She tossed the soggy dregs of the Western Morning News away, wiping in vain at her inky hands and her muddy coat with a handkerchief, but only managed to leave streaks of gray from her wrists to her elbows. A slick of greasy gutter water dripped down her legs and into her shoes.
A long, dark green Packard pulled to the curb. Parsonhurst leaned out of the driver’s-side window, his white scarf and white teeth gleaming. “Want a ride home?”
“You don’t take no for an answer, do you?” she said while eying the comfort of American automotive engineering. He was pushy, but she was familiar with pushy, and it was better than drowning while waiting for the bus. She got in.
He gunned the engine, and the long car sped up the dark street, quickly leaving Newquay behind. The darkness beyond the town was complete, barely a line between land and sky, the fold of the rising hills and shallow valleys a blur beyond the worn wipers and the shuttered headlamps. At a crossroads, he took the turn in a spit of gravel and a squeal of brakes. Something in the backseat fell to the floor with a heavy thud and what sounded like a grunt, but Lucy was too busy holding on to the door handle for dear life to investigate.
“Slow down, flyboy. You’re not piloting a Spit.”
“Wish I were. The brass hats have me flying damned Blenheims. Now, I tell you, is that a waste of my talents or what?”
She looked back to see a cyclist cursing them from the middle of a hedge. “You certainly have evasive maneuvers down pat.”
By now, the rain had stopped and the moon peeked in and out of the breaking clouds. She recognized the road they were on. Another mile and they’d be at Nanreath’s gates and she could get off this roller-coaster ride. But instead of continuing on, he drew into the grass and cut the engine.
“Out of gas?”
Parsonhurst grinned like a Cheshire cat. “I’ve always held a soft spot for our colonial cousins.” He leaned close. She smelled the beer on his breath and saw the way he swayed even without the band. It was a miracle they’d made it this far without crashing. “I thought you and I could enjoy our own private transatlantic alliance.”
She tried and failed to stop her laughter. “I’m flattered at the offer—but I’ve had more than my share of British hospitality if it’s all the same to you.”
She started to get out, but he grabbed her wrist. “I don’t give up until I get what I want. And you’re the prettiest thing I’ve seen since I enlisted.”
“I don’t doubt it, but you’re really not my type. So let me go—or else.”
“Or else what?” Without warning, he pulled her into his arms, pressing his mouth on hers. His tongue pushed between her lips. She tried to break free, but his hold on her tightened. He grabbed her breast, fumbling at her collar.
“You’d better ease off the throttle, airman,” she protested, attempting to ooze her way free of his clumsy advance. “It’s not a dogfight.”
“You want it. I could tell back at the pub.”
“I wanted a drink. Not a grope from a sweaty pilot desperate to have his cherry popped so he can crow about it to his friends.”
“Little tart.” He pushed her back against the seat, ripping her collar. She made to slap him but he caught her wrist and dragged it behind her back until she cried out in pain. With his free hand, he squeezed her breast until she winced. “Think you’re so damned clever, don’t you? Won’t be so quick to joke when I’m done with you.”
Knee poised, she was just about to strike a blow for outraged womanhood everywhere when Parsonhurst folded like a tent on top of her.
“My mam told me you never hurt a girl or make her cry.”
“Bill.” Her voice emerged shaky with adrenaline. “What are you doing here?”
“It was raining, and the car was unlocked.” The boy sat in the backseat, a spanner in his hand, his face set in fierce lines. “Come on, miss. We’d better hop the twig before he wakes up.”
She grabbed his hand and together they left the Packard with its unconscious driver behind.
Name’s Bill Smedley. My mam and me live in Bethnal Green. That’s in London. She works as a maid for a swanky gent up the West End during the day and takes in washing at night.”
“Where’s your father?”
He shrugged, kicking a stone farther up the track. “Gone for a sailor, I reckon. Least that’s what Mam says. She says he’s a jolly fella but not a reliable one and I shouldn’t expect him to be around much even if he comes back alive . . . which he probably won’t on account of her bad luck. ‘If I love ’em, they leave or they die, Billy boy. That’s my lot.’ That’s what she says. Then she lays down with a wet rag on her forehead and sings sad songs.”
