Secrets of Nanreath Hall Read online

  “Enjoying yourself?” he asked.

  She laughed, suddenly awkward in his presence. “What a ridiculous question. All my life I’ve heard of this place. I think I saw Cole Porter when we came in, and I’m certain it was Margaret Rutherford taking a powder in the loo when I went to fix my lipstick earlier.”

  “So are Cole Porter and Margaret Rutherford the only reasons you’re enjoying yourself?” His breath tickled her ear.

  “Another ridiculous question,” she replied quietly.

  His arm tightened around her waist, and she felt rather than heard his deep rumble of laughter. A bubble of happiness grew in her chest.

  The bandstand, the winding, elegant stair up to the balconies, the crowded tables, the other dancers—they blurred and spun in a feverish whirl with her and Tony at the center. Anna grew dizzy, her head swimming, her body alive with a crackling heat as if she were feverish. The singer’s smoky alto spoke of loneliness and longing, emotions Anna understood too well. She laid her head on Tony’s shoulder and closed her eyes, letting him guide her, giving herself up to the music and the moment, the glittering excitement around her and the steady man holding her safe.

  In that instant of surrender, her guard faltered, and all the memories she’d so firmly locked away spilled free. Cold sweat doused her feverish skin. Her heart raced until it felt as if it would propel itself right out of her chest. No! Her eyes snapped open, focusing on the bandleader, a thin Negro man elegantly dressed in a dinner jacket, hips swaying as he led the orchestra in the final refrain.

  Tony cast her a glance, but in the dim light of the club, it was impossible to interpret the odd quirk of his mouth and contraction of his brows. He continued to carry her through until she regained her composure, his arm always there, his steps unerring until the last note fell into an uneasy silence, as if she were not the only one affected by grim thoughts.

  A few in the audience clapped, sporadic at first then growing until the place roared, as the singer bowed and moved offstage. The bandleader moved into another tune, and Tony led her from the floor to their table.

  “Phew! I haven’t danced in ages,” Anna said, working to calm herself with the deep breathing exercises she’d been taught in hospital. “I’m positively dizzy.”

  “Ginger Rogers couldn’t have cut a more elegant rug.”

  She slid into the seat across from him, her smile a shade too bright, her manner a tad too exuberant, but Tony didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, he kept it to himself. He waved over a waiter and ordered them two more cocktails. When Anna finished hers in less time than it took him to take more than two sips, he ordered her another, but now his gaze was a bit more assessing.

  Anna answered this with more high-spirited jollity and another deep gulp of her Manhattan. “I still remember the first night a boy invited me to the local Palais on a Saturday night. Graham threatened him with violence if he tried anything fresh. When I slunk back home hours past my curfew, he was sitting in the parlor smoking his pipe and doing the crossword. He never raised his voice, merely invited my date out on the stoop to see his old Enfield rifle. The next time I saw that poor boy, I think he tripped over himself fleeing in the opposite direction.”

  “Nothing like waving a deadly weapon about for keeping the men away.”

  When had she finished off her drink? Was it her fourth or fifth? Stymied of a liquid distraction, she toyed with her napkin, folding and refolding tiny pleats in the linen. “Prue was usually the one you had to be careful about. She didn’t suffer fools gladly and had no problem expressing herself. I thought she would be the one to lose her temper when I told them I’d volunteered with the BRCS, but it was Graham. He’d served in the last war, you see. He knew what I was getting myself into, knew it would be worse than I could imagine. He tried to tell me, but I ignored him. I saw myself as Florence Nightingale with her lamp out to save the world. Then the Germans invaded France and . . . well . . . Graham was right.”

  Tony laid a hand over hers, putting an end to her manic napkin pleating. “You must miss them very much.”

  “I . . .” There was that internal stutter-step again, like she’d missed her footing and landed hard, punching the breath from her lungs. She made a small noise somewhere between a hiss and a gasp, barely noticeable above the din of the club, but Tony immediately drew her from her chair. She made no protest as he collected her coat, simply allowed him to ease her through the dancers to the stairs leading back to the crisp wintry street.

