Heaven Sent (25 page)

“
Well, it’s all because I
was watching you, Becky,” Callie said. Her voice sounded somewhat
strained, but she was obviously aiming at humor. “You’re a super
skater.”

“
I love to skate!” Becky
threw her arms around Callie’s knees, almost sending them both over
backward.

Laughing, Callie grabbed Becky and
managed to keep both of them upright. “Careful, there, Becky! We
don’t want to end up in the hospital.”

Becky giggled
appreciatively.

Miss Prophet’s aplomb, Aubrey noted
with annoyance, seemed to have returned in an unseemly short period
of time. Any female with proper sensibilities ought to have been
embarrassed for a much longer stretch after such an
embrace.

Not, naturally, that he’d have
appreciated it if she’d succumbed to a fainting spell, hysterics,
or a fit of the vapors.

“
Come along, Becky. I think
your papa doesn’t appreciate creating a spectacle.”

“
Creating a spectacle?”
Startled, Aubrey glanced up from the vision of Becky holding Miss
Prophet’s hand. As soon as his gaze lit upon the ladies in the
tent, he groaned.

From Old Bilgewater through her
lorgnette to Callie’s sister Alta, all eyes were focused on the
three of them. As he watched, Aubrey saw Bilgewater’s lips move. A
woman—he thought it was a Mrs. Finney—lifted a hand to her mouth as
if to cover either a gasp or a giggle.

Whichever it was, Aubrey didn’t like
it. Furious, he took Becky’s other hand. “Come with me, Becky. Show
me how well you can skate.”

“
Super, Papa!”

He felt Callie's gaze on his back as
he and his daughter left her presence.

Chapter Twelve

Callie’s heart rattled like a
kettledrum, her mouth had gone as dry as the Sahara, and she
couldn’t seem to catch her breath. Her gaze flickered from Aubrey’s
back, where it wanted to remain, to the group of gabbling women
under the tent.

They were talking about her.
Her or Aubrey. Perhaps her
and
Aubrey. And for no good reason. Merely because
she’d practically swooned with ecstasy when she’d found herself in
his arms didn’t mean anybody watching should have known about it.
Even if they had known about it, they most certainly shouldn’t be
talking about it now.

If they were talking about
it.

Another glance at the herd of mothers
and Mrs. Bridgewater confirmed her unhappy assumption that they
were talking about something fascinating. Callie knew that gossip
about men and women was the most fascinating kind and, since there
hadn’t been any other couples to gossip about recently, she assumed
she and Aubrey were the one on today’s menu. What’s more, they were
being chewed and digested with great relish. Drat it.

She tried to arrange her face to show
nothing but amiability, and hoped to heaven she didn’t look as
though she’d just undergone a religious experience. If her face
told the tale her insides were singing, it would be all over town
in a day or two that she was hopelessly in love with her employer,
That, while true, would be too humiliating to be borne.

In order to nip scuttlebutt in the
bud, and in an effort to get her hammering heart to settle down,
Callie hummed a merry tune as she skated toward the chattering
matrons who were at present buzzing like a hive of honey bees being
besieged by a bear.

“
Oh, Mrs. Bridgewater, I’m
sure there’s nothing shady going on between them.”

Callie’s eyes widened and her cheeks
caught fire when she caught this comment, uttered by a woman in a
yellow polka-dot morning wrapper. Callie had always mistrusted
polka dots. It didn’t make her feel any better to know her mistrust
had not been unmerited.

“
Of course, there isn’t.
Callie’s much too respectable and high-principled to do anything
like that,” Alta announced staunchly.

Thank God for
sisters
.

“
Well, I have reason to
believe you’re both wrong. It’s improper for a young woman her age
to be living under the same roof with a single gentleman—if he is a
gentleman. I’ve always had my doubts.”

Callie stopped humming when Mrs.
Bridgewater’s voice, full of quivering malice and self-righteous
indignation, smote her ears. She glanced up from the driveway—she’d
been keeping her eyes on the pavement because she didn’t want to
take a tumble—and saw the elderly woman plying her fan with one
hand and her lorgnette with the other. Her bilious green bombazine
bosom had swelled to alarming proportions, and the gaze of every
matron was fixed upon her face.

