The Runaway McBride (12 page)

The journey was a bit of a letdown. She’d hoped to get a good view of the passing scenery from the train window, but the countryside was shrouded in a mist that was almost impenetrable.

Lily had offered to come with her, but Faith wouldn’t hear of it. Lily’s brother and his family lived in Brighton and were expecting them both to spend the first two weeks of their holidays with them, as was their habit.

“I don’t need a chaperone,” Faith had protested. “There will be plenty of people about. You go on to Brighton, and I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

“You think Lady Cowdray will ask you to stay the night?”

“It’s possible, but I couldn’t accept. We’re strangers. I don’t want to impose. Besides, I’d feel awkward after writing that I only wanted an hour of her time.”

Lily nodded. “And I’d just be in the way, I suppose.” There was no rancor behind her words. Lady Cowdray had agreed to see Faith. An uninvited guest might not be welcome. They both understood that.

“Lily, I’m a big girl, now. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be back in time to catch the last train to Brighton.”

“Well, at least I can look after your traveling case. You don’t want to be lugging that around when you’re running for trains.”

And that’s how it was left.

Since there was nothing much to see from the window, Faith turned her attention to the people in her compartment. The men of business looked very important as they read the morning paper. The fourth passenger was an elderly lady who was dozing with her chin on her ample bosom. No one spoke or tried to catch her eye. They were traveling second class, and that was the thing about second-class passengers: they were all locked up in their individual coaches like cattle going to market. There was no escape if a quarrel got going, so they kept themselves to themselves.

James, of course, could travel any class he wanted, and he didn’t always choose first-class. He was as interested in the interior design of the coaches as he was in building the tracks to carry them. She wasn’t surprised that he’d made people believe in him, or that he’d found backers to invest in his companies. His enthusiasm for railroads was infectious.

Maybe Miss Elliot should have invited
him
to be one of the speakers on Speech Day.

That was the last time she’d seen him, the day that would be forever branded into her mind, not as Speech Day but as the day of the locked closet. Gingerly, she touched a hand to her face. Her skin felt as though she was coming down with a fever. Good Lord, the man wasn’t infectious, he was
lethally
infectious, no matter what he was selling.

Shoving all thoughts of James from her mind, she forced herself to focus on the approaching interview with Lady Cowdray. She felt at a disadvantage because she knew next to nothing about her ladyship, while she had been obliged to give an account of her life with her father and subsequent career as a lady’s companion and teacher at St. Winnifred’s.

And if that were not enough to convince her ladyship to see her, she’d included a photograph of Madeline, the mother who, she was led to believe, had died when Faith was six. She’d discovered the photograph by sheer chance among her father’s papers. On the back was written in her father’s script, “Madeline Maynard.”

What troubled Faith was that the woman in the photograph was forty if she was a day, but she’d been told that her mother was twenty-six when she died. Faith had speculated endlessly on what it might mean. Now, at last, she hoped to learn the truth.

 

 

Chalbourne was the first stop the train made, and many of
the passengers got out either to stretch their legs or to use the station’s conveniences. When the guard blew his whistle ten minutes later, people hurried to reboard the train. The engine belched a cloud of steam and smoke then jolted into motion, leaving Faith alone on the platform.

She was supposed to be picked up by her ladyship’s driver, who would convey her to Cowdray Hall. Feeling a tad conspicuous, she sat on a bench against the waiting room wall and looked this way and that. Her gaze became riveted on a figure, shrouded in mist, who was lounging under a tree at the far end of the platform. Was he Lady Cowdray’s driver? She got up and took a step toward him then halted. The mist had swallowed him up.

She jumped when someone spoke at her back. “Miss McBride?”

Turning quickly, she saw a short, stocky man, hat in hand, revealing a shiny face and a bald pate. “You must be Lady Cowdray’s driver,” she said.

He nodded. “Farr’s the name.” Not a smile cracked his face. “Shall we go?” And turning on his heel, he walked away.

Faith picked up her skirts and hastened after him.

