Daughter of Dark River Farm (21 page)

‘That’s what Lawrence said.’

‘Well, he’s clearly a man of good sense. Not to mention impeccable taste.’ Will gave a wry smile, and let go of my hand in order to brace himself and shift his position against the pillows. ‘Can’t you at least give him a chance?’

‘Lawrence?’ I quipped, and he rolled his eyes, making me smile.

‘Look, I understand why you did it, but really, don’t you think it’s up to him to decide whether you’re “worthy” of him?’

‘I do sound rather as if I’m playing the martyr, don’t I?’

‘Not at all, sweetheart. Your family have proved how important it is. To them, at least. But Archie’s…well, he’s different. He won’t set any store by something as ridiculous and changeable as circumstance.’

‘I know, but—’

‘Look at Jack and Lizzy. When Lizzy met Jack she was seventeen, and as innocent as could be. She was twenty-two when they finally got together, and just out of prison. No more her fault than what happened to you was yours. We all
know
that, despite what your parents said.’ He took my hand again. ‘Do you think Archie’s a lesser man than Jack? Or Lizzy more of a woman than you?’

‘But Lizzy’s wonderf—’

‘And so are you. You should credit Archie with the same ability to see the truth as his uncle.’

My heart began to pick up pace as I thought about what he’d said. He was right. I’d been draping my family’s prejudices over Archie, dressing him with that same ugly, opaque cloth and not daring to listen when he’d tried to cast it away. I’d done the same with him as I’d done with Evie, Frances and Belinda—heard their declarations of love and friendship, and searched so hard for a way to convince myself they meant it that I’d talked myself out of believing in it.

I felt a new, hopeful smile creep across my face. ‘I’ll do it. I’ll write to him.’ Then I hesitated. ‘What if he’s already changed his mind though?’

‘Then you must change it back,’ Will said. He closed his eyes and his voice dropped. ‘Best do it today.’

‘I’ll have Evie chasing me up hill and down dale if I tire you out,’ I said, standing up. ‘I’ll leave you to sleep now.’ I leaned over and kissed him lightly on the forehead. ‘Thank you, Will. I miss Oli dreadfully, but you’re the perfect big brother.’

‘Happy to oblige,’ he murmured. ‘Now off you go and tell Archie what a little idiot you are.’

The Matthew who had sent the telegram was, I was surprised to learn, Samuel Wingfield’s son. I would never have guessed it from the warmth of the greeting extended by both Lily and Evie; I’d understood the enmity between the two families to be severe, yet Evie clearly trusted him, and Lily liked him. I gathered he was the only member of the Wingfield family who had earned himself the epithet of ‘uncle’, with the Creswell children.

‘How is Constance?’ Evie asked, as we went in to dinner. No-one had yet mentioned Samuel; it seemed everyone, including his son, was reluctant to bring his name out and turn the evening sour.

‘Constance is Uncle Matthew’s sister,’ Evie explained, seeing me trying to keep up with it all. ‘And, to make things more confusing, she was once engaged to marry Uncle Jack.’

‘Now there’s a chap I always respected,’ Mr Wingfield said, and by the way he looked at Evie I guessed he knew more about Jack than Lily did, and was aware that Evie knew it too. Presumably then, he would be the one to confirm her suspicions, although the more I thought about that, the less likely it seemed. Jack Carlisle was impressive, imposing even, and there was a distinct sense that he knew a great many influential people, but when I thought of the man who’d taken such pains to put me at my ease during Oli’s trial; the man who’d moved mountains, and furniture, to ensure I’d be as comfortable with him as I could be; the man who loved the same people I did… How could anyone imagine he was capable of murder?

By dessert, Evie had had enough of tiptoeing around the subject, and as soon as Dodsworth had left the room she turned to Mr Wingfield. ‘Uncle Matthew, you said you would explain how your father died. That is, if you’re not too—’

‘Not at all, dear.’ Mr Wingfield patted his mouth with the thick napkin, and replaced it on the table next to him, deliberately arranging it, and using the time to gather his thoughts.

‘My father’s body was found close to the Swiss border,’ he said. ‘He’d been shot, once. A clean shot, between the eyes.’

‘An assassin’s shot,’ Lily murmured, and I was jolted by the phrase.

