The Letter

by Ruth Saberton

  “To all of us,” said Mrs Polmartin, dabbing her eyes on the corner of her apron. “The Rivers are part of Rosecraddick and to lose Mr Kit feels like losing family.”

  “You haven’t lost him. Missing isn’t dead,” Daisy said angrily. A cold hand laid itself on her heart. She chose to ignore it. “What’s the matter with you all? He’s not dead.”

  Kit couldn’t be dead. He was coming home to marry her. He’d promised.

  Nancy and Mrs Polmartin exchanged a look that made Daisy want to scream. This wasn’t the same as Gem or the housekeeper’s son, both of whom had been killed outright and buried in foreign soil with no chance of a mistake being made. Kit was missing. And missing didn’t mean dead. He was somewhere waiting for her to find him.

  Daisy supposed she must have gone into shock at this point because it all became something of a blur. There was hot sweet tea followed by brandy, maybe several brandies, which she must have drunk because her stomach started to churn and her head felt odd. Nancy and Mrs Polmartin talked in hushed voices but Daisy scarcely heard a word they said. Nor did she much care that her big secret wasn’t quite as secret as she thought. What did any of that matter now?

  She needed to talk to Kit’s parents and find out what they knew. If she discovered where Kit was last seen and where he’d been fighting, then she could pick up a breadcrumb trail. He could be injured. He could even be a prisoner of war. There would be a way to find him because Kit couldn’t be dead. If he was, Daisy would know. She would feel it.

  How could you not feel your heart being wrenched out of your body?

  While she sipped the brandy, Daisy’s mind was shuttling back and forth as questions and ideas jostled to be at the forefront. Perhaps the army had got the details wrong. That happened. Maybe he even had amnesia? There could be all manner of explanations. But death? Daisy would never, ever accept that. She knew he couldn’t be dead, that their love couldn’t be drifting away like dandelion seeds in the wind.

  Kit was alive. All Daisy had to do was find a way to prove it and then find Kit.

  She pushed her glass aside and stood up so abruptly that her chair fell over. The loud clatter stopped Nancy and Mrs Polmartin mid conversation.

  “Where are you going, Miss?” Nancy asked as Daisy headed to the door.

  “To find out what happened to Kit,” Daisy said.

  She would discover where Kit was last seen and then she would search for him and bring him home – but to do this she needed all the facts, which would mean having an extremely difficult conversation.

  Daisy was going to pay Kit’s parents a long-overdue visit.

  Chapter 14

  Daisy, August 1916

  Although she’d passed Rosecraddick Manor a thousand times, Daisy had never had occasion to visit. As she paused by the impressive stone-pillared entrance and looked down the drive, her stomach flipped with nerves. The old manor house was beautiful against the summer sky, yet forbidding in its grandeur. Much of it was Elizabethan, but some of it was even older; there were battlements and arrow slits in the oldest parts, and myriad mullioned windows glinted in the sunshine like eyes heavily browed with boughs of twisting wisteria. Elsewhere, ivy laced the stonework. With walled gardens, green lawns and deep woods beyond, and silvery grey lichen velveting the roof, Rosecraddick Manor was like something out of a fairy tale. As in any good fairy tale, there was a handsome prince – but in this story he was the one in need of rescue.

  Daisy leaned Nancy’s bicycle against one of the pillars and stood for a moment to recover her breath after the uphill journey from the Rectory. She’d been in such haste to reach the Manor that she’d bicycled hard and fast, and now there was a stitch in her side and her breath burned in her lungs. Maybe she wasn’t thinking straight. Perhaps, as Nancy had warned, she was making a huge mistake by coming here. Nevertheless, she had to speak to Kit’s parents. If they could tell her where he’d been fighting when he was reported missing in action, then she would have a starting place for her search.

