Greenway, the next morning
Bridey woke early the morning after their trip into the village, angry and uncomfortable in the chair in the playroom, where she’d bedded down after a good scolding from the butler. She’d chosen the chair for spite, some misguided effort at being noticed missing, but who was the victor? She had a thick head and tongue, a crick in her neck.
In their bedroom, Gigi and Willa lay entwined in Gigi’s bed, faces of angels.
She didn’t tiptoe. Bridey opened the shutters and let the hot sun glare in, allowed her feet to fall heavily.
Gigi shifted in her sleep. “Bridey, my God,” she groaned. “What are you about?”
“Get dressed. I’m not watching all the children by myself so that you can have a lie-in.”
“Bridey, of all mornings. Think of my head.”
“You might have thought of your own head last night. Do you think I don’t have a headache? It’s Sunday.”
“Is that your judgment?”
“We’re taking the children to church.”
“You must be joking.”
“It can’t be morning already,” Willa said, burrowing in.
“And you’ll want to see your friend out before Mrs. Arbuthnot wants an explanation,” Bridey said.
Gigi sat up, her eyes slits. The sheet barely covered her, and Bridey looked away. “Wills,” Gigi said, her voice hoarse. “Wills, wake up.”
“The children should be your priority. Not visiting pubs, not listening for hints and codes in parish gossip. Not sneaking . . . strangers into the very house you’re to keep safe.”
“I don’t keep the house safe,” Gigi said. “You make me sound rather cloak and dagger, someone Aggie conjured with her stories.”
“It isn’t amusing,” Bridey said. “Intrigues and ruined dresses and—”
“Say what you mean to.”
“Vulgar acts in a public toilet. It’s not a regular way of life.”
“I don’t think you would know a regular way of life,” Gigi said, “if it wrote you a letter every Tuesday whether you answered it or not. Are you jealous?”
“Jealous of who, then?”
“All right, if not of my attention—of feelings, of desire. Of being alive and young and hungry and having someone take you in their arms and feed you precisely what you need.” Gigi gazed down at Willa, a look of such tenderness that Bridey had to look out the window. “Of having a moment of calm and relief in which you can believe all will be well.”
Is that what romantic love was? Freefall, hoping one would be saved by another? It sounded rather childish.
“I’m glad you had such a good night,” Bridey said. “I took last night’s expedition on the chin with Scaldwell, slept in a chair in the girls’ room so I wouldn’t have to listen to—”
Gigi laughed. “You heard a bit of that.”
“You’re a fool if you think I’ll take the full serving for you today.”
“All right, Bridey. Will you please be still? Wills.”
There was a sharp rap at the door.
Bridey went to answer, heard exclaim and scrambling behind her. The doorknob turned as Bridey reached it. She stepped into the door’s path to keep Mrs. Arbuthnot from putting her head in.
“Girls, please,” Mrs. Arbuthnot hissed through the opening. She had her hair set in rollers, night cream across her nose. “You’ve woken the entire household. Will you not let me in?”
“Gigi’s not decent,” Bridey said, enjoying it.
“One of the children is crying, Bridey.”
“Is Gigi not also employed to take care of crying children?”
Mrs. Arbuthnot stared at her. “Just this once—”
“Just this once, just this once. It’s been nothing but just this once since we arrived. I would like to request that Gigi do her share of the work or—or I’ll have to find another position.”
Mrs. Arbuthnot pressed at the door, and Bridey let her in. Gigi sat in bed, blankets pulled up to her chin, alone.
“Bridget,” Mrs. Arbuthnot said, rigid in posture, “I would appreciate if you would go see to the child who is suffering, alone, without his mother to comfort him. Or you will have to find another assignment and without my reference. Do I make myself clear?”
Bridey swallowed around all the things she wanted to say. “Yes, missus.”
She turned and fled. Behind her, Gigi was receiving a few words from Mrs. Arbuthnot as well. Where had Willa been stowed? In the cupboard? Under the bed?
She didn’t care.
Who was she? She’d arrived a month ago knowing what she wanted, who she wanted to be, knowing what she had to do to get there. Thinking the matron was wrong about her, thinking she had been nothing but maligned and unfairly treated. And now she didn’t mind if she lasted the day, if she was put back on a train for London, if—
She did mind. Despite all her defenses, the children had sneaked under her skin. She didn’t love them, of course—she couldn’t. But they were innocents in all of this—all of it. She couldn’t leave them to fend for themselves with only Gigi and her intrigues.
And there was her own reputation. Her future.
Bridey thought of working alongside Dr. Hart in the pub, of feeling capable and in partnership—of his surgery in Galmpton. Her future was so close and so far away at the same time. Was there a wife? Why couldn’t she still become who she was meant to be? She was not the one who had cracked the smooth surface of this arrangement. She was not messing about in conspiracies and secrets.
With a black cloud over her head, she went through her duties, the babies changed, girls dressed and brushed, all of them fed. She wouldn’t punish the boys for Gigi’s sloth. She wouldn’t punish herself, either.
“Let’s have an outing,” she said, and then the questions began. “Edward, please sit down.” Bridey went to seat the boy back in his place, then someone’s milk was spilled. The rest of the meal was a tumble downhill.
