Elizabeth’s eyes widened. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Serious as taxes.” The young man chuckled. “I’ll spare you the details of the poor beast’s journey across the channel, however. Suffice to say, his equilibrium did not cope well, especially when a storm whipped the water to new heights.”
“You can’t mean …”
“Well, we have to take my uncle’s word about that. He mercifully took no photograph of the event.”
Andrew frowned at the letter in his hands. It had arrived by post today, bearing no return address. Someone jealous of Mr. Raleigh, he told himself again, for Jonathan Raleigh was the type who inspired envy. The nephew of a duke, third cousin to the Lord Chancellor, he was one of those golden students who excelled at his studies and was even captain of the archery team. The upperclassman had met Elizabeth at a church fete and swept the girl off her feet. Even Andrew had been impressed. Mr. Raleigh’s manners were as impeccable as his family credentials, and so he allowed the young man to call upon his daughter.
I’ll throw it in the fire, Andrew thought. Anyone spineless enough to send an anonymous message such as this was surely no one who could be trusted. Instead, he folded the page and held it. The five lines had contained only an address on Locke Street in the seedier part of Cambridge and a warning that Jonathan Raleigh was seeing the wife of an army sergeant there.
Thirteen-year-old Laurel came from upstairs and perched herself on the arm of Andrew’s chair. “Have you been missing anything lately, Papa?” she asked.
He had to think about that one, for he had a tendency to misplace things. “Why, not that I can recall.”
She grinned and drew his favorite pen from behind her back, the one he had long given up hope of recovering.
“Where did you find it?” he asked as she handed it to him.
“In the dirt under the garden swing. Along with two shillings. May I keep them, Papa?”
“Well, I suppose a reward is in order.”
“Thank you!” she said, giving him a quick embrace. Like Elizabeth, Laurel had her mother’s dark brown eyes and delicately carved oval face. Andrew felt grateful, for his daughters’ sakes, that both had inherited most of their looks from Kathleen. In fact, his only contributions toward their appearances were the dimples in their cheeks and the straight, wheat-colored hair. Most people were unaware of his own set of dimples, however, for he’d worn a beard ever since he was a young curate.
He was fully aware that he could never be regarded as a handsome man in the classical sense. For one thing, his height was too nondescript at five feet eight, and his body, though solid, was thick almost to the point of stockiness. His nose, once broken by an errant paddle during his university days on the rowing team, would appear more natural on the face of a prizefighter than of a man of the cloth. But since he seldom looked in a mirror except to make sure that he’d parted his hair correctly, it didn’t matter.
“What have you there, Papa?” Laurel asked, reaching out to scratch his bearded chin.
Andrew slipped the folded page in his waistcoat pocket. “Nothing that would interest you, Pet. I thought we were going to have to send someone up for you. Dinner is almost ready, Mrs. Orson says.”
“I was studying and lost track of time. Where is Grandmother?”
“She’s at one of those ladies’ meetings—’The Society to Promote Hummingbird Table Etiquette’ or something of that sort.”
Laurel giggled. “I’ll tell her you said that.”
“To your peril, if you do,” Andrew said, feigning severity. He could tell that she wasn’t the least bit alarmed and wondered for the hundredth time since Kathleen’s death if he were doing his girls a disservice by not being a sterner parent. His own father had been eager to point out the character flaws of his six sons. Too eager, Andrew had thought while growing up, but he could see now that the criticism had made him strive to become a better man, if only to prove his father wrong.
But the feminine mind was still such an enigma to Andrew. He wasn’t certain if his daughters’ delicate egos could take the severe regimen by which he had been raised. Blessedly, Elizabeth and Laurel were tender-hearted children, eager to please, and had never tried to take advantage of his mild discipline. He had visited households, in the course of his duties, where children had been permitted to become little tartars, ruling parents and servants with self-important contempt. One could only imagine what sort of disagreeable adults those children would become, and chiefly because the parents failed to exercise a restraining hand.
