Callie jumped to her feet. “Oh, thank you, Mr. Lockhart! I haven’t broached the subject with Becky yet because I didn’t want to disappoint her if you didn’t approve of the notion, but tell her first thing tomorrow.”
“Fine, fine. You do that.”
To his astonishment, Callie actually dipped him a curtsy before she turned and headed toward the door of the library. Aubrey watched the way her hips swayed and wondered if a nanny’s hips were supposed to do that. He supposed that, all things considered, nannies had no more power to order bodies to certain specifications than any of the rest of the people in the world. It did seem, though, that, in a just world, she ought not to have such a superb figure.
There he went again, fretting about the injustice of life. He shook his head and was about to wrench his gaze from Callie’s hips when she surprised him again by turning abruptly at the door. With one hand holding the jamb, she gazed at him for a couple of seconds. It wasn’t a long time, but it was fully long enough for Aubrey to get a queasy feeling in his tummy.
Because he believed in facing problems squarely and not allowing them to fester or sneak up on him, he said, more sharply than was strictly necessary, “Yes? Is there something else you wish to discuss, Miss Prophet?”
“Yes. I mean, no. I mean . . . Oh, dear.”
She put a palm to her cheek. Aubrey started to worry. She wasn’t going to quit, was she? Not right after he’d acquiesced on the subject of a birthday party.
Birthday party. Whoever heard of such a thing? The world was becoming a more frivolous place by the hour.
“What is it, Miss Prophet?” He held his breath.
She flung a hand out. “It’s nothing, really, Mr. Lockhart. It’s only that—that— Mr. Lockhart, I apologize if I’ve been unpleasant to you on occasion during these past weeks. While, at first, I blamed you for neglecting Becky, I’ve since come to understand more fully the nature of your loss.”
Aubrey stared at her and opened his mouth. Since he could find no words to fill it, he shut it again.
Callie, her cheeks burning pink, muttered, “That’s all. I just wanted to apologize if I’ve been impolite to you, is all.”
Before he could string two coherent words together, she fled, and he was left staring at the wall and the doorway out of which she’d just exited his presence.
“Good Lord.”
Treasure Island lay forgotten on Aubrey’s lap as he considered Miss Callida Prophet and her unusual personality. He’d never met anyone quite like her. She was a true original.
For the life of him, he couldn’t drum up a single ounce of disapproval. And he tried.
*****
Callie told Becky about her birthday party the very next morning. Becky approved wholeheartedly, and was eager to begin planning party games and addressing invitations.
Since Callie’s duties weren’t as strenuous as they had been, now that school had started, she spent that day looking through The American Girl’s Handy Book in search of party games. She chatted with Mrs. Granger about an appropriate luncheon meal to serve a horde of seven- and eight-year-olds.
“I’ll bake a cake, of course,” said Mrs. Granger in a complacent voice. “Becky’s favorite is a white cake with white icing sprinkled with coconut.”
“Sounds delicious,” said Callie, who didn’t care much for coconut but was willing to eat anything if it would make Becky happy.
“And perhaps we should have an ice-cream dessert to go along with the cake.”
“My goodness. Do you think that’s going overboard?”
“I do not.” Mrs. Granger looked stern. “That poor child deserves all the good things we can give to her, Callie, and you know it. I sincerely doubt we’ll spoil her by feeding her friends cake and ice cream one day out of the year.”
After the two women had wrestled with Becky’s birthday meal and throttled it to a standstill, she wandered off to peruse The American Girl’s Handy Book some more.
In truth, she was using the book as an excuse. The conversation she’d had with Aubrey last night wouldn’t leave her alone.
So, he didn’t think she knew any of the family’s secrets, eh? Little did he know. Guilt enveloped her like one of San Francisco’s famous fogs.
No matter how guilty she felt about reading Aubrey’s letters to Anne, however, she couldn’t make herself stop reading them. Every night, she read to Becky from at least one of the letters. That was bad enough, and she excused that part of her prying by telling herself it was good for Becky to know that her parents had deeply and genuinely loved each other and their little girl.