Evie saw my expression, and although her face had paled, her voice was steady. ‘It’s what my father used to call snipers. Both our side and the enemy’s. Uncle Jack hated it. He always said it was an assassin when it was them, but a marksman when it was our side.’

‘You won’t have any love to share for snipers, Evie,’ Mr Wingfield said gently. ‘Let’s not talk about that now; it’s not helping.’

‘So why do you think your father was killed?’ Evie asked.

‘He’d been carrying…papers, evidently. Classified papers.’ He cast a look at Lily, and I read uncertainty in it. ‘Lily, I’m not sure if you knew this, but my father was a spy.’

I nearly dropped my fork. Part of me was fizzing with excitement at the thought of all I’d have to tell Belinda, but a colder part of me realised the implication, and I caught Evie’s eye. She gave the slightest, warning shake of her head, and I dropped my gaze back to my food, pulse racing. Jack was a spy as well, then…and Archie?

My breath caught at the thought, and I began to choke. Eyes streaming, I turned to Lily for help, and she absently handed me a glass of water before turning her stunned attention back on Samuel. I was able to force a tiny dribble down the frighteningly small passage of my constricted throat, and made myself breathe very slowly, swallowing time and time again until I could feel the air moving more easily. By then Mr Wingfield had finished talking, and there was a heavy silence lying over the table. He rose and poured Lily’s wine for her himself. Lily drank half the glass down at once, and set it back on the table with a trembling hand.

Mr Wingfield reached for that hand, and it lay unresponsive in his, as he spoke very gently. ‘Jack’s a spy, too, Lily. But Samuel was working for the Germans, and Jack’s one of ours.’

‘Hush!’ Lily glanced over at Evie, as if to indicate this was not the time to reveal such devastating news. But Evie looked away, expressionless, and Lily’s face tightened. ‘You knew, Evangeline?’

‘Yes.’

‘For how long?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Yes!’

‘Last year. When Samuel took the Kalteng Star and Lizzy was hurt.’

Lily’s face wore an expression of one for whom many different puzzle pieces were slotting into place all at once. She kept opening her mouth to say something, remembering something else, and subsiding. In the end she picked up her glass again and finished her drink before standing up. ‘I’m going for a walk,’ she said in an oddly calm voice. ‘I’d very much like to be left alone for a while.’

When she had left the room, a piece of that puzzle slipped into place for me, too, but I didn’t want to voice it in front of Matthew Wingfield, just in case he was not the kindly man he appeared to be. After all, he was Samuel’s son. I looked at Evie, who nodded. Her father had also been a spy—the secret Jack had been protecting.

The question that burned in my mind now, and wouldn’t be quenched by any amount of wine, was whether Archie was who he seemed to be after all.

Chapter Twelve

Up and down the country, every country, lives and families were being torn apart. Changed, reshaped, misshaped, broken. Telegrams, lists on post-office walls and windows, and in the newspapers—a crookedly typed name that, to most people would be simply two words, eliciting vague sorrow, but unrecognised and unremembered. Reluctant eyes the whole world over scanned those lists, relief building with every unfamiliar name that passed…and then that one. The one that stopped the breath in the throat, impersonal black marks on a piece of paper that those suddenly burning, blurring eyes fixed upon, willing them to change, to be the trick of a cruel imagination. A lie.

Oaklands Manor, with its fairy-tale turrets and beautiful grounds, with its sense of peace and its quiet strength, was not spared. The news of Lawrence’s death fell over us, a cold, heavy blanket, smothering all talk. Eyes would not make contact. Stunned faces remained blank in the view of others, but low sobs and disbelieving cries echoed through the house as fresh grief took hold somewhere, in someone. Lily moved through the rooms in dazed incomprehension, and Evie was torn between tending to her, and to her husband. Will remained in his room and I could only imagine the thoughts that claimed him; there was nothing else to think about.

I spent most of those days in the walled garden. I sat by the two apple trees, planted with such love, and in such deep grief, and I remembered Lawrence’s fond memories of the man who had planted them, and nurtured them when he could. Caring for them as he had done for his friend’s children, and now the youngest of those children was gone. For days I fought the pain, and then, on the day of Lawrence’s memorial service at the little church in Breckenhall, I stopped fighting it and let it take over. Sweet Lawrence, so young… His blue eyes should have been filled with fun, with excitement and mischief, but in the short time I’d known him they’d been shadowed with fear, and with the knowledge of a love that could never be returned.

