Heaven alone knew what might happen if Miss Prophet were left to her own devices. For all Aubrey knew, she’d allow Mark Henderson to sweep her off her feet and carry her away from the Lockhart abode. That would never do. Becky would be crushed.
Rather than see his daughter suffer another wrenching loss, Aubrey would make sacrifices. Hell’s bells, he was even willing to sacrifice himself.
By the time Figgins sounded the gong to announce dinner,
Aubrey had begun to feel quite noble.
*****
Becky yawned hugely. “But I want to write to my mama tonight, Miss Prophet, because I want to tell her about my party.”
“Very well, dear. We’ll write to your mama.” Every time Becky wrote to her mother in heaven, Callie experienced an uncomfortable sensation of compassion mixed with guilt. She wasn’t sure which emotion was dominant. Either one all by itself was hard to stomach. Both of them together might have given her indigestion, except that Callie’s digestion was superb and nothing did that.
“I want to say what we did. Especially the skating. Then I can send her the letter along with the pictures.” Becky had even tell what some of them were supposed to be.
She brought more paper and pencils to the child-size table on which Becky wrote her letters. The little girl was wearing her brand-new nightgown Mrs. Granger had given her, and the frilly cap that went with it. Delilah had knitted her some bed socks, too, so she was ready to hop under the covers as soon as she finished her letter and said her prayers. Callie made sure Becky said her prayers every night. Becky’s prayers did something to ease Callie’s conscience about all the things she knew she shouldn’t be doing.
Concentrating hard, Becky wrote slowly. She was a bright child, and was unusually good with her letters, but her little hands were still slightly clumsy. Callie knew from experience with her nieces and nephews that young hands needed lots of practice when it came to these things.
“How do you spell ‘roller skates’?”
Callie told her.
Several minutes later, Becky looked up and smiled. “All done. I think Mama will like this one.” Her smile didn’t fade, but an expression of concern entered her blue eyes. “I hope she will: I don’t want to hurt her feelings by making her think I’m happy without her.”
“Hurt her feelings? I’m sure you couldn’t do that, Becky. Your mama loves you and understands how difficult life is for a little girl without her mother.”
Becky nodded. “Good. That’s what I think, too.”
So Callie listened to Becky’s prayers and tucked her in. She left the room with Becky’s letter to her mother, which she opened as soon as she entered her own room. As she read it, her heart swelled, tears filled her eyes, and she wished she could talk to one of her sisters.
Dear Mama,
Miss Prophet got roller skates for all the children at my birthday party. It was ever so much fun.
Mama, I love Miss Prophet very much. You don’t mind that I love her, do you? I love you, too. And Papa. But it’s nice with Miss Prophet here. I am not so lonsom anymore. Thats OK isn’t it?
Love,
Becky
“Oh, my land.” Callie pressed a palm to her cheek and
plopped down on her bed, disturbing Monster, who growled at her. With tears streaming down her face, Callie turned to the cat. “Shut up, you. What do you know about anything?”
His feelings evidently hurt, Monster leapt from Callie’s bed and stalked across the room, but Callie paid no more attention to him.
“Whatever should I do?” Callie whispered to her empty room.
She answered Becky’s letter to her mother in heaven, hoping to God that she was saying the right things, and begging forgiveness from the spirit of Anne Lockhart.
Her feelings of oppressive guilt did not abate.
Chapter Thirteen
Aubrey’s feeling of nobility about the prospect of remarriage didn’t last through the soup course at supper on the night of Becky’s party. By that time, Old Bilgewater had taken over and directed the conversation along unpleasant lines. From nobility, in fact, Aubrey plunged headlong into sheer rage.
“What’s more, Aubrey, I don’t believe children ought to be indulged so shamelessly.” Mrs. Bridgewater sniffed as Figgins served her soup. “Birthday parties, indeed. I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
Fortunately, Becky and Miss Prophet had taken supper in the nursery this evening. Miss Prophet had pronounced Becky too exhausted from the stimulation of the day to be fit company at the supper table.
