A Love Surrendered (16 page)

Squirming away, the youngster managed to pop up with a delighted shriek, flapping the front of her skirt with a giggle to reveal dimpled knees. “You’re not public, Annie, you’re my sister.” She twirled around, unveiling another glimpse of pretty pink lace. “My
‘Old Maid’
sister!”

Annie shot up and snatched her in the air with a spin. “I’ll teach you to call me an old maid,” she said, pausing to slobber Glory with kisses. High-pitched laughter rolled through the parlor when Annie burrowed into Glory’s neck, blowing raspberries against her sister’s skin.

“Good heavens, Susannah, how is that child ever going to learn to behave as a proper young lady if you persist in acting more juvenile than her?” Aunt Eleanor stood at the parlor door, gaze flitting to where Mr. Grump lay sprawled in front of the open French doors. Wrinkling her nose, she marched over to shoo him away, yanking the doors closed with a not-so-subtle reminder she preferred them shut to keep out the flies. She cast a wary glance at the girls on the floor as she made her way to her favorite blue brocade wing chair by the fireplace. Retrieving her needlepoint from a cherrywood chest, she settled in with another cumbersome sigh and put her reading glasses on. “I wish you’d act your age rather than playing the hooligan with your impressionable sister,” she said, the stiff lines of her face highlighted by a tulip lamp that stood guard over her chair.

Allowing a stone-faced Glory to slip to the floor, Annie forced a smile despite her own pale reflection in the gilded mirror over the hearth. She took a deep breath, determined to forge some kind of connection with her aunt. After all, she was both blood and benefactor, her mother’s estranged sister who could’ve easily turned her back on them in their time of need. Annie smoothed the pleats of her cream paneled dress. “Sorry, Aunt Eleanor, I do behave in public, I promise.”

Plopping down on the floor, Glory tugged her abandoned baby doll, the Queen of Sheba, into her lap while she glanced up at her aunt, eyes wide. “We’re playing Old Maid, Aunt Eleanor—wanna play?” Her expression was almost angelic. “I bet you’d be good at it.”

Annie stooped to pick up the cards, eyes narrowed in warning.

Eleanor looked up from her needlepoint canvas, the downward tilt of her lips lifting slightly as if she might actually smile. But the hazel eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses remained aloof, reflecting the cool green of her prim silk dress. “No, thank you, dear.” Her gaze returned to Annie, her tone slightly sterner. “You’ll be eighteen in less than a month, Susannah. You need to set an example. Your sister looks up to you and will mimic you whenever possible.”

Annie caught her breath, her aunt’s mention of her birthday reminding her of Peggy’s plea to celebrate her eighteenth out with the gang.
“But I don’t want to celebrate my birthday at Ocean Pier,”
Annie had argued, no desire to spend time with Joanie, Ashley, and Erica, or Steven O’Connor for that matter. “How ’bout just you and I go out to dinner?”

Peggy had groaned, her elfin face crimped in pain. “But you’re going to be eighteen, Annie Lou—
a woman!
You need to have a party—with people!” She grabbed Annie’s hand. “Okay, no Ocean Pier, but at least let us take you to dinner to celebrate, okay? Please?”

Of course Annie had relented. What trouble could she possibly get into at a restaurant?

With a skim of her teeth, she stood and took a step forward, fiddling with the filigreed silver ring Maggie had given her for Christmas. “Uh, Aunt Eleanor? About my birthday . . .”

Her aunt peered over the rim of her glasses, a crevice at the bridge of her nose. “Yes?”

“Peggy and her sister would like to take me to dinner. Would that be all right?”

The crease deepened as she removed her glasses. “I was
hoping to have a birthday dinner for you here, with your sister, but I suppose you may invite Peggy and her sister as well.”

Joanie?
With Aunt Eleanor?
Panic jolted like a brain freeze after too much Rocky Road. “Oh no, not to our family dinner,” she said, desperate to steer her aunt away from sure disaster. “I only want to celebrate with you and Glory on my actual birthday.” She hesitated, licking her dry lips. “This would be the Saturday night after, with Peggy, her sister, and friends.”

Aunt Eleanor stared, wheels turning as slowly as the ponderous thud of Annie’s heart. “And how old, exactly, are Peggy’s sister and her friends?” she asked, her tone measured.

Annie blinked, trying not to swallow. “Well, Peggy’s eighteen, of course, and Joanie and her friends, a few years older, I believe.”

The greenish hazel eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “How many years older, dear?”

