Love by the Morning Star (25 page)

She paid one last visit to the twin yews. She knew he wouldn't be there. Even if he'd looked for her earlier, he wouldn't have waited all night. Still, there was a little part of her that knew she would forgive him if he was there, doing penance all that cold night.

No, he wasn't there. Of course he wasn't there.

She went inside the hollow bole and breathed in the memory of him, of those nights, so few, so precious, so misleading. It was only a dream, though, she told herself. A midwinter night's dream.

She was about to leave the place of her disillusion forever when she caught a glimmer of white in the faint crescent moonlight. Her heart beating wildly, she held it an inch from her eyes and strained to read the words.

 

I waited for you
.

Marry me
.

 

If it had been a question, not a command, she might have torn up the paper and left with Waltraud and HRH. But that stark statement, with a period at the end, made it seem so very inescapable, practically preordained, that she never thought to question it. She didn't
want
to question it.

Yes
, she whispered to the stars.

Then she ran back to tell Waltraud she'd be staying after all.

Waltraud argued, but in the end she shrugged and said, “Just as well. Because I only now remembered where Lady Liripip's pearls are, and someone has to tell her. You see, she wanted them cleaned, and scrubbing with soap didn't seem to help. I'm not very domestic, as you know, but I do recall an old, er, acquaintance of mine, whose name I can't recall though I still have the Mainbocher gown he gave me . . . anyway, he soaked his false teeth in vinegar to make them clean and white. So I tried it on Lady Liripip's pearls.”

“You didn't!”

“How was I to know that pearls dissolve in vinegar?”

I
DO NOT WANT TO BE
this kind of girl
, Hannah thought.
The kind who forgives weakness, the kind who waits, interminably, for a prince to deign to take her
.

I do not want to be the girl who loves without reason or sense, enduring
.

When Teddy talked to her in the black of midnight, he seemed as brave as an entire Roman legion, ready to stand against any barbarian, to hold fast and true. Was he not going to Germany to do the work of the angels and white hats? Sometimes he made it sound like a schoolboy lark, but they both knew how dangerous it would be, particularly if it came to war, as everyone thought it must. He was not doing that from patriotism, or a sense of adventure, but from a passionate sense of right and wrong: where there was wrong, to put it right. How could the man who would defy a country and save the world, if he was able, not defy his own mother? How could he swear one thing in the darkness and act quite another way in broad daylight?

But I love him, damn it
, she thought.
Why are the poets right—why does that conquer all? Why does it make his weakness less contemptible?
She loved him and despised him at the same time . . . but the love would not go away.

So she stayed, scrubbing and chopping, tending to Anna, and occasionally, in between, being waylaid by Lord Liripip to hear more of his memoirs. Some shred of pride still prevented her from revealing who she was, as well, she had to admit, as some scrap of mischief. Let Lady Liripip gloat in her subjugation. The look on her face would be that much more enjoyable when she found out Hannah and Teddy were to be married, and when she faced her husband's wrath at the deception, all at once. A creature of the stage, Hannah appreciated a proper buildup and stunning climax. Sometimes it was better to skip over the obvious and the immediate in favor of a delayed punch line. And what a punch line it would be!

But it was a long time until May, when Teddy would return. Scrubbing dishes helped keep her philosophical . . . and if her occasional tears fell into the dishwater, no one noticed them for the bubbles.

 

A
NNA HAD VERY LITTLE
to amuse her that winter. Teddy was gone, and there was no one else personable on the estate to even daydream about. Even the handsome and completely impractical under-gardener she liked to watch had left immediately after the Servants' Ball. She did not know where, and did not let herself ask. It was bad enough that he slipped into her thoughts uninvited, that every time she tried to imagine her future with Teddy, Hardy's low-class but undeniably dashing face and form intruded. His absence was a relief, she told herself. She wouldn't rub salt in a wound that shouldn't be there in the first place by asking about him.