“Not while Mrs. Bridgewater is visiting,” Callie had told him in the frank, down-to-earth way she had. “Because Mrs. B is sure to criticize, and I don’t think Becky needs that. Not after having had such a splendid day. It would only spoil the pleasure of her party.”
“I think you’re right,” Aubrey had agreed, although he hadn’t wanted to. Not because he didn’t want to agree with Callie aloud, either, but because he hated the mere notion of dining alone with Old Bilgewater.
Now, however, as he eyed the woman over his own steaming bowl of soup, he wondered if this wasn’t an opportunity in disguise. “Oh?” he said coolly. “What do you advocate instead? Keeping children in leg shackles and wrist manacles?” He smiled, showing a lot of teeth.
Bilgewater looked at him and huffed irritably. “For heaven’s sake, Aubrey! What a ridiculous suggestion.”
“Is it?”
“Of course!”
He took a sip of soup. Mrs. Granger, overworked already today, thanks to all the party preparations, had warned him supper would be a simple meal this evening. Simplicity to Mrs. Granger, however, meant something different from what it meant to Aubrey. She’d made up a delicious soup, and she’d already told him they were having a chicken casserole, using chicken and vegetables left over from the party.
After he swallowed and smiled at Figgins to let him know he approved of the soup course, Aubrey again directed his attention to Becky’s great-aunt. He narrowed his eyes. “I see. So, you think it’s ridiculous, do you?”
“Yes, it is. Of all the nonsensical notions I’ve ever heard expressed, that’s the most nonsensical.”
Aubrey doubted that Bilgewater could sound too much more emphatic. She looked as if she were taking on air in order to launch another assault. He decided to give her a large target to shoot at. “Oh? Then do you believe the suggestion that Miss Prophet and I are carrying on an illicit affair, which you proposed to that group of mothers, to be a less ridiculous suggestion, Mrs. Bridgewater?”
Bilgewater sat up with a jerk, precipitating a loud groan from her corset stays. “What? I beg your pardon?”
“I overheard what you said to those ladies, Mrs. Bridgewater. I thought that was pretty near the top of the nonsense pinnacle.”
“I never!”
“Oh, yes you did. I heard you.” Aubrey allowed his anger to show. He hoped she’d choke on it. “And let me tell you, I do not appreciate your insinuations, blatant accusations, and snide comments.”
After swallowing once or twice and huffing three or four times, Bilgewater seemed to regroup. Her bosom swelled ominously. “Well! What do you expect people to think when you carry on in such a blatant way?”
“Carry on? Carry on!” Aubrey opened his eyes wide, unable to believe even Great-Aunt Evelyn could spout such bilge.
“Yes! Living here with that—that—”
“Nanny,” Aubrey supplied, breaking in with a loud bark that made Bilgewater jump. “Miss Prophet is Becky’s nanny, Mrs. Bridgewater.”
“Nanny, my foot.”
“I don’t understand you. You don’t even know the woman, yet you’re willing to blacken her name here, where she lives. You’re not only willing, you’re eager. And you want to take Becky and me with you!”
“Nonsense! I—”
Aubrey trounced on her words as if she hadn’t spoken. “I’ve heard of brazen talk, Mrs. Bridgewater, but I’ve never witnessed it until today.”
“I think the ladies of Santa Angelica know Miss Prophet far better than you do. What’s more, she came to me with a sterling character. There isn’t a person in the town who doesn’t speak highly of her.”
He didn’t bother to bring up the fact that Callie had actually appeared in his drawing room without any written references. Aubrey had found out soon enough what the neighbors thought about her. They liked her; therefore, he didn’t consider his prior statement a lie. It might be a bit of a stretcher, perhaps, but it wasn’t an out-and-out lie.
Mrs. Bridgewater, apparently giving up trying to break into Aubrey’s monologue, lifted her chin and glared at him in defiance. It was, and Aubrey recognized it as such, the last-ditch effort of a person in the wrong who would rather die than admit it. Which gave Aubrey some pleasant ideas, but he’d never dare act upon them.
“I am only concerned about Rebecca’s welfare, Aubrey Lockhart, and you know it.”