  Searchlights speared the sky and the glow of fires reflected on the heavy smoke off to the east. Distant antiaircraft fire bounced and echoed like summer thunder. He didn’t speak but simply started walking slowly up Coventry Street, clasping her hand in his. Damp snow sifted onto her shoulders, stung her cheeks. In the hours they’d been in the club, it had drifted its way into alleys and under awnings, coating the buildings in dingy frosting. For some reason, she found herself thinking of Nanreath Hall and the way the snow there glowed in the wintry moonlight against the far hills or drifted beneath the bare trees along the path to the village.

  “Given any more thought to what I said this afternoon?” Tony asked, breaking into her thoughts.

  She rubbed her temples against a headache that threatened to ooze out her ears. “I can’t go back. It’s too humiliating. My name is Trenowyth, but I don’t belong there.” She looked around helplessly at the dark street, the city a collage of gray on gray shadows smelling vaguely of soot and mud and death. A scent she knew she would never forget should she live to be a hundred. “I’m not sure where I belong anymore.”

  “You belong with people who care about you. With Tilly, Sophie.” He paused. “With me.” She couldn’t see his expression in the dark but she felt the intensity behind his words like a slap to the face.

  “Oh” was all Anna managed to say until she swallowed the lump in her throat. She pulled her hand from his. Stood hugging herself against the cold. The moment stretched thin and brittle. No words spoken. Only the soft puffs of their mingled breaths in the air between them.

  Tony leaned in for a kiss, but instinct had her turning away before she did something she’d regret.

  He gave a small self-deprecating sort of laugh. “I didn’t expect you to swoon at my feet, but well . . . I guess my bloated ego expected a bit more of a reaction.”

  “I’m sorry, Tony. I’m honored . . . truly . . . but . . . you see . . . I . . . I can’t even think like that . . . of that . . . it’s impossible . . .” Her evening’s diet of Manhattans swirled uneasily in the pit of her stomach.

  The top half of his face was lost in darkness but for the refracted gleam of the sweeping searchlights in his eyes.

  “Please don’t be angry. Tonight’s been lovely, and I don’t think I could bear you to be upset with me for ruining your leave.”

  She’d come to rely on Tony’s friendship and trust in his common sense. She didn’t know how much so until there was a risk of it being withdrawn. She felt her breath catch in her chest as worry slid cold over her shoulders.

  He tipped her chin up and kissed the end of her nose. “Silly thing. I can’t say I’m not disappointed.” He didn’t smile but there was humor in his voice. “But I’m certainly not angry. And I can’t think of anyone I’d rather spend my leave with than you, prickles and all. I warn you, though, I don’t give up easily. Not once I’ve set my mind on something—or someone.”

  An air-raid siren broke the quiet hiss of falling snow, growling louder and louder as the searchlights coalesced to the south where the Thames acted like a great big silver arrow to the armadas of German bombers who followed it on their nightly runs. The dissonant rise and fall broke the spell. She jerked as if she’d been slapped, her skin crawling as every frayed nerve unraveled at the same time. She clamped her teeth and her knees together. She’d already made herself look a complete fool. She wouldn’t add to her humiliation by throwing herself to the ground and trying to burrow through the cement.

  The st
reets filled with citizens streaming out of the buildings toward the nearest shelters or underground stations. A man clutching a Bible and an extra pair of shoes; a woman carrying a framed photograph, a teakettle, and a hairbrush; a couple each with a small dog under their arms. Whatever, in their haste, they had decided was worth saving.

  “Let’s go,” Tony said.

  Anna forced her legs to move, her feet to follow the others down the street. She balked at the entrance to the station, a hand on the gate. Already the air grew thick with the mingled smells of sweat, onions, and wet wool. It would be worse the deeper they went, as the sensation of being buried alive crawled along her skin and squeezed her lungs.

  She looked back over her shoulder to see an ominous red glow riming the clouds. The guns grew louder and closer as the hum of the bombers increased, and the ground shook with the nearing explosions.

