Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor (4 page)

Walter telephoned his mother back in March, and she was thrilled with the news. Her first grandchild. Once the baby was born, she would know the timing was off, but now that they were married, everything was in order. Maggie only hoped her mother-in-law would believe the child was Walter’s.

But Aunt Priscilla wasn’t so easily fooled.

She arrived at Maggie’s doorstep the morning after church for a private visit, after Walter left for the newspaper office. Maggie boiled water for tea, pretending to be gay while Aunt Priscilla watched her from the kitchen chair, her arms crossed. “Is Walter pleased about the baby?”

“He’s thrilled about being a father.”

Her aunt leaned closer. “And what about your sailor?”

Maggie shrugged, willing her heart to beat at a normal pace again. “What about him?”

“What will you tell him when he finds out?”

“He won’t find out,” she said, the familiar pain piercing her.

“You don’t know that—”

Maggie shook her head, determined. “He came and left, just as you said. He won’t inquire after me.”

“I wouldn’t be so certain,” Aunt Priscilla said, twisting her purse in her lap. “And then word will get out—”

Maggie tilted her head. “Word about what?”

“Don’t be coy, Margaret,” her aunt replied, her voice a sharp whisper. “Walter may be entirely clueless about your conduct, but I’m not daft.”

Maggie’s hands trembled as she lifted the teapot though she managed to fill her aunt’s cup. No matter what Aunt Priscilla said, she wouldn’t admit her indiscretion.

“Have you seen one of the midwives?”

She nodded. “Sally.”

Aunt Priscilla spooned a lump of sugar into her tea. “What does Sally say?”

“That the baby seems to be healthy.”

“Not that,” she said, waving her spoon. “What does she say about the timing?”

“The health of the child is her only concern.”

“You and Walter must leave here at once,” Aunt Priscilla insisted. “No one outside of Devonshire will question you about the dates of your wedding or the child’s birth.”

“Walter would never leave the newspaper.”

“You are his wife,” her aunt said, her spoon clinking as she stirred her tea, its ripples colliding with the sides of the cup. “It’s your job to compel him to go.”

“But how—”

“You’re smart, Margaret,” she said as she mixed in more sugar. “You’ve gotten yourself married, and that’s probably the best thing you could have done under these circumstances. Now you have to protect Walter and your child.”

She didn’t say it, but Maggie knew the secret must be kept most of all to protect the Fraser family’s reputation.

Aunt Priscilla sipped her tea and then stood. “If Walter really loves you, he’ll relinquish his position at the paper.”

Maggie stared down at her full cup of tea. Walter loved her—she had no doubt of that. He’d spent more than a year in the steady pursuit of her hand before she agreed to marry him. But how could she ask him to choose between his two loves—his wife and his writing?

Aunt Priscilla excused herself to visit the water closet; when Maggie leaned back in the chair, her gaze traveling out the window to the Bristol Channel in the distance.

Walter wasn’t so enamored by the fame of a byline, but he thought information was the key to liberty. Reporting the news was his passion though, not creating it. If anyone else suspected that this baby wasn’t Walter’s child—the gossip would never compete with the facts that Walter religiously collected, verified, and distributed for his subscribers. No one would bother to verify the child’s father and she would never tell. The villagers could talk and whisper all they wanted about her, but Walter’s reputation was as stellar as her aunt and uncle’s.

She drained her warm tea, but didn’t taste it.

Could she really influence Walter to leave Clevedon before the gossipmongers began milling her story?

Walter had been only eleven when Hitler invaded Poland. As the war progressed, many British newspapermen became war correspondents or soldiers so by the time Walter was fourteen, he began filling in the gap, writing for a newspaper in Kent. After the war, he left for London to write for the
Evening Standard
until Harold Bishop hired him as the managing editor for the
Clevedon Mercury
.

Her husband hadn’t liked living in a big city where he didn’t even know his neighbors, but he loved to write and thrived on every aspect of the newspaper business—collecting the stories, setting the type, even selling the advertising pages and weekly subscriptions. And once he moved to Clevedon, he continued to work as a correspondent, feeding occasional stories from Devonshire back to his old boss at the
Standard
.

She couldn’t imagine Walter working in any profession that didn’t involve writing in some capacity. He was passionate about his stories and about raising their family here along the coast.

When she heard her aunt’s heavy footsteps in the back hall, she stood to clear the teacups.

How was she supposed to convince Walter to leave Clevedon without telling him the truth?

JUNE 1954, CLEVEDON, ENGLAND

T
he baby pressed against Maggie’s abdomen as she shelved the last novel in her tall stack of returns. Then she gently placed her hand over the elbow—or perhaps the foot—that bulged under her white blouse.

It wouldn’t be long now before she’d be holding this child in her arms.

Before he left for work this morning, Walter said they had 132 days until the baby arrived, but according to her calculations, baby would be here in 41 days. Or less.

The number made her feel faint.

It was still an hour before the library closed, but Mrs. Jenkins, the head librarian, said she could leave early. Somehow she must convince Walter that they had to move right away.

Fog had settled over the village, and she slowly navigated the narrow alleys down the hill, toward the greengrocers to buy fresh produce for Walter’s favorite salad—a mixture of shredded cabbage, grated onion, and diced tomatoes.

Her stomach roiled from the smells in the air. Seaweed. Gasoline. Greasy fish and chips.

She hadn’t liked the taste of fish, any kind of fish, when she’d been relocated here during the war, and she’d never grown fond of the cod or bass from the channel. Still, she ate it several times a week like most of the people in town, even as she dreamt of beef pie and leg of lamb.