He wasn’t going to let her get away with that. “I do not know it, Mrs. Bridgewater. I know nothing of the kind. I fail to comprehend how spreading malicious gossip about Becky’s father and the woman he hired to take care of her can contribute in any way whatsoever to Becky’s welfare. It can only hurt her. You know it as well as I do.”
“That’s not so.”
“It is so. You want to get Becky away from me, for some reason known only to yourself, and you’re not going to succeed. I won’t let you. Becky has a good life. It’s neither her fault nor mine that Anne died, and you’re not going to use Anne’s death, which was a tragedy for both of us, to maneuver my daughter away from this house. Until I heard it myself today, I didn’t believe even you, of whom I’ve learned to expect almost anything, could sink to the level of spreading false and vicious rumors to achieve your own selfish goals. I learned my lesson, Mrs. Bridgewater. After you leave Santa Angelica tomorrow, I don’t want you to visit Becky again. Ever. If you show up without an invitation, you will be turned away from this house.”
The older woman’s face had turned a startling purple during Aubrey’s last speech, and he saw that her hands shook when she placed her napkin on the table beside her soup plate. For approximately ten seconds, he contemplated whether or not he should feel guilty. After all, gentlemen seldom, if ever, took ladies to task for anything. When he recalled how this miserable specimen of womanhood had tried to blacken his name and Callie’s name among the matrons that afternoon, he hardened his heart.
She rose slowly and with much creaking of whalebone. “I have never,” she said, her voice atremble, “been so insulted in my life.”
“I don’t know why it’s taken anyone so long to call you on your nefarious career as a gossipmonger,” Aubrey told her frankly. “The way you carry on behind people’s backs, I’m surprised you haven’t been shot out of the water long since.”
“Slanders. Vile insults.”
“Fiddlesticks. I speak only the truth. Unlike you, who, this very afternoon, slung around blatant lies about me among my neighbors,” Aubrey pointed out.
“I did not tell tales!” she began, but Aubrey again interrupted.
“Balderdash. There’s not a shred of truth in anything you said today. You made up tripe, hoping it would ruin my reputation and turn my neighbors against me. God alone knows why, unless you think that making me into a black sheep will cause me to relinquish Becky.”
“Of all the—”
He waved a hand, effectively silencing her once more.
“You’re a witch, Mrs. Bridgewater. It’s difficult to imagine you and Anne coming from the same family. On consideration, I think it’s you who are the changeling, since everyone else in the Harriott family is very nice. You’re the only freak in a good lot.”
“Well!”
“It’s no use welling me in that indignant voice, either. You stepped way over the line today. Perhaps no one else whose name you’ve blackened over the years has ever had the brass balls to point out to you the error of your ways—probably in some misguided attempt to maintain his or her sense of conventional decorum—but I’m not so nice.”
“I should say not!”
“No, indeed. I’m honest. I prefer to call a rotten apple a rotten apple. And you, madam, are a rotten apple.”
“I shall retire now.” Mrs. Bridgewater’s voice shook violently. She turned and started tottering toward the door.
“I’ll have Mrs. Granger send you up a tray,” Aubrey told her back.
“That won’t be necessary.”
“I’ll do it anyway, on the off chance you can manage to take some nourishment,” Aubrey said dryly.
“I’m sure I shan’t be able to eat a bite. I have never been so—” But, perhaps recalling Aubrey’s reaction to the last time she’d told him she’d never been so insulted in her life, Mrs. Bridgewater didn’t finish her sentence.
She also ate everything on the tray Mrs. Granger had Delilah carry up to her. Aubrey, not accustomed to calling a spade a spade, felt shaky after Mrs. Bridgewater left him alone in the dining room. He conducted a spirited dialogue with himself on the issue, and twice started to rise from the table and pursue Mrs. Bridgewater in order to apologize.
He didn’t do it. Not only did he know he’d spoken the truth—perhaps a trifle brutally, but it was no more than the old harridan deserved—but he even received unexpected confirmation that he’d done the right thing from an unusual source.