 

 

They had to pass through the main thoroughfare to get to the
house, and as the buggy jogged along, Faith asked the odd question about her ladyship just to be friendly, but Mr. Farr’s short replies did not encourage her to continue. On one stretch of road, they stopped to let a dray cart going in the opposite direction pass them, but other than that, it was an uneventful journey that lasted no more than twenty minutes.

Her first view of the house might have been taken from one of the gothic novels she enjoyed—a castle rising above the mist—but as they got nearer, she saw that the house was much smaller than she imagined. There was no turret or battlements, only graceful Ionic columns that flanked the stone steps leading up to the front door.

A butler, who was as stony-faced as Mr. Farr, ushered her into the great hall and told her to wait. She took in the giant pilasters lining the walls, the wall niches with sculptures, but what riveted her attention was the enormous sculpture of a reclining woman with only a sculpted shawl covering the lower half of her naked body. Whatever the artist’s intent, it certainly did not preserve the lady’s modesty. Faith moved closer. Modesty or not, the model, she thought, was truly lovely, and this was a work of art.

She did not have long to wait. The butler returned to conduct her to her ladyship, but this time, he might have been a different man. The starch had gone out of him, and though he did not smile, his manner was not intimidating. Encouraged by this, Faith followed him through one of the three doors into the great hall and was almost immediately shown into a large room that seemed to be part library and part sitting room. Her first impression was of untidiness, but it was an appealing untidiness and reminded her of her father’s study.

Her gaze shifted to a lady who was pouring what seemed to be sherry into two crystal glasses. Her gown was simple, a pale green silk that suited her silver hair. It was hard to tell her age, but Faith judged her to be close to sixty, though a youthful sixty.

“Milady,” protested the butler, quickly crossing to her, “allow me.”

Her ladyship waved him away. “Go and find something useful to do,” she said. “Tell Cook to send us tea and sandwiches. Miss McBride and I have a lot to talk about.”

As her ladyship closed the distance between them, Faith’s jaw dropped. There could be no doubt about it. Though she was older and had a few lines on her face, Lady Cowdray was definitely the model who had posed for the sculpture in the great hall.

Her ladyship seemed amused. “You’ve seen the sculpture,” she said. “Well, of course you have. Sir Arnold, my late husband, commissioned it when we were first married and very much in love. I hope it did not shock you.”

“Not at all,” Faith managed in a reasonably neutral tone. She suspected that Lady Cowdray liked nothing better than to shock people.

Lady Cowdray had a glass of sherry in each hand. She smiled into Faith’s eyes as she offered her one. “I would have known you anywhere,” she said. “You are the image of your mother. Sit down, sit down. I only wish Madeline could see you now.”

Her thoughts in a whirl, Faith took the chair her ladyship indicated.

 

 

“I met your mother,” said Lady Cowdray, “at a lecture of the
Antiquarians’ Society at Somerset House. The speaker was Aurora Blandford, one of the first women to travel to Egypt without male chaperonage. She didn’t go alone, of course. Other women with a sense of adventure went with her, and whenever they required men to do the heavy work, they hired porters and servants on the spot.”

A maid had brought a tea tray, and her ladyship passed a plate of tiny sandwiches to Faith. She ate them without thinking. Her mind could hardly take in what she had heard. The mother she thought had died when she was a child had led a separate existence that she had known nothing about.

Lady Cowdray smiled at Faith, and all the lines in her face became more pronounced. “Madeline and I took to each other at once. You may imagine that Aurora’s address had us all fired up.”

Faith nodded. She was thinking of Speech Day at St. Winnifred’s.

“At any rate, one thing led to another. The following year, we set out for Egypt, and we took the route that Aurora had taken, you know, traveling down the Nile, making stops along the way to see the sights. It was glorious.” Something in Faith’s expression made her elaborate. “It wasn’t as dangerous as it sounds. We traveled the Nile in a boat. Everything we wanted to explore was within easy distance: Cairo, the tombs, the pyramids. And there were plenty of other English people around with the same idea. We made many friends. Oh, before I forget.”

