“Oh, but your dress,” Rachel exclaimed. “It’s so beautiful, and Ruthie is drooling quite a bit right now.”
I shrugged, having draped the little blanket Freddy had handed me over my shoulder. “This will catch most of it, and I doubt if anything it doesn’t can’t be remedied.”
I found myself swaying from side to side to keep the little one soothed. Sidney leaned closer, and I turned with a smile to allow him to see her better, and she him.
“Well, hullo, there,” he murmured, offering her his finger.
I felt certain she would ignore it in favor of the pearls, but I was proven wrong. She looked up at his face before reaching out to take it, and then broke into a toothless, slobbery smile. Even at six months old, the ladies were still helpless in the face of Sidney’s winsome looks.
“Verity, mind your pearls,” my mother chastised, appearing at my side.
“I know, Mother,” I replied, fighting to restrain my annoyance. “I have a firm grip on them.”
“You’ll learn you can’t wear such fripperies with Ruthie about,” she continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “Or such gowns.” Her voice grew strident. “The neckline, Verity. You’ll do well to wear something a bit simpler and more modest. Like Rachel.”
Rachel’s shoulders seemed to deflate a little, and I could see her mentally comparing my sage-green frock with draped V neck and embroidered brassiere to her pale yellow gown with its simple drop waist and three-flounced hem. Though by no means dowdy or cheap, it couldn’t quite compete with Paris couture.
“Rachel looks absolutely charming,” I countered.
“Of course, she does. She has no need for such brazen attire to accentuate her beauty.”
I wasn’t certain whether my mother had meant to insult me or not, but my cheeks stung regardless. Sensing my embarrassment, Rachel’s gaze lifted to meet mine, seeming to offer her unspoken condolence. Which only made my discomfiture turn to guilt as I wondered how often Rachel had been forced to dodge my mother’s barbed comments in my absence.
Mother’s attention shifted to Tim, and I braced for her to flay him with her tongue next. But she merely straightened his tie before nodding her head in approval and turning away. I turned to Freddy in bewilderment, and the manner in which his eyebrows rose in emphasis seemed to say he had much more to tell me later.
“Oh, meine Engel,” a voice exclaimed over my shoulder, and I turned to discover that Tante Ilse had joined us, looking resplendent in a gown of azure silk in a style popular a decade before. “Is this my great-great-niece?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied, turning toward her parents to continue the introductions.
“This is Ruth,” Freddy told her.
“Ruth Townsend, what a darling you are,” she told the little girl, distracting her briefly from her study of my pearls. “So precious.” Her face had softened into an entranced smile, and I wondered if I’d yet seen her this happy since her arrival on my doorstep six days prior.
It made me breathe a little deeper, knowing I’d made the right choice to come home earlier than planned. After everything she’d endured, this was where Tante Ilse needed to be—among family. Any amount of strain or awkwardness I might experience was well worth it knowing that.
CHAPTER 10
“Somehow I knew I would find you here,” I proclaimed as I rounded the corner in the barn that led to the stable block.
Freddy looked up from the bale of hay he’d perched upon, a hank of brown hair falling over his forehead. “Yes, well, sometimes the horses are better company.”
Tabitha, who lay on the floor at his feet, looked up at my appearance, but then subsided again when she discovered it was just me.
I leaned against the wall, studying his slumped shoulders and loosened bow tie. Its ends draped over his collar. The lantern at his feet threw his shadow up across the stall behind him. But it was the whisky bottle he dangled between his spread legs that most interested me.
“Did you bring that to share?” I asked as I approached.
One corner of his lips curled upward, and he lifted the bottle, tipping it toward me. “Don’t think I didn’t notice how aggravated you were with Mother about her ‘no ladies tippling’ policy. I figured you could use some, Pip,” he remarked, using the shortened form of Pipsqueak, the childhood nickname my brothers and their friends had always called me. “No glasses, though.”
