Lavender Dreaming: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas Series Book 5)

by Barbara Bartholomew

  Lady Laura, who had a fortune of her own that kept them going, had ordered Violet to hire someone to do the work, but she’d not been able to find anyone and besides was sure they couldn’t spare the money. She’d found tools enough to patch up the hole in the side wall as best she could and she put out tubs to collect the water that leaked in from the roof.

  Lady Laura hadn’t been happy, but no more than Violet did she know what else to do. The area around them was largely abandoned and help was hard to come by.

  Each morning after breakfast, Violet walked through the rooms, making sure doors were locked and windows secured. This made her feel a little safer when she went to bed at night, hopeful at least that nobody had sneaked in to do them harm.

  Lady Laura’s house was as safe as anyplace in London these days and so she went about her task of cleaning, cooking under Mrs. Rolfe’s direction, weeding and all the multiple tasks that made up her day.

  By the time she went to bed in the upper servant’s room she’d chosen as her own after the others moved out, she was always too tired to think of much other than she hoped the sirens wouldn’t go off again tonight.

  But then they had sounded this night and so she drowsed in the shelter until the all-clear sounded and they could climb the stairs and go back to bed. When the second round sounded, she told herself it was only a dream and rolled over to go back to sleep.

  The next thing she knew Lady Laura herself dragged her from bed, her skinny old hands covered with blood, and calling to Margaret and Mrs. Rolfe, pulled her downstairs and into a narrow tunnel that a confused Violet guessed was just another shelter. And then, against all reason, a bomb fell on the house again and all was noise and confusion.

  A scream shattered his normally peaceful routine as Warne proceeded through downtown Lavender. His was night duty this week and he patrolled the usually quiet streets of Lavender without expecting much in the way of trouble.

  Saturday nights some of the men got a little wild after drinking away too much of their paychecks at the downtown bar, but this was Thursday and no evening for anything extraordinary to occur.

  Sounded like a woman’s scream, he thought, taking off running in the direction from which it had come, which was the corner where set Forrest Stephens’ dry goods store right in the middle of the little downtown.

  The elegant glass door stood open when it should be firmly closed and another scream sounded from within. Pulling out his sidearm, he rushed into the darkness inside the building.

  Struggling, struggling, struggling through dense smoke that burned her lungs, Violet ran through the unknown streets of a part of the city unfamiliar to her. The square where she lived had suffered damage from the air raids, but here in this area of London, ruins lay all around her and furtive, frightened people, many of them children peered out at her flight as bombs continued to pour down on them, flashing brightly as they exploded.

  In real life she could not run, not very long or fast, but now she skimmed down the streets, leaping over or going around the debris left by the attacks. Real life? That was the clue. Only in her dreams were her legs whole and sound as though one of them had never been injured at birth. When she was in Lavender, she could walk without limping, run like any other person.

  Lavender! And suddenly her dream went elsewhere, escaping as she had for so many years into the little Texas town that didn’t exist in the world in which she lived. Lavender, where no bombs fell blasting ordinary people’s lives into splinters, leaving their family members dead in the wake of invading planes.

  The sweet blooming scent of summer flowers replaced the acrid burning of smoke that had clouded the air only seconds before. She heard screaming and ran toward the sound, even as her mind told her that was a foolish thing to do.

  But this was Lavender, not London, and somebody was hurt and in need of help. She found herself standing in the doorway of a tiny shop and tiptoed carefully in.

  “Lie still,” a man’s deep voice reached her, calm and gentle. “It’s going to be all right.”

  Warne. Her Warne. She couldn’t be afraid when he was present and obviously the injured woman felt the same way because her cries died away into smothered sobs.

  “She’s hurt,” she said. “She’s hurt awful bad.”

  Margaret? Deeply puzzled she recognized the voice that she shouldn’t hear in Lavender and found her way through the crowded room toward a light that shone in the back. Her instinct to call out a warning that they were defying the blackout since no thick curtains covered the windows against the brightness that gleamed through into the streets outside was quickly suppressed as she reminded herself that this was Lavender, not London.