In January, she received a note from her father, though the envelope had the return address of the British Ladies' Poetry Society. Even that received a suspicious look from Lady Liripip when she spied it. “I hope their poetry rhymes, at least,” she sniffed. “I have no stomach for modern tripe.” Not that she was an avid reader of poetry. She hadn't read a verse since escaping the schoolroom.

Anna opened the letter at the tea table and skimmed it, keeping her face serene. “They only want a donation to help them teach guttersnipes to recite,” she said, and tucked the letter into her pocket. Which, fortunately, started Lady Liripip on another critical rant—she believed pockets were common—and let the letter evaporate from her notice.

Had she somehow managed to extract the letter or divine its contents, Lady Liripip would have expired on the spot. For it said, tersely:

 

Write to confirm successful position re Starkers
.

Not necessary after all to eliminate Lord Liripip, as his heir is not congenial to the cause
.

Stand by for further instructions
.

Destroy after reading
.

 

It was unsigned, but Anna recognized her father's handwriting.

Anna's oolong rippled in its Limoges, but she managed to endure the rest of tea, and even choked down the obligatory biscuit before withdrawing to her room. Once there, she stood in the center like one of those empty-eyed Roman statues, staring at nothing until her eyes burned. She scarcely breathed. She felt like a fawn who believes with all her trembling heart that if she does not move, the wolf panting upon her throat cannot see her.

Finally, with the greatest effort, she staggered to the window. Her breath fogged the glass, and frost covered the garden, but she could just see the faint warm orange of the firepots burning inside the glass hothouse. She felt an indescribable craving to be there, surrounded by blossoms that should have perished a season ago, breathing the living air. She longed for a simple world of flowers.

They wanted me to kill
, she thought numbly. Not flirt with a visiting diplomat, not whisper code or pass documents or ferret out secrets, but kill. No wonder the NAFF had told her nothing of their true plans. If they had, she'd never have agreed, no matter how many eligible young lords she might have met. And Lord Liripip, of all people? She could not think of anyone less political than Lord Liripip, bellowing for his dessert and scribbling his memoirs. But he was in the House of Lords, technically, though he hadn't attended a session in ages. Was the NAFF really going to kill anti-fascist lords in hopes that their heirs might be pro-German?

She stripped off her gloves, using her teeth when they stuck clammily to her fingers. They were big, strong hands, she thought. Hands that by rights should be digging potatoes or working in a factory. A lady's hands could never kill . . . but these could. They were the one thing about herself that effort and will could not change.

Hastily, she tugged her gloves back on, shuddering. How could he think it of her? How could he expect his own daughter to do such a horrible thing?

Never
, she swore.
He can't make me
. Not for the cause, which she hardly understood. Not to be a heroine. She didn't want to be a heroine anymore, not at all. All she wanted was a good marriage.
Teddy
, she amended.
I want Teddy
.

Though for some reason she couldn't quite remember what he looked like.

Frightened, disgusted, hurt by what her father had almost asked of her, she would have left Starkers if not for Teddy. But surely now that the NAFF had abandoned its ludicrous plan to have her kill Lord Liripip, her job was all over. Maybe somewhere else in England, some poor girl was being asked to kill a liberal old man so a fascist son could take over. But as long as it wasn't her, she didn't particularly care. She would stay, and tell no one.

She wrote a hasty note back to her father, via the address of the poetry society.

 

I regret I cannot contribute to your scheme. However, should you ever require anything of a less extreme nature, I am here, at your disposal
.

 

She didn't dare state outright that she was through with the NAFF plans. Her father was a violent man, and though she'd impressed upon him before that her face was her fortune and must never be damaged, she now knew that his cause meant far more to him than his daughter. If she refused to help, if he thought there was any danger of her alerting the authorities, there was no telling what he might do . . . or whom he might send. The NAFF had some unsavory members.

Anna rested easy until March, when she received another missive from the poetry society.

 

Have been told His Majesty often visits Starkers
.