“If she’s in London, who are you staying with?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Sayres. I’m a sore trial to good Christian folks like them, but a cross they must bear for the war effort,” he parroted in a doleful voice.
Lucy tucked her torn collar up and pinned it with her brooch. It didn’t look completely right, but it kept her slip from showing. Damn that bloody airman. She should have known the arrogant jackass was too good to be true.
“I expect you must have the same problem as my mam,” Bill said as he turned down a narrow rutted track. A thin bar of light could be seen in the distance, a gap between the curtains that would have sent any passing air raid warden into a frenzy.
“Unreliable or dead?”
“Aye . . . or rotters like that bloke back there.”
“I think you’re right.”
“It’s a good thing I was there. Now we’re square. You saved me at the cliff and now I saved you.”
The house Bill led her to was a long granite cottage with a mossy slate roof and a squat chimney at either end. Small square windows flanked the front stoop, where a scrawny man with a chinless face and a pair of bulbous eyes stood smoking a pipe.
“Is that you, Bill? Where you been, boy? Mrs. Sayres has been worried sick.”
Bill’s hand slid into Lucy’s. She found herself giving it a reassuring squeeze. “He’s been with me. I hope we didn’t worry you.”
A plump woman in a flowered housedress and bedroom slippers appeared at the door, her dimpled face anxious. “That you, Father?”
“Aye, Mother. Bill’s home.”
“Not before time neither. Well come on. I’ve kept your supper warm for you.” Bill looked like he was being led to the gallows as he followed Mrs. Sayres into the house. Gone was his tough-guy swagger. For the first time he looked like the child he was. “Then straight to bed with you. Mr. Lewis stopped in. Said you’ve missed three days of school and not turned your lessons in for a week. And Mrs. Bitter tells me you’ve been at her chickens again. I’ll not have that kind of nonsense in my—”
The door closed on her harangue, plunging Lucy and the old man back into gray darkness.
Mr. Sayres continued his puffing. “Hope he weren’t any trouble.”
“Not at all,” she said, her own bravado reasserting itself in the face of this dour, disobliging man. “In fact, Bill was very helpful. He saved me when a . . . a nasty dog tried to bite me.”
Barely lifting an eyebrow, he chewed on the end of his pipe. “Did he now? I can barely credit it. The youngster’s a wild one; slick as a Gypsy. Shoulda seen him when he arrived. Naught more than the clothes he stood up in and the manners of a wild animal. Mrs. Sayres and I took him in out of the kindness of our hearts and he’s repaid us with nothing but mischief and back talk.”
She had a feeling their kind hearts were tied directly to the ten shillings a week they received for his care. “I assure you in this instance Bill acted quite the hero. You’d have been proud of him.”
He snorted his disbelief. “Well, there’s a first for everything.” He tapped out his pipe on the side of the house and, without more than a nod, left her standing in the dark of the swept yard, a bolt sliding home to signify the end of her visit.
Lucy turned to leave, but not before a last glance up at that barely parted curtain, wh
ere Bill stood watching her. She made to wave good-bye, but the curtain was wrenched closed, dousing that last sliver of comforting light.
A fitting end to a dreadful night.
She arrived back at Nanreath Hall as the case clock in the hall struck two. By now, her dress was sadly rumpled, the heel of one of her expensive pumps had broken off, and she’d a long painful weal on her upper arm she’d received crossing the stile at the bottom of the water meadow. This added to her bruises from Parsonhurst’s rough treatment, and she ached for a drink. Something strong that would render her unconscious until at least noon tomorrow. Nodding a passing good night to the sleepy sentry, she headed for the family wing, where a decanter of expensive brandy with her name on it waited on the sideboard.
“Enjoyable evening, Miss Stanhope?”
Lucy sighed and turned round, broken pump in hand, to face Sister Murphy, harpy in training. She lurked in the telephone alcove, her eyes glittering with an unreadable expression.
“Enjoyable? I don’t know if I’d go so far as that.”