  She found them hunched on the floor in what seemed to be a storeroom. The rounded figure of the maid huddled helplessly, her sobs finally forming into words. “It’s Lady Laura,” she said. “And she’ll kill me for letting her get hurt this way.”

  Margaret had always been given to hysterics, though in the old days it was usually about something trivial like a mouse running across the floor. Warne glanced up only briefly acknowledging her presence with a quick nod, then went back to focusing his attention of the fragile old figure lying on the floor. He’d grabbed some kind of cloth and was pressing tightly against a bleeding wound on Lady Laura’s head.

  The old woman’s eyes were open, but dazed looking. She looked past the stranger who was trying to help her, her face relaxing a little at sight of a familiar face. “Violet, will you tell this young man that I’m quite unharmed so that he will allow me to get to my feet.”

  Lady Laura hated to be incapacitated in any way, even by age. It was her style to plow ahead through illness and injury, pretending she was fine until she was.

  “Look, lady, you’re bleeding like a stuck pig,” Warne said in his slow Texas accent. “You just be still and let me see to you.”

  No way to work with Lady Laura, Violet new. No way to speak to her. She wasn’t to be forced into reasonable action.

  Chapter Three

  Caleb would arrive in the morning and though she missed him, Betsy was enjoying once more being a daughter in the family gathered around the big dining room at the house on Crockett Avenue. Her own two little munchkins were tucked into their beds upstairs, hopefully sound asleep, and she could concentrate on helping her friend Dottie put dinner on the table.

  Married now with a home of her own, Dottie still reported to help out each day, continuing to cook under the supervision of her grandmother who was long-time housekeeper, mostly retired now, for the two Dr. Stephens. As always when the roast had been placed in the center of the table and Betsy had served the hot rolls, both Mrs. Myers and Dottie joined the family at the table.

  This was not a formal household with servants that ate in the kitchen and Mrs. Myers and most of her grandchildren were like family. Now she looked at Betsy with open disapproval, “My land, girl,” she scolded the young woman she’d helped bring up. “Thought you were going to stay out in the country forever. Don’t you know we’re all in need of some storytelling?”

  Betsy smiled, pleased to be reminded that she was something other than wife and mother, that like Dottie she had a career outside the home. “Eddie should be here next week. She’s promised both she and Zan can take off a few days from their busy schedule for a visit. While she’s here we’ll plan a joint production.”

  While Betsy was the community’s chief storyteller and entertainer, her step-sister Eddie who had a nearly perfect memory for anything she’d heard or read served as their historian. In a town that had only limited use of print materials, she collected the old tales, preserving them in her memory to hand down to some future keeper of the past.

  Betsy didn’t get to see Eddie often these days now her sister lived at a future time with her husband and was looking forward to the visit.

  She glanced at her step-father, thinking that he probably missed his daughter even more than she did, though to Dr. Evan Stephens, he had not only the two d
aughters born to him, but counted Betsy, his second wife’s daughter, as much his child as the others.

  And for Grandpapa Forrest, she always felt special and knew both her sisters felt the same. Sylvie, the youngest who would be turning fifteen tomorrow and was the reason for this family gathering, always said that Grandpapa had a way of making whichever grandchild who was currently present feel like his favorite.

  The only blood relative she had at the table other than Sylvie was the other Dr. Stephens, her gentle mother. Cynthia who had brought the two of them to safety into little Lavender back when she was only a little girl, introducing them to this strange world where they’d stepped back into the last years of the 19th century in the little north Texas town of Lavender where nobody could come in or leave unless guided by Betsy Stephens Carr.

  She tried to dismiss that thought as she bowed her head for the grace that Papa spoke, then buttered the light-as-air roll that Dottie had made under her grandmother’s tutelage. Betsy was a fair hand at cooking and baking herself, but never had felt her bread-making skills quite lived up to Mrs. Myers’ high standard.