  “Anna?” Tony took her hand and offered her a reassuring squeeze. “I won’t let you go.”

  She inhaled as if she were going under for the last time and followed him down.

  Anna arrived for her appointment with the JWO early the next morning and was promptly shown to a tidy office. The middle-aged Red Cross administrator regarded Anna across a scrupulously organized desk, official-looking forms of every description stacked in tidy piles alongside trays of correspondence, color-coded files, and a bookended row of ledgers. Only a single framed picture of a uniformed young man standing in front of a Hurricane offered any hint this no-nonsense woman had a life beyond this dreary building.

  “Your file makes for an interesting read, Miss Trenowyth.” Every tap of her pencil smashed against Anna’s skull as if she were shooting off rounds above her head, but at least the throbbing headache distracted her from the queasy pitch and roll of her stomach. She’d never be able to smell sweet vermouth again without a nauseated shudder.

  The administrator paused in her tapping to turn a page, her gaze flicking to scan the fine print of the report. “Three months nurses training at St. Barts here in London before you left to join the Red Cross. Anxious to do your part?”

  “I was afraid the war would be over before I got my SRN license.”

  “Fat chance of that.”

  The clock on the wall ticked over to 9:00 A.M. Back at Nanreath, she would have been on duty over an hour and a half already. Probably cleaning up from breakfast or working with one of the sisters on morning rounds. There had been an increase of pneumonia and other respiratory infection admittances, which kept everyone hopping round the clock.

  The officer continued scanning the pages. “Posted to France with the BEF in January of last year. Served until the evacuation of forces in June where you suffered an injury to your”—another pencil tap, another flick of her pale eyes—“right shoulder when your ship was hit.”

  “Actually it was my collarbone, upper right arm, and two ribs. We probably would have survived the strafing. It was the mine that did us in.”

  “Three nurses died.”

  It wasn’t a question. Anna threaded her hands in her lap. Cold sweat trickled down her spine. “Along with twenty-eight stretcher cases and six of the ship’s crew . . . ma’am.”

  Her fingers tightened. She felt her eyes wandering back to the clock. Tilly was probably up to her armpits in dirty laundry, and the boiler was tricky if you didn’t set it just so. It had taken Anna two months to learn the knack.

  “It also says you didn’t speak for three weeks following your arrival in hospital for your injuries. And that there were episodes of troubling emotional behavior determined to be a direct result of your . . . unfortunate experience.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Unfortunate was puncturing a bicycle tire and being late for 10:00 P.M. roll call or being set to polishing keyholes and bed hooks by Sister Murphy. Not wading through roads scattered with the pulverized body parts of refugees fleeing the German advance or unceasing days hunkered on the beach deafened by the constant noise of exploding mines, screaming dive bombers, and artillery shelling, unable to sleep or eat or scrub the sand, grease, and blood from your skin.

  The administrator set the file down, eyeing Anna with a schoolmarmish grimness. “I assume this was why your original request for an overseas posting was denied.”

  “They thought I needed more time to heal. They sent me to Cornwall to work at the convalescent hospital at Nanreath, instead.”

  Nanreath, where the wind always tasted faintly of salt and the ocean’s constant purr lulled her to sleep when sleep seemed impossible.

  “Which brings us to the present.” The woman placed her pencil in a perfect right angle to the folder and leaned back in her chair. Her row of World War I medals gleamed. “I’ve been informed that short of my finding evidence of out-and-out lunacy or some other diagnosis that would assume you unfit for duty, I’m to offer you a transfer wherever you wish.” Her eyes dropped to the pencil, as if she were dying to edge it to the left a half inch. “You have a friend in high places, Miss Trenowyth, to take such care over one lowly VAD.”

  “I don’t know if friend would be the most appropriate term.”

  “No, I wondered about that, as well. As I said, your report makes for interesting reading.” She rose to pace the small office, her eyes flicking ever so faintly to the portrait of the young man. A brother? A son? Alive? Dead? “Is it your wish to leave the hospital at Nanreath?”