“I suppose we must all seem rather dull and ordinary to you after your glamorous life abroad. I don’t wonder you laugh at us behind our backs.”
“Not that I don’t love our little heart-to-hearts, but I’ve had a wretched evening, so if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to bed.” Anything to escape a lecture on the proper decorum for ladies. Hadn’t anyone figured out yet that she wasn’t a proper lady and didn’t aspire to be one?
“Of course. I really only stayed up to deliver this. It came while you were out. I thought you should have it immediately rather than wait until morning.” Sister Murphy handed Lucy a telegram. “I’m sorry, Miss Stanhope. I know you may not believe me, but if there’s anything I can do to help . . .”
. . . inform you that Lady Amelia Fortescue . . . Reginald Fortescue . . . sinking of Diamond Star . . . torpedoed off coast of New Guinea . . . missing, presumed dead . . .
“I think you’ve helped enough for one night, don’t you?” Lucy said quietly.
Sister Murphy’s dark eyes gleamed in a face that would have cracked at anything remotely resembling a smile. “It must be rather a shock. You’ll want to be alone. I know I would in your situation.”
“And what situation would that be?” Lucy crushed the telegram in a fist. Took a step toward the QA nurse, who seemed to suddenly realize she was alone in a dark corridor with a potentially unhinged woman. “My mother’s death? Amelia was barely a mother when she was alive. I doubt death will change the tenor of our relationship much.”
After the initial hesitation, Sister Murphy recaptured the high ground, her expression suitably sympathetic with a touch of superiority thrown in for good measure. “You’re overwrought and lashing out. I’ve seen it a hundred times in the men on the wards. It’s very common in those who suffer such a tragedy. It takes time to heal, to truly comprehend the enormity of the loss.”
Despite her compassionate patter, it wasn’t pity Lucy saw in the nurse’s eyes. She knew pity. She’d seen it often enough from teachers at her various schools, or parents who invited her home on holiday breaks when Amelia didn’t bother to show up, though that was usually pity mixed with self-righteousness. No, Sister Murphy waited for the collapse, the moment when Lucy would be vulnerable and open. Then she would pounce. That was the way of women like her. They saw a weakness and exploited it. But Lucy wasn’t anyone’s pawn, and she’d plated herself in chain mail years ago. “If you’re expecting me to fall to my knees rending my clothes and bawling hysterically, it won’t happen. Not for her. Not for either of them.”
“You’re a selfish, heartless girl,” the older woman muttered under her breath.
“Are you just now realizing?” The companionable hours she’d spent with Bill were forgotten as the familiar anger that simmered beneath her skin erupted. “Yes, I’m afraid my lack is well documented.”
Lucy headed for the stairs. If she didn’t get to that brandy decanter soon, a violence would occur.
“I feel sorry for you, Lucy Stanhope, but I don’t know why I should. You’re nothing but a common slag.” Sister Murphy’s words slithered up the stairs after her.
“I may be a lot of things,” Lucy tossed over her shoulder as she concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, the pin she’d used to repair her dress cold against her collarbone, her pump pinching her toes from the long walk, a painful bruise forming on her rib cage from her tussle in Parsonhurst’s car, “but common has never been one of them.”
Chapter 7
This wasn’t the first time Lucy had watched the sun rise after a sleepless night. It was the first time she’d been stone-cold sober and all alone.
Okay, to be honest, she was only mostly sober, but definitely by herself.
Light inched its way up the mossy stones of the ruined watchtower, spread across the wide cliffs to gild the far green wood with gold. The sea danced with a million diamonds and gulls rose and fell on a soft salty breeze. Even the ugly line of pillboxes and ribbons of deadly razor wire took on a rosy glow in the dusty gilded air. It would have been a completely glorious morning if not for the fact that she felt like something the cat coughed up.
She closed her eyes against a thudding headache that pushed down into her neck and shoulders. Her beautiful red dress was damp and stained, and her arms prickled with cold. She should have brought a sweater with her, but she’d assumed the decanter of brandy she’d snatched from the sideboard would keep her warm. With the dawn, its numbing effects were quickly wearing off.
