Then something inside her crumpled. She was bad-hearted. An urgent feeling of despair ballooned inside her as she tasted again the jealousy that had tormented her each time one of her sisters had acquired a fellow. Now she was jealous of Verity Forbes. Yet she knew that Juliet would have welcomed Verity as a friend had it not been for the William situation, and so would she.
Archie had been the sun, moon and stars to her before she fell in love with William. She had to recapture that.
Except she couldn’t, because you couldn’t recapture something that had never been lost. Archie was still all the world to her, but somehow her treacherous heart had made room for William too.
Juliet stared as Hal darted through the door – and stopped dead. Had he run up the stairs to pull her into his arms, then thought better of it? She was dazed with shock, but beneath that, a great yearning took hold. He was … older. Stupid thought. Of course he was older. He was closer to thirty now than twenty. He had filled out, though his frame was still slim and strong. There were fine lines around his eyes that hadn’t been there before. Her fingertips tingled with the need to touch this new part of him she didn’t know. She remembered the cheerful young man with the kind eyes, leaning on his spade to chat, sleeves rolled up. He used to push back his cap on his head. With a jolt of remembered desire, she recalled preferring him like that to togged up in his Sunday best. He still wore a cap, but otherwise was in a tweed suit. He looked prosperous. Not rolling-in-it prosperous, but capable, able to earn a decent living.
Able to support a wife and family.
Had he got over her and met someone else?
‘Juliet,’ he said. ‘It really is you.’ He smiled. Goodness, she remembered that smile.
‘What are you doing here?’ Stupid question. He was here. That was all that mattered. After years apart, here he was, here they were, together. How could it matter why? She wanted to check her hat, smooth her hair, make herself look perfect.
His arms fell to his sides. ‘I could ask you the same question. I noticed someone up here and came to say it’s not safe, especially after that shower earlier. It gets slippery. Or if you meant the question in a wider sense …’ He glanced away from her towards the view. ‘I’m here to extend the gardens.’
‘So you’ve achieved your ambition. Congratulations.’
‘It’s been a hard slog, but, yes, things are going well for me. What about you? What brings you here?’
‘Dressmaking.’ Her heart was thumping so hard she could barely speak.
‘Sewing for Lady Darley? Your mother would be proud.’
‘What about your parents? How are they?’ As though she and Hal were casual acquaintances who bumped into one another occasionally and observed the usual courtesies.
‘Fine, thank you.’
‘Is your dad the head gardener now?’
‘Has been for the past five years.’
Five years. And she and Hal had been apart longer than that. She would be twenty-three shortly. Twenty-three, and the mother of a six-year-old. Isadora. Where had that sprung from? She might not be Isobel or Isabella. She could be Isadora.
And Lily was being interfered with by Mr Nugent.
‘This is ridiculous,’ Hal exclaimed. ‘We’re talking as if there had never been anything between us.’
‘I wrote to you, but you never wrote back.’
‘Ma took against you after you disappeared. When you wrote, she hid the letter instead of posting it on, and I might never have found out about it, but when I visited, Dad asked me what you’d said in your letter, so Ma had to admit what she’d done.’
‘You wrote back?’ Hope clutched at her chest.
‘When I didn’t hear from you again, I went to the address on the letter.’
Her flesh prickled. ‘You went to my grandmother’s house?’
‘She said you’d run away.’ Hal lifted his shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. ‘I had nowhere else to look. I hoped you’d write again, but you never did.’
‘You wanted me to?’ she whispered.
‘Of course I did. I wanted to know that you were well and safe. I wanted to know what had happened. You left so many questions behind. You missed your mother’s funeral, for pity’s sake – her funeral.’
‘All right, don’t rub it in.’
‘But – to miss her funeral, Juliet.’
Suddenly she was trembling with anger. ‘Don’t you dare use that shocked voice with me. You have no idea … no idea.’