  She had only time for one bite before a pounding on the front door resounded throughout the house. Dottie pushed back her chair, but Betsy’s mom stopped her with the wave of one hand. “I’ll get it,” she said. “Most likely it’s for me or Evan.”

  Still they all waited, only little Ben continuing with the meal untroubled. A medical emergency in Lavender was bound to involve someone they knew since they were acquainted with most everyone in the community.

  Emergencies had long been a way of life in this household where both her parents were doctors, but Betsy couldn’t help feeling on edge as the pounding continued and her mother hurried toward the door.

  Sound carried through the big house and she heard the opening of the door, followed by her mother’s exclamation. Then a deep, but familiar male voice reached her ears. Warne’s voice resounded, calm, but urgent. “Bombed,” he said. “Ceiling came down on her.”

  A bomb? There were no bombs in Lavender. Unable to be still any longer, Betsy raced from the room, aware that others followed. Her first fears were for Eddie and Zan since her stepsister and her husband lived in a century where violent weapons were too much a part of life.

  She didn’t have time to figure out how the two of them could possibly have gotten into Lavender without her help. In the seconds while she ran through the house, she had only time for fear to rise within her.

  A fear that was immediately relieved as she saw the white, bony face of the woman Warne placed carefully on their best sofa, disregarding the blood that flowed from a head wound.

  The woman was a stranger as was the rounded middle-aged woman who stood wailing at her side. Then her gaze rested on the third face among the newcomers.

  A slim, delicate face, long, dark hair, wide brown eyes. Violet. She knew what Warne’s shadow girl looked like only from his description but here she was in the flesh.

  Even focused as she was on the injured Lady Laura, Violet was somehow aware that few of the people spilling into the room from the interior of the house were strangers to her. They wouldn’t know her, but she had dreamed of them for years.

  She saw sweet-faced Cynthia Stephens first. Good. She was a doctor and would help Lady Laura if anybody could. Then there was Betsy, her daughter and Warne’s friend. Betsy who couldn’t see her but could hear her voice and sometimes smiled or nodded. Even now a little smile of welcome quivered on her lips as she saw Violet standing so improbably there.

  The rest flooded in, murmuring only soft exclamations of surprise as they gave way to the other Dr. Stephens, Cynthia’s big dark-haired husband, Evan. In spite of her shock and fear, Violet felt better just knowing the two of them were here.

  Then she felt Betsy’s arm go around her shoulders and if she’d been a woman who gave release to tears, she would have wept just from that comforting touch. She had seen them all over the years as she dreamed of Warne’ life, but to these people who were more familiar to her than those she’d lived with in the London house, she was a stranger.

  Quickly things began to sort out and thankfully not too many questions were asked. The two doctors had Lady Laura carried back to their treatment rooms and vanished inside with her. Mrs. Myers spread her motherly wings over Margaret and, speaking soft words of comfort, led her back toward the kitchen for a hot drink that Dottie promised to make.

  Limping even more than usual after the strain of the evening, Violet headed for the closest chair and sank into its softness. She was left alone with Warne and Betsy and watched as they exchanged glances.

  “Don’t know what happened,” she said sourly, even though no words of accusation had been spoken. “The raids came at night and we didn’t make it to the shelter, though Mrs. Rolfe was yelling at us to hurry.”

  “She’s the cook,” Warne explained in an aside to Betsy.

  Violet nodded. “I heard her call and Lady Laura half dragged me somewhere, to the shelter, I supposed.” She shook her head in confusion. It was all just a jumble in her mind. “Then there was a big boom and the house seemed to shake itself and start falling. It was dark and I couldn’t seem to catch my breath, then I heard Margaret screaming that Lady Laura was killed. I bent over to dig her out of the debris and Margaret helped, then, just like that, we were here and Warne found us.”

