On wings of devotion, p.7
On Wings of Devotion, page 7
Which just made those splinters of her heart ache all the more. Would He ask this of her too? Was this, in fact, why her trustee had been so determined to keep her from dumping the bulk of her inheritance into Middlegrove—at the Lord’s prompting? Inspired him to work so diligently to ensure that she would have plenty for other good works?
It wasn’t fair. She was supposed to get a family from the bargain. A home. A life surrounded by people she loved.
Maybe she was meant to be always the nurse, moving from one cot to the next, helping for a time and then fading out of the lives she worked to touch.
It sounded so bleak just now.
Renewing her smile, she rubbed a hand over Cassandra’s arm. “Let’s not borrow worries, Miss Camden. Our God can work wonders on a man’s heart, especially when he is the warm recipient of a family’s love. For now, focus on the happy things. We’ll set Brax straight, and he’ll marry you. You’ll have a beautiful little one. Your life is only beginning.”
Cassandra sniffled and dashed at her eyes. “You’re too good. Comforting me, when I’ve wronged you.”
“Brax wronged me. You didn’t know I existed.” She gave the girl a wink. “Trust me, I don’t intend to be so kind to him when I see him. Which I daresay will be soon, so you had better go and tidy up, I think.”
Cassandra touched a hand to her swollen eyes, then to her fallen hair. “I suppose you’re right.” Then she leaned over and gave Arabelle a quick, fierce embrace. “I will repay your kindness, Miss Denler. Somehow, someday.”
Easy words. But Arabelle had a feeling she meant them. She smiled and hugged her back. “I look forward to it.”
6
Arabelle Denler was either a saint or a madwoman. Perhaps a bit of both. Camden shook his head and looked away from Miss Denler and Cass, toward his mother, who stood gaping at them in the drawing room doorway. She met his gaze, his own thoughts reflected in her eyes. This wasn’t at all what they’d expected. But his mother wasn’t one to let a little thing like complete stupefaction compromise her manners.
As Cass bustled off, she bustled in. “What a reception we’ve given you! And you fresh from the road. You must be an icicle. Come, Miss Denler, warm yourself by the fire. Phillip, your brother’s train ought to have arrived. Hadn’t you better fetch him from town?”
“I’m an icicle, too, you know. And Jer has two legs, doesn’t he?” He’d go in a moment, as his mother knew he would. But first he watched her usher their unwitting guest into the room.
Her back was straight as a biplane’s wing, and she moved forward with the image of perfect confidence, even though inside she had to be quaking. Didn’t she?
Mother would like her. They were obviously cut from the same cloth—the kind robust enough to survive a gale.
With a shake of his head, he turned away. He hadn’t really paused to consider how Miss Denler might react to Cass, but had someone asked, he probably would have wagered on a catfight. Especially after her tantrum in the car—which was warranted, he granted.
His fingers were only now starting to thaw a bit, and he figured that if Jer had gotten to Portsmouth, he could start for home on his own. A few minutes in the cold would do him no harm. Camden took the stairs two by two, not even glancing at the familiar portraits and landscapes on the walls, the end tables with the same candlesticks and doilies that had been there as long as he could remember.
He rapped upon his sister’s closed door. “Cass? You all right?”
The door opened, and Cassandra’s sheepish face soon filled the space. She’d taken her hair down, the pins prickling out of her mouth evidence that she was in the process of putting it back up. She motioned him in with her head and took the pins from between her lips. “I was a complete ninny down there, wasn’t I?”
Her room was still every bit as young and girlish as it had been when she first moved into it from the nursery at the age of twelve. Pink this and white that and a bunch of ridiculous froufrou that had, so far as he could discern, no purpose but to clutter up the place. How was this any better than stacks of dishes? He crossed his arms. “If ever you had an excuse to act a ninny, I daresay that was it.”