Bilgewater went on, “There’s something
obscene going on between them, and I think it’s scandalous.” The
other women were so fascinated, they didn’t notice Callie’s
approach.

The horrid old
cow
! Callie’s heart stopped trilling
instantly, and any slight remaining fear of swooning vanished like
smoke. Lifting her chin, she skated swiftly the rest of the way to
the tent. “What exactly do you consider scandalous, Mrs.
Bridgewater?” she asked civilly, but in a defiant tone, plumping
herself down on a bench and leaning over to remove her roller
skates.

A silence as thick as cream
spread throughout the group of mothers. Callie glanced up and swept
the group with one of her most glittering smiles. She hoped it
conveyed both her fury and her challenge. Alta swallowed, so Callie
guessed it did pretty good job. That her so-called
friends
should be
gossiping about her hurt and infuriated her.

Bridgewater lowered her lorgnette to
her lap and frowned at Callie without their help. “Were you
eavesdropping, Miss Prophet?”

“
Not at all. I skated over
and heard you talking about something scandalous. Since this is a
little girl’s birthday I couldn’t conceive of anyone talking in
front of the mothers of the children present about anything unfit
for all ears to hear.”

Somebody drew in a gasping breath.
Mrs. Bridgewater’s frown deepened. She sat up straighter, causing
her corset—which was being called upon to perform yeoman’s duty by
holding in her excessive bulk—to creak ominously. “I merely said I
think it’s a pity that a child has to reside in a house where so
little attention is paid to propriety.”

Callie sat up, bringing her skates
with her and setting them on the bench next to her so nobody could
step on them and fall. “Oh? Who is this child and where is this
improper house? I didn’t think Santa Angelica had any of
those.”

Alta stifled something that might have
been a giggle or a moan.

Up came the lorgnette. “You know very
well I’m speaking about this house, Miss Prophet. It’s improper for
you, a single young lady, to have charge of Rebecca. And it’s
perfectly scandalous that you and Aubrey should be carrying on
under her very nose.”

One the matrons uttered a stifled,
“Oh, my!”

Callie was now so furious that it was
difficult for her to unclench her teeth far enough to speak.
“That,” she said in a tone she’d never heard herself use before,
“is a vicious, unkind, and slanderous statement, Mrs. Bridgewater.
These ladies”—she swung her arm in an arc, taking in all of her
friends—”have known me all my life. They also know Mr. Lockhart,
and they knew his late wife. How anyone—and a blood relation, to
boot—can accept a gracious invitation to a little girl’s birthday
party and then spend her time spreading salacious rumors about her
host, is something I do not understand.”

“
Hear! Hear!” murmured
Alta.

“
And another thing.” Callie
had stood up by this time, and was leaning over Mrs. Bridgewater,
who had somehow seemed to have shrunk in the last few moments. “How
you, of all people, a relative of the late Mrs. Lockhart, could
spread such malevolent calumnies about Mr. Lockhart is
incomprehensible to me. That man is a saint. He adored his wife. He
all but worshiped her. He was and still is devastated by her death.
He hired me because Becky needed a female presence in her life. I
may be a poor substitute for her mother, but at least I
care
, which you obviously
do not, or you wouldn’t be spreading such insulting
prattle.”

All of the women except Mrs.
Bridgewater nodded. Mrs. Hurst had to draw a hankie out of her
pocket and dash a tear away. “So sad,” she murmured. “So very
sad.”

“
You,” Callie went on,
pointing at Mrs. Bridgewater, “are a malicious harpy!” And, with
that, she turned on her heel and headed back to the group of
children. Offhand, she couldn’t recall another time in her life
when she’d been so angry. When Aubrey’s voice came to her from
behind a hedge of daphne, she was so startled, she almost
shrieked.

“
Thank you for defending me,
Miss Prophet.”