She opened a book on the table by her elbow and withdrew a photograph, which she passed to Faith. “When I opened the package you sent me and saw Madeline’s face staring up at me, I knew you were not some charlatan out to wheedle money out of me.” She smiled and looked down at the photograph. A silence that seemed almost reverent settled on them.

“This was taken shortly before your mother died,” her ladyship said softly. “It must have been the summer of seventy-five. The last time I saw this photograph was when I sent it to your mother’s solicitor informing him of her death. That was our arrangement. If anything happened to Madeline, I was to let her solicitor, Mr. Anderson, know about it. I presume he gave your father the photograph of Madeline. I thought he should have something to remember her by.”

Faith blinked back incipient tears. She had been seventeen when her mother died, old enough to know the truth. Why hadn’t her father told her? She thought of something else. Thomas Anderson had been her father’s friend as well as his solicitor. Now they were both gone.

Faith’s eyes were intent on the older woman. “Why did my mother never write to me? Why did she never write to my father? I’m sure if she had, he would have kept her letters.”

Her ladyship let out a tiny sigh. “I have no idea. Perhaps she thought that a clean break was best. I was a widow with no children to care for. There was nothing to stop me living the life I always wanted. I don’t know about Madeline. We never discussed our past lives, not in any detail. She knew what she wanted and was single-minded in reaching for it. I admire that in people, male or female.”

As the silence lengthened, her ladyship stirred her tea. Finally, looking up, she said, “I knew that Madeline had left her husband to follow her own path, but that was all I knew. I’m sorry to give you pain, but Madeline never told me more than that. Frankly, I was happy for her. I don’t believe in putting birds in cages. I did not know she had a daughter.”

Faith had heard words like these at St. Winnifred’s more times than she cared to remember. She may have said some of them herself. But this was
her
mother they were talking about, and she resented the implication that her mother had regarded their home in Oxford as a cage. She resented it, but she could not argue against it.

“Tell me how my mother died,” she said.

Lady Cowdray nodded. Obviously, she’d been expecting the question. “It was our third trip to Egypt, November seventy-five,” she said, “and we were staying at the Grand Hotel in Cairo. On this occasion, we were a mixed party. By that I mean that Madeline and I had joined Sir Edward Talbot’s expedition before we set out for Egypt, so he was in charge. That last night, Madeline was unnaturally restless. She said that she felt feverish and wanted to lie down and sleep off whatever was making her feel unwell. The rest of us were in the dining room having a party, I suppose you would call it. At any rate, your mother wasn’t gone long. When she came downstairs, she said that she was feeling much better.”

Her ladyship seemed reluctant to go on. Finally, she sighed and said softly, “She was found dead in her bed the next morning. There were no signs of violence. There was an English doctor there who said that Madeline had taken too much laudanum, that she’d probably been disoriented during the night when she’d wakened and had mistaken the dose she’d added to her glass of water. You can imagine how shocked we all were.” She blinked rapidly and swallowed. “She is buried there, you know, in Cairo. Her grave is in the Coptic churchyard. There’s a headstone. I didn’t know what to put on it but her name and the dates of her birth and death.”

Faith was trying to take everything in, but something the older woman said struck her as odd. “Why would you say that there were no signs of violence? Were you surprised that there weren’t any?”

“No! It’s just that . . .”

“What?”

Her ladyship spied her half-drunk glass of sherry beside the tea tray and reached for it. “It’s just that odd things got me to thinking once I was home.” She drained her glass before continuing. “That last day, Madeline told me that she thought she’d recognized someone, but she had her reasons for not mentioning it when they were introduced. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but once I was home and my maid had unpacked one of my traveling boxes, at the very bottom, she found Madeline’s diary wrapped in one of her scarves. Then I began to wonder about it.”

“How did it get into your traveling box?”

“It shouldn’t have. Madeline was very careful to keep it with her at all times, because it contained all the notes she’d made of the places we had visited. Later, she would turn those notes into articles and sell them to a number of periodicals and newspapers. That is how she supported herself, and she did very well, too.”