Until We Find Home Page 5

  “English evacuees, my lady!” Mrs. Newsome exclaimed. “I told you they’d not let us off. One to a room, they’re saying, counting kitchen and bath. We’re lucky not to have been fined already.”

  “You brought these children to my home as evacuees?” Her aunt pulled back.

  “Well—refugees. There’s more I must explain.”

  “More?” Aunt Miranda seemed to grow taller.

  Claire felt the ground she’d imagined gaining slip away. “Please . . . may we come in? We’ve traveled for two days. If the children could just dry off and have something to eat, I can explain.”

  Mrs. Newsome looked to her lady for instructions, but Claire saw pity fleck the woman’s eyes. “They might dry by the kitchen stove, my lady, and Mrs. Creedle could find them a bite to eat, I daresay . . . with your permission, of course.”

  Aunt Miranda seemed flustered. It wasn’t the children she looked to, but Claire, and Claire didn’t know how to make herself more pitiable, or more appealing. So she simply cuddled Aimee closer and resorted to her American habit of clasping her hands in praying position, then silently mouthed, “Please.”

  Aunt Miranda lifted her chin, just slightly, drew in a breath she seemed to hold, and moistened her lips. Another moment passed before she pronounced, “Mrs. Newsome is my housekeeper. You will follow her every instruction. Hot baths and breakfast—for everyone.”

  “Yes, my lady. I’ll see to it at once.” Mrs. Newsome, clearly gratified by her acknowledged authority, pulled one of the cases from Bertram and motioned for the children to follow.

  But Aimee clung to Claire. Claire pushed the little girl gently but firmly away. “Go with Mrs. Newsome, Aimee. She’ll get you something to eat.”

  Aimee buried her head into Claire’s skirt. “You come too, mademoiselle.”

  “Aimee, please!” Claire felt her patience growing thin. Now that someone else could help, she felt near to fainting, incapable of carrying the burden alone.

  Mrs. Newsome drew the child away. “Come, now. Such a fuss—why, this child’s burning up with fever!” She cast an accusing glance Claire’s way. “And there’s a rash—”

  “I don’t know what’s the matter. It’s just come on while we traveled.” Claire felt her own head throbbing, her forehead burning.

  Mrs. Newsome clucked her tongue. “I’d best send for Dr. MacDonald, my lady. No telling what they’ve brought with them.”

  “You take the children, Mrs. Newsome. I’ll telephone him.”

  “Yes, my lady.” Mrs. Newsome hesitated. “I must say, my lady, that dressing gown with its color becomes you.”

  Miranda Langford blushed, as if the compliment pricked. “You may go, Mrs. Newsome.”

  “Thank you,” Claire said sincerely. She swallowed painfully, ready to follow the housekeeper.

  But Aunt Miranda stopped her. “Claire, after you’ve had an opportunity to refresh yourself, I’ll see you in the library. Shall we say at nine?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Thank you,” Claire breathed. Uncertain she’d said it aloud, Claire said again, “Thank you, Aunt.”

  But Aunt Miranda had already turned and, head lifted, marched halfway to the grand staircase at the far end of the hall.

  Unsettled, Claire shivered. She’s like Mother in some ways—that feigned sense of self-importance. Aunt Miranda walks as if she’s got a rod up her back and a book on her head. Claire remembered months of training under her mother’s strict eye doing precisely that. She bit her lip, no longer certain her aunt would prove a kindred spirit after all.

  Chapter Four

  MIRANDA LANGFORD’S FINGERS TREMBLED as she dialed for the doctor from the phone in the library.

  The operator responded in her clipped Lakeland accent, “What number, please?”

  But Miranda, confused as to exactly what she would say if the doctor answered, hung up. Mildred’s daughter is in my home. . . . Mildred’s daughter . . . Claire. Repeating the information embedded it in her brain, though she would not allow it to penetrate her heart. She didn’t dare. Does Mildred know? Did she send Claire here? Why? You returned my letters, Sister, and yet you send your daughter to my doorstep with five ragamuffin children?