Advise when
.

 

I
N
A
PRIL, WHICH
H
ANNAH NOW
heartily agreed was the cruelest month, mixing memory and desire, she walked past the burgeoning lilies that lined the lane. She was heading to the village to fetch a bottle of vanilla for Sally, and she was deep in thought.

Hannah was getting to be well known in the little village that abutted the grounds of Starkers and was, in that old feudal way, owned, more or less, by Lord Liripip. The baker shouted a greeting, and several scrubbed, apple-cheeked heads peeked out of the schoolhouse to grin at her as she walked by. Her hopeful longing, her fitful depression, began to subside in the wake of all the peasant cheerfulness, and she had a nice chat with the grocer as he fetched her bottle of vanilla.

“Someone was asking about you the other day,” he said, after telling her a scintillating tale about his wife's bunion surgery.

“Me?” she asked, flush with the hope that hung around every corner, emerging again and again like a perpetually eager puppy, though it knew it would probably be kicked. Her parents? Someone from Germany who knew her parents? Teddy?

“I suppose he meant you. He was asking about the newest kitchen maid at Starkers, anyway. Said he thought he might know her, and could I deliver a letter to her. What's her name, I asked, but he wouldn't say. Just the newest kitchen maid.”

“Who was he?” she asked.

The grocer shrugged. “Strange fellow. Shifty-eyed. I suppose he was an admirer and wanted to make your acquaintance. He couldn't just walk up to Starkers, though, could he? So he wrote a note. I didn't care for his looks, Miss Hannah. He had that stoatish look, if you know what I mean.”

She didn't, because though her English was near perfect, she still didn't know if a stoat was a rabbit or a ferret or a badger. Though any one of those, she supposed, would make for an unpleasant admirer.

The grocer gave her the note, which she took with some reluctance. “Thank you.” She waited until she was on the jonquil-lined path back to Starkers before she tore it open. It certainly wasn't in Teddy's hand.

 

The time is near
.

Be prepared
.

Meet me at the gate
.

Sunday midnight
.

 

She chuckled. Perhaps her admirer was Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouting movement.

Or—Hannah's spirit danced, her heart grew lightsome in the giddy spring—could it be Teddy? Was it like in the novels? Was he planning an elopement? The stoatish man might just be his messenger.

She couldn't let her hopes rise too far. Maybe the note wasn't even for her, but for Glenda or Judy. Maybe Waltraud wanted to whisk her away to London . . . though that wasn't her pretty, careless script, and she probably would have written in German, which was by far her stronger language.

Tomorrow was Sunday. Hannah would simply go to the gate and see for herself. She didn't have to actually meet whoever it was; she could hide in the shrubberies or behind the wall. The gate was locked at night, with a bell to summon some hapless servant in case of nocturnal emergencies, so whoever it was couldn't get at her.

But a sense of caution made her want to tell someone, just in case. Sally or Coombe would prohibit her from going—servants have a strict curfew, and though in those modern days they weren't exactly forbidden to have admirers, it was certainly discouraged. Judy or Glenda, troublemakers both, would snitch. With Waltraud gone to her glamorous London life (she was dancing burlesque in a fashionable nightclub, she wrote, when she wasn't—ahem—serving the Crown) and Hardy away at Windsor perfecting his vegetative knowledge, Hannah didn't know whom to turn to, except . . .

A
NNA HAD SETTLED INTO THE LIFE
of an aristocratic hanger-on with comfortable ease. For most of the day she trailed Lady Liripip, running little errands for her, blandly submitting to her stinging criticisms. These were easier to bear because they were mostly about her parents—her supposed parents, that is. Her father was a Jewish swindler, while the woman Lady Liripip thought was Anna's mother was a disreputable minx who led men on. Anna asked in all innocence whether it was considered more acceptable to fulfill a man's expectations than to lead him to believe he had any and then thwart him, to which Lady Liripip gave a shocked glare.