He nodded and she was sure he had his own doubts. For the rest of the ride, they talked about the outlook for crops, the weather and discussed the well-being of friends at each farmstead they passed.
Time passed slowly as the day warmed and sweat began to trickle down her back. She lifted her straw hat to allow the air to blow across the dampness of her hair and it felt good.
She sensed the peace of Lavender around her and thought how that would be a quality in short supply in most of the world in the century that lay ahead. She’d been in Lavender for years now and the knowledge of the history of the 20th century was only what she’d learned as a child. Most certainly she didn’t have her step-sister Eddie’s formidable memory, but she knew that much of it was a history of war and violence.
The two world wars, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan and everything else. From this distance, it didn’t give a picture of a world she wished to inhabit. And the brief visit she’d paid as an adult—she shuddered to remember the southwest as she’d last seen it and was thankful that Eddie and Zan refused to discuss the happenings of these days, saying that peeks in the future would be unwise for those choosing to remain in Lavender.
Sometimes all that knowledge and emotion invested in future and past was almost more than one head and one heart could contain.
She dismissed it all from her mind and looked ahead as they moved past a farm with a small house and a big red barn. They were getting close now. Soon they would reach their destination and she would, hopefully, have a clearer picture of what was going on.
Warne didn’t doubt for a minute where Betsy was taking him and his anxiety grew as they drew near the spot where he used to be able to see the creek just ahead.
He hoped it would be there again, a sign that things in Lavender were returning to normal, but was unsurprised when they rode over the last hill to see only a broad stretch of pastureland ahead.
Parts of Lavender were still missing.
She motioned to him to keep riding east and it was only when, almost without being aware of the fact, they began to circle back to the south that he knew they’d reached the edge of the community.
Betsy signaled him to a stop. “Here goes nothing,” she said.
He knew well enough that her attempts to cross the line into that other time had failed recently. He didn’t know exactly what would be gained by trying again, but if this was what Betsy wanted he was willing to help her give it a try.
“I’ll go with you,” he said, getting down from his horse to help her from hers.
She frowned, her sunshiny face not wearing the expression comfortably. “Warne, I wanted company coming out here so that my family would know in case anything goes wrong.”
“You think something’s going wrong?” he asked quietly.
“Not necessarily, but nothing is as it was before. Everything’s different.”
He’d never done this before, but almost everybody in Lavender knew the stories. Betsy Stephens Carr could walk in time and she could take anyone with her if she grasped them by the hand.
He had no choice but to release the horses to return home. He couldn’t stake them out here without water. Somehow if once more Betsy found herself unable to get out, they’d just have to hike to the nearest farm and beg a ride, but if she was, he would go with her. It was the only way he had of getting to Violet and Maudie.
He held out his hand.
“You sure?” Betsy asked.
“Heck, you’re the one taking the risk. You’ve got a young family back there in Lavender.”
She almost gasped in air. “If I thought it was a serious chance, Warne . . .” her voice trailed off. “I’d never risk leaving Caleb and the babies.”
He nodded, his hand still stuck out. She took it and they faced the east and started walking.
Chapter Seventeen
Violet sat waiting in the solicitor’s outer office with a secretary who ignored her. Having given her carefully edited information about the death of Lady Laura, she had found it surprisingly accepted, considering war-torn London and the condition of the house. Today the details of the will were to be read to Mrs. Downing, who was principal heir.
She’d hoped they’d let her go back to the house to see to Maudie and Mrs. Rolfe while they completed their business, but the elderly solicitor had told her to wait until they were finished.
“A young woman like you should not be walking alone this late in the day,” he said and, though Mrs. Downing who no doubt intended returning to her hotel instead of the damaged house, had looked as though she would like to protest, she had not. And so Violet waited.
A sudden shriek from the inner office interrupted her thoughts of Warne and what he might be doing back in Lavender.
“That’s impossible, utterly ludicrous!” She recognized Mrs. Downing’s normally dignified voice enunciating at a shattering level. The dowdy, rather elderly secretary jumped to her feet with sudden alacrity.
“Sir James?” she called in a quavering voice. Before she could take a step, Mrs. Downing, her eyes bulging in her face, stomped out like a wild woman.
“I will see you in the courts, James,” she was saying as both her daughter and the venerable solicitor followed immediately in her wake. “This is fraudulent. This is criminal. I won’t stand for it, you hear.”
The rather plump gentleman quickly moved around and past her to throw himself in front of the exit. “Be reasonable, Sibyl,” he pleaded. “It is written exactly as your cousin insisted and you can hardly complain since she left you everything else.”
“Complain?” Mrs. Downing sputtered, her face turning purple. “A valuable estate. My home since I was a child. Meant to be my daughter’s home. Money, I’m only left money.”
“A great deal of money, Sibyl my dear, and several other houses as well.”
