Wentworth Hall

by Abby Grahame

  Snobby came running in. “How is my little cutesie-bootsie today?” she asks, tickling the baby under the chin.

  Lady Worthless shooed Snobby away. “Don’t even look at this baby. Someone might notice his resemblance to you and to a certain someone.”

  Snobby looked away from her mother. “I can’t imagine what you might mean by that, Mother,” she said with mock sincerity.

  “You understand full well what I mean,” Lady Worthless insisted.

  “I assure you, I do not,” Snobby replied.

  “Can I remind you of a few months back when your belly looked as if you’d swallowed a melon whole,” Lady Worthless retorted.

  Snobby stuck a finger in either ear. “I can’t hear you!” she sung out.

  Lady Worthless stamped her foot in frustration. “Oh! You make me so mad! You are just like your father!”

  “My father?” Snobby gasped. “In what manner could I possibly resemble that blustering old coot?”

  “Well, you both have a child that you won’t admit to!”

  “Shh!!!!” Snobby hissed sharply. “What child won’t father admit is his? Doodles?”

  Doodles rushed in. “I’m not father’s child?” she asked, aghast.

  “Shh!” Lady Worthless and Snobby shushed her at once. “No, not you, Doodles, silly girl,” said Lady Worthless. “The nanny.”

  “The nanny?!” Doodles and Snobby cried in one voice. “The nanny is a Worthless?”

  “I’m afraid it’s true,” Lady Worthless admitted as she continued to bounce the baby. “Years ago Lord Worthless dallied with Nanny’s mother, who was a very young maid in the household. They sent her off to France and paid her never to return.”

  “But she did return?” Doodles asked.

  “The child grew up to be Nanny and she came back to claim her inheritance. She fooled us all by pretending to be poor.”

  “But she is poor,” Snobby reminded her mother. “Everyone who works for us is poor because we pay them hardly anything.”

  “I suppose that’s so,” Lady Worthless agreed as a slab of ceiling crashes to the floor at her feet.

  “Are you telling us we have a poor relative?” Doodles asked in horror.

  “Shh!” Lady Worthless said again. She lowers her voice. “That’s why your father wouldn’t admit to having a child by a maid. It’s so embarrassing to know poor people, let alone be so… familiar… with one.”

  “But Mother, aren’t we poor now?” Snobby asked.

  “Shh!” said Lady Worthless. “We are not poor. We’re impecunious.”

  “What does that mean?” Doodles asked.

  “Poor,” Snobby filled her in.

  “No! No!” Lady Worthless objected. “We’re penniless but not poor. We still have the Worthless name, which is worth its weight in gold.”

  “A name weighs nothing,” Doodles said.

  “Exactly!” said Lady Worthless.

  Snobby scratched her head in bewilderment. “So how does that make me like Father?”

  “You dolt!” Lady Worthless cried. “You both have a child you won’t admit is yours.”

  “Snobby has a child?!” Doodles cried.

  “Shh!” hissed Snobby.

  At that moment Jon Handsome, the stable boy, stomps in, leaving muddy boot prints on the floor. He snaps the straps of his overalls and lifts the baby out of Lady Worthless’s arms, letting his feet dangle in the air. “There’s my darling son,” he said proudly. “He looks just like me, don’t you think?”

  “Hush!” said Snobby. “He most certainly does not!”

  “Sure he does,” Jon insisted. “He’s lucky. I’m a good-looking fellow. At least that’s what you told me that night in the stable. Don’t you remember?”

  “You must be thinking of someone else,” Snobby insisted.

  “No, I’m not. It was you all right!”

  “You win! He is our baby. Now the whole county will know,” Snobby said. “If we raise him as a Worthless, though, he will inherit the Worthless fortune.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” said Lady Worthless. “Here in this safe is our fortune.” She went to the portrait of her ancestor in the velvet tights and lifts it off the wall. Behind it is a safe, which she opens.

  Everyone said “Ahh” as a single brown moth flew out of the empty safe.

  Nora stopped reading and shook her head, stunned by the information revealed in the satire. She knew, of course, about Maggie and Michael. But that Therese was Lord Darlington’s daughter!

  What luck for the Darlingtons that this never got published! Therese must have been so furious with her father for the way he denied her that she lashed out at the family any way she could.

  Nora ran her eyes along the page once more. It was cruel and unfair to the girls and Lady Darlington, as well as Michael and the baby. What kind of mind could judge good people so harshly, though she had to admit that Lord Darlington probably deserved everything he got. How ironic that the daughter he wouldn’t acknowledge was the one who had turned out to be most like him.

  Fifty pounds was a lot of money. It would take her years of sewing to earn as much. With a deep sigh of regret, Nora tore the pages in half and then in half again before tossing them in the trash basket. “Fifty pounds down the drain,” she murmured, shaking her head woefully.

  Nora hurried down the stairs to the kitchen. “Have you seen Michael?” she asked Rose, the cook.

  “Not in the last hour,” Rose responded. “Why are you looking for him?”