  “I’ve spent these past months working hard to prove I’m fit for an overseas post.”

  “That wasn’t exactly an answer, was it?” She smiled, giving her stern face an unexpected warmth. “Or perhaps it was.” She sat back down and lifted her pen, dipped it in a great glass inkwell, hand poised atop the forms. “You will be billeted in London until your reassignment. See my secretary for details and additional paperwork.”

  Anna’s stomach rolled. Her head threatened to split down the middle. Her heart dropped into her toes. As the pen touched the page, Anna lurched to grab it away from her, the ink dribbling out to stain the pristine paper. “Wait.”

  The woman merely glanced up, as if VADs losing their minds in her office were par for the course. “Yes, Miss Trenowyth?”

  “I appreciate your help, really I do. And . . . well . . . I thought I wanted to leave. I thought it right up to the moment I saw you lift that pen.”

  “And now?”

  “I want to stay at Nanreath Hall. Not because I’m scared. Or unfit for duty. But I don’t like being pushed around. If I get an overseas posting, I want it to be on my own merit, not because you’ve been ordered to do it.”

  “You realize you’ve wasted more than an hour of my time, Miss Trenowyth, as well as valuable resources as we shift manpower around in order to place you in your requested post.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I’m very sorry.”

  The officer ripped up the forms. “Be on the next train west and see that I don’t have cause to hear from your friend again.”

  “Lady Boxley isn’t my friend, ma’am. She’s my aunt.”

  The officer leaned back in her chair with a pinch of her brows. “All smells a bit odd if you ask me.”

  Anna ventured a grim smile. “Take my word, ma’am, you wouldn’t believe the half of it.”

  Chapter 12

  June 1914

  Summer sunlight woke me from a dark dream where no matter how I swam, the sea dragged me from shore, the lights of Nanreath Hall dimming until they winked out and I was left all alone. I started awake, out of breath and heart thudding in my chest, to stare at the familiar and comforting crack in the ceiling above the bed. A dream, nothing more.

  “Good morning, beautiful.” Simon stood in the doorway already wearing his hat and coat. “Sleep well?”

  “Like a baby,” I lied.

  He dropped a chaste kiss on my forehead, though his gaze burned with desire. “Break a leg today.”

  “That’s what you say to actors.”

  “What’s good luck for artists, then?” he murmured.

 
“Break a paintbrush?”

  He chuckled, and this time when he kissed me, it was a hungry, demanding kiss that had me twining my arms behind his head as I sought to pull him back into bed with me.

  “Tempting, love, but I have a train to catch.”

  “I wish I could come with you this time.”

  “I wish it, too, but my parents are as stodgy and old-fashioned as yours. They don’t understand, and there’s no use trying to make them. It’s just easier if I go alone.”

  “Perhaps if we took rooms in separate hotels or—”

  He glanced at his watch. “I have to run, love. I’ll be home the day after tomorrow. We’ll talk then.” He broke away with a sigh, and a few moments later I heard the door to the flat close.

  I banished my momentary disappointment as I smiled and rolled over, drowsy and satisfied and content with my life in a way I’d never been before. Somehow, becoming a fallen woman was much less tiresome than worrying about how to avoid becoming one.

  Still basking in the afterglow, I rose, throwing a wrapper over my shoulders as I made my way into the tiny kitchen to fix myself an egg and boil a pot of tea. I was due to meet Jane in an hour, and the two of us would head to Miss Ferndale-Branch’s studio together. My employer had arranged for us to sit for an artist friend of hers. He would pay four shillings each for a day’s work.

  Jane might have been an old pro at posing in front of strangers, but it was the first time I’d been asked to sit for money, and I was slightly nervous, though keen to try. The wages I received as Miss Ferndale-Branch’s assistant were meager at best and while they were enhanced by the classes I was able to take at the Byam, I couldn’t eat lessons on composition nor feed the gas meter on what I learned about human musculature. Simon never reproached me, but I felt my dependence keenly. It was one thing to be a fallen woman, but I despised the idea of being a kept one.