There was no stopping the gulp this time. “They’re . . . twenty-five,” she whispered.

A heavy sigh parted from Aunt Eleanor’s lips as she put her glasses back on. “I’m sorry, Susannah, but I’m just not comfortable with a young woman your age roaming the streets at night with older girls. Heaven knows what type of morals they have, coming of age during such a promiscuous time.” She proceeded to pull fibers through the canvas in her lap. “It’s my responsibility to see to your best interests, as it is yours to become the kind of role model your sister needs, a young woman of grace and refinement.
Which
you can begin right now by selecting a less rowdy game to play at the table instead of sprawled on the floor.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Annie’s chest deflated. She bent to retrieve the cards and gave her sister a sad smile. “How ’bout we play Hearts instead?” She nodded at the table. “Over there.”

Glory trudged to her feet as if she were rotund instead of a bitty little thing. Her tiny brows bunched in a thunderous scowl while the Queen of Sheba dangled from her fist
in a most unregal manner. “I’d rather play Old Maid than Hearts,” she muttered under her breath, sliding Aunt Eleanor a scowl while she sulked to the table. “The ‘old maid’ should play—she could use one.”

Broiling her sister with another look, Annie took the chair facing the hearth so her aunt wouldn’t see Glory’s nasty look.

“Lemonade, per your request, Miss Eleanor.” Frailey entered the parlor with a tray in hand, head high and body stiff, his stride almost a glide except for the faint indication of a limp.

Eleanor looked up, face in a frown. “Goodness, Frailey, it’s almost June, and your arthritis is still acting up?”

“No, miss, not too badly.”

The glasses came off. “Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes, Mr. Frailey, you’re limping more today than I’ve seen in a while.” Her daunting tone couldn’t mask the concern in her eyes. “Are you trying the cider vinegar and honey concoction I told you about?”

Frailey offered her a lemonade, bending slightly at the waist. “No, miss.”

“Well, I suggest you do so right now, is that clear?”

“Yes, miss.”

Before he could turn away, she reached to brush his hand, almost a caress to gnarled fingers as they held the tray. Her voice was low, as if she didn’t want anyone to hear except Frailey, and so fraught with pain that Annie paused. “You mean the world to me, Arthur, you know that. Please—for me—take care of yourself. When you’re in pain, I’m in pain.”

“Annie, it’s your turn,” Glory said, shaking Annie’s arm.

She startled and returned her attention to the game, stunned at her aunt’s depth of concern for her elderly butler. Never once had she known Aunt Eleanor to express emotion of any kind, even when her only sister had passed away. Mama told her once that she and her little sister “Ellie” had been close growing up—Eleanor a vivacious and bright-eyed little girl and Mama the older sister she idolized. But everything
changed when Mama quit Radcliffe to elope with Daddy, not only alienating her parents by marrying outside the church and moving to Chicago, but estranging ten-year-old Ellie as well. But for all her anger and bitterness over her older sister leaving the Church to marry a minister and her disdain for the offspring of that union, Eleanor Martin
had
reached out. First to Maggie in providing a top-notch education at Radcliffe, and now to Annie and Glory.

“Thank you, Frailey,” Annie said, reaching for the lemonade he offered.

“My pleasure, miss.”

She took a sip, peeking at Aunt Eleanor through lowered lids, noting she had returned to her stitching with a porcelain expression that meant all emotion was safely tucked away. Unbidden, Annie’s throat tightened at the sadness that engulfed her aunt, as potent as the tart lemonade that now wrinkled her nose. And then, in the rise and fall of her breath, Annie saw beyond clipped responses and cool gazes into the eyes of a woman who desperately needed love in her life. And a touch from God to heal her soul, just like he’d done for Annie.
Oh, Lord, help me to connect with this woman whose blood I share.

“Thanks, Frailey.” Glory took a gulp of her lemonade, face puckered like a prune. “Mmm . . . nice and sour.” Her rosebud lips went flat, voice sinking to a mutter. “Just like Aunt Eleanor.”

Annie nudged her with her foot under the table, suddenly comprehending for the first time just why Aunt Eleanor was so bitter. Mama had told her that Ellie’s fiancé had broken her heart when he cheated on her days before the wedding, so she’d called it off. And then Mama’s parents had perished in a rail accident on their way to New York four years later, leaving Aunt Eleanor broken and alone as the sole heir of a lucrative estate. Aunt Eleanor became a shell of a woman at twenty-six: beautiful, educated, wealthy . . . and so very alone. And as lifeless as the artificial flowers she placed on her parents’ graves.