The part that made her feel really guilty was that, every night after she’d kissed Becky good night, she took the letters to bed with her and reread them. She occasionally wondered if she had some kind of emotional insanity that propelled her to read another woman’s private and personal correspondence and to dream that the letters had been written to her instead of to Anne.
Not that Aubrey Lockhart or any other man would ever adore Callie Prophet the way Aubrey had adored his Anne. Callie was not like Anne in the least.
“Bother. The letters made Becky feel better. That’s the important part.”
She knew she was only trying to assuage her guilty conscience.
And she still read the letters. She even prayed about the matter, hoping to gain some guidance from God, since she was too ashamed of herself to ask anyone else what she should do.
Anyhow, she knew what she should do. She should confess to Aubrey that Becky had found the letters. She’d never be able to tell him that she herself had been reading them; that would be too humiliating. Even if she never made a full confession of her guilt, she should return the letters to Aubrey.
But she didn’t. That night, as every night since Becky had first showed her the letters Aubrey had written to Anne, Callie read a couple of them.
The really awful, not to mention stupid, part of the whole pickle was that Callie was wildly jealous of Anne, a dead woman. She’d feared she might also have fallen completely in love with Aubrey through those same letters, which was not merely awful and stupid, but impossibly idiotic.
She also began to understand that, all by itself, life was plenty complicated enough. When a person did things she knew she shouldn’t do, such as reading another person’s private letters, she only made it more so.
And she couldn’t stop for love nor money.
Chapter Ten
To all outward appearances, life at the Lockhart mansion proceeded much as usual during the month following the beginning of Becky’s first school year. Becky continued to blossom under Callie’s care, the gardens at the mansion took on an autumnal cast, Figgins started talking about instructing the gardeners to lay in firewood for the winter and having the storm windows put up, Mrs. Granger and a minion hired for the purpose finished the yearly potting, pickling, and preserving, and Aubrey’s business interests flourished.
Mark Henderson made his weekly visits to Aubrey’s house on schedule. Mrs. Granger, when she wasn’t preserving foodstuffs, continued to prepare delicious meals, she and Delilah kept the house tidy and dusted, and Callie continued to answer Becky’s letters to her mother in heaven.
And then there was Mrs. Bridgewater.
“The damned woman’s driving me mad,” Aubrey told Mark one day as the two men sat in Aubrey’s library office, sipping a pre-prandial sherry after slaying the day’s commercial dragons. The mail had been delivered earlier in the day, and now Aubrey’s insides tightened when he picked up the letter Figgins had just brought to him, He eyed the envelope with misgiving, recognizing the fiercely upright penmanship inscribed on it. He steeled himself to open the envelope and disgorge its contents.
“Is she still trying to get you to send Becky to live with her?”
“Yes. The infernal, interfering busybody.” He shook the envelope at Mark. “I swear, I get a letter from her every other day.”
Mark grinned. “She’s a regular Tartar, all right.”
“She keeps proposing new reasons Becky ought to move to San Francisco and live with her. She’s driving me crazy With her constant meddling.”
“Why is she so intent on having your daughter move in with her? I have to say that she doesn’t seem the motherly type to me.”
“Motherly! Maybe to a pack of hyenas she’d be an appropriate mother.”
Mark’s grin widened. “Besides, I should think she’d be glad Becky’s got a papa who cares about her.”
Aubrey scowled as he picked up the Chinese letter opener from his massive teakwood desk. He stabbed it under the gummed flap of the envelope. “She’s not happy unless she has all the members of her family directly under her thumb. She’s driven most of her relations out of San Francisco already, except those who can’t escape because of their business dealings.”
“Dictator in training, is she?”
“In training, hell. She graduated from the dictator college a long time ago. She could give the Kaiser a run for his money.” Lifting the folded paper out of the envelope, he flapped it open and eyed it with distaste. “Dash it.”
“What’s wrong?”
“She’s holding out lures,” Aubrey said glumly.