The only times Andrew could remember being in the company of his own parents were when the boys were brought down to the drawing room for brief evening visits before bedtime, or to recite for guests. Andrew did not consider himself deprived during those early years in Gloucester. His nanny was kind and attentive, and besides, it was the same way with most families of the upper classes. At the age of eight he was sent to join his older brothers at a boarding school in Huntingdon. That was when a longing for the attentions of a loving mother and father took root in his heart and began to grow.
And that was the other reason Andrew could not bring himself to be as stern as he knew he should be. Perhaps the primary reason. A sudden attack of apoplexy had taken his beloved Kathleen from them six years ago. He felt great empathy for his daughters, growing up without the tender ministrations of a mother. Even his widowed mother, who had agreed to come to live with them in Cambridge, could not fill the void that Kathleen had left. But God hasn’t sent anyone into my life to take her place.
“Father?”
Realizing he’d drifted off into one of his “hazes,” as Elizabeth called them, he looked at Laurel again. “Yes?”
The girl motioned toward Elizabeth and her beau, both heads bent over a globe. “They don’t even realize I’ve walked into the room, do they?”
“ … of the elephant’s journey was by rail,” Jonathan Raleigh was explaining to Elizabeth. “My uncle hired a whole steerage car.”
“I’m afraid they don’t, Pet.” Andrew agreed. He cleared his throat, and the two heads turned in their direction.
“Will you stay for dinner, Mr. Raleigh?”
The young man gave a reluctant shake of his dark head. “Thank you, sir, but I’m afraid I’ve already been invited to dinner. One of those stuffy faculty-student affairs. In fact, I should be leaving now.”
When Mr. Raleigh was gone, Andrew sat to dinner with his daughters, himself at the head of the table, Elizabeth on his right and Laurel his left. The pocketed letter was a hot brand on his chest, and he wondered again why he was unable to dismiss it as petty jealousy. Perhaps it was because Elizabeth seemed to be so completely in love.
“You know,” he began awkwardly after carving the roast duck, “we should invite other gentlemen to dinner sometime. Take Mr. McCready’s son, Bruce, for example. I find his knowledge of the Scriptures most impressive. He’ll make a fine minister one day.”
“Yes, he seems to be very pleasant,” Elizabeth replied, toying with her food, as was her habit of late. But then she looked up at Andrew and smiled. “Did you know that Jonathan’s uncle keeps an elephant on his estate in Kensington?”
“What does he feed it?” Laurel asked with wide eyes.
“Why, I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask Jonathan.”
Andrew dabbed his mouth with his napkin and went cautiously ahead. “It would be good for you, making the acquaintance of other young gentlemen. You’ll have less time for such things when you start at Eton this fall.”
Elizabeth lowered her eyes to study the place setting in front of her for several seconds, prompting Andrew to ask her if anything was the matter.
“I don’t want to go to college,” she whispered after some hesitation.
“Don’t want to go to college?” Andrew echoed, uncomprehending. “But you’re doing so well at Brunswick.” Brunswick was the preparatory school for girls on Newmarket Road operated by the Sisters of Saint Anne, whose cree
d was that idle minds were the devil’s playground.
Finally raising her chin, she met his gaze. He could see the tears shining in her brown eyes. That’s not fair! Andrew thought, even as his heart began to melt. He set down his fork. “Elizabeth, what is wrong?”
“Nothing,” she whimpered while dabbing her eyes with her napkin.
“Nothing?” He tried coaxing a smile from her. “Come on now. You’ve spent too much time studying for exams lately. Why don’t you take a day or two and rest?”
“I want to take a year away from studying, Papa. Perhaps longer. Perhaps forever.”
“But college …” Andrew could only mumble stupidly, glancing at Laurel for help.
His younger daughter gave him a somber nod and turned her face back to Elizabeth. “Is it because of Jonathan?”
Elizabeth blew her nose. “N-No.”
“Then, why?” Andrew asked, not quite believing her half-hearted denial.