Whirling around, Callie saw that
Aubrey was carrying Becky on his shoulders. It looked to her as if
the little girl had been crying. She opened her mouth to ask what
had happened, but nothing emerged.

Aubrey saved her the chore of finding
her voice. “Becky fell down and skinned her knee, so I’m giving her
a pony ride.”

With a pathetic cross between a giggle
and a sniffle, Becky said, “Papa’s being the pony.”

From somewhere inside her, Callie
found the wherewithal to smile at the child. “Papas make good
ponies, especially if you have a sore knee, don’t they,
Becky?”

Becky nodded.

“
I think we ought to take
you indoors and bandage your knee, sweetheart. What do you think
about that?”

Another nod from Becky, this one
accompanied by a sniffle.

Although she’d have liked to have
spent a few more hours mentally beating Mrs. Bridgewater to a
bloody pulp, as she deserved, Callie turned and waved to the group
of women. “Alta! Becky hurt her knee and we have to go indoors to
bandage it. Will you please keep this swarm of skating children
from running wild for a few minutes?”

“
Glad to!” Alta called
back.

Several of the other mothers rose to
assist her amid a sympathetic buzz and bustle, thereby leaving a
wide empty patch around Mrs. Bridgewater, Callie was gratified by
this show of support.

When Callie, Aubrey, and Becky entered
the house, Mrs. Bridgewater was left to stew all by herself under
the tent. Which, Callie said to herself, was merely appropriate.
She wished a tree limb, or something heavier, would fall on
her.

Aubrey and Callie took Becky to the
kitchen and parked her on Mrs. Granger’s utility table in the
middle of the room. Callie wetted a clean rag and rubbed soap on
it, while Mrs. Granger tutted and clucked over Becky, and Becky
explained how her accident had happened.

“
I skated into a bush,” she
said soberly. “And fell down on the pavement.”

“
What a very bad bush!” said
Mrs. Granger.

Becky smiled up at her. “It’s ‘cause I
wasn’t looking.”

“
Well, then, perhaps the
bush isn’t so very bad,” Mrs. Granger amended, handing the little
girl a piece of bread and jam to help soothe her battered
soul.

Callie tried not to look at Aubrey as
she reached for the ointment and bandages,

Had he thanked her out there on the
driveway? She’d been so startled by his sudden appearance, she
couldn’t recall. And if he had thanked her, why had he done
so?

“
All tight, Becky, Be a
brave girl now, This will sting a little bit.”

“
I’ll be brave.” Becky
swallowed the last of her bread and jam.

It tore at Callie’s heart to see the
twin trails of tears drying on the little girl’s pretty cheeks.
“Hold on to the edge of the table, Becky. Sometimes it helps to
hold on to something.”

“
You can hold my hands,
Becky,” Aubrey offered.

Callie was pleased to see Becky
instantly reach for her father’s hands and hold on tight. Using the
greatest care, she lifted Becky’s drawers up over the bloody knee.
“This doesn’t look too bad, although I know it hurts, darling. I’ll
try not to hurt you any more than I have to.”

“
Thank you.”

Holding the small ankle so as to avoid
getting kicked should Becky react to the soapy rag, Callie
concentrated on her task, trying hard not to hurt the
wound.

“
I really do thank you, Miss
Prophet.”

She glanced up quickly, and just as
quickly returned her attention to the job at hand. After clearing
her throat, she said, “For what, Mr. Lockhart?”

“
For sticking up for me out
there.”

Oh, good God, he’d heard. Callie’s
lips pinched together for a second as anger against Becky’s
great-aunt surged through her. “That woman,” she said through
gritted teeth, “ought to be horsewhipped.” Immediately, she glanced
up to see if Becky was paying attention to the adult conversation.
She was looking pretty worried and seemed to be concentrating on
her knee, so Callie hoped her last intemperate remark had passed
over her head.

Aubrey chuckled. He had a deep chuckle
that did odd things to Callie’s insides. “You’re probably right.
Didn’t they used to do that to gossipmongers?”