  It made no sense. Nothing her sister ever did made much sense to Miranda. And yet she knew that was too easy a dismissal. She’d not written Mildred in more than twenty years and had never placed a transatlantic telephone call. After five years of posting letters with no response from her sister, she’d given up hope—and every desire—of reconnecting. You chose to live without me, so I lived without you.

  She sat heavily in the library’s wingback chair nearest the fireplace and kneaded the cuff of her black sleeve. First Gilbert, then Christopher. Wasn’t that enough, Lord? Now what does this mean? After some minutes she picked up the receiver on the desk once more.

  Miranda could not say she was sorry for a need to telephone the distinguished Dr. Raibeart MacDonald, even if it was, first and foremost, to examine children who’d nearly fallen from the sky. He’d been her friend, her only confidant besides the occasional sharing with Mrs. Newsome, for more years than she wished to confess. If there was someone who could help steady her, who would understand what another life upheaval meant to her, it was Raibeart.

  Miranda wouldn’t admit she was flattered when he dropped everything, saying he’d be there within the hour. She knew the good doctor would use his coveted ration of petrol to race to Bluebell Wood. She reasoned that the least she could do was offer him tea in the library by a warm fire this unseasonably cold and wet morning after treating the little girl and examining the older children. What about that younger boy? He looked so lost . . . or perhaps feverish as well. Miranda rubbed her hands across her eyes and forehead. She wasn’t up to nursing little boys.

  She stood, forcing back nervous tears, and rearranged the tea tray that needed no rearranging. She sat down again. At last the clock in the hallway chimed nine. As if on cue, a timid knock came at the door, a turning of the knob, and Claire peeked round.

  “It’s nine o’clock, Aunt Miranda. May I come in?”

  “Yes, of course, Claire. Come in.” Saying the girl’s name did not come naturally to Miranda—it felt surreal, like a dream. Miranda had not felt so out of place in her own home in years. Her niece looked cleaner, neater, but her face flared red as beetroot. And yet the resemblance was unmistakable—not to Mildred, as she would have rightly supposed, but to herself. Claire Stewart could have passed for Miranda’s own daughter, if she’d had one—flaming red hair that might one day tend to auburn, green eyes that seemed to change in shading and depth with color resting near her cheek. Slender, she stood tall and strong.

  “Thank you for the bath and breakfast. We’re all so much better for it,” Claire offered, smiling tenuously. The girl looked unsteady on her feet.

  “Please sit down.” Miranda indicated the chair opposite and did her best to smile, unable to take her eyes from her niece’s face. What made you choose me for help?

  “I know I’ve some explaining to do. Children were not what you were expecting this morning, I realize.”

  Miranda nearly laughed at Claire’s presentation. “No—nor was I expecting you, though that would have been surprise enough.”

  “Yes. . . . Where to begin?” The corners of Claire’s mouth lifted slightly, but the crease in her forehead told Miranda the girl was at a loss.

  “Perhaps the beginning. How is it that you’re here? And are you here alone? Is Mildred—is my sister with you? Nearby, in England?” Miranda tried to keep the hope and the dread from her voice.

  “No. No, Mother’s not here. She’s in America.”

  “Your father came with you, then?”

  “No—he’s not in the picture.” Claire visibly swallowed. “I mean, he left Mother and me—soon after I was born.”

  “Of course, the war. Mother wrote as much. But I didn’t realize he’d . . .” Miranda understood the cruelties of the Great War too well. “I’m so very sorry
.”

  Claire hesitated and seemed about to say more, but bit her lip.

  Miranda tipped her head. She’d steeled herself to protect her own heart, but the girl looked so pitiable.

  Claire heaved a sigh and plunged ahead. “It’s tempting to let you think that, that my father died in the war. But that’s not what happened. He went off to war, yes, and—” She seemed to reconsider, and stopped. “I’m not the one who should be telling you this. It’s for Mother to say.”

  “You don’t have to tell me anything that you don’t want to about your parents, Claire. But you must realize that your mother and I haven’t spoken in—in a long time.”

  “Mother told me you and she were estranged. She never told me why, exactly . . .”