“Ouch!” Glory rubbed her shin, her narrow gaze fusing with Annie’s. “Why did you kick me?”

“I did not kick you, young lady,” Annie whispered with a stern look, “I just don’t think we should be talking about Aunt Eleanor that way.”

“Anything else, miss?” Frailey asked with a stiff bow to Aunt Eleanor.

“No, thank you, Frailey—just tend to that leg, all right?”

“Yes, miss.”

Annie watched the kindly butler leave, his regal bearing more in keeping with royalty than servitude, and all at once she wondered about this man who had devoted his life to the Martins. Mama said he had come from Manchester, England, and swore that Arthur Frailey had blue blood in his veins. But if he had an aristocratic heritage in Britain, Mr. Frailey never let on. “A love affair gone awry,” Mama suspected, never understanding why her beloved butler, with whom she corresponded until her death, never opted to marry.

“Aaaaan-nie,” Glory moaned, “you have to start, remember?”

“Oops, sorry.” Annie snapped from her reverie to select three cards from her hand and push them forward. “I wonder why Frailey never married,” she mused out loud.

“Think about it,” Glory whispered in her typical sage-in-a-five-year-old-body mode. “If you worked for Aunt Eleanor, would
you
want to marry a woman?”

“I think she’s just really sad,” Annie said softly. “Which is why we both need to try harder to be nice to her and do what she says without complaining.” Annie leveled a pointed look. “She’s Mama’s sister, after all, and she’s been good to us.”

A surprisingly low grunt erupted from Glory’s lips. “If you call jail good.” She slapped three cards on the table while moisture glistened in her eyes. “I miss Daddy.”

Annie squeezed her little hand. “I know you do, baby. I do too . . .”

“Excuse me, Miss Eleanor, but you have a visitor. Mr. Callahan is at the door.”

Aunt Eleanor looked up at Frailey, her skin suddenly as white as the milk-glass tulip lamp that highlighted the gold in her hair. Nervous eyes darted to a gilded bronze clock on her Tudor oak writing desk. “At this hour?” Her voice rose to a crack. “What does he want?”

Frailey’s eyes softened. “I believe he has papers for you to sign, miss.”

She rose with a disgruntled sigh, the set of her shoulders a clear indication the visit would be short. “Well, show him to the library, Frailey, and for pity’s sake, don’t take his coat.”

“Very good, miss.” With a stiff bow, Frailey hurried from the room.

Placing her needlepoint aside, she removed her glasses and glanced in the mirror, hands shaky as she smoothed ash-blonde curls. Her flustered gaze collided with Annie’s in the glass, and she whirled around, back straight and head high. “Susannah, it’s late, and you girls should be asleep. Since Mrs. Pierce left early, I’d appreciate it if you put Glory to bed tonight, please.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Annie bit back a sigh. She gathered the cards, countering Glory’s jutting lip with a sympathetic smile. “We’ll play tomorrow night, okay?” she whispered, squeezing her hand.

“No we won’t,” Glory muttered, golden curls as limp as her mood. “
She’ll
still be here.”

“I heard that, Gloria,” Aunt Eleanor said as she strode by, a storm raging in her eyes. “And, yes, I’ll be here, young lady, rest assured, but
you
may not be if an orphanage is more to your liking.”

Glory shrank back, tears pooling. She clung to Annie. “I want my mama,” she whispered.

Eleanor spun around at the door, her eyes glinting with both tears and torment. “Stop it!” she rasped, hysteria rising along with her chin. “She’s gone, do you hear? She left you
just like she left me, like she left Mama and Papa—with a broken heart and a life full of pain. Why should
you
be any different?” she screamed, fists clenched white.

Air seized in Annie’s throat while her body chilled to stone. She clutched a sobbing Glory to her side, both of them shivering from the shock of their aunt’s hateful words. “Shhh, baby, let’s go upstairs,” she whispered, “and we’ll snuggle for a while, okay?” She ushered her out, inching past their aunt, who stood at the door, head in her hands.

Annie flinched when Aunt Eleanor halted them with a quivering arm, face averted to the wall and voice hoarse with repentance. “Forgive me, I . . . I don’t know what came over me. I didn’t mean it . . .” Her voice broke on a shuddered sob. “I suppose . . . I miss your mother too . . .”

Throat swelling with sympathy, Annie laid a tentative hand on her aunt’s shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. “It’s okay, Aunt Eleanor,” she whispered. “We understand.”