasn’t my Lavender with Doc and Forrest still a young man and both the ladies still alive. Your papa was hardly more than a baby . . .but you remember.”
How could she ever forget meeting the young soldier during that other time while factions on both sides fought so bitterly, neighbors who had been friends turned to enemies in the struggle between the states. She and Caleb had been of opposite opinions and still they’d managed to come together.
But nothing had been entirely right since they came here to the Lavender in which she’d grown up so many years later. “Today I stood up like a man because those two young people needed help and I knew I couldn’t sit on the sidelines out at my farm forever. Guess I had to lose that farm to understand that I had a part to play right here on the main streets of Lavender. My old world is gone, but you and our kids, well I reckon, Betsy, you’re world enough for me.”
Remorse overwhelmed her. Granted life out on a remote, primitive farm was not what she would have chosen, but she had picked Caleb for a husband and she could have been a better sport about the whole thing. If it was the price of life with him, she was do without modern conveniences and the company of good friends here in town. She would can beans instead of telling the stories she made up herself for the entertainment of her friends. She would bake, sew, scrub and plant and try not to complain too much about not having indoor plumbing if it was necessary.
Instead she only said, “I know you loved your farm, Caleb.” This time she kissed him.
“Not about to give up farming. It’s what I’m good at and I wouldn’t know what to do if I couldn’t go out under God’s blue sky to tend my crops and animals each day. It’s the work I’m meant to do.”
Lavender Dreaming: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas Series Book 5) Page 17