Courageous Bride

by Jane Peart

  Brides of Montclair 14

  COURAGEOUS

  BRIDE

  MONTCLAI

  in WARTIME

  1939–1946

  By best-selling author

  JANE PEART

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  1939

  chapter 1

  chapter 2

  chapter 3

  chapter 4

  1940

  chapter 5

  chapter 6

  1941

  chapter 7

  chapter 8

  chapter 9

  chapter 10

  chapter 11

  chapter 12

  1942

  chapter 13

  chapter 14

  chapter 15

  1943

  chapter 16

  chapter 17

  chapter 18

  chapter 19

  chapter 20

  chapter 21

  chapter 22

  1944

  chapter 23

  chapter 24

  chapter 25

  chapter 26

  1945

  chapter 27

  chapter 28

  chapter 29

  chapter 30

  chapter 31

  1946

  chapter 32

  chapter 33

  About the Author

  By Jane Peart

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Share Your Thoughts

  1939

  chapter

  1

  Montclair

  Spring 1939

  CARA MONTROSE, A TALL, slender woman in her early forties, wearing a threadbare riding jacket, tan breeches, and scuffed leather boots, came out of the house and walked purposefully toward the stables. Her dark auburn hair was pulled back into a clubbed knot at the nape of her neck. Today her face, with its aristocratic features, was unusually thoughtful, almost pensive.

  She moved with a casual grace along a path bordered with golden daffodils. As if becoming suddenly aware of them, she paused briefly, bent to touch a delicate, bonnet-shaped flower with one finger. Straightening, she breathed deeply of the scent of apple blossoms wafting from the orchard.

  Virginia in early spring was truly paradise. No wonder she had never been really happy anywhere but here. She looked back at the house where she had come as a bride over ten years ago. Seen through a veil of pink-and-white dogwood, it stood as it had for nearly two hundred years, its mellowed brick chimneys rising over the rambling slate roof. Montclair. It had become almost as dear to her as Cameron Hall, where she had grown up.

  If only she and Kip could keep it up the way it should be. But help being what it was these days, and money in the Montrose bank account being what it usually was, there was no possibility of that. At least not right away. Someday … perhaps.

  In the meantime she had her pony class to teach three days a week, and that brought in a little income. Kip’s small income as an army reserve flight instructor helped, as did the income from the occasional chartered flights he piloted.

  For a short period he had flown for the airmail service. But unpredictable weather often grounded him for days as he waited for clearance to take off. It also meant being away from home too much, and Kip loved his family and missed them terribly when he was gone. Now his main job was giving flying lessons to a few adventurous souls at the local airfield.

  We’re doing the best we ean, Cara thought, her jaw tightening as she recalled how Great Aunt Garnet had chastised her for advertising her pony classes. “Don’t you care what people say?” the old lady had demanded.

  “No, I don’t care what people say,” Cara had replied. “I never have and I don’t intend to start now.” So what if people thought they were broke? So were most of the families they knew. There was a depression on in the country.

  Thank goodness they had managed to scrape enough together and get a bank loan so Luc could attend the university. Smart boy that he was, Luc had also earned a scholarship. She didn’t know what they’d do about Niki when her turn came.

  The five ponies were kept in the small barn next to the stables. Cara went to each one, fed them sugar cubes from the supply she carried in her jacket pocket. She rubbed their noses and talked to them softly, gently. Like children, the ponies were much more tractable when they were sweet-talked, not scolded. Amused at her own analogy, Cara got down the tack and started getting the animals ready for their little riders, who were due within the next half hour.

  Cara was tightening the girth strap on one of the ponies when she heard the sound of voices. She turned to see the girl and boy approaching. They did not see her as they went inside the stable. Niki’s voice was raised argumentatively. She was probably trying to get Luc’s opinion, advice, or approval. He seemed to be listening intently to whatever it was she was saying. Still not aware of Cara’s presence, they got their horses out of their stalls and began to saddle them. Cara stood at the entrance of the pony barn, watching them fondly.

  Luc was becoming an extraordinarily handsome young man. Although not as tall as his father, he had a slim, athletic build and Kip’s coloring and features. Corduroy breeches, a blue denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a red scarf tied casually around his neck gave him a dashing look.

  Of course, Niki was as carelessly outfitted as ever, in a sweater yards too big for her, jodhpurs too short, her curly dark hair as tousled as some ragamuffin boy’s. She was still talking as she swung up into her saddle. Luc mounted with effortless grace, and they walked their horses out of the barn and into the sunlit afternoon.

  “Have a good ride,” Cara called. Neither seemed to have heard her over the clatter of their horses’ hooves on the cobblestone. At the curve of the drive they broke into a trot. Cara remained, looking after them until they rode out of sight.

  From the day Cara and Kip had brought the little French war-orphan back to Montclair, Luc, although only two years older, had taken on the role of a protective older brother, affectionate and kind. Niki adored him immediately, wanting to tag along with him everywhere. Tolerantly Luc put up with her.