They went out to the ruins on the hill and Bridey let them gather as many violets as they wanted, to play war games in the roofless stone room. Through lunch, she still hadn’t seen Gigi. Perhaps Willa had been discovered and Gigi sacked?
When Bridey had the children, all of them, down for an afternoon nap and order nearly restored to the playroom, Edith appeared at the door.
“There’s someone downstairs for you.”
“For me?” Bridey said.
Gigi appeared over Edith’s shoulder. “Who is it?” she said.
“Where have you been?” Bridey said.
“I didn’t see who it was,” Edith said, looking between them. She had bags under her eyes and a foul expression. “Only Mrs. Scaldwell fetched me upstairs to tell you and now I’ll get back to the dusting.”
“Perhaps your guest has returned, Gigi,” Bridey said.
“Is it a man or a woman?” Gigi said.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Edith said from the landing, not stopping. “I know how you might find out for yourself.”
“The cheek,” Gigi said. “That was a good pair of stockings I gave up for a few hours out.”
“She hasn’t forgiven you for scolding her for gossiping about Mrs. M.”
“Maybe it’s Tom,” Gigi said. “You go.”
“It won’t be Tom.”
Gigi crouched on the rocking chair, curled in on herself. “Well, you’ll have to go.”
“Another chore you can’t do? I have to receive visitors for the both of us now?”
“I’ll watch the children while you see who it is,” Gigi said.
“Now I got them asleep? How generous.”
“Maybe it’s someone for Mrs. Arbuthnot.” Gigi stood and brushed past Bridey to the window.
No one would come to Greenway House to see her, in other words.
“Don’t mention my name,” Gigi said.
“Our name, you mean. Shouldn’t be difficult at all.”
“Right. I’m not here, just in case.”
“In case of what?” Who would come looking? She felt the tremor start up, deep in her guts. “In case the police are back and want to speak to us, you’d have me see them alone.”
“You’re much more stoic than I am. You’re a sphinx,” Gigi said. “And you’re such a good girl. You’ll be much better with them than I was. If it’s them. It might not be.”
Bridey went down slowly, fighting a rising panic. What if it was the police? What if it was—
The image of Matron Bailey came to her, traveling cloak billowing vengeance as she stood at Greenway’s front door.
Edith and Mrs. Scaldwell stood in the entrance hall peering around the doorway into the morning room.
“What’s happening?” Bridey said.
Mrs. Scaldwell raised her chin as she turned toward the kitchen. “Do tell me if this . . . guest will be staying for tea. We barely have the rations for ourselves, what with the thief taking an extra share.”
“Mr. Scaldwell’s up to the higher farm,” Edith whispered. “Should Mrs. Arbuthnot be called for?”
Now she was curious. “She’s gone for a walk,” Bridey said. “And Mr. Arbuthnot’s off painting, of course.”
“We could get Hannaford or one of his men to go fetch her.”
Bridey looked in. A hatless woman sat in one of the parlor chairs, leaning forward over her knees. Her ankle showed a scuff where she might have taken a tumble on the road and her long dark hair had started to fall out of its arrangement. She wasn’t quite ready for visiting, but otherwise Bridey could see no reason to panic. She was lost or had motor trouble.
“I’ll see to her.” She pulled off her apron and handed it over.
“But—miss, wait—”
Bridey entered the room with authority. She might be the mistress of the house as far as this woman knew. “Madam,” she said, attempting Mrs. Arbuthnot’s abrupt way of speaking. “Welcome to Greenway.”
The woman looked up, as startled as a deer on the road. Her eyes were bright, and she had a bloody gash at her temple.
“Oh,” Bridey said. “What’s happened, missus?”
“Do you have the children from London?” the woman said.
“That must sting,” Bridey said. “Let me take a look. Edith, will you fetch some bandages from—from upstairs?” She’d almost said Gigi’s name, but Gigi was not here. “What’s your name, madam?”
“You’re not the woman from the station. Where is she?”
“No, I’m not from—I’m Bridget. I’m the nurse.”
“Nurse!” The woman bolted up and put the chair between them. “I won’t go back without him. They said they would help but they didn’t help.”
“Madam, please. Your name?”
“Cecilia Poole,” the woman said, like a child called upon in school.
“And what happened to your head, Mrs. Poole? Did you have a fall?”
Mrs. Poole closed her eyes. “The floor went out.”
Bridey thought she finally understood why they’d wanted to call for Mrs. Arbuthnot, or anyone else.
She’d seen worse at the hospital, of course. Grown men who’d lost their minds, who called for their mams as though they were little children. Men who thought they were still on the battlefield and raged against any efforts to patch them up. Women with blood dripping from the ears, carrying their dead children into the ward.
Bridey swallowed down her own memories as they rose, bile in her throat. “That’s too bad about the floor. Generally speaking, one does expect the floor to stay put.”
“It always had before.”
“What brings you to Greenway, Mrs. Poole?”
“I’ve come for Sam,” the woman said.
“Sam. I’m afraid I don’t know who Sam is.”
“My little boy,” the woman said. She stood and walked toward Bridey, her wild eyes barely contained in her skull. “You took him,” she said. “You took my little boy.”
Mrs. Poole was so convinced, Bridey wondered—my God, have we been calling one of the boys by the wrong name? Her eyes were so hot with fervor, Bridey was inclined to believe she was right and backed away as the woman reached for her.