  Miranda breathed deeply, trying to shut out the pain her sister had caused her over the years, even if it was an estrangement that she’d initiated. But the past couldn’t be redeemed, and after all this time . . . It was just like Mildred, to cast blame without ever explaining the separation to her daughter. The only reason Miranda knew Mildred had borne a child was because their mother had written before her death about Claire’s birth. “I’m surprised she told you about me at all.”

  “She didn’t . . . not much. Well, not exactly.” Claire’s red face blushed deeper still. “I read her diary once—”

  Miranda felt her eyebrows rise. She’d only just met Claire and the girl astonished her at every turn.

  “When I was eleven . . . You know what eleven-year-old girls are like . . . I hope.”

  Reaching to pour the tea, Miranda held in check a smile born of memory. “I have a vague recollection.”

  Claire leaned forward. “I only know that you and Mother loved the same man. Uncle Gilbert must be a fine man for you both to have loved him so.”

  Miranda hadn’t expected such directness, let alone an inkling of understanding. Perhaps she’d lived in England too long, acquiring a pronounced lack of obvious curiosity as a social nicety, or grown old too soon. Anyway, shouldn’t she be on the offensive with this niece who’d shown up on her doorstep unannounced? But she could not deny the opportunity she’d longed for to mend a long-open wound. That will never happen with Mildred . . . but what of her daughter? Perhaps . . . “The finest. He was the best and the bravest.” Even now, all these years later, pride filled her voice and nearly burst her heart.

  Claire’s eyes widened. Miranda realized too late that Gilbert’s death would be news to Claire—would have been news to Mildred, in fact.

  “I’m so sorry,” Claire began. “Uncle Gilbert is . . . not here?”

  Miranda pitied her niece. Why she’d come with all those children hardly mattered in comparison with the fact that she’d come. Miranda should do all she could to reach across the room’s divide, for she’d certainly failed to reach her sister across the Atlantic. “Gilbert was killed at the Battle of the Somme.”

  “The Somme? But that was—” Claire gasped, frowning.

  “1916.”

  “Over twenty years ago!”

  Miranda nodded. “The Great War. A lifetime.”

  “Mother doesn’t know; I’m certain.”

  “No, she wouldn’t. Mother—your grandmother—had passed by then. The same year, only months before.” Miranda would not say that her sister had returned every letter, unopened and marked Refused. The only way she’d learned of their mother’s death was through the receipt of a small inheritance, handled by the family attorney. Her mother’s death had been a devastating and bitter pill—the severing of her last link to home and family, followed shortly by Gilbert’s death. If it hadn’t been for Christopher, I would not have wanted to . . . But I mustn’t think of that now.

  “I’m so sorry.” Claire looked as if she genuinely meant it, but also looked confused. “You must have been married such a short time.”

  Miranda didn’t ask if Claire wanted sugar. She squandered two lumps in her niece’s tea and added warmed cream to the cup. “We were married six months before he enlisted. . . . That was our lifetime—my lifetime.”

  “And all these years, you and Mother . . . Wasted.”

  Miranda swallowed and looked away. Not even her Christopher had been so direct. “Your mother married, must have found love.” It was what she had hoped for her sister, despite the pain of their estrangement, despite the pain of her own widowhood.

  Claire sipped her tea before answering. “Mother married, but I don’t know that it was for love. I mean, she married because—I think, because—she was lonely . . . and perhaps angry. Mother said my father was a social climber—something Mother craved. If he loved her, he didn’t love her long.” Claire took another timid sip of the sweet, hot brew and winced as it burned her throat.

  “That’s a harsh judgment against your own father.”

  Claire set the cup down and stared into its bottom. Half a minute passed before she looked up. “My father went to war a few months after I was born. Mother thought he was killed, you see—in Belleau Wood. But he wasn’t—he just let her think that. He worked it so the Army even thought he’d fallen. He stayed in France, pretending he had no family.”

  “He deserted? But you—your mother . . . how did you manage?” Miranda thought of all she could have done to ease her sister’s plight, if only she’d known, if only Mildred had allowed her.

