The Runaway McBride (5 page)

She gave up trying to sort it out.

At least, if they should meet again, she’d have herself well in hand. No recriminations. No tears and no regrets. And no memories to shatter her control. James Burnett was dead to her.

She stopped in her tracks. Damn the man! Damn! Damn! Damn! He’d made her forget to collect her letters from Mr. Pritchard. She looked over her shoulder and suppressed a shiver. She couldn’t go back, not after running away. What could she say to explain her behavior? She was over him. He was nothing to her now, and her exaggerated response was nothing more than . . . than . . . than . . . It was just as he said: auld lang syne.

Satisfied with her explanation, she struck out toward the school.

 

 

James was aware of her sudden departure when he’d done no
more than take a few steps into the aisle. He didn’t have to turn around and go back to the parlor to verify what he knew. His mind was so focused on Faith that he could feel the vacuum she’d left behind.

He wasn’t sorry that she’d run away. He’d thought he was up to seeing her again, but he’d lied to himself. Faith McBride in person was far more lethal than his faded memories of her. Despite the passage of time, she was still as beautiful as he remembered; she still had that glow from within that softened her features. If only she’d been fat and frumpy, his brain might still be functioning, and he wouldn’t be as hard as a rock.

His hands fisted at his sides. He had to get a grip on himself if he was to keep his promise to his granny. Next time he met the faithless McBride, he’d make damn sure that he kept his hands to himself.

On that virtuous resolve, he joined Mr. Pritchard at the counter and waited patiently as he served a customer.

This was not the first time he’d visited Pritchard’s shop. He’d taken Alex’s advice and started to read the morning newspapers from cover to cover. The clue to Faith’s whereabouts had come in one of the advertisements.

“Wanted, information about Madeline Maynard, formerly of Oxford. Apply to Miss F. McBride, Pritchard’s Bookshop, Woburn Walk, Bloomsbury.”

He hadn’t known what to expect on his first visit—that she owned the bookshop or lived on the floor above it? He’d soon come to see that Pritchard’s was not only a bookshop but also a letter box for people who either worked in the area or did not wish their mail to be sent to their own homes. It made him wonder what Faith had to hide.

Mr. Pritchard was a canny man and could not be made to divulge one scrap of information on Faith. Hence James’s encounter with her today. Now that Pritchard knew that Faith and he were acquainted, however, the old man might be more forthcoming. Leastways, that was what James hoped. He had no wish to spend another morning patrolling back and forth along Woburn Walk on the odd chance that he might catch a glimpse of Faith. Besides, he doubted she would show her face in Pritchard’s for a long time to come. In all likelihood, she would send a friend to collect her letters, and he would be none the wiser.

Pritchard counted out a customer’s change, waited a moment until he was at the door and out of earshot, then turned to James with an anxious frown. “How is Miss McBride?”

“Much better,” James returned. “I took her outside for a breath of fresh air, and she decided to return home at once.”

Pritchard’s bushy eyebrows snapped together. Bristling, he said, “And you did not go with her to see her safe to her own door?”

“She wouldn’t allow it.”

The old man’s frown gradually relaxed. “School rules,” he said and shook his head. “She’d find herself mired in trouble if she returned to the school in the company of a gentleman.”

“She’s a teacher, then?”

Pritchard’s look was frankly suspicious. “I thought you and Miss McBride were friends.”

James saw his mistake and quickly corrected it. “And so we were, a long time ago, when she was a . . .” He searched for the right word. “A debutante. I was surprised to see her today, surprised and dismayed. She seems to have . . .” He let his words hang, inviting a response.

Pritchard sighed and finished the sentence for him. “Fallen on hard times? That was my impression, too. A debutante, you say? I can well believe it. She’s a lady, all right. Always a pleasant word from her, never forgets to ask after my grandchildren. Breeding, it always tells, you know.” He sighed again.

The silence stretched. Finally, James said, “I’d like to help her. Oh, not personally, but I’m sure my aunt, who is the soul of tact, would be more than happy to make Miss McBride’s acquaintance.”

Pritchard scratched his chin and studied James thoughtfully, taking in the cut of his tailoring, his pristine neckcloth, the quality of his leather gloves. Finally, he nodded. “The school is round the corner from Tavistock Square. You can’t miss it. There’s a sign out front, St. Winnifred’s School for Girls. It’s a big building on extensive grounds.”

He broke off when two customers appeared at the counter. James thanked Pritchard for his assistance and promptly left. At the end of the street, he hailed a hansom to take him to his club in St. James’s, and he settled back on the banquette to review what he’d learned from Pritchard.

He had, of course, lied to Mr. Pritchard. Faith had not been a debutante when he’d first met her, though in his eyes, no debutante could have held a candle to her. She was Lady Beale’s paid companion, serenely beautiful, well-bred, and though her gowns were modest and Faith never pushed herself forward, she was the girl all the debutantes loved to hate. Envy was at the root of their dislike, of course, because Faith was the girl all the young bucks loved to moon over.

At nineteen, she’d been tall and slender, with glossy copper hair pinned in a simple chignon, a flawless complexion, and a cool-eyed stare that could depress any ardent young man who overstepped the line of gentlemanly conduct.

He’d watched the performance from the wings with a cynical eye. Those young bucks could moon as much as they wanted, but he doubted they had marriage on their minds. Marriage was a serious business, even in these enlightened times, involving dowries, contracts, and family connections. As a penniless orphan, Faith wasn’t in the running, and she knew it.

She didn’t fit in with the upper crust of polite society, mostly because she had to earn her own living. As he remembered, her father had been an Oxford don, but when he died, Faith had supported herself by taking the first job that offered: paid companion to Lady Beale.