“I didn’t expect her to be so . . . kind.” With a sigh, she sat upon her dressing table’s stool. “Go ahead. Lecture me on my irresponsibility and stupidity and complete lack of principles and—”
“Who do I look like—Jeremy?” Camden shook his head and eased to a seat at the foot of her bed. Gingerly, lest some of the pink get stuck to him somehow. “You were stupid. You know it. But we’ll get it all sorted, and in a few years this will be nothing but a faded memory. Something to laugh over.” Assuming the ladies would ever deign to speak of such matters, which he highly doubted.
She twisted her hair into a coil and began slipping pins into it. “I suppose. But the look in Mum’s eyes when I told her . . .” She wilted. Shoulder slumping, hands falling to her sides. “How in the world did you get used to seeing that look on her face? The one that says you’ve disappointed her?”
Camden laughed. He’d gotten the look plenty of times over the years, to be sure. Enough that he’d learned to see beneath it. “It’s only the look she’s practiced to keep us in line, Cass. To cover the fact that she’s found plenty of mischief of her own through the years and finds more amusement in it than she thinks she should let on.”
She spun to face him. “Perhaps in your pranks. But in this?”
He lifted a brow. “You think this is any worse than when she came to see me in prison?”
Cassandra winced. “I suppose not.”
“But do you know what she did then?” He’d tried not to think of it much. It seemed wrong to focus on the light of hope she’d been, when the fact remained that his men were dead and he was responsible. “She reached between the bars, gripped my chin in her fingers in that way she does, and told me she knew me, she loved me, and that this was not my end.”
He stood, took the two steps to reach his sister, and gripped her chin in his fingers. “We know you. We love you. And this is not your end, Cass. Miss Denler was right about that—it’s just your beginning.”
The tears in her eyes this time weren’t so sad, he hoped. “Just like it wasn’t your end.”
His fingers fell away. He was still here, so his mother had technically been right. But every day was borrowed time for him. He knew it. Sooner or later, Mrs. Lewis’s and the press’s constant pestering of the justice system would overwhelm any reluctance the brass had about prosecuting an officer. Maybe new evidence would surface. Something would happen. He knew it would. Something to end his miserable excuse for a life.
It wouldn’t be so for his sister. “Is this what you want, Cass? To marry him? Not because you feel you have to—do you want to? Because if you don’t, I’ll find another way. We can set you up somewhere they don’t know you, say you’re a war widow—”
“Phillip.” She caught the hand that had retreated to his side and gave his fingers a squeeze. Not the quick, fleeting kind most people would give. No, she held it in the way she always had—clinging, holding on, and not letting go. “I want it more than anything. I promise you. I love him.”
He nodded and squeezed back. “You know I’ll see he pays for it if he hurts you.” He’d move the very earth if necessary. Or the seas, in this case, and drag the diver up by his air hose.
“I know. Phillip . . .” The confidence on her face melted into concern. “You’ll be all right, won’t you? All this nonsense about you sabotaging your squadron’s planes—”
“Poppycock. That part was tacked on just a month ago in an attempt to fan the flames, that’s all.”
“—and killing those men on purpose. Has it gone away? The papers . . .”
He could still see their faces. Miller and Greyson and De Were. Montagu and Lewis. Their smiles, the day before. The glances they’d exchanged that morning.
The panic upon them in the air that afternoon. Well. On most of them.
He plunged a hand into his pocket, his fingers flicking aside the ring Arabelle had tried to throw out the window and finding the bronze-copper wings with RFC at their junction. They’d only had the pins for a few months at the start of the war. Stupid things had caught on everything, ripping their uniforms, so woven ones had been sewn on instead. Most of the chaps had tossed their pins. Camden had instead tossed his into a box. Hadn’t found it or even thought of it until after The Incident. After the men at the base had locked him in his barracks, before the Military Police arrived. He’d sat down to look through the snapshots of happier days, the few mementos from home he’d stashed away, and found it. He’d slid it into his pocket that day, and it had lived there ever since.
His thumb ran along the bumped lower edge of the wings, traced the letters. “Don’t worry for me, Cass.” He gave her the mischievous smile she’d expect from him and pulled his hand from hers. “You know I’m not one to stay down for long.”
His sister clearly didn’t believe the confidence. “Phillip.”