“I just don’t want to go,” she said, then gave a sigh that belied her tender years. “I’m so weary of Latin and mathematics and French—all of it.”
“But you may not feel that way in another month or so.” Which was very likely, Andrew thought, for Elizabeth had a history of taking up projects and abandoning them later, such as the flute and riding lessons. He certainly couldn’t allow her to abandon her education on a whim.
The light in her brown eyes seemed to dull in front of him, and she stretched out her hand upon the tablecloth to touch his. “I want you to be proud of me, Papa. That’s why I’ve studied so hard all these years. But I feel like I’ve become a shell, full of facts and figures. There has to be more to life.”
She looked so much like her mother, staring at him with tears still hanging to her lashes, that a painful lump swelled within Andrew’s chest. “I have always been proud of you, Elizabeth,” he said gently. “You never had to earn that.”
She heaved another deep sigh. “I know.”
“What is it, then?”
Fixing her eyes again upon the filled plate still in front of her, Elizabeth answered in a small voice, “I want to be like Mother was. I want to marry … and have children.”
Jonathan Raleigh, Andrew thought. I knew it. Now it was he who sighed. “You’re that much in love with him?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
Andrew glanced again at Laurel, who returned a helpless shrug of her shoulders. He turned back to his elder daughter. “Has he asked you, Elizabeth?”
She shook her head. “But I know he will. He’s hinted as much. And he’s asked us all to come to Kensington this summer to meet his family.”
“We could see the elephant?” Laurel perked up, then grimaced at Andrew’s warning look.
“There is a gazebo on the grounds,” Elizabeth went on. “It was there that Jonathan’s father proposed to his mother. Jonathan says he wants to show it to me.”
“Oh.” Andrew rubbed his forehead absently. “And if … if he proposes?”
The blush across her cheeks gave her answer, even before her lips responded, “I would accept. I do love him, Papa.”
He spent the next hour in his library chair, staring unseeingly at the same page of The Cambridge Chronicle. Yes, he’d expected that Mr. Raleigh would eventually propose. But now that the day seemed to be rushing toward him, he wished with all his heart that he could turn the clock back to the time when his girls did not have thoughts of leaving home. This summer? I didn’t know it would be so soon.
“Andrew, dear?” Lydia Phelps, his mother, came into the room with a rustle of silk. “Where are the girls?”
“They’re upstairs.”
She came closer, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. “And when did you become interested in the fashion page?”
“Huh?” Andrew looked down at the newspaper in his hand, then set it aside. “Did you enjoy your meeting?”
“Marvelous,” she replied, ostrich feathers quivering from her hat as she spoke. She settled into a chair. “I find society at Cambridge far more stimulating than back at Gloucester. Vastly more cerebral.”
“Yes?” He hoped she would not launch into a description of the evening’s events, for he found her social acquaintances rather pompous and self-absorbed.
His mother fixed him with a mildly calculating look. “You know, Mrs. Keswick was there. She’s having a dinner party next month and will be sending you an invitation to act as my escort.”
“Mrs. Keswick?”
“Oh, don’t look at me with that blank expression. You met her at my little luncheon last month. She’s a widow, you know, and well situated.”
Andrew vaguely recalled a set of predatory eyes beneath the brim of a hat à la Reine and felt a little shudder.
“She found you quite interesting,” his mother went on. “With just a little encouragement from you, you could have those girls a mother.”
And wishing Mrs. Keswick good day would likely be encouragement enough, Andrew thought. He always found himself puzzled whenever a woman expressed interest in him. He was certainly no Adonis and did not have the polish and charm necessary to woo them. It was still a wonder to Andrew that Kathleen had loved him so completely.
And that was the reason for his hesitancy in responding to the occasional flirtations that were directed his way. Not only had Kathleen been his helpmate and the mother of his children, but she was also his friend … his best friend. Which made the marriage all the sweeter. While he could appreciate a woman’s attractiveness and femininity and would like to have a wife again, he had yet to feel anything close to the bond of friendship he had enjoyed with Kathleen. And certainly not with those women who so arduously cultivated his courtship, for it seemed that they had neither the time nor the patience to develop a friendship.