‘When you vanished, Mr Nugent – Sir Henry – hell, I don’t know what to call him, talking about the past like this. He said you’d run off with another man, that you were having his child. I didn’t know what to think. Well, I did – I knew there couldn’t possibly be anyone else – but then why had you run away? You planned it, didn’t you? Ma wrote letters about the things you’d taken with you, which proved it was planned.’
He scrubbed his face with his hands. He didn’t wear gloves. No, Hal wouldn’t. He might have risen in the world, but he would never stop working with his hands, and would never wear gloves at work unless he was doing something that required his hands to be protected. Oh, there was a lot to be said for having bare hands at work. Hadn’t her own hands touched her daughter? When she had drawn her gloves on afterwards, it was like pushing the feel of Izzie inside her gloves to snuggle close to her skin.
For all the good it would do her.
‘I went home for your mother’s funeral. There was just time to get to the church, though I wanted to go to the cottage, to see you, to hold you and say how sorry I was not to have been with you when she passed away. If I’d had time, if I’d gone to the cottage … what would I have seen? What happened that day? And then Mr Nugent sent for me and accused me of being the father of your child. He said there was no doubt about your condition, because you were suffering from morning sickness. He said if it wasn’t mine, you must have had another chap on the side and you’d run off with him. I couldn’t believe it – and yet what else was I to think? I had to go back to London. After that, Mr Nugent got his lordship to sponsor me as apprentice to the garden designer. He gave me a real leg-up, Mr Nugent did.’
‘And got rid of the one person who knew there was no secret lover,’ Juliet said sharply, then gasped. Her cheeks burnt with shame. ‘I’m so sorry. That sounded as if I don’t believe in your talent, and I do. I always did. You know I did.’ She willed him to believe her.
‘I know,’ Hal said softly. He shook his head on a frown. ‘But if there wasn’t another man, why would Mr Nugent believe you were expecting a child? What happened that day, Juliet?’
What happened that day? What happened that day? The words spilt out in a frantic rush in her head. I’ll tell you what happened, I’ll tell you what happened – and it swooped back once more to consume her. It was painfully near the surface, because of Lily, and now it stormed out with unprecedented vigour – the shame, the guilt, the disgust and despair, the fear, the gratitude, stupid, stupid, stupid.
Her eyes burnt with angry tears, but she refused to let them fall. It was her secret shame, her secret guilt.
Lily’s secret shame, too, now.
She couldn’t tell Hal about Mr Nugent, about having to be grateful. Fear and loathing uncoiled inside her. Stupid, stupid, stupid. But it wasn’t just because she had nursed her secret for so long that she couldn’t speak now. It was because of Lily. She had to help Lily. It was Lily’s only chance. She had to save Lily.
And afterwards, maybe she could – could she? – whisper the truth to Hal. But not until afterwards. She forced her torment back into the dark box where she kept it.
When she didn’t speak, Hal finally said, with an edge of desperation in his voice, ‘I can’t tell you what it means to see you again.’
Hope jolted through her. ‘Really?’
‘I’ve dreamt of this for so long. There’s never been anyone else for me. But I have to ask. I have to know. Was there a baby? Your grandmother asked if I was the
father. Was there really a child?’
Anger flared – no, not anger, nothing so tame as mere anger. Rage such as she had never known in her life burst forth and there was no stopping it. Rage at the way they had been kept apart all this time. Years! Bloody years. Rage against Rosie and her brother, against Mr Nugent, against Adeline, against herself for being so young and in need of support, for giving up her beloved baby. Cecily had never considered giving up her baby.
‘Was there a child? Was there? She’s up yonder in that posh house. She’s bright-eyed and rosy, and so fetching you could eat her for breakfast. Her name is Constance – except that it isn’t Constance – it’s Izzie, Izzie McKenzie, when she should have been Constance Mary Harper. My daughter, my baby. She’s in there and I’m out here, and all I have is the hope that her mother will send for me to make a dress. Does that answer your question?’
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Juliet crept into Garden Cottage. She felt punch-drunk. Hal. Izzie. Lily. Mr Nugent. Hal – Hal. Her heart had remembered. She was weak and shaky from when she had exploded. And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, she had turned tail and run for it.