  However, how long would this close relationship last? Home from his first year at college, Luc was changing, growing up to be a serious, more thoughtful young man. Cara had found books on his bedside table, placed facedown as if he had been reading at night before turning out the light. This was a new side of Luc, one she had not been aware of before. Certainly this wasn’t the Kip part of Luc. Cara couldn’t remember the last time she had seen Kip reading a book. If ever. Maybe he’d occasionally pick up a Field and Stream magazine or glance through the Hunt Club newsletter …

  “Afternoon, Aunt Cara.” The young male voice startled her, and she whirled around to see her nephew Stewart Cameron.

  “Well, hello, Stew,” she greeted him, thinking the lanky redhead was, as they say, the “spittin’ image” of her brother Scott at the same age. “Shouldn’t you be working at the newspaper this time of day? Does your daddy, the editor, know you’re playing hooky?”

  “Turned in my copy. Got a city council meeting to cover tonight, so I took the rest of the day off.” He grinned, then glanced into the barn hopefully. “Niki around?”

  Cara darted him a quick look, then shook her head. “Sorry, she and Luc just took off on a ride.”

  Stewart could not hide his disappointment. He did not have a poker face, Cara thought with sympathetic amusement. “They should be back in an hour or so, Stew. I told them I wanted them back in plenty of time to clean up and help me some. Your Aunt Kitty and Craig are in Williamsburg, and they’re driving over here for supper.” Cara added impulsively, “You’re welcome to join us, if you’d like.”

  T
he minute the words were out of her mouth, Cara winced. Niki will kill me. She always wanted Luc to herself when he was home for the weekend. But it was too late to retract the invitation. Stewart’s face broke into an eager grin.

  “Thanks, I’d like that, if it isn’t any trouble.”

  “No trouble. It will be just family. You’re family, Stew.”

  When Luc and Niki came back and found Stewart there, Cara was relieved to see Niki hide her chagrin. Sometimes Niki treated Stewart with undisguised indifference. Maybe Niki was learning to curb her impulsiveness. Cara hoped so. Niki’s volatile temperament had often got her into trouble. Cara set another place at the dining room table, thinking that she couldn’t really blame Stewart for having fallen in love with her adopted daughter. Niki had become an enchanting young woman.

  She wasn’t beautiful, but her face had individuality. Brown eyes sparkling with mischievousness, a small, square-tipped nose, a generous mouth ready to smile. Her silky dark hair was worn short and gave her the look of a French street urchin—which might have been her destiny if Cara had not rescued her from the orphanage and brought her to Virginia after the war.

  Upstairs, after a quick shower, Niki fumed. For all her effort to maintain a good-natured acceptance, she had been dismayed to find Stewart Cameron waiting when she and Luc cantered into the stable yard. She had hoped that when Aunt Kitty and her husband and Tante and Uncle Kip lingered at the table over coffee, she and Luc could slip away for a private conversation. There was so much she wanted to tell him, confide to him, and she hadn’t had a chance on their gallop that afternoon. Whenever Luc came home to Montclair on weekends, he always wanted to ride hard. “Get the cobwebs out,” he called it. Niki couldn’t imagine why Luc had chosen to work in the stuffy Richmond office of Frank Maynard, their state senator. Now, with Stewart here, there probably wouldn’t be another chance. She’d just have to find some time before Luc left on Sunday evening to tell him her plans. He’d probably try to talk her out of them, but maybe not. If anyone would understand, it would be Luc.

  Niki felt her unhappiness come down upon her like some nightmarish entity. The dark cloud she mostly kept at bay descended, twisting and turning inside, making everything seem dreary, when in reality everything was lovely.

  She lived in a beautiful home, with affectionate people who showered her with everything anyone could want or dream of having. Why was it not enough? Why did she feel claustrophobic?

  It wasn’t as though she didn’t appreciate Tante and all she had done for her. That painful empty place she had in her heart had nothing to do with Tante. It was the not knowing that hurt. Like a toothache that wouldn’t go away, would never go away until she had a chance to find out—or at least to try to find out.

  Well, somehow she’d have to get through dinner and hope Stewart would leave early. She gave her hair a couple of whacks with the brush, made a final check in the mirror, and then went downstairs.

  After dessert, instead of excusing the young people while the adults stayed at the table, as was their custom, Tante suggested that since the evening was warm, they should have their coffee on the veranda. Picking up the silver coffee carafe, Cara signaled Niki to help her. Resignedly Niki followed with the tray of cups and saucers.

  On the porch everyone took seats on the wicker armchairs or in one of the rocking chairs and resumed the conversation. Niki went from one to the other, offering them cream and sugar. Watching her, Kitty Cavanaugh, Cara’s twin, thought it was uncanny how alike the two were. Not in appearance but in personality. Kitty had noticed it even when Niki was a little girl. Now it was even more apparent. They both had the same spontaneous gaiety, a longing for attention, an eagerness to please. It was all the more endearing because Niki had a certain unsureness about her, a vulnerability that Cara never had. Cara was always supremely confident of her ability to make people love her. There was something a little hesitant about Niki.

  When Niki reached her, Kitty asked, “So Nicole, now that you’ll be graduating from high school, what do you plan to do?”