Figgins, who came in to remove the soup plates, and who looked this evening more like a treasure from a taxidermist’s shop than usual, paused with two soup plates in his gloved hands and turned toward Aubrey. He bowed his head for a moment before lifting it again and looking straight at his employer.
Such a breach of orthodoxy was most uncommon in this ancient retainer. Aubrey didn’t know if there was a school for butlers, but if there was, he imagined Figgins could give lessons therein. Alarmed—he hoped to God Old Bilgewater hadn’t suffered an attack of apoplexy or, more important, that nothing had happened to any of the servants—he said, “What is it, Figgins? Is something the matter?”
“No, sir. It’s only—” He stopped talking abruptly.
Good God. Aubrey rose from his chair. “What is it? What’s happened?” Fear roughened his voice. Had Delilah upturned the soup pot on herself and been burned? Had Mrs. Granger suffered some kind of attack? Good God, if any catastrophe had befallen Becky—
“It’s not my place to say this, Mr. Lockhart, but I believe you should know that the household staff is delighted that you gave Mrs. Bridgewater a piece of your mind, sir.”
His hands braced on the table, intending to shove himself away from it and race off to the nursery or the kitchen, Aubrey paused, blinking at Figgins. He wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly.
Figgins straightened, something Aubrey wouldn’t have believed possible before it happened, since he’d looked about as straight as a man could get before he did it. “As I say, sir, it’s not my place to say so, sir, but . . . well . . . hooray for you.” Figgins swallowed.
So did Aubrey, who still wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “Er . . .”
“That’s all, sir. I sincerely beg your pardon if I’ve given offense.”
Aubrey sat with something of a thud. “Offense? Good
God, no, you haven’t given offense. In fact—” The humor of the situation struck him suddenly, and he grinned. “In fact, thank you, Figgins. And Mrs. Granger, too. And Delilah. And anyone else who’s been made unhappy by Mrs. Bridgewater.”
For perhaps the first time in his career as an ever-so-proper butler, Figgins smiled. “Very good, sir.”
He left the dining room with a spring in his step. He was back to being his austere butlerish self when he returned with the main course.
That settled the matter for Aubrey. He wasn’t going to apologize to Bilgewater. Let the witch suffer. Aubrey hoped she’d choke on his scold.
In the meantime, Aubrey planned what
he needed to do in order to assure Miss Callida Prophet’s continued residence in his home. For Becky’s sake.
He didn’t leap to the conclusion that he should marry her. Indeed, he pondered the matter all through the chicken casserole, taking his time and thinking hard.
She was good with the staff. Would the staff resent someone in her position becoming their mistress?
“Hell, she already rules the roost,” Aubrey mumbled around a mouthful of chicken. He grinned as he swallowed.
An odd thing about Miss Prophet: She took over without anyone’s being the wiser. For nearly three months now—ever since Callie’s arrival in his home—Aubrey hadn’t been troubled by servants’ queries regarding what to do with the sour milk or whether or not to wax the parlor floor. The servants all went to Miss Prophet when Mrs. Granger had no answers for them.
Mrs. Granger herself consulted Callie whenever anything needed to be discussed. She never bothered Aubrey with anything anymore.
It was a relief, in fact, how much household nonsense Callie had lifted from his shoulders.
So. He could relax about the servants. Aubrey didn’t think any of them would mind if he married Becky’s nanny.
And then there was Becky. She adored Miss Prophet. Becky would probably be overjoyed if her papa were to marry her nanny.
By the time Aubrey finished the baked apple in cream Mrs. Granger had prepared for dessert, he’d made up his mind. He was going to march upstairs to the nursery and ask Miss Prophet to be his wife.
As he laid his spoon beside his apple dish, Aubrey frowned. He didn’t want to offer the woman false coin. Although it wasn’t terribly flattering to her, Aubrey sensed that he ought to be honest with her.
“Anyhow, she’s too smart not to figure it out on her own,” he reminded himself.
Ergo, he would not declare an undying passion for her.
Perhaps he ought not use the word “passion” at all, come to think of it. Truth to tell, he’d been harboring passionate feelings for Miss Prophet for weeks now.
Heaven Sent Page 19