Tonight there would be no fish on their dinner table and nothing would come out of a tin. Lamb chops were more expensive than fish or tinned food, but not so pricey that Walter would fret about her extravagance.

When she stepped into the butcher shop, two women turned toward her. Instead of greeting her, however, one woman tipped toward the other like a teapot preparing to pour out. Maggie held her head up as she proceeded in the queue toward the counter, trying to pretend they weren’t whispering about her.

It was becoming increasingly apparent that her pregnancy was much further along than her wedding date allowed. Fortunately, these women didn’t know about Elliot, and her husband didn’t seem to suspect anything was amiss. The baby was technically due in the middle of July, and she prayed the child would be late by a week or two.

Heaven forbid he or she came early.

She must convince Walter to leave this village before the baby was born so they could start over in a new place, far away from the whispers and gossip. Somehow she had to rescue their little family without explaining her reasons.

Maggie tugged on the hem of her oversized blouse, pulling it over the elastic of her skirt as she waited for her meat. With the brown wrappings around her lamb in one hand, the bag of produce in the other, she brushed past her aunt’s friends and hurried back up the hill toward home.

Quickly she shredded the cabbage on the chopping block and tossed it along with the onion and tomatoes in a blue Pyrex bowl. Then she slid the lamb chops, encrusted with fresh rosemary, into the oven.

While the lamb baked, she brushed her hair in the washroom and pinned it back again. Then she zipped on a silk floral dress she’d purchased in Bristol and retrieved her grandmother’s rhinestone necklace, one of the few family heirlooms her mother packed for her, to clasp around her neck.

At the foot of the bed was the antique trunk she’d brought from her childhood home in Balham more than a decade ago. Opening the trunk, she removed her wedding album along with her treasured copy of
The Secret Garden
and the tubes of watercolors her father had sent with her and her brother. Her father hoped she would spend time painting on the coast, but Maggie hadn’t inherited his talent or passion for art. Sometimes she wondered if Edmund would have become an artist.

Carefully she took out her newest treasures—pieces of crystal she and Walter had received as wedding presents, protected by pages and pages of her husband’s newspaper. She unwrapped the crystal and two silver candlesticks, then set them on the white-cloaked dining table. She arranged the candlesticks alongside a small silver bowl filled with mint jelly and a basket with sliced whole-meal bread from the bakery. After placing white, tapered candles into the candlesticks, she lit them and stepped back to admire her handiwork.

Satisfied, she blew them out. Once she heard Walter at the door, she’d quickly relight the candles.

When the timer chimed, she removed the lamb chops and turned off the oven, placing the pan on her stovetop and covering it with foil. She’d learned a lot about housekeeping in the past decade, and now she was determined to learn how to be the best wife to Walter. And a doting mother to their children.

If only she could avoid the whispers from her aunt’s friends.

Baby kicked her side again, this time much stronger. Bending over, she steadied herself on the counter.

“I’m here,” she said to comfort her child, wishing she knew what to call him or her.

She and Walter had been discussing names for their baby—and she did think of the child as
theirs
now—for three months. If it was a boy, they’d name him Walter. If it was a girl, they weren’t certain what to name her.

She’d suggested Eliza or Caroline for a girl’s name, but Walter liked Margaret or Priscilla. Maggie told him she didn’t like either name. If the baby was female, she prayed their daughter would be nothing like her or her aunt.

As she sat on the davenport, Maggie eyed the clock. Strange. Walter was already a half hour late. Usually he phoned if he didn’t leave the office by six, but she hadn’t said anything about their special dinner tonight, hadn’t wanted him to suspect that she had ulterior motives.

She picked up the telephone and rang the
Clevedon Mercury
office, but no one answered. After replacing the receiver, she propped her pumps up on the coffee table, listening to the front windows rattle from the wind. Even though it was summer, the breeze from the bay cooled their town in the evenings. They had no need for the air-conditioning she’d read about in the magazines.

She kicked off her shoes and reached for the afghan that hung over the arm of the davenport to pull over her dress. The newspaper didn’t go to press until Friday. She never would have made this special dinner on a Thursday night, but she thought Wednesday would be safe.

Her mind began rehearsing again what she would say to Walter. How she would coyly suggest, not demand, they leave without playing on his love for her. She was doing this because she cared for him and their baby.

Tired, she began to drift asleep and didn’t awaken until the front door banged open. She inched herself up, her lower back aching as she slowly remembered that she’d been waiting for her husband.

The streetlamp colored their sitting room with a hazy, orange glow, and she watched Walter hurry across the room, trying to catch his breath even as he spoke. “I’m sorry I’m late.”

She pressed her pinned curls back into place. “What happened?”

“A trawler hit the rocks near Battery Point and tipped over.” In his voice, she could hear the mix of sadness at the tragedy along with an underpinning satisfaction, the restrained enthusiasm, over covering a real news story. “I had to interview the survivors.”

“How awful,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Two fishermen died.” He shook his head as he collapsed onto the davenport beside her. “They were trapped inside the hull.”

She rubbed her arms, shuddering at the thought of families who had lost men they loved tonight. “I wish you’d telephoned.”

“I ran out of the office so fast . . .” He reached for her hand. “I didn’t realize I’d be gone so long.”

He leaned closer to her. “Will you forgive me?”

The way he said it was so sweet, the way she’d once imagined Elliot would ask for her forgiveness when he returned.

She smiled at him. “Of course, I will.”

He lifted his head, and his eyes widened when he saw the crystal and candlesticks in the street lantern light. “You made us a special dinner.”

She shrugged. “They’re only lamb chops—”

“I’m famished,” he said as he stood up and switched on the lamp. She was hungry as well.