“I need to go and fetch Jer from town before your fellow arrives.” He leaned over, dropped a kiss onto her forehead, and spun away. “Be back directly.”
He jogged down the stairs, along the front hall, smiling just a bit at the friendly female voices within the drawing room, and tried not to think of the heat that would be blazing from the hearth. Though when he stepped outside, the shiver he had prepared faded away. Warmer air had moved in—no doubt with the dark clouds boiling over the harbor. He needn’t save his brother from cold so much as rain, he suspected.
And it looked like he needn’t save him at all. Even as he turned toward the carriage house, the puttering of an engine on the drive broke into his hearing. He paused and turned, waiting for whomever it was to come into view. If it was Braxton instead of Jeremy, he’d sock the bloke in the nose before he went after his brother.
But no, it was Neville’s little runabout, and that meant his brother would be in the passenger’s seat. Jeremy’s childhood friend had been rejected for service because of his being nearly deaf, which meant he still lived in the city, right beside the train station. Ought to have assumed Jer would knock on his door the moment his train got in.
Camden strode back toward the front of the house as the car squeaked to a halt—Nev really should check on those brakes. But then, Nev wouldn’t be able to hear the ghastly sound they were making. Cam lifted a hand in greeting to Jer as his brother climbed out but ducked his head down to meet Neville’s eye. He didn’t know all the signs for automobile parts, but a bit of pantomiming got his point across.
Comically, it seemed. Neville laughed at him. “My brakes?” His speech had always been a bit garbled but understandable. Camden nodded. Neville gave him a lazy salute. “I’ll check them. Thanks.”
The runabout pulled off again, leaving Cam to drift closer to his brother.
Jeremy let his bag fall to the steps and cast a glance at the house. “How did it go?”
“Shockingly well. She was furious—at Braxton—but is Cass’s new best friend.”
The lift of Jer’s brows was impressive. “Really? I’m looking forward to meeting her properly. She must be quite a girl if she didn’t faint dead away at having Black Heart kidnap her.”
Camden gave his brother a playful—mostly—punch in the shoulder. “I inspire batting lashes more than fainting. I hear they all think they can save me with their undying love.”
Jeremy’s eyes flashed. “There’s only One who can save you, Phil. And—”
“Stow it.” He ought to have known better than to say the word save around his brother. “I already got that particular lecture from Miss Denler. Who, let it be noted, isn’t one for batting lashes either.”
“Now I really need to meet her.”
Camden rolled his eyes and leaned down to heft Jeremy’s bag. Though he paused before picking it up, his ears straining again. The putter of the runabout had faded, but another engine’s clatter sounded now, turning in at their drive. “I think our next guest has arrived.”
“Father God, give us your wisdom and peace and guidance, that all this may work out to your glory.”
Camden shot Jeremy a scowl. Much as he would love to blame Jer’s training, the annoying fact was that the youngest Camden brother had always burst spontaneously into prayer. “I don’t think God has much to do with this particular situation.”
Jeremy wasn’t fazed. He just turned to watch for whatever auto might appear through the bare-limbed trees lining their drive. “Your ignorance is showing, brother. God has much to do with everything.”
“Simpleton.” Camden gave Jeremy a shove.
Jeremy shoved him right back. “Heathen.”
The clouds spat out a few stray drops, more bluff than rain. Camden swiped a bead of moisture from his cheek and turned to watch the car barreling toward them. In contrast to the slow amble of Neville’s runabout, this one was bouncing along at a clip fast enough to loosen the bloke’s teeth. It came to a dust-swirling halt a few yards from where they stood, and Camden straightened, awaiting his first glimpse of this Braxton fellow.
He wasn’t that tall—that was his first impression. Not short exactly, but Miss Denler probably topped him by two or three inches. He must have run off without his cap, because his hair blew about in the wind, curly and damp-looking. His jaw was square, ticking, and his hands were in fists at his side as he stormed their way.
“Where is she?” the bloke demanded.
Camden folded his arms across his chest and opened his mouth to answer.