  She looked at them pleadingly. “It doesn’t make much sense.”

  She heard her own strange mixture of accents: London street language, the sound of her ‘betters’ in the house, and the soft, rather flat drawl of Texas that she’d learned from Warne.

  Warne had to arrange for one of the other constables to take over in his place for the rest of the night, but Betsy insisted on making Violet drink a soothing cup of what she called tea, though it tasted like some sort of herbal mess to her. After that they tried to get her to eat, but though the food smelled good she couldn’t to get a bite past the lump that choked her throat.

  It was only when Betsy led her upstairs where she’d run a hot bath and left her for a soak that Violet saw herself in the mirror and realized that bits of plaster stuck in her hair and her dress, which had been about worn out in the first place, now hung in tatters around her thin body. “Don’t I just look a proper scarecrow,” she told herself in the mirror.

  Her body covered with bruises and scratches that stung as she settled into the soapy water, she still welcomed the comforting warmth and nearly fell asleep as she rested dozily in the tub. When she suddenly jerked awake and realized she had been sleeping, at least for a second or two, she climbed wearily out, toweled herself dry and put on the long nightgown Betsy had left for her.

  Strangely enough it was the sense that Warne Chapman was somewhere nearby that allowed her to crawl into bed and drift toward sleep. The fact that the two women who had been so long a part of her life, Lady Laura and Margaret, were in the same house added nothing to her comfort. She was sorry that Margaret was frightened and that Lady Laura had been hurt, but it was for their sakes, not hers. They were not and never had been friends of hers.

  Sleep felt thick and heavy like an old-fashioned quilt and in her exhaustion she didn’t even dream, though she wakened abruptly at the touch of a hand on her shoulder.

  Wordlessly, she sat up in the darkness only lit by thin starlight coming in the windows. For an instant she thought the sirens sounded again and waited for the thud of falling bombs, then realized what had awakened her.

  Betsy stood at her side, her golden hair enhanced by the delicate light. “Sorry to wake you, Violet, but the old woman is asking for you.”

  Violet shook herself into wakefulness. “Probably wants to send me on an errand,” she said, but obedient to the summons she stepped from bed and slipped on the wrapper that Betsy handed her to cover her thin gown.

  “Dad doesn’t think she’s going to make it. She’s hurt rather badly.” Her tone was gentle and kind as though Violet would be crushed by the news.

/>   Violet didn’t want Lady Laura to die, but it wasn’t as though she were a friend or relative. Violet didn’t find much of either in her life. She supposed Warne was the closest she came to having a friend and she’d never actually met him face-to-face in reality until tonight. Her life had left her scarce on warm feelings toward anybody. The main thing about her relationship to Lady Laura was that she’d been left responsible for the three older women. It had been her job to take care of them.

  She stayed silent as she padded from the room on bare feet, following Betsy as she led the way down the hall to the stairs. The graceful old stairway gleamed in the night and Violet felt like a spirit gliding through the quiet of the sleeping house. As they moved through the front of the house, a third party got up from where he reclined on a sofa to join them.

  “Hello,” Warne whispered. “Are you well?”

  She nodded and allowed him to take her hand. His felt warm and reassuring around her own and she couldn’t help thinking, this is what it’s like to have somebody care for you. It was a new feeling in her life and felt somehow vaguely threatening. Instinct told her to pull her own hand free, but somehow she couldn’t bear to let go.

  Both doctors, their faces worn with fatigue, looked up as they entered and Betsy stepped back to allow Violet to approach the woman they thought was her friend.

  Chapter Four

  Accustomed as he was to working nights and top that off with the second most remarkable experience of his life and Warne had been lying awake on the sofa, standing guard over his Violet, when she and Betsy tiptoed into the room.

  She looked little and fragile, her limp pronounced as she proceeded through the room, and knowing that her friend was probably mortally injured, the only thing he could do was accompany her and offer her his hand.