The Widow of Larkspur Inn (27 page)

“You know,” he began awkwardly after carving the roast duck, “we should invite other gentlemen to dinner sometime. Take Mr. McCready’s son, Bruce, for example. I find his knowledge of the Scriptures most impressive. He’ll make a fine minister one day.”

“Yes, he seems to be very pleasant,” Elizabeth replied, toying with her food, as was her habit of late. But then she looked up at Andrew and smiled. “Did you know that Jonathan’s uncle keeps an elephant on his estate in Kensington?”

“What does he feed it?” Laurel asked with wide eyes.

“Why, I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask Jonathan.”

Andrew dabbed his mouth with his napkin and went cautiously ahead. “It would be good for you, making the acquaintance of other young gentlemen. You’ll have less time for such things when you start at Eton this fall.”

Elizabeth lowered her eyes to study the place setting in front of her for several seconds, prompting Andrew to ask her if anything was the matter.

“I don’t want to go to college,” she whispered after some hesitation.

“Don’t want to go to college?” Andrew echoed, uncomprehending. “But you’re doing so well at Brunswick.” Brunswick was the preparatory school for girls on Newmarket Road operated by the Sisters of Saint Anne, whose creed was that idle minds were the devil’s playground.

Finally raising her chin, she met his gaze. He could see the tears shining in her brown eyes.
That’s not fair!
Andrew thought, even as his heart began to melt. He set down his fork. “Elizabeth, what is wrong?”

“Nothing,” she whimpered while dabbing her eyes with her napkin.

“Nothing?” He tried coaxing a smile from her. “Come on now. You’ve spent too much time studying for exams lately. Why don’t you take a day or two and rest?”

“I want to take a year away from studying, Papa. Perhaps longer. Perhaps forever.”

“But college …” Andrew could only mumble stupidly, glancing at Laurel for help.

His younger daughter gave him a somber nod and turned her face back to Elizabeth. “Is it because of Jonathan?”

Elizabeth blew her nose. “N-No.”

“Then, why?” Andrew asked, not quite believing her half-hearted denial.

“I just don’t want to go,” she said, then gave a sigh that belied her tender years. “I’m so weary of Latin and mathematics and French—all of it.”

“But you may not feel that way in another month or so.” Which was very likely, Andrew thought, for Elizabeth had a history of taking up projects and abandoning them later, such as the flute and riding lessons. He certainly couldn’t allow her to abandon her education on a whim.

The light in her brown eyes seemed to dull in front of him, and she stretched out her hand upon the tablecloth to touch his. “I want you to be proud of me, Papa. That’s why I’ve studied so hard all these years. But I feel like I’ve become a shell, full of facts and figures. There has to be more to life.”

She looked so much like her mother, staring at him with tears still hanging to her lashes, that a painful lump swelled within Andrew’s chest. “I have always been proud of you, Elizabeth,” he said gently. “You never had to earn that.”

She heaved another deep sigh. “I know.”

“What is it, then?”

Fixing her eyes again upon the filled plate still in front of her, Elizabeth answered in a small voice, “I want to be like Mother was. I want to marry … and have children.”

Jonathan Raleigh,
Andrew thought.
I knew it.
Now it was he who sighed. “You’re that much in love with him?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

Andrew glanced again at Laurel, who returned a helpless shrug of her shoulders. He turned back to his elder daughter. “Has he asked you, Elizabeth?”

She shook her head. “But I know he will. He’s hinted as much. And he’s asked us all to come to Kensington this summer to meet his family.”

“We could see the elephant?” Laurel perked up, then grimaced at Andrew’s warning look.

“There is a gazebo on the grounds,” Elizabeth went on. “It was there that Jonathan’s father proposed to his mother. Jonathan says he wants to show it to me.”

“Oh.” Andrew rubbed his forehead absently. “And if … if he proposes?”

The blush across her cheeks gave her answer, even before her lips responded, “I would accept. I do love him, Papa.”

He spent the next hour in his library chair, staring unseeingly at the same page of
The Cambridge Chronicle.
Yes, he’d expected that Mr. Raleigh would eventually propose. But now that the day seemed to be rushing toward him, he wished with all his heart that he could turn the clock back to the time when his girls did not have thoughts of leaving home.
This summer? I didn’t know it would be so soon
.

“Andrew, dear?” Lydia Phelps, his mother, came into the room with a rustle of silk. “Where are the girls?”

“They’re upstairs.”

She came closer, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. “And when did you become interested in the fashion page?”

“Huh?” Andrew looked down at the newspaper in his hand, then set it aside. “Did you enjoy your meeting?”

“Marvelous,” she replied, ostrich feathers quivering from her hat as she spoke. She settled into a chair. “I find society at Cambridge far more stimulating than back at Gloucester. Vastly more cerebral.”

“Yes?” He hoped she would not launch into a description of the evening’s events, for he found her social acquaintances rather pompous and self-absorbed.