Faith reminded him of himself when he’d been sent, against his will, to school in England. He hadn’t fitted in, either. Looking back, he had to admit that it was largely his own fault. He’d got into one fistfight after another, proving to those superior English boys that he was as good as they were. It hadn’t helped him to make friends. Those school years were the loneliest of his life.

Faith wasn’t in a position to fight back, and Lady Beale seemed unaware of the snubs and slights her companion suffered, so he’d taken Faith under his wing. That was something that had always puzzled him—why he had decided to take a hand in things. He wasn’t exactly a party animal. In fact, he only attended these functions because he’d been invited by men of influence who were crucial to financing his business ventures. Though he was very young, he’d already amassed his first fortune. Railroads were his passion, and though the railway mania was long over, there was plenty of money to be made in reconstruction, both in Scotland and in England.

So, he’d attended some reception or other, and that was where he had met Faith.

He was twenty-four to her nineteen. He should have known better than to think their friendship could remain platonic. He discovered his mistake at a Christmas ball when he’d kissed her carelessly under the mistletoe.

That careless kiss had rocked him back on his heels. After that, he couldn’t keep his hands off her. One liberty led to another. He’d known damn well that the only solution for them was marriage. So they’d planned their lives together, but before they could publish the news of their engagement, his company in Scotland was threatened with bankruptcy, and he had to return to Edinburgh to set things right.

It had taken longer than he thought it would. Bankruptcy was the least of his worries. It seemed that his second-in-command had been bleeding the company dry for his own gain and had left James to face the lawsuits shareholders were threatening to bring against him. It hadn’t been easy to raise the money to pay them off. And that was all he could think about: paying off his shareholders. It had never occurred to him that he had to worry about Faith, too.

He’d had to persuade some canny bigwig financiers that he could turn things around and make his company pay. In hindsight, he didn’t know how he’d pulled it off. He was ambitious but, all the same, he was only a fledgling compared to them. Yet they’d taken a chance on him and made themselves a tidy profit in the bargain.

A memory slipped into his mind: Faith, her gray eyes wide and trusting when she’d promised to wait for him.

He’d known something was wrong when her letters stopped, so he’d traveled back to London to find out what was going on. No one knew where she was, not even Lady Beale. All she could tell him was that Faith had handed in her notice and gone off with some young buck called Alastair Dobbin, who was escorting her to friends in Dorset, or was it Derbyshire?

What it came down to was that Faith and Mr. Dobbin had disappeared into thin air.

The coach hit a pothole and lurched to the side. The sudden jolt cleared his head, and his mouth twisted in a humor-less smile. So much anguish over so little! He wasn’t the man he was then. As he kept reminding himself, there was no point in going over the past. It was the future he should be focused on. Faith was heading into danger. Why? How?

He dwelled on the advertisement he’d read in the paper. She wanted information on Madeline Maynard. Who was Madeline Maynard? How could he find out?

If he was to protect Faith, he had to get close to her, as close as her own shadow. There was the rub. She had made it perfectly obvious that he was the last person she would turn to.

He couldn’t allow her feelings or his to stand in the way. This was a matter of life and death. One way or another, he would get close to Faith; then, when he was satisfied that she was no longer in danger, he would walk away and never look back.

It was after supper before Faith had a chance to compare notes
with her friend, Lillian Summers. At that time of day, the school was practically deserted, for nearly all the girls were day pupils. The boarders were mostly the daughters of diplomats who served in foreign embassies or girls whose parents lived far from London but wanted their daughters to have the cachet of having graduated from St. Winnifred’s. That was the one thing that all the parents had in common: they wanted the progressive kind of education that was coming into vogue, the kind of education that would equip a young woman to go on to a university, or enter the professions, or fulfill whatever destiny she chose.

On entering the room, Faith went straight to the gas ring and put a kettle of water on to boil. Lily set out two mugs and measured two heaped spoons of cocoa powder into each one. She was a willowy young woman with flaming red hair that was tamed by a severe black ribbon. Her eyes, surprisingly, were as dark as the powder she was measuring into the mugs.

“Burnett!” she exclaimed, hostility making her voice vibrate. “At Pritchard’s? Burnett the brute? The bounder? The scoundrel?
That
Burnett?”

Lily’s outrage came as no surprise to Faith. She was a loyal friend. They’d known each other since they’d met when Faith was Lady Beale’s companion and Lily was companion to Mrs. Rowatt, Lady Beale’s sister, so they’d seen a good deal of each other. Their employers had not been demanding, but the girls had found that life on the periphery of society, where they were little better than servants, both wearing and depressing. They had become confidantes, sharing all the trials and tribulations—and the humor—of the daily round of a paid companion.

In spite of their different temperaments, they seemed to complement one another. Faith, however, had learned the value of diplomacy in her dealings with the upper classes. Her livelihood depended on it. Lily was fiery and outspoken. It was that tendency to speak her mind that had cost Lily her job with Mrs. Rowatt. According to Lily, it was the best thing that ever happened to her. She’d accepted a post as a teacher in a girls’ school in Cheltenham where, she said, she’d found her calling. Lily was born to be a teacher.

Faith would have gone with her, but by that time, she had met James, and she couldn’t bring herself to make the change. A year later, crushed and disillusioned, she was glad to make the change and even more glad that her closest friend was there to jostle her out of her misery. Lily had no patience with an easy sympathy.
Keep busy
was her remedy for a broken heart, and Faith tried to live up to it. In time, the pain became manageable and, as one year slipped into the next, the image of James Burnett faded to the darkest corner of her mind.