“Lures?” Mark seemed to be having trouble containing his amusement. “What sorts of lures?”
Aubrey didn’t think it was funny. He waved the letter in the air. “Old Bilgewater’s sister, Anne’s nice aunt, Glenda, is holding a party in honor of her daughter’s—Anne’s younger sister’s—engagement. Bilgewater wrote to ask us to attend.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound too horrible,” Mark mused consolingly. “When’s the party?”
“In a couple of weeks.”
“Can you claim Becky’s school duties prevent your attendance?” Mark looked thoughtful. “After all, you can’t take a child out of school every time a relative has a party, can you? And you’ll have to spend at least one night away from home if you attend a formal party in San Francisco, since it’s a four-hour trip each way.”
Aubrey, who had already noticed a diabolical trend in Bilgewater’s efforts to wrest Becky from him, shook his head grimly. “She thought of that one already. The party’s set for a Saturday night.” Holding the letter in one hand, he smacked it with the other. “Damn her, she said she talked Glenda into holding the party on a Saturday instead of a Thursday just so that Becky and I can attend.”
Mark didn’t do a very good job of concealing his enjoyment of this situation. “Thinks of everything, doesn’t she? Are you going to go?”
A feeling of savage frustration chewed at Aubrey’s insides. Dash it, it seemed that every time he turned around, his sanity was being tried by one officious female or another. First Miss Callie Prophet thundered into his home and took it over, and now Old Bilgewater was trying to direct the rest of his life from San Francisco. “I suppose I have to.”
“Why?” Mark sounded genuinely interested.
Slapping the letter down on the desk at his side, Aubrey growled, “Anne would want me to. Amalie was her favorite sister, and Glenda was her favorite aunt. Besides, Becky ought to become better acquainted with her San Francisco relatives. Most of them are quite nice. Bilgewater’s the only clinker in the works.”
“Look on the bright side,” Mark suggested. “She can’t live forever.”
Aubrey shot him a quick grin. “True. And she’s really more of an annoyance than a threat. She can’t do anything to take Becky away from me.”
With a shrug, Mark said, “There you go.”
“Bah.”
It was all so frustrating, though, no matter how little real power Bilgewater had. Until a couple of years ago, Aubrey Lockhart had believed himself to be in absolute control of his life. It seemed to him now that Anne’s illness had been the start of a whole series of events some evil presence had sent to prove to him that life was outside his command. He hated feeling out of control.
Happy sounds of a child and a nanny at play—Aubrey thought he heard the fierce yowlings of a particularly devilish black cat a couple of times, too—wafted through the library window. Although the early autumn mornings and evenings had begun to nip at the edges of the remains of the good old summertime, the afternoons had so far remained warm enough that Becky and Callie played outdoors after school. Aubrey sometimes wondered what the devil they found to do out there for so many hours at a stretch, although he hadn’t asked, for fear he might disapprove and thus instigate a squabble with the nanny. He was glad to know Becky was no longer lonely, in any event.
He rose from his chair and meandered over to the window, his hands clasped behind his back, and peered out. His daughter and her nanny seemed to be involved in some sort of craft activity involving tree bark, grass, and a variety of leaves, acorns, and other bits of flora. He squinted, but couldn’t make out what they were doing with it all.
Monster, reminding Aubrey of an Eastern potentate in his silent, superior pose, watched the activity, his yellow eyes glinting in the fading sunlight. His tail switched back and forth occasionally, as if to remind anyone who might be watching that he was aware of the goings-on around him and was ready to take action if necessary.
Aubrey had been staring gloomily out on the scene for a few minutes when Mark joined him at the window. Glancing at his secretary, Aubrey was neither pleased nor surprised to see that Mark’s gaze was directed not at Becky but at Miss Prophet. His infatuation with the woman remained untrammeled, apparently.
“I suppose I’ll have to take Becky to the dashed party. Don’t see any polite way out of it.”
With a shrug, Mark said, “It probably won’t be so bad, Mr. Lockhart.” He cleared his throat. “Ah, will you be taking Miss Prophet along? To look after Becky?”