“Since when have I needed one in your company?” I retorted, snatching the bottle from his hand and setting it to my mouth. The whisky was rich and peaty, and I welcomed the bite and burn as I took a deep swallow. “How does Rachel stand it?” I asked, sinking down onto the bale beside him as I passed back the bottle.
“She’s never been much of a drinker, and it’s best she avoid doing so while she’s nursing anyway.”
I looked at him in surprise. “Really?” Sometimes it was easy to forget Freddy was a doctor, a battle-hardened surgeon.
He nodded. “While expecting as well.”
I sighed, sinking my head back against the stall behind me. “Lovely. Something to look forward to,” I drawled sarcastically.
The horse in the stall behind us stirred, shuffling the fresh hay strewn about the floor and snorting through his nostrils. It was a comforting sound, a soft exhale in the otherwise quiet barn rife with the scents of wood, straw, and warm animals.
“You aren’t, are you?”
I turned to Freddy in confusion.
“Expecting?” he clarified.
“No,” I replied perhaps a trifle too emphatically. After a moment of silence, I scoffed. “Mother didn’t put you up to that, did she?”
Freddy’s mouth twitched around the mouth of the bottle. “No. But it would be just like her to do so, wouldn’t it?”
“Like when she sent you to London a few months back to interfere.”
“I didn’t . . .” he began to protest, but at the sight of my challenging stare he relented. “All right, yes. It was interfering, wasn’t it?”
I held my hand out to ask for the whisky. “What changed your mind about that?” I asked before taking a swig. Four months ago I felt certain he would never have admitted as much.
“Seeing Sidney with you.”
I looked to him in question.
“If he’s in the least upset with you for anything that happened during or since the war, he certainly doesn’t show it. In fact, he seems what we might have called in our younger days ‘sickeningly besotted.’ ” His voice wasn’t derisive, as it might have been, but almost rather wistful.
“Well, I don’t know about that,” I replied. “But we are both dedicated to working through our differences.” I stared morosely at a gouge in the opposite wall. “The war wasn’t easy on any of us.”
In answer, Freddy took the bottle from me and took a long drink.
Not for the first time, I pondered what his war must have been like.
When we were young, Freddy had wanted to be a veterinarian, to look after horses—thoroughbreds and racing horses, in particular. But well-born gentlemen, even untitled ones, did not become animal doctors. So he’d elected to go to medical school instead. Even that was unconventional, for as the oldest son and Father’s heir, he had no need for a profession. He would eventually inherit Brock House and all its lands, and they generated more than enough income for a country gentleman and his family. But Freddy had been determined. And not simply to become a gentrified physician, but a skilled surgeon—a move that proved fortuitous once the war broke out.
He did not officially join the Royal Army Medical Corps until 1916, when he was sent to the Western Front, but while still in medical school in 1914 he’d already pledged himself, should he be needed. Of course, none of us had believed the war would last beyond Christmas when it first began, but that had swiftly changed as the number of casualties mounted higher and higher in September and October of that year. By 1916, Freddy and all of his fellow medical school graduates were desperately needed. So off he went, headlong i
nto the bloodbath of the Battle of the Somme. A baptism in fire if ever there was one.
I could only guess at the horrifying injuries he’d encountered, at the number of wounded soldiers who had passed over his operating table, at the number who had lived and who had died. I wondered whether Freddy kept a mental tally of those he was helpless to patch up, and those he felt he should have been able to save, much like Sidney did of the men who had served under his command. It was enough to rattle me just thinking about it.
I huddled deeper into my coat, wiggling my toes in the boots I had donned after discarding my pumps. “Ruthie is an absolute darling,” I told him, meaning every word, though they sounded somewhat hollow given my words immediately before. But I couldn’t think of how else to segue into asking about Rachel without being too obvious. “You must be proud.”
“I am,” he admitted. “She’s . . . wonderful.”
I could read in his expression that he felt that word was inadequate to sum up precisely what his daughter was to him, and I smiled, letting him know I understood the sentiment. “And Rachel? She seems to be a happy mother?”