His mother fixed him with a mildly calculating look. “You know, Mrs. Keswick was there. She’s having a dinner party next month and will be sending you an invitation to act as my escort.”

“Mrs. Keswick?”

“Oh, don’t look at me with that blank expression. You met her at my little luncheon last month. She’s a widow, you know, and well situated.”

Andrew vaguely recalled a set of predatory eyes beneath the brim of a hat
à la Reine
and felt a little shudder.

“She found you quite interesting,” his mother went on. “With just a little encouragement from you, you could have those girls a mother.”

And wishing Mrs. Keswick good day would likely be encouragement enough,
Andrew thought. He always found himself puzzled whenever a woman expressed interest in him. He was certainly no Adonis and did not have the polish and charm necessary to woo them. It was still a wonder to Andrew that Kathleen had loved him so completely.

And that was the reason for his hesitancy in responding to the occasional flirtations that were directed his way. Not only had Kathleen been his helpmate and the mother of his children, but she was also his friend … his best friend. Which made the marriage all the sweeter. While he could appreciate a woman’s attractiveness and femininity and would like to have a wife again, he had yet to feel anything close to the bond of friendship he had enjoyed with Kathleen. And certainly not with those women who so arduously cultivated his courtship, for it seemed that they had neither the time nor the patience to develop a friendship.

“
Andrew?
”

Realizing he’d drifted again, Andrew looked at his mother. “I beg your pardon, Mother?”

She gave an impatient sigh. “Don’t you
want
to marry again one day?”

“Of course,” he told her gently. He could not fault her for trying to better his life. “But not just for the sake of marrying. I’ve witnessed too many disasters that have resulted from haste.”

His words brought Elizabeth and Mr. Raleigh back to his mind, and he suddenly got to his feet. “Would you mind hearing the girls’ prayers?”

“Why, where are you going?”

Andrew touched his waistcoat pocket. “I’ve an errand. Please don’t wait up.”

Fourteen Locke Street turned out to be an old building carved into flats, dark except for lights shining from three windows and the glow of a streetlamp near the stoop. Across the street lay a wedge of ground that could loosely be described as a park. Andrew sat down upon the lone bench there and waited, elbows propped upon knees, not even sure what he wanted to happen. If it turned out that the anonymous note was true, then Elizabeth would be devastated. And if he found no evidence to support the accusation, did that mean Jonathan Raleigh was innocent? Or that he’d managed not to get caught this time?

“Am I being foolish, Kathleen?” Andrew mumbled. He could clearly imagine her watching from heaven with that indulgent smile she used whenever he worried about anything.
If only you were here to help me keep my thoughts straight
.

A cough broke through his reflections, and he looked up at the figure standing at his left. She wore a gown of garish purple and a hardened expression, making her look anywhere from twenty to forty years old. He could tell even in the semidarkness that the smile she was giving him did not travel up to her world-weary eyes.

“You look lonely, mister,” she said, taking a step closer to his bench.

Annoyed, he opened his mouth to snap at her. Even in such a cerebral city as Cambridge, there were certain sections where a gentleman simply could not walk without being accosted by such as the woman before him. Then the thought crossed his mind,
She’s someone’s daughter
.

“What’s a handsome fellow like you doin’ all alone?”

Andrew couldn’t help but chuckle at the absurdity of this flattery. That seemed to encourage her, for she took a step even closer and said, “There’s a pub over the road a bit. How’d you like to buy me a drink?”

“What is your name?”

“Annabel,” she shrugged, as if to say,
what does it matter?

“Annabel,” Andrew echoed. “A lovely name.”

“Well, I can show you a lovely time too.”

He shook his head. “Ah, but it wouldn’t be so lovely for you, would it?”

Frowning, she said, “What are you talking about, mister?”

“How many men have given you anything back for all they’ve taken from you?”

“I get paid.” After her eyes scanned the vacant street in vain for a more likely prospect, she turned back to Andrew and feigned another smile. “Hey, are you going to buy me that drink or not?”

“Why don’t you let me tell you about some living water instead?”

The woman went as rigid as a statue. “You’re a preacher, ain’t you?”

“I am.”

“Why didn’t you tell me straight off?” She spat on the ground near his feet. “I wouldn’t have wasted my time.”

With that, she turned and was swallowed up by the night again.
God, lead her to you somehow,
Andrew prayed silently, his already troubled heart now heavier with his failure to reach the woman.

Another two hours went by, with Andrew studying every face that passed, straining his ears at every voice. It was a familiar masculine laugh that finally caused his pulse to quicken. He got to his feet and watched a couple enter the amber glow of the lamp in front of number fourteen. Their arms were linked, and their attention was absorbed with some mutual joke. The woman—obviously much older than the young man—giggled to match his laugh.

His fists balling at his sides, Andrew stepped out into the street. “Mr. Raleigh?” he called out, still hoping his sight and hearing were mistaken.

The laugh stopped abruptly, and the giggle trailed to a halt. “Who’s there?” the young man replied in a slurred voice, squinting in Andrew’s direction.