“But Worthington is my heart’s home. My cousin would never have left it to anyone but me.” Mrs. Downing grasped in the general direction of her heart and allowed herself to be led to a chair, quickly shoved in her direction by the secretary. Secretary and solicitor hovered over her while her lovely young daughter regarded her with bemusement. “Really, Mother, I’d rather have the cash,” she said, then smiled, “and the bonds and that lovely cottage on the coast and the hunting villa in Scotland.”
“Really, Pamela,” her mother exclaimed indignantly.
Pamela turned and smiled sweetly at Violet, who had been observing the action with her mouth open and her eyes wide.
“Well, Miss Viola, scullery maid, how does it feel to be an heiress?”
Betsy and Warne strolled together like a young courting couple not in much of a hurry, pushing against invisible and unfelt barriers.
The first change Warne became aware of was in the sounds around him. If he had not already been introduced to cars and planes in London, he would have been shocked beyond measure. Even so, the difference between the vehicles he’d seen in 1940 and now was beyond measuring.
From the distance he heard a great and terrifying roaring and glancing quickly saw shiny vehicles, each of them with its own loud voice, hurtling down a wide roadway on one side going one way and on the other the opposite. Somehow in his shock he managed to recognize that through glass panes people looked out from inside those speeding modes of transportation.
Other objects flew through the air, a magical means of transportation so large and heavy-bodied that he found it hard to believe they could be held up in the air. Oh, he’d heard about the men who were trying to fly through the air by one means or another, had heard the bombers over London, but had placed little confidence in the events described by Betsy and her sister. The drawings they showed were obviously sensational imaginations meant for the entertainment of male juveniles.
Then his gaze withdrew, moved in away from the noise and confusion into the scene directly before him. A winding creek trailed past him, bending to head south. And a little further on he saw the roof of a familiar house.
&nbs
p; He drew in an audible breath and heard Betsy say, “Well, I guess it worked this time.”
He led the way as they walked away from the bend in the creek and toward the house. As the dwelling cast into sharp relief against the horizon, he saw that it was indeed the white-painted house that had been refurbished by the hard work of the Clarence family when they bought it after the previous owner’s death. Because it had been in a bad state of repair, they’d paid little for the old house and the few surrounding acres. People in town had doubted that Oliver Clarence could support his family on the modest little farm with only the help of his wife and daughters. A farmer needed a strong and sturdy son and Clarence had none, but the female members of his family proved to be hard workers and they’d managed, barely, to eke a living from the soil.
To Warne they’d always looked a little under-fed and overworked which was why he’d taken to stopping by now and then to lend a hand.
Nobody greeted them as they walked up the familiar path to the front door, though he could see that the rose bush Mrs. Clarence had planted to the right of the steps bloomed with small pink blossoms. The whole place looked much the same, undisturbed and unruffled, as though it had been set down here in this new place without even fluffing the feathers of the old hen who pecked at grasshoppers in the yard.
No, it was more than that. The house and yard had not been set down. The line had simply shifted so that the Clarences, their home, barn and even the cow that grazed out back were now outside of Lavender.
As he stood on the front steps, his hand raised to knock on the door, a black and white cat joined him to twine around his ankles in friendly fashion. Mrs. Clarence’s cat. He was here too.
How had Maudie ended up so far from the rest of her family?
He had to knock three times before he heard whispering within and saw the lacy curtain at the front window twitch as though someone looked out to see who was there.
A girl of about thirteen answered the door. “Warne,” she said. “Mama and Papa said not to answer the door, but when I seen it was you I figured it was all right.” Nervously she nodded in Betsy’s direction, acknowledging her only by saying, “Miz Carr.”
“Rosie,” Betsy smiled as she returned the greeting, then also greeted the smaller girl hovering just behind her sister. “Hello, Mary Sue.”
Smiles flickered on both thin faces. Warne couldn’t blame them for being scared. That roadway where horseless vehicles raced past had to be way outside any experience these country girls had ever faced. He didn’t feel too good about it himself.
“Mama and Papa are in the barn,” Rosie offered.
Warne nodded. “We’ll go talk to them,” he said. He half expected the two girls to follow them to the worn old barn, but instead they retreated inside, closing the door carefully behind them.
“Maudie wasn’t there,” Betsy commented, jogging a little to keep up with his long strides.
“Certainly not. She’s in London with Violet.”
They found the mother and father in the barn, not working, but the woman crying in the man’s arms. They’d sneaked off down here, Warne guessed, so their daughters wouldn’t see how they really felt.
Both burned to stare through dim light of the barn at the intruders. Betsy sneezed as the strongly hay-scented air wafted their direction.
“Bless you,” Mrs. Clarence said, then seeming to take their presence in, ran straight to the comfort of Betsy’s arms while her husband, a broad smile breaking on his face, grabbed Warne’s hand and began to shake it fiercely.
“Never been so dang glad to see anybody in my whole life,” he announced cheerfully. “Thank God, we’re back in Lavender.”
“It was like a bad dream,” his wife said, tears running down her face. “We was just inside fixing supper and Maudie had run out looking for the cat.” She sobered, looking around. “Where is Maudie? Have you seen her? Is she safe?”