“Yes. She’s wonderful with Ruth.”
I nodded, unsurprised he’d resorted to repeating the same adjective. “And you?” I began hesitantly. “The two of you seem . . . happy.”
This was a lie, but a well-intentioned one. The only thing that had become increasingly evident to me over dinner was that first impressions were fickle, and their relationship was decidedly strained.
“Don’t, Verity,” Freddy cautioned in a hard voice.
“I only . . .”
“No,” he snapped. “We’re not discussing me and Rachel. We’re just fine.” He turned to glare at me. “And even if we weren’t, you lost the right to question me about it when you stayed away so long.”
My heart ached as the truth of that statement, and the pain evident in his words, struck home.
He shifted and sank his head back so that it banged lightly against the wood behind us. “Mind your own marriage.”
I swallowed, realizing I’d misstepped, or overstepped—possibly both. Either way, apologizing would only make it worse, so I allowed the silence to stretch between us. One that was at first awkward, but became more comfortable as his irritation diminished. My older brothers and I seemed to have always possessed the ability to inhabit the same space without speaking. There was a comfort and a solace in that. If only my thoughts hadn’t shifted to Rob.
As if sensing the change in my demeanor, and the reason for it, Freddy remarked without looking at me, “His treehouse is still there. I’m not sure how stable it is, but it’s still standing. For now.”
I didn’t respond. I couldn’t without revealing my distress. In any case, I had no intention of visiting Rob’s retreat. Not yet anyway. Perhaps never.
Regardless, Freddy seemed to realize I was fighting back tears and passed me the whisky bottle. I accepted it, taking a shallow pull—afraid that if I tried to drink any deeper I might choke on it and the knot in my throat. The burning warmth that filled my stomach helped distract me from the sting at the back of my eyes.
I turned my head toward the sound of voices coming from the front of the barn. One was Sidney’s low rumble, while the other was louder and more boisterous, and undoubtedly belonged to our younger brother, Tim.
Freddy heaved a heavy sigh.
“Before they find us, tell me what all that was with Tim,” I requested, having sensed earlier in the drawing room that he wished to tell me something.
He opened his mouth to answer, but then seemed to think better of it, shaking his head. “You’ll see for yourself what I mean soon enough,” was his cryptic reply. Before I could press him on it, they were upon us.
“See, I told you they would be out here,” Tim declared before turning to me. “Sidney was looking for you.” He spied the bottle cradled in Freddy’s hand. “Dipping into Father’s reserve?”
Freddy scowled. “It’s my own.”
“Then let me have a drink?”
I lifted my gaze to my husband’s, who stood watching me with an inscrutable look, one hand clutching one of his specially blended Turkish cigarettes and the other tucked in his trouser pocket. I arched my eyebrows in subtle query, but his only response was an amused quirk of his lips. I supposed the situation was rather humorous. Here I was, a sophisticated married woman—and a spy, to boot—and yet I was forced to slink away to the barn like an adolescent in order to have a dram of whisky.
“Out here checking on Ruby?” Tim asked, and then continued, answering the question I must have looked. “I heard Father threaten to sell her to the knacker yard if you didn’t come home for a visit.” His head nodded toward a stall farther along the row where the old pony must have drowsed. “She’s still alive and kicking.” He rubbed his backside. “Literally.”
Ruby had never been fond of Tim. He’d been an annoying child.
“You’ve only yourself to blame if you got too close,” I quipped, refusing to feel any empathy for him.
“Yes, probably,” he admitted with good grace before taking another swig from the bottle.
“Don’t drink it all,” Freddy groused, demanding it back. “I’ll not be blamed for your having too thick a head to attend church tomorrow.”
“I won’t,” he protested mildly, passing the bottle back to him nonetheless. “I’m well aware of Mother’s intentions that we put on a great show of family unity for the other parishioners.” He scrubbed a hand back through his too-long hair. “Though, we won’t be in full force until Grace returns.”