  Once her breath was less ragged, Daisy smoothed down her skirts and patted her hair back into place. The engagement ring was on her finger, and tucked safely in her pocket were Kit’s letters. These items should prove to his parents that she was indeed their son’s fiancée. She’d toyed with the idea of bringing his poems too, but then she’d decided against it. In some ways, Kit’s poetry was far more personal than his letters: the poems had drawn Daisy deep into Kit’s soul and taught her how to view the world and the war through his eyes. No person had ever read them apart from her, and until Kit was home and willing to share them, Daisy was determined they would remain a secret. Besides, the imagery they evoked was stark and Daisy couldn’t bear to distress the Rivers further. It was best that the poems remained hidden beneath the floorboard for now.

  “I’m Kit’s fiancée,” she said aloud, squaring her shoulders and gulping down her nerves. “I have every right to visit his parents and every right to know the truth, don’t I?”

  But her only reply was the call of a woodpigeon from across the valley. Even the seagulls and the rooks were silent on the matter.

  Daisy raised her chin and began to walk up the drive. With every footstep that took her closer to the house, she wondered how it was possible that her gentle and compassionate Kit came from a world such as this. When they’d been together, the realities of wealth and social standing had rarely featured, but now, as she dredged up the courage to approach his parents, Daisy was desperately aware of the differences between them – differences that had upset his parents so much and still kept Daisy and Kit apart. How could she ever have forgotten these?

  The reality was that Kit wasn’t just Kit. Her fiancé was more than the poet who’d read to her on the beach with her head cradled against his shoulder and his fingers threaded into her curls. He was more than the man who’d held her close and loved her with every fibre of his being. Kit was the heir to everything as far as the eye could see. One day this beautiful manor house, with its thousands of acres of land and collections of priceless artwork, would all be his – to say nothing of the tenant farms and the properties in London.

  He was the landowner’s son and she was a doctor’s daughter from London. This was respectable, Daisy reminded herself. She might not be from the upper classes but marriage to her was hardly dragging the Rivers’ noble lineage into the gutter. It might have caused a little gossip and raised a few eyebrows, but it wouldn’t be the awful scandal they seemed to think it might be. Cornwall was the kind of place that was slow to change, but even here the war had altered things. People were adapting, thinking was becoming more modern and marriage between the heir to the estate and the Reverend’s goddaughter wouldn’t ruffle too many feathers. Her mother had told her all those years ago that the new century would bring changes she couldn’t imagine. Recalling Mama’s words now made Daisy even more determined to see Kit’s parents. She was Kit’s fiancée. He loved her and had wanted to marry her before he left – and he would have done so too, had she not dissuaded him.

  Oh! If only she had listened! Then nobody would be able to keep anything from her. As Kit’s wife Daisy would have been informed first and told where her husband had been fighting. She wouldn’t have had to hear the news second-hand or scrabble for information. Tears burned behind her eyes and she blinked them away furiously, knowing that if she started to cry now she was in danger of never stopping. She had nothing, nothing, to be ashamed of.

  As Daisy grew closer to the house it soon became clear that the war hadn’t left the Manor as untouched as it had initially appeared from the entrance. Weeds were shooting upwards through the drive, the overgrown lawn was rippling and sighing like the sea, and the roses around the porch were rampant and desperately in need of deadheading. Old blooms hung heavy and rotted from the wire clipped to the stonework, reminding her of Kit’s description of bloated corpses strung along the barbed wire or blooming hellishly in shell holes. She shuddered and looked away. There were too many images of
death and decay, as though nature was grieving for the waste of life across the water.

  She must share that concept with Kit in her next letter because he’d appreciate it, Daisy thought. Then she brought herself up short. There would be no more letters. She’d have to wait until she saw him. And she would see him again, because he wasn’t dead. He wasn’t.

  Daisy inhaled and exhaled to calm herself – an exercise Papa swore by – and then climbed the steps and tugged at the bell pull. There was a deep clanging from within, but it seemed an age before the door was answered by Nancy’s sister, Sally.

  “Miss Daisy!” Sally’s blue eyes were wide as she showed Daisy into the vaulted entrance hall. I’m not expected then, Daisy thought grimly. “So sorry to keep you waiting, Miss. Blame the conscription because we’ve no footmen left now and I’m fair rushed off my feet, let me tell you. Mr Emmet’s busy with the master most of the time but thank goodness he’s too old to fight!”