Jeremy beat him to it. “Cass? She’s inside. She—”
“Not Cass. Ara. What have you done to her?” Braxton’s gaze—part angry, part panicked—barely even glanced off Jer. No, it was too busy shooting harpoons straight through Camden.
He couldn’t quite decide if it was to the man’s credit or not that he was so concerned for his fiancée’s well-being. He ought to be, on the one hand. But on the other, if he were, he oughtn’t to have dallied with another woman. Camden lifted a brow. “Concerned for her now, are you? It’s a bit late for that, don’t you think?”
“Phillip.” Jeremy’s censuring voice was, at least, low. “What exactly was in that note you and Mother sent to him?”
Before he could answer, had he wanted to, Braxton was upon them and made the mistake of giving Cam a shove. “You cur! Dragging an innocent into this! Only a villain would involve her!”
The shove had started it. Had gotten his blood simmering, had made his muscles snap by rote into a posture as familiar to him as breathing. Knees bent, legs coiled and ready to spring, arms loose, limber, with his fingers half curled toward his palms. Never in his life had he turned away from a fight, which meant plenty sought him out.
Still, he didn’t mean to let instinct have its way. Not until the word villain slapped at him. Then he couldn’t help but answer the strike with one of his own.
His fist was in the chap’s nose before he could convince it to exercise a bit of patience.
Perhaps Braxton would have ignored the quick surge of blood and come after him, had a feminine shriek not interrupted them. It took Camden’s ears a moment to process which female had shouted, until he saw the tall form running their way from the front door.
And Miss Denler looked fit to skewer him. “Camden! You promised!”
Braxton shifted. Subtly, but purposefully. He faced his fiancée, presenting his profile to Camden, and reached into his pocket for a handkerchief, which he pressed to his nose. “You honestly expected this monster to honor a promise not to strike me?”
“Don’t be an idiot, Edmund. I didn’t make him promise not to strike you.” She’d reached them now, and that look of fury she’d directed at Camden five seconds earlier transferred to Braxton—and multiplied. Before the bloke’s eyes could even go wide, she’d pulled back a fist of her own—with perfect form, let it be noted—and sent it into his already gushing nose. “I made him promise to let me have the first shot.”
Braxton’s knees buckled. Jeremy shifted, and for half a second Camden thought he meant to catch the blighter. But no, he slid to Camden’s side as their guest crumpled to the ground. Gaze on Miss Denler, his brother leaned close and whispered, “I like her.”
Arabelle tilted Brax’s face into the light of the drawing room’s lamp and probed his nose far less gently than she normally would have.
“Ow! Easy, Ara!”
“Stop blubbering.” Her knuckles still stung from where they’d connected with his face, but she deemed it an acceptable price to pay.
When he tried to pull away, she stopped him with a tug on his hair. He’d probably end up with two black eyes by tomorrow. Served him right.
He scowled at her, though there wasn’t much force to it. “If this is the way you nurse all the chaps—”
“Didn’t I already ask you not to be an idiot?” She hadn’t really met his gaze yet. It had been easier to focus on mopping the blood from his face. But she met it now, looking long and hard into the eyes that should be familiar . . . and yet weren’t. She’d scarcely seen him in the last four years. And before that, he’d been nothing but Victoria’s brother. Sarah’s employer.
He sighed and looked away. “Did he hurt you?”
She kept on looking at his averted eyes. Not studying the bruises beginning to form. Not noting the deep, bright blue she’d memorized when he proposed so that she could try to convince herself she could get lost in them easily enough. No, all she could see was the way they darted to the door.
She knew well whom he was looking for. And it wasn’t the he of whom he’d spoken. She straightened her spine and lifted her chin. “Why would he? I was just a pawn to get you here, Edmund, surely you know that. Surely you know I’d have socked him in the nose had he tried anything more.”
At least he looked back at her, a hint of a smile on his lips. “You always were a scrapper when backed into a corner.”
Her lips curved a bit too. She’d made quite an impression on her first visit to Middlegrove, she supposed. It had unfortunately spanned the first anniversary of her mother’s death, and she’d been in a foul temper. A powder keg, Mrs. Braxton had called her later that day. After a spark had set her off.