Freddy’s mouth quirked derisively as he proffered the bottle to Sidney and then me, but we both shook our heads. “And then Bolingbroke will want to sit with us.”
“Who is this Bolingbroke chap?” I asked, grateful they’d offered me the opening to do so.
“Old Fenrick’s nephew,” Tim replied, approaching one of the hooks where the tack hung. He fidgeted with it as if it wasn’t positioned right. “He came to help convert part of Gayle Mill to provide electricity for the village.”
“Then he’s educated?” I surmised, trying to decipher the look that had passed between my brothers. Clearly there was something about Bolingbroke they disliked or found suspect.
“Cambridge, I believe,” Freddy answered when Tim turned away, strolling down the line of stalls, his hands fiddling with every item that wasn’t pinned down, and even some of those.
“Did he serve?” Sidney chimed in to query around a drag of his cigarette, leaning his shoulder against the wall.
“With the Northumberland Fusiliers.” He paused, scorn lacing his next words. “Until he received his Blighty wound.”
That explained it, then. Mother’s hesitance to accept him and my brothers’ vague contempt. The word Blighty had been the soldiers’ rather affectionate term for Britain or home. And a Blighty wound was trench talk for an injury that was serious enough to get a man sent back to Britain—removing him from combat for a long period of time, if not forever—but that was neither mortal nor permanently debilitating. Receiving such a wound was not cause for disdain in and of itself. But if it was combined with the suspicion that the injury had been deliberately inflicted in order to escape the fighting—a suspicion evident in Freddy’s curled lip—then it would explain the family’s mistrust and derision. The sin of perceived cowardice was difficult for most to accept, and a taint that was all but impossible to escape when proof of one’s guilt or innocence was mutable.
“Is he in your care?” I asked Freddy, curious if he’d examined the wound.
“No, he prefers to drive to Kendal.”
Which was even more suspicious. For why would Bolingbroke travel all the way to Kendal when he had a competent and experienced surgeon here in Hawes? But perhaps that was my bias showing. Maybe he felt uncomfortable discussing medical matters with the man he presumably hoped to make his brother-in-law.
Whatever the case, Freddy’s opinion about Bolingbroke’s Blighty w
ound was apparently mere speculation. If he had more definitive proof, he would have shared it.
Tim returned toward us, a riding crop in his hands, which he flicked toward his feet. “When did Tante Ilse arrive in England? I didn’t even know she was coming.”
Freddy’s gaze lifted to him in annoyance. “Mother told us over dinner earlier this week, and we’ve discussed it at least half a dozen times since then.”
“Oh,” he replied, seemingly unfazed by his brother’s criticism, and also unrepentant. He tilted his head to the side as if in thought while his wrist continued to flick the crop, snapping the soles of his shoes. “I thought her maid was older. With warts.”
I arched my brows. “I don’t recall the warts, but yes, Schmidt was older. She died from the influenza.” As so many others had. “You must have seen Bauer, her new maid.” I searched his face, wary of why he’d asked about Bauer. After all, she was quite pretty.
But his gaze remained trained on his shoes as he responded almost distractedly. “No warts on her.”
Detecting no inappropriate level of interest, I relaxed. “I imagine not.”
“For the love of—” Freddy suddenly snarled, breaking off before he used the Lord’s name in vain, an infraction that would have earned us a lashing as children. “Stop that!” he ordered Tim. “Can you not stand still for one second?”
Tim’s lashing motions slowed, but never actually stopped. “I can.” He grinned in a manner calculated to vex Freddy even more. “I simply choose not to.”
“Well, change your mind before I rip that out of your hand and whip you with it myself.”
“I’d like to see you try.”
Tabitha half rose to her feet, barking.
Before Freddy could follow through on his threat, I pressed a staying hand to his chest, feeling his muscles tense beneath his tailored coat. “Stop it. Both of you. Unless you want to draw Mother out here. Or worse, Father.”
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