  Mr Emmet was the Rivers family’s butler, a dour man well known in the village for his unwavering loyalty to the family and lack of humour. With his pale face, beaky nose and grim expression, he reminded Daisy of a character from a gothic novel.

  “He scared the hell out of me as a boy,” Kit had told her once. “He looked just like an undertaker and I had nightmares about him nailing me into a coffin. He was Father’s batman in the army and he’s loyal to Pa, I’ll give him that, but he gives me the shivers.”

  He gave Daisy the shivers too, and she was relieved the butler was occupied. She’d been the recipient of several disapproving looks from him during Sunday services, and on one occasion she’d been certain that he’d spotted Kit turning and smiling at her. He knows, she’d thought, and a feeling of unease had crept over her which had never quite left.

  “I’ve come to see the Colonel,” she told Sally now, taking off her hat and passing it over. The hall was gloomy now that the window blinds had been lowered as a mark of respect.

  “Begging your pardon, Miss, but you won’t be able to. He’s in bed and he’s being ever so odd. Only Mr Emmet’s been allowed upstairs. The master’s health has taken a dreadful turn for the worse these past weeks, and with Mr Kit dead he’s in a terrible state.”

  “Mr Kit is not dead. He’s missing,” Daisy snapped. “It’s not the same thing at all. If the Colonel is indisposed then I’ll see Lady Rivers and,” she added when Sally opened her mouth to protest, “I’m not going away until I do. This is about Mr Kit and it’s important.”

  Her mama had possessed an I won’t be argued with tone that nobody in the Hills family had ever dared disobey, and Daisy was now thrilled to hear it ringing through her own voice. Before long Sally was showing her through to the drawing room. Daisy was so nervous that she scarcely noticed the beauty of the house or the impressive portraits lining the panelled walls. Even the sad-eyed deer and the polecats trapped in glass cases didn’t fully register.

  “I thought I made it clear I was not to be disturbed?” said a voice when Sally opened a heavy door.

  “I beg your pardon, ma’am, but Miss Hills has called and says she needs to speak with you.”

  “I said nobody was to disturb me! Is there no respect? No shame? I am in mourning for my son!”

  Before she could be sent away, Daisy ducked beneath Sally’s arm and stepped into a large room richly panelled in oak. Family portraits hung all around, fixing Daisy with challenging stares as though outraged that she’d dared to enter without permission. A longcase clock ticked the time away from the farthest corner and, even though it was high summer, a merry fire danced and crackled in the grate. Yet despite this heat the atmosphere was chilly. Daisy shivered, wishing she hadn’t been in such haste to leave the Rectory that she’d forgotten her shawl.

  Lady Rivers was seated at a writing desk. Slowly replacing the cap onto her fountain pen, she folded her hands and regarded Daisy with distaste, as though Daisy were an unpleasant insect that required squashing. Kit’s mother was dressed in black but her eyes, Daisy noticed, weren’t red from weeping. For someone who had recently learned that her son was dead, Lady Rivers appeared remarkably composed.

  “I wondered how long it would be before we were graced with your company,” she said, reaching into a drawer and pulling out a slim leather wallet. “Very well. Name your price.”

  For a moment all Daisy could do was stare, taken aback to be this close to Kit’s mother. She’d often seen Lady Rivers at church, but never closely enough to study any similarities to Kit. Her ash-blonde hair, swept up in an elegant chignon, must once have been the same corn-bright hue as Kit’s, and her face had the same high cheekbones – although it lacked Kit’s openness and ready smile. Whereas Kit tended to laugh and draw people in, his mother’s features were set in a defensive expression and her downturned mouth implied that she found life perpetually disappointing. She would have been beautiful once, as her portrait above the fireplace testified, but today her lips were a tight slash of coral in a lined and powdery face, while her green eyes were as cold as sea-washed glass.

  “Well?” One slim brow arched quizzically. “How much will it cost for you to leave us and our son’s memory in peace?”

  Daisy felt as though she had received a physical blow.

  “I haven’t come here for money! I came as soon as I heard the news about Kit because I had to speak to you. He isn’t dead! I know he isn’t. Kit is alive.”