Aubrey gave his secretary a searching lock. “I suppose so. I don’t think I’m up to traveling alone with Becky. Not exactly in my line, if you see what I mean, taking care of children.”
“Understandable.” Mark nodded. He cleared his throat again. “Er, I might be able to lend my assistance, if you’d like me to. You know, to carry things and so forth. Becky and I get along very well. I might be able to help keep her amused on the journey.”
Aubrey had to fight an urge to thump Mark on the jaw with his fist—which he unclenched as soon as he realized he’d clenched it. “Thank you.” His jaw seemed to have frozen into a tight knot. He relaxed it, too, and told himself to be calm. Mark’s offer was kindly meant. He was sure Mark didn’t intend to seduce Becky’s nanny. And, even if he did, what business was it of Aubrey’s?
As if he sensed that something odd had crept in the atmosphere, Mark glanced at Aubrey with some confusion. “Well, I know it’s difficult to travel with a child if you’re not used to it. At least, that’s what my sister Margaret tells me.” He laughed uneasily. “She’s got three, you know, and likes to take me along on trips to keep the kiddies entertained.”
“Ah. No. I didn’t know that.”
“Well, she does. Er, when did you say this party is planned?”
Eager to wrench his thoughts away from the problem of Mark Henderson and Callie Prophet, Aubrey said, “Weekend after next.”
“I can plan my visit out here on Friday instead of Wednesday that week, if it will help you out,” Mark said hopefully.
Knowing he was being completely irrational and disliking himself for it, Aubrey gave himself a fierce inner shake and said, “Thank you. That would be great.”
“Good.”
Dash it, the man didn’t have to sound so cheerful about it. Aubrey shot Mark a glare from under his lowered eyebrows, but Mark didn’t see it. He was too busy gazing wistfully at Miss Prophet.
*****
Both Callie and Becky were excited about their trip to San Francisco. “Papa says I’ve been there before,” confided Becky, “but I don’t ‘member it much.” She paused, and Callie thought she could see the gears in her little brain grinding. “I ‘member fireworks, though.”
“Fireworks?” Callie smiled at
Mark Henderson as he took a suitcase from her and handed it to the coachman.
“I think you’re remembering the Chinese New Year’s celebration we saw a couple of years ago, Becky,” Aubrey said.
Callie was startled when he thrust Mark out of the way and lifted a second suitcase from the ground near Callie. “That must have been fun,” she said as she watched Aubrey brusquely gesture Mark to the back of the carriage.
“It was,” Aubrey said curtly. “Here, Mark, why don’t you help John strap these suitcases on the back of the coach so they won’t fall off.” He frowned, “Don’t see why we have to take so dashed much baggage with us.”
“It’s because we have to bring day wear and party wear, Mr. Lockhart.” Callie pitched her tone to sound cool and neutral.
“Hmm.” Aubrey all but hurled a bandbox at Mark.
Eventually they settled into Aubrey’s comfortable traveling coach, and John, the head groom at the Lockhart stables and today’s coachman, clicked to the horses to let them know they could start on the journey. Callie and Becky sat on one side of the commodious coach, while Aubrey and Mark took their seats across from them. Becky’s cheeks were pink with excitement.
“I can’t wait to see San ‘Frisco,” she announced, settling back and folding her hand in her lap, in blatant imitation of Callie, who’d only sat thus because she was trying to look prim. She didn’t feel prim. She felt as exuberant as Becky looked, actually. As much as she adored Santa Angelica, she also occasionally loved visiting the city.
“It should be fun,” she said, keeping her tone sober. “And I’m sure you’ll enjoy seeing your San Francisco relations again, too.”
“I s’pose so.” Becky sounded as if her San Francisco relations were the least of her concerns. •
Callie tried to hide her grin. Mark didn’t go that far, He laughed outright. “What gives me the feeling you’re more interested in revisiting Chinatown than in revisiting your San Francisco relatives, Miss Becky?”
Heaven Sent Page 14