She badly needed to be alone, but William was laying the table – a man laying the table! – and making mistakes with the cutlery, much to Archie’s vociferous indignation. She felt her heart fold up and sink. Here was William yet again inadvertently displaying himself as ideal husband and father material, which meant she was due for another evening of heartache from Cecily. Pleading a headache, she escaped upstairs, though for all the good it did her, she might as well have stayed to play happy families, because she couldn’t gather her thoughts sufficiently to gain control of them. Hal was there, in her mind, claiming his place. She had blurted out the truth about Izzie to him. Everything felt so horribly complicated.
She must concentrate on Lily.
She rose with the dawn to make a start on the bathing costumes, cutting them out and tacking them together for Mrs Livingston to finish. They were ready for fitting by teatime. By sewing other garments into the evening, she made time to take them to Darley Court tomorrow, a day earlier than expected, so she dropped a postcard in the pillar box that evening, politely suggesting the change.
When she arrived, Lady Darley appeared agitated.
‘I’m sorry, but I shan’t require your services in future. It’s my husband’s decision. He says – no offence – but he says you’re not high class enough for a baronet’s lady and his daughters.’
‘I see.’ She did see. She saw that Hal had mentioned her name to Sir Henry. What must Sir Henry have thought, knowing that the girl from long ago was living in the vicinity of Darley Court and, worse, had been coming into his home?
But no more. Not unless today’s fittings went horribly wrong and the costumes needed redoing, which they wouldn’t, because she was too good at her job for that. She stopped halfway up the stairs and had to force frozen limbs to move again. This could be the final time. After her husband’s decree, Lady Darley might see no need for her to be present when the finished garments were tried on, so this could be the end of her contact with Izzie. Constance Mary Harper, Constance Mary Harper, she chanted in her head, like a prayer. Somewhere on the periphery of her mind, she was aware she needed to get Lily on her own. She should concentrate on that, but it was hard when her impending loss was smothering her.
‘Izzie McKenzie!’ Lady Darley exclaimed in a mock telling-off voice. ‘What’s that down the front of your pinafore?’
‘Marmalade,’ Frances chirped at once.
Juliet looked. There was her darling girl smeared with jam. No, not jam – marmalade. It was another child who had been smeared with jam. Abigail Carmichael. She shook her head as if to dislodge Abigail, but for some reason the child wouldn’t be turfed out. Two little girls in smeary pinafores.
‘I’m not putting it on here,’ Lily said hotly. ‘I’m going to my room.’ Snatching up the garment, she was gone.
‘Careful,’ Juliet called after her. ‘It’s only tacked.’ Too late, she realised she had missed the chance to see Lily alone. ‘Perhaps I—’
‘Leave her,’ said Lady Darley, her voice low with emotion.
Izzie in her costume was the most gorgeous sight Juliet had ever beheld. She stared, trying to imprint this moment on her heart, terrified that the image would shatter and vanish when she left, as it surely would. Constance Mary Harper, Constance Mary Harper. Her daughter’s name was a plea for strength.
Then, just when she most needed to apply her attention to Izzie, she realised what was wrong about Abigail Carmichael. Two little girls in smeary pinafores. Abigail was the same size and age as Izzie and Archie, but the child from Rosie’s attack should be a little older, a little bigger, a bit more mature. And Rosie had said she couldn’t have more children. So Abigail wasn’t hers, couldn’t be. Hannah. Abigail was Hannah’s. But where was Hannah? And if Abigail was hers … Oh, dear heaven. If Abigail was of a similar age to Izzie and Archie, and Hannah had gone to the job at Mr Nugent’s that Juliet had run away from …
It was over. The fittings were done, and the costumes were fine.
‘We’re leaving for our holiday tomorrow,’ said Lady Darley.
‘But I thought you were going—’
‘We were, but my husband can take us tomorrow and return the day after. Please deliver the costumes here for the housekeeper to send on.’
Dazed, she walked home. Marching into Garden Cottage, she removed the sewing from Mrs Livingston’s hands and calmly instructed her to take Archie for a walk.