She tried to weep, but tears were impossible. Her face burned hot and her throat ached, but her eyes remained traitorously dry. Instead, she heard Amelia’s voice telling her to stop sniveling. Crying made one’s nose red, one’s eyes puffy, and almost never solved the problem. Move on with one’s best face forward, and when the chips are down, look for the main chance. Survival had been Amelia’s motto. Look out for number one at all times. Everyone else was expendable.
Even her only child.
Lucy had always known she was superfluous to Amelia’s life, detritus from a marriage forgotten as soon as she had signed the papers and dumped her daughter in the first of a string of boarding schools stretching around the globe. As a child, Lucy fantasized about her father arriving like a hero on horseback to whisk her home to the big house outside Philadelphia. Early on, she made excuses for his lack of letters and gifts. He was too busy to keep in touch. Correspondence was lost in the mail. The school and her mother were keeping them apart out of spite. Then when she was twelve she’d seen a newspaper clipping of Carlton Stanhope’s departure for France as an ambassadorial envoy. He stood proudly with his new wife and his new son. No mention of the daughter he’d left behind. No place for Lucy within the happy family portrait.
She burned the newspaper in the dormitory grate, and those dreams stopped.
Now, with Amelia missing, for all intents and purposes, she was an orphan.
Alone. On her own. Free of them all.
Just the way she wanted it. To hell with Sister Murphy’s gloating sympathy.
She took a swig of brandy, hoping a little hair of the dog would help soothe the worst of her hangover and prepare her for the storm to come. Aunt Cynthia would be furious. She’d laid down an ultimatum after Lucy’s last run-in with the hospital staff. Once she heard about this latest to-do, it wouldn’t be a question of whether Lucy wanted to volunteer but how soon she could be signed up and shipped out.
What else was new?
A shadow slid across her legs followed by a quick frightened gasp. She looked up to see Bill frozen at the edge of the ruined tower wall, a knapsack slung over his back. “What are you doing here?” she growled, far more belligerently than she intended.
His chin took on a mulish jut, his eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What’s it to you?”
“Nothing at all, but don’t expect another rescue. That was my last pair of good stockings you ruined.”
He kicked at a ston
e. “Don’t need rescuing. Don’t need anybody. I can take care of myself.”
That sounded familiar. Lucy smiled despite the clanging in her head and the taste of cotton coating her tongue. “I’m quite sure you can, but that’s not what the authorities think.”
“They can all go hang, the whole bollocksy lot of them with their rules and their talk and their noses in the air. Don’t need ’em. Me and my mam did fine before ’em and we’ll do fine after ’em.”
“Right, then. Well, it’s been lovely talking to you, Bill. Cheers and all that.” She took another pull from the bottle before lying back to look up at the sky. A circling hawk made her dizzy.
“You feeling all right, miss? You look sick as a hooked cod, if you don’t mind me saying.”
She laughed harshly. “It’s just a large dose of self-pity mixed with a larger dose of Hennessy.”
He sat on the grass beside her and rummaged in his knapsack, pulling out two cigarettes. He lit one and offered the other to her. “I have an extra fag. You can have it if you like.”
“Keep it, but thanks.”
He leaned back against the rocks, knees up as he settled in with his smoke.
“You’re not going to go away, are you?” she asked.
His lips pressed in a tight angry line. “I’m going away all right. For good and all. I’m going home to London. Home to me mam.”
She finally focused her blurry gaze, her brow furrowing. Bill wore a dark purple bruise around his right eye and the corner of his mouth was split and scabbed over. “Maybe I’ll take that cigarette, after all.”
He handed it over and even dug in his pocket for a pack of matches. She accepted both, settling herself to face this unexpected crisis. At least Bill’s problems took her mind from her own. “So, let me get this straight—you’re running away.”
“Aye.” His features grew positively defiant. “Mr. Sayres has an old atlas. Some of the pages are missing or torn, but I traced out a route on a piece of paper. London’s east. If I follow the sun, it shouldn’t be too hard.”
The Way to London Page 8