“Andrew? ”
Realizing he’d drifted again, Andrew looked at his mother. “I beg your pardon, Mother?”
She gave an impatient sigh. “Don’t you want to marry again one day?”
“Of course,” he told her gently. He could not fault her for trying to better his life. “But not just for the sake of marrying. I’ve witnessed too many disasters that have resulted from haste.”
His words brought Elizabeth and Mr. Raleigh back to his mind, and he suddenly got to his feet. “Would you mind hearing the girls’ prayers?”
“Why, where are you going?”
Andrew touched his waistcoat pocket. “I’ve an errand. Please don’t wait up.”
Fourteen Locke Street turned out to be an old building carved into flats, dark except for lights shining from three windows and the glow of a streetlamp near the stoop. Across the street lay a wedge of ground that could loosely be described as a park. Andrew sat down upon the lone bench there and waited, elbows propped upon knees, not even sure what he wanted to happen. If it turned out that the anonymous note was true, then Elizabeth would be devastated. And if he found no evidence to support the accusation, did that mean Jonathan Raleigh was innocent? Or that he’d managed not to get caught this time?
“Am I being foolish, Kathleen?” Andrew mumbled. He could clearly imagine her watching from heaven with that indulgent smile she used whenever he worried about anything. If only you were here to help me keep my thoughts straight.
A cough broke through his reflections, and he looked up at the figure standing at his left. She wore a gown of garish purple and a hardened expression, making her look anywhere from twenty to forty years old. He could tell even in the semidarkness that the smile she was giving him did not travel up to her world-weary eyes.
“You look lonely, mister,” she said, taking a step closer to his bench.
Annoyed, he opened his mouth to snap at her. Even in such a cerebral city as Cambridge, there were certain sections where a gentleman simply could not walk without being accosted by such as the woman before him. Then the thought crossed his mind, She’s someone’s daughter.
“What’s a handsome fellow like you doin’ all alone?”
Andrew coul
dn’t help but chuckle at the absurdity of this flattery. That seemed to encourage her, for she took a step even closer and said, “There’s a pub over the road a bit. How’d you like to buy me a drink?”
“What is your name?”
“Annabel,” she shrugged, as if to say, what does it matter?
“Annabel,” Andrew echoed. “A lovely name.”
“Well, I can show you a lovely time too.”
He shook his head. “Ah, but it wouldn’t be so lovely for you, would it?”
Frowning, she said, “What are you talking about, mister?”
“How many men have given you anything back for all they’ve taken from you?”
“I get paid.” After her eyes scanned the vacant street in vain for a more likely prospect, she turned back to Andrew and feigned another smile. “Hey, are you going to buy me that drink or not?”
“Why don’t you let me tell you about some living water instead?”
The woman went as rigid as a statue. “You’re a preacher, ain’t you?”
“I am.”
“Why didn’t you tell me straight off?” She spat on the ground near his feet. “I wouldn’t have wasted my time.”
With that, she turned and was swallowed up by the night again. God, lead her to you somehow, Andrew prayed silently, his already troubled heart now heavier with his failure to reach the woman.
Another two hours went by, with Andrew studying every face that passed, straining his ears at every voice. It was a familiar masculine laugh that finally caused his pulse to quicken. He got to his feet and watched a couple enter the amber glow of the lamp in front of number fourteen. Their arms were linked, and their attention was absorbed with some mutual joke. The woman—obviously much older than the young man—giggled to match his laugh.
His fists balling at his sides, Andrew stepped out into the street. “Mr. Raleigh?” he called out, still hoping his sight and hearing were mistaken.
The laugh stopped abruptly, and the giggle trailed to a halt. “Who’s there?” the young man replied in a slurred voice, squinting in Andrew’s direction.
The Widow of Larkspur Inn Page 18