Panicked at the thought of her missing daughter, she dashed to the sunlight of the wide door, stopping abruptly as she got a few feet outside and began to look around. “We’re still there,” she whispered. “We’re still in that awful place.” She looked in bewilderment to Betsy and Warne.
Warne had to offer the two parents some comfort. “I’ve seen Maudie. She’s all right and in the care of a good friend of mine.”
“In Lavender?” her father asked almost pleadingly.
Warne had no choice but to admit that much of the truth. “No,” he said. “Not in Lavender.”
They went back to the house together, Mrs. Clarence almost reeling with shock until she went through her own front door. Once in the presence of her two remaining daughters, she changed immediately, exuding an air of confidence for their benefit.
“Good news, girls,” she said. “With Warne and Betsy here we’ve made the first step toward home and being with your sister again.”
The children looked eagerly at their visitors. Betsy tried to be as courageous as their mother. Certainly she knew of no way to get their home and farm back across the time line, but hopefully she could usher the family members across. Hopefully, her brain whispered. Everything had been so strange lately.
She tried to explain as simply as possible something she herself knew little about. “Somehow the creek and the land around it, including your home slipped across the time line.”
They all stared at her with puzzled expressions.
“You do know about how I can move from one time to another?”
“I never was sure how that worked,” Mrs. Clarence admitted, “thought maybe it was another of your made-up stories.”
“It’s true enough,” Betsy said. “That’s how I came here and brought Warne with me looking for you. And that’s how I’ll take you back.”
Chapter Eighteen
The way Violet had it figured Laura Lady had just been playing games with her relatives. No doubt she’d planned on going back and changing the will later after having spent time tormenting them with the idea that she was leaving her favorite estate, the one where she’d grown up and lived as a young woman, to mere servants.
For, of course, Worthington wasn’t left solely to Violet. Mrs. Rolfe and Margaret were also heirs and a note read by the solicitor indicated that her ladyship made the gift in gratitude to those who had stayed by her in her most difficult hours.
Well, it hadn’t been actually by choice that they’d stayed at the townhouse through the bombing to look after her. They’d been ordered to remain, though Violet supposed that in these days when every hand was needed even a half-crippled kitchen maid and two older servants could have found work of some sort.
Still she was cynic enough to suspect that if she’d lived long enough Lady Laura would have reversed her decision and left the property to her cousin’s family. She was, after all, one of those people who believed that blood was everything.
Back at the house, Mrs. Downing, having failed in her insistence that Violet immediately sign the property over to its rightful owners and being told by her solicitor that such a move might tie up the whole estate for years, especially in wartime, insisted that Margaret be found immediately.
But Mrs. Rolfe, after one glance at Violet’s face, had refused. “She is with family,” she said, “recovering from the loss of her lady.”
Violet wondered why she said this, if it was because she sensed that something not easily explainable involved Margaret or because she was afraid the lady’s maid would be more amenable to pressure from the Downings. Anyway, Violet couldn’t have produced Margaret if she tried.
Maudie hovered at Violet’s side, alarmed at the tone in Mrs. Downing’s voice. Violet couldn’t help being a little threatened herself, feeling that her employer would like to murder the three of them if she dared. Pamela, on the other hand, looked as though she was enjoying her mother’s discomfiture and Mrs. Rolfe, who suddenly seemed taller and straighter, her slumped shoulders held erect, spoke in a voice that held not a trace of the politeness of servitude.
> “We will need to go to Worthington immediately, Violet,” she said now, “to see that things are kept in proper order. Both the servants at the house and grounds and those who manage the farms will need to know that the place is still in good hands. It’s the least Lady Laura would expect of us,” she added this last with a bare glance at Mrs. Downing.
For nearly five minutes, Violet feared the woman would choke to death. She seemed unable to speak and her face turned purple once again.
“You think you’re going to take over Worthington? Not likely. Not bloody likely.” Her voice rasped with strain as she hissed out the words. “You have no idea how much it requires to keep an estate like that running.”
“But Mother,” Pamela said in her high-toned voice. “Sir James said Cousin Laura left money to run the estate and that it comes close to supporting itself with earnings from the farms. And certainly, the staff is low in numbers because so many have left to join the war effort.”
“Good management will do wonders,” Mrs. Rolfe said briskly, cheering Violet who was feeling more overwhelmed than privileged as she became aware of the fact that people like her, those who still worked at Worthington, were now depending on the three of them for their livelihood. At least one of them seemed to have an inkling of how to proceed.
“We will travel to Worthington on the morrow,” said Mrs. Rolfe, speaking only to Violet and ignoring the other two women as though this was no concern of theirs.
“I expect you think to throw us out like beggars into the street,” Mrs. Downing challenged wildly. Pamela grinned. Violet wondered what their relationship was that the daughter seemed to be so enjoying her mother’s ire.
“Certainly not,” Mrs. Rolfe responded without emotion, “but I’ve often heard you say you detested old fashioned Worthington and that once your cousin died you would live on one of the other properties.”
Lavender Dreaming: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas Series Book 5) Page 11