  “Mother learned he was alive through some photo a friend of theirs had—a photo taken after Belleau Wood—and found a way to make him pay. And of course, the Army paid his death benefits to her as his widow.”

  Miranda could not believe that of Mildred, that she would knowingly take death benefits if her husband had not died. But what did she know of her sister, really?

  “He sent money over the years. I’m not sure if that was penance or if Mother blackmailed him. But he wanted nothing to do with us. . . . He has a different family now—had a different family then. A wife and children in France. He never returned to America.” Claire looked as if her confession cut her heart.

  “I’m sorry.” Miranda tried not to look shocked, but she didn’t know what to say. “I’d hoped happiness for Mildred, and for you. I was so glad when Mother wrote of your birth. She loved you, loved being a grandmother.”

  Claire did not answer. She looked uncomfortable with the notion. Moments passed with only the ticking of the pendulum on the mantel’s clock before Miranda realized her niece was staring.

  “You still mourn him. Uncle Gilbert, I mean.”

  Miranda stiffened. My mourning garments. “I miss my husband, yes. But to say I mourn him . . . I gradually learned to live again, for the sake of our son.”

  Claire straightened in her chair. “You have a son? I have a cousin? Mother never told me. I suppose she never knew!”

  The lead in Miranda’s heart settled all the heavier. Must I tell the story again . . . explain how England and war once again stole my dearest and best? “Christopher enlisted, you see—before there was any conscript—”

  Before she could finish, the library door shook with a pounding that could only be Raibeart MacDonald. “Are you in, Maggie?”

  “Come, Raibeart. Please, come in!” Miranda was relieved for his intrusion. “It’s good of you to come on such short notice.”

  Dr. Raibeart MacDonald’s eyebrows climbed dangerously close to his full crop of silver hair. His normal, charming smile turned to a grunt as long strides carried him across the room. He deposited his black bag on the library table. “Thank me now. I’ve seen the wee bairns. You’ll not be thanking me for my diagnosis.”

  “It’s just a little fever, isn’t it?” Claire interrupted. “They’ll be all right?”

  Miranda rose to the occasion. “Dr. MacDonald, this is my niece—from America—Claire Stewart. Claire, this is Dr. MacDonald, our village doctor and an old and dear friend.”

  “Ach, naw! Another American invading our bonny shores.” The doctor grinned, taking Claire’s hand. But he turned it over, inspected it, and peered at her flushed face, which
made Claire’s color deepen. “And by the look of it, another victim.”

  “Victim?” Miranda stopped short while pouring the doctor’s tea.

  “Chicken pox,” the doctor pronounced, dropping Claire’s hand.

  “Chicken pox!” Miranda exclaimed, nearly dropping the teapot. “You can’t be serious!”

  “As serious as the day is long. I have to know, Maggie Langford: did you contract chicken pox as a child?”

  “Yes, of course. At least, I assume I did.”

  “I didn’t,” Claire all but whimpered.

  “Well, I’d say that’s taken care of now, Miss Stewart. You’ve got the beginnings of the rash to prove it, and I’d wager a fever and a splitting head, as do the two youngest of the children, and a third one coming down.”

  “This is impossible,” Miranda sputtered.

  “Regardless, ladies, Bluebell Wood is quarantined.”

  “Quarantined? That means they cannot leave.”

  “Quite so,” the doctor quipped.

  “But they can’t stay here—they can’t all stay here!”

  “They must. You know that as well as I. One child could infect the entire village. I’ll not have it.”

  “For how long?” Claire’s red face paled.

  The doctor took his steaming cup from Miranda and paused to consider, before taking a first sip. “Since the rash has already shown itself, I’d say twenty-eight days, thirty-two or -three to be on the safe side.”

  “A month!” Miranda gasped.

  “I can’t stay a month,” Claire whined. “I must get back to France—as soon as possible.”

  “France, is it?” the doctor asked. “And what did you propose to do with all these young ones? I venture a guess: I don’t suppose Hitler’s war zone is the safest place for a passel of Jewish youngsters?”

  “No, it’s not.” Claire rattled her cup in its saucer. “Aunt Miranda, that’s what I need to talk with you about.”