  Afterward Niki never knew why she said it. Maybe because it had been on her mind all through dinner as she waited for a chance to talk to Luc about her plan. At Kitty’s question she just blurted out, “What I really want to do, Aunt Kitty, is go to France, see if I can find my real parents.”

  Her answer seemed to drop into a pool of utter stillness. It was one of those silences that sometimes fall naturally, even during the liveliest gatherings. The statement hung there vibrating until someone had the presence of mind to pick up the thread of the previous discussion and carry on with it. Soon the buzz of voices continued.

  If her hands had been free, Niki would have clapped one over her mouth. If she hadn’t tightly gripped the tray she was holding, she might have dropped it, spilling everything all over Aunt Kitty’s lovely dress and making a terrible mess. Instead she’d made a different kind of mess.

  Automatically both Kitty and Niki glanced at Cara. At the sight of her suddenly pale face, her stunned expression, both realized that she had not only overheard Niki’s reply but had been shocked by it. Niki’s wide-eyed, stricken gaze met Kitty’s.

  It was not Cara’s nature to show hurt, and she did not do so now under Kitty’s sympathetic gaze. Instead she turned to Craig and continued their conversation, which had momentarily halted.

  Indeed, Cara had heard every word. Even as she kept her voice calm, she was deeply moved. How long had Niki kept this hidden, harbored a secret plan? She had been just four when Cara and Kip married and brought her back to live at Montclair. Cara assumed Niki remembered little if anything about the French orphanage where Cara had worked after the war and where Niki had been brought as an abandoned baby. Niki had never before expressed the desire to find her real parents. Why now? Cara wondered. And why does this natural curiosity upset me so much? Maybe if she and Kip had had other children of their own … maybe then she could be less wounded by what Niki wanted to do. And what if Niki were somehow able to track down her real parents and they were people whom she couldn’t love, admire—or worse still, who did not want her?

  As soon as she could, Niki made her escape back to the kitchen, where Luc found her a few minutes later.

  “What was all that about?” he demanded.

  She whirled around from the sink, where she had been standing, clutching the metal edges of the drainboard, trying to stop shaking. “Well, it’s true. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time.”

  “I don’t think you picked the best possible time to announce it,” Luc said dryly.

  “I didn’t intend to…. I—”

  “Niki, you never intend to do some of the dumb things you do, do you? You just act on impulse. Never mind if you upset things that get in your way,” he said, half smiling. Both of them remembered some of their early quarrels, when Niki would run into the room so eager to share something with him that she didn’t see one of the elaborate Lego structures he used to build, and inadvertently knock it down.

  “I guess I could have—”

  “Yes, you certainly could have,” Luc drawled, then came over and put a comforting arm around her shoulders. “So, want to tell me about it?”

  “You of all people, Luc, should understand why it’s important. I know you love Tante and Uncle Kip is your father, but you’ve had a chance to find out about your real mother and know your grandparents.”

  Every summer since he was fifteen, Luc had traveled to France to visit his mother’s parents, the Boulangers. The first year he went with Jill Cameron, who went to see the one remaining member of her family, an aging uncle in England. From that time on Luc traveled on his own. When he came home each fall, he had many fascinating stories to share. While using his grandparents’ home as his base, he had taken bicycle trips all over France with his companion, Paul Duval, who over the years had become Luc’s best friend in their village. Paul had even come back with Luc to stay for his junior year in high school at Montclair.
>
  Perhaps these experiences of Luc’s had made Niki more aware of her own French background. The desire to go back had grown. Now it was more than that. It had become an obsession.

  “Don’t you see, Luc, how important this is?”

  Luc did understand. He was comfortable with his own dual heritage. He thoroughly enjoyed the summers he spent in France, spoke French fluently, loved everything French. He had unconsciously whetted Niki’s appetite to explore her native country. But this thing about finding her birth parents was something even she must know was nearly impossible, given the mass confusion and chaos that was the aftermath of the war. Still, she had thought about it so much that it had become a possibility.

  Cara soon saw that Niki could not be talked out of it. So Cara and Kip decided that, as a graduation present, they would allow Niki to accompany Luc when he left the first week in July. Niki had no idea Cara had to sell an heirloom set of jewelry, a cameo pendant and earrings, to finance her trip.

  Kip drove Luc and Niki to Richmond to catch their train to New York. There they would stay overnight in Kitty and Craig Cavanaugh’s Manhattan apartment. The following day Kitty and Craig would take the two young people to board the ship for their trip to France.

  That evening Cara wandered alone through the house. She stopped at the door of Niki’s empty, now perfectly neat bedroom. Standing in the doorway, she remembered the nights she had tucked her into bed and said with her the prayer she had learned herself at the same age, listened to the little girl, who still had the slightest French accent, repeat the words:

  Matthew, Mark, Luke, John,

  The bed be blest that I lie on,

  Four posters to my bed

  Four angels round my head

  One to watch and one to pray,

  Two to bear my soul away.

  At this point Niki would always interrupt, saying, “Now let’s say Luc’s prayer.” And she would repeat the one Luc had taught her—“Now I lay me down to sleep …”—the goodnight prayer that Kip had taught him. Even from the beginning Niki had wanted to copy everything Luc did.