  “I just need to speak to him,” Nora brushed her off as she headed for the back door. She crossed to the stable and entered. “Michael? Are you in here?”

  A horse nickered in response to Nora’s voice.

  “Michael?” Nora tried again.

  He wasn’t there, but he always worked at this time. Where could he have gone?

  A great silence welled up just behind the soft shuffling of hoofs and occasional sputter of a horse. “Michael?” Nora tried again more softly, now suspecting that Michael might never respond.

  Everything was changing. She could feel it and it gave her a chill. But another emotion ran through her. A deep instinct told her that the end of Wentworth Hall had somehow begun. The life of being a serving person on this once great estate—the colorless life she had, deep down, always assumed would be hers—would never be the same. This life was ending and a new one was opening up before her.

  Everything was changing. Nora could feel it. And she was glad.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  MAGGIE PUSHED HER WINDBLOWN HAIR from her eyes and gazed out across the glistening ocean. She could hardly believe she was on a ship bound for America. Reaching out, she gripped Michael’s warm, strong hand and smiled up at James, peacefully asleep on his shoulder.

  “Is this really happening?” Maggie asked him.

  “It’s happening,” Michael confirmed with a warm smile. “And it’s exactly what should be happening. Nothing has ever felt as right to me in my entire life.”

  Maggie squeezed his hand lovingly, knowing that it was true and deriving strength from his confidence. Maybe some might consider what she was doing wrong. But nothing had felt so right in ages.

  In America, no one would care if she was a Darlington. It would be neither an honor nor a disgrace. She would simply be Maggie, her own self.

  Michael drew her close to him and wrapped her in his free arm. Maggie rested her head on his chest, letting the drumming of his heartbeat merge with the crash of the waves. “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you, too. And I love the baby. We’re going to be happy, Maggie.”

  Epilogue

  SEVERAL MONTHS LATER, MAGGIE HELD James in her arms as she leaned against a doorjamb in their New York apartment. The little fellow’s eyes were drifting shut. He’d had an exciting day in the park, now that he’d learned to take a few steps. He was happily exhausted. In her free hand, she held a letter from Lila giving her news of Wentworth Hall and he
r family.

  She couldn’t believe nearly a year had passed since she and Michael had come to America. What an adventure it had been at first! How happy they were now that they’d finally moved into their own place.

  To think, too, that it was Lila who had struck on this plan. Lila, who she thought she’d had to protect, had ended up saving her. Of course Ian had been wonderful too. It was so sweet of him to let them stay in his family’s New York apartment when they first arrived in New York. If it hadn’t been for his motorcar they never would have been able to get to the dock and aboard the ship sailing for America. He even lent them the money they needed until Maggie had pawned her jewels and paid him back.

  “I don’t care a bit!” Maggie had assured Michael when he protested. “They’re all old and out of style anyway. Our new, amazing life is worth so much more than a few shiny trinkets.”

  Michael’s first stop was to seek work at Belmont Park racetrack on Long Island, outside the city. There was nothing for him but they told him to check back in a few months. For now he was working as a courier and making enough to support them. He’d even begun talking about opening his own courier business, maybe out on Long Island.

  Maggie closed her eyes to let the image of them in a regular house in the country sink in. “We’ll be happy,” she crooned to the sleeping baby, “in our own home someday soon.”

  James sighed in his sleep and shifted his position.

  Maggie glanced at the letter she held. Lila had reported that she and Ian had stayed in touch after heading back to universty with Wes. He had been invited back to Wentworth Hall to have Christmas with the family. Someday, Maggie dared to hope they might even forgive Michael and her, even though Lord Darlington had disinherited her and James for now.

  “I hope someday you’ll see your grandparents,” Maggie whispered hopefully to James. “Maybe Lila will marry Ian and move to America. Wouldn’t that be wonderful!”

  Besides, Wesley had been supportive. “Don’t fret about being disinherited too much,” he’d counseled them. “I’ve seen the account books. There’s no big inheritance coming your way. Lila and I will split whatever we get three ways. I promise.”

  “Will he disown Lila for this, as well?” Maggie had asked.

  Wesley had shaken his head. “He doesn’t know this was her bright idea. Or of Ian’s role. I certainly won’t tell him.”

  What a crushing week it had been for her father, Maggie considered. The news that she was leaving with Michael—plus the Fitzhugh twins had left the day of their eighteenth birthdays without even saying good-bye. That potentially lucrative alliance had also crashed and burned before his very eyes.

  James stirred on her shoulder and lifted his head. His green eyes opened. The breeze from the open window ruffled his downy tufts of hair, making him smile. Maggie reached up to run her fingertips along his baby-soft cheeks.

  Michael walked in from his job and smiled at them, encircling both Maggie and the baby in his arms. “That’s right, James, you smile,” he spoke to James tenderly. “Mommy and Daddy are here and there are nothing but good days ahead.”

  Maggie reached up and kissed Michael. Never in her life had she felt more loved and more optimistic about the future. “Good days ahead,” she echoed. “Such good days.”