‘What is it?’ Cecily demanded, but Juliet, hanging on by a thread, wouldn’t utter another word until they were alone.
She was shaking deep inside. Soon she would be shaking on the outside too. ‘There’s something I never told you about Lady Darley.’ And out it came, about the sleeve lady, and seeing her, or possibly dreaming it, at Mrs Maddox’s, and the identity of Izzie McKenzie.
‘It might have been a dream,’ Cecily whispered.
She pressed her fingers to Cecily’s mouth. ‘Don’t say it. Don’t make light of my situation.’
‘I’m not. I swear I’m not.’
‘She’s my daughter,’ Juliet breathed. ‘That’s how it feels.’
‘Why did you never tell me? I’d have understood.’
‘Don’t!’ It came out on a spurt of tears. ‘Don’t blame me for not saying. Don’t you think it’s bad enough without that?’
‘Sweetheart, I never meant … Come here, come here.’
She was wrapped in Cecily’s arms, being rocked like a child, Cecily’s cheek pressed against her scalp. The tears came then, hot and fierce, bursting through the tangle of anguish, while Cecily cuddled and murmured and rained little kisses into her hair.
At last, Juliet drew back, exhausted.
‘Are you all right?’ Cecily whispered.
‘No,’ she said, ‘but I will be. I have to be.’
At Rosie’s house, the moment Juliet said her name on the doorstep, something glittered in the footman’s eyes, and he was already closing the door as he said, ‘Mrs Carmichael is not at home.’
She stood transfixed for a moment before going down the steps. If Rosie wouldn’t let her in, she would wait for her to come out. If necessary, she would come back tomorrow and the next day and every day.
Eventually, a carriage came clopping along the street, halting outside Rosie’s house. The front door opened, and Rosie emerged, clad in a three-quarter-length coat of red fur with wide sleeves and deep, turned-back cuffs. Behind her came a smart gentleman with a cane, the sort used for show, not for leaning on.
Juliet darted across the road and clutched Rosie’s arm. ‘I have to see you.’
The gentleman with the cane and the servant holding the carriage door both stepped forward.
Juliet hissed, ‘It’s about Abigail, and if you won’t see me, I’ll bellow it from the rooftops.’
Rosie pulled her arm free, then she said, addressing the
men, ‘There’s something I must attend to.’ With a dazzling smile, she turned to the gentleman with the cane. ‘The properties will have to wait, Hugo. Don’t let anyone else have them. My carriage is at your disposal.’
Rosie swept indoors, Juliet on her heels. Rosie barely stopped for the maid to receive her outdoor things before heading for the same room as last time. She turned in a challenging swirl of turquoise silk to face Juliet.
‘What’s this about?’
‘What happened to your child?’
‘You met her the last time you came uninvited.’
‘Abigail isn’t yours. She can’t be – not if you’re being honest about getting your insides messed up. She isn’t old enough.’
‘She’s mine,’ Rosie said in a low voice, ‘in every way that counts.’
Juliet nodded. She could understand that. ‘What became of your own?’
‘I couldn’t get rid fast enough.’
‘Adoption or knitting needles?’
Rosie’s eyebrows shot up. ‘My, you have developed claws, haven’t you?’
‘I want the truth.’
‘Who the hell d’you think you are, coming here, making demands? What has any of it to do with you?’
‘More than you think.’
‘Spare me your riddles.’
She pulled in a breath. ‘Abigail is Hannah’s daughter.’
‘So?’
‘Where’s Hannah?’
‘I’ve heard enough.’ Rosie reached for the bell.
‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’ Juliet said quickly, and Rosie’s hand froze in mid-air. ‘Why else would you have adopted Abigail?’
Rosie threw her a dangerous look. ‘If you imagine this information is going to be of any use to you—’
‘I’m not here to blackmail you. I just want the truth.’
Rosie laughed, a mirthless sound. ‘I think you’ve already worked it out. Congratulations. Now leave.’
The Sewing Room Girl Page 32