He’d been terrified of going back, but I’d told him he would be safe. It was what you said to ward off the fear, and the bad luck that seemed like a living being, dogging your footsteps unless you found some kind of talisman to give you courage. Lawrence’s talisman was speaking aloud the fear of injury; if he said it, it wouldn’t happen.

But within two days of his return to France, his tank unit had pushed through the enemy lines—a time of celebration and of triumph, until a lone German, courageously refusing to leave his gun, managed to load and fire his mortar directly beneath Lawrence’s machine. I tried to shut my ears to the phantom screams that tore through my head when I imagined how it must have been, and to close my eyes against the horror… It was
Lawrence
.

The service, where the names of too many other boys and men were read out, marked the beginning of some kind of acceptance in Lawrence’s family, too. There was no body to lay to rest, not even over in France, but still, somehow, we managed to feel we were saying goodbye. Afterwards we all returned to Oaklands, still quiet, but now and again finding some anecdote that earned a flicker of a smile, blurred by tears, but a smile nevertheless. We were a small group, united in grief, and there existed between us a kind of bond, forged by darkness, but not held prisoner by it.

It was only two days later that everything changed again.

Mr Dodsworth came to find me after breakfast on the last day of July. ‘Her Ladyship would like to speak to you, Miss Maitland. In the morning room.’

I followed him from the library, through the hall, and waited at the door of Lily’s favourite room, while he knocked and waited to be called in. Then he left with without a word, leaving me standing, rather adrift, in the middle of a large, rather cluttered room. The summer sunshine spilled through the huge windows onto the desk, at which Lily sat, her fingers twiddling with her pen. She looked up and I was struck by the hollowness of her expression. The light had retreated from her eyes until they seemed nothing but darkened caves in the pale perfection of her face. Her voice, too, had lost its strength, and it was because of this that the harshness of her words did not at first sink in. Then I realised what she’d said.

‘You must leave us now, Kitty. Tomorrow will be quite all right, but I’d like you to be gone by mid-morning at the latest.’

I wasn’t sure what to say; I was a visitor, it was true, but we were all of the understanding that, with all that had happened, I was welcome to stay until Will was strong enough to return to Dark River Farm. I started to say as much, in a stammering voice, but Lily held up a hand, effectively cutting me off after only a few words.

‘Will is family. You are not.’

‘You wanted me to be!’ I flashed back, without thinking. Had I really felt I belonged here, after all?

Lily focused first on my shocked face, then on the way my hands clasped one another in an attempt to hide the trembling betrayal. Then she looked away. ‘I was prepared to accept you,’ she corrected.

‘What do you mean by that?’ But I realised, and went cold. ‘Lady Creswell…’

She rose and turned to look out of the window. ‘Your reputation would have been difficult to reconcile, but our family name was strong enough to have withstood it.’

‘And now it isn’t?’

‘Strength is no longer the question,’ Lily said bleakly. ‘The name, and the family, will soon be gone. Everything is ruined.’

‘Because of the diamond.’

‘Yes!’ she shouted, and I jumped as she banged her hand flat on the desk. ‘Because of the diamond! Evangeline always hated it, but she was happy enough to live off what it gave us!’

‘She seems content enough living at the farm,’ I said. ‘She never needed all this,’ I waved my hand at the room in general, and at the glorious, incongruously summery garden beyond the French window, contrasting so sharply with the icy atmosphere in the room. ‘She was even happier in Flanders. I used to wonder why, when she could live in luxury like this. She nearly always cried with relief when she came back to the mess we lived in out there.’

‘And now you have
such
a deep knowledge of our family.’

The sarcasm was so thick it buried my good sense, and before I knew what had happened I had blurted out, ‘I know more about some of it than you do!’

She sat down again, her elegant hands clenched into fists, the knuckles bone-white. ‘What are you talking about? What do you know?’

‘I…nothing.’ I could have slapped myself, but the words were out now, and hung between us. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘Oh, I think it does,’ she said softly, then shrugged. ‘I’ll get the truth out of Evangeline, anyway. I assume that’s where you learned it, whatever it is. I know she’s hiding something about Jack Carlisle.’