  Kit’s mother blanched. One hand fluttered to her throat.

  “How could you possibly know that?” she whispered. The blood even seemed to vanish from her lips. “It’s impossible you’d know that. Nobody knows that. They can’t.”

  “I do!” Daisy cried. She stepped forward, her hands pressed against her heart. “Lady Rivers, I would know if Kit were dead. I would feel it in here!” She struck her chest with her hands. “My heart would tell me. You see, we love each other and—”

  Lady Rivers gave a shrill laugh. She seemed oddly relieved by Daisy’s answer.

  “What nonsense is this? Feelings? Love? Your heart?” Her lips curled scornfully. “Have you deliberately come here to mock me? Do you not think I would know if my son were alive?”

  “I’m only telling you what I feel!” Daisy cried. “I would know if Kit was dead!”

  “You would know? You? Who are you to presume to barge in here and speak to me about my son like this?”

  Daisy took a deep breath. This was it.

  “Lady Rivers, you need to know that Kit and I are engaged to be married. I’m his fiancée.”

  Lady Rivers was on her feet now and glaring at Daisy.

  “I beg your pardon? Engaged? You most certainly are not. On the day I have to announce that my son is dead, you choose to come here and tell such lies? In any case, we would have flatly forbidden it. Christopher had his reputation to consider. He would never marry a slut like you. Never!”

  Daisy was finding it hard to breathe. It was as though the air was poisoned.

  “I know a great deal about you, Miss Hills. More than you think,” said Lady Rivers. “I know all about your secret meetings and your sordid little trysts with my boy. I know about all of it. You thought you’d fooled us, didn’t you? But I know your type, so we had you watched. We wouldn’t let a girl like you get her claws into our son.”

  Daisy stared at her.

  “You look surprised.” Lady Rivers crossed the room, her skirts swishing as though with an ire of their own, until she was standing in front of Daisy. She was taller than Daisy by far. When she reached forward suddenly and took hold of Daisy’s chin, her thumb and forefinger bit into the flesh and Daisy cried out in pain.

  “You’re pretty enough, I suppose, and I can see why my son would find you becoming, but do you honestly think you’re the first village girl Kit’s enjoyed? Are you really so naïve? He was just having fun, as young men do before they settle down. Christopher would have told you anything to lift your petticoats – and I can see by your face that you’ve let him. You silly, fool
ish girl! He was never serious about you. He was just sowing his oats.”

  Daisy was shocked. She wanted to clap her hands over her ears to block out the ugly language. None of what Lady Rivers was saying was true, she told herself sharply. To know the truth, all Daisy had to do was recall the magical summer moments she’d spent with Kit: the days passed wandering the woods around Rosecraddick Manor, the hours spent swimming in the cove and then dozing beneath the midsummer sun, and finally the engagement trip to Truro. Then there were his letters and the engagement ring, not to mention the poems that he’d only shared with her.

  Kit loved her. He did. He really did.

  “Kit is – was – our heir. He knew full well that any prospective bride would have needed to meet with our approval, and you most definitely do not. There is no way my son would have proposed marriage without our permission. Kit understood that the future of the estate rested on making a good match. It was the only way to keep everything safe – and if it hadn’t been for you, he would have done his duty and married an heiress.”

  Now Daisy understood everything. The Rosecraddick estate, like so many across the country, was probably burdened with debts and taxes. A good name and a noble lineage were all that shored up their bad credit. Kit had often mentioned how many American heiresses had swapped their papas’ millions for marriage to an aristocrat; he’d teased Daisy by wondering whether he ought to follow suit. Then he’d kissed her and promised that all the treasure in the world didn’t compare to his love for her. His parents must have pinned all their hopes on an advantageous marriage, Daisy realised. No wonder they’d been so bitterly opposed to Kit and Daisy’s relationship. Kit’s future marriage had been part of a bigger plan for the family’s prosperity. When he’d decided that he wanted something more, there had soon been conflict. Love, like poetry, had never been part of Colonel and Lady Rivers’ plan for their only son.