Legacy of Secrets. Sara Mitchell

he reached the door to their house, he paused, flexing his hands in a relaxing motion. Then he gave two brisk knocks and turned the rusting knob.

      “Momma? I’m back!” Carefully he hung his bowler hat on the hall tree.

      “William!” She rushed from her bedroom, her arms out-flung. “Is it finished, then? Were you successful this time? Do you have it at last?”

      He hugged her, savoring the welcome, the warmth that could transform so quickly into anguish…or anger. When he felt her stiffen, he released her instantly. “It’s good to be home, Momma. But I’m very tired. Spent the last two days traveling, you know.” He tried a laugh. “Had to walk the last fifteen miles.”

      She drew back, crossing long skeletal arms over her flat chest while her gaze seemed to devour him. “William? You look so tired, baby. And I don’t see any excitement on your face.” Vague fear swam into the pale brown eyes so like his own. “Something happened, didn’t it? Something bad.” Two bright red spots appeared on her cheeks. “William, please don’t tell me you failed. Not again. No, not again. I’ve been hoping—praying for you. We’re so close…”

      Carefully Will gripped her shoulders, sat her down in her rickety old rocking chair he’d salvaged from the dump on the edge of town. “I promised to take care of us, and I will. Some things take a long time, remember? Listen, why don’t we eat, and I’ll tell you about the trip,” he finished, hoping to divert her. “Let me hang up my coat, and—”

      “Don’t turn your back to me!” Her hand closed over his forearm, her fingers digging in. “You’re lying…” She slapped him hard, right across his mouth.

      As abruptly as the rage boiled up, it disappeared. Tears swam into her glittering eyes. “Oh. Oh, William, baby, I’m sorry. So sorry. I can’t bear it.” She choked on a sob that brought moisture to Will’s eyes. “I didn’t mean it, you know I didn’t mean it. William, forgive me. Please.”

      With a final anguished, tear-drenched look at Will, she fled to her room and slammed the door. A broken stream of sobs and wails about how horrible a mother she was, about the unfairness of life echoed from the room, washing over Will in a seething flood.

      His jaw throbbed from her blow, and he slowly lifted a hand to wipe away the trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth.

      The unnerving attacks were becoming more frequent. Yet he didn’t blame her. He couldn’t. She was his mother. He owed her his life, and to a great extent, his future. But this last attack…He released a long, tired breath. Footsteps heavy, he headed for the stove. The squalor of unwashed dishes and unemptied slops pail, the odor of rotting food and musty ashes revolted his senses.

      But on the grease-laden warming plate rested a dish. A neatly folded piece of cloth covered his dinner.

      With stoic resignation, Will sat down to eat before he set about cleaning the kitchen.

      Chapter Five

      Isabella Chilton Academy

      The cuckoo clock Mr. Chilton had bought her over forty years earlier on their wedding trip to Europe finished declaring the nine-o’clock hour. Isabella gratefully settled into the cushions of her favorite settee, and allowed a wisp of sweetly painful nostalgia to drift through her mind. Everett, that clock always did make you smile….

      Unlike his previous visits, this evening Grayson ignored the clock’s charming antics of woodcutter and wife chopping while the cuckoo warbled. Instead, as restless as one of the school toms on the prowl, he wandered about her private parlor, his hands idly drifting over the collection of objects given to Isabella by her students. His expression remained aloof, almost grim. She waited without comment for him to speak, though as always the growing hardness that surrounded him like a suit of medieval armor saddened her.

      He swiveled suddenly, dropping back onto the game board one of the chess pieces he’d been fiddling with. “Aunt Bella, I need to talk with you about—” A muscle twitched in his jaw; he lifted a hand to tug his earlobe, an endearing boyhood habit he’d never outgrown.

      Calmly Isabella laid the piecework in her lap. “Talk to me about what? Perhaps your recent adventures over these past few months? Those, ah, shooting exhibitions? Don’t scowl, dear. You had to know your mother would write to me when she read about you in the weeklies. Your father was kind enough to include several of the articles, one with a rather…interesting…photograph of you.”

      Grayson emitted an ungentlemanly snort. “Ah, yes. The photograph. The one where I was straddled with a foot on the back of two horses while I shot a bull’s-eye at the target? Caused the gents to swear and the ladies to swoon. Doubtless Mother’s was the only swoon not feigned.” His laugh was short and bitter. “When I stopped by home for an overdue visit my ‘reckless behavior that shamed the family name’ provided fodder for three evening meals.”

      “I’m sorry your visit home was another difficult one.”

      He merely shrugged again, and looked away. “Never mind. It’s not important.”

      “Come along, now.” Isabella leaned forward. “Talk to me, my dear, about whatever you need to. But since it’s after nine, doubtless there’ll be a knock or two on the door soon.” She paused, then finished matter-of-factly. “Ofttimes in the evenings, after chores, a student comes to me with her burdens, needing to share, or just needing a chat.”

      “There. That’s what I want to talk about with you, Aunt.” Her nephew casually scooped up the glass paperweight from the piecrust table and turned it round while he talked, his words increasing in volume along with velocity. “You run a school for orphaned women. But that doesn’t mean you’re their mother. No matter how many years they live here, they’re not family. In truth you know little about them. Yet you take on all the responsibility for their misfortunes, not to mention their futures—and your own.”

      “My future, and that of my students, rests where it always has. In God’s hands.”

      Isabella was not surprised when Grayson merely arched a brow, looking more cynical than ever. “The truth of what I’m saying doesn’t change, especially after today’s incident in the woods, with Miss Shaw.”

      Ah. Here then was the real purpose for this circuitous conversation.

      “Now, really, Grayson. Someone shot at her. I think her reaction proved to be remarkably levelheaded.”

      “Ha! You wouldn’t say that if you’d been there.” He paused. “What do you really know about her background, Aunt Bella? I don’t think you have ever fully appreciated the risk, inviting strange young women without any family connections into your life. I know Uncle Everett’s family pretty much washed their hands of you after he died, and you turned Sumner into this school. But I don’t think Uncle Ev—”

      “Without the Academy’s existence, I would have no home at all, Grayson. Not here, at any rate.” Not for the world would she admit that his words jabbed, deep inside. “Tell me, are you more concerned about the fact that Sumner is no longer the beautiful Chilton family estate, or are your objections primarily all the ‘strange young women,’ Neala Shaw in particular?”

      “Aunt Bella…” A band of red spread across his deeply tanned cheeks, but his expression revealed little. Somewhere over the years the boy had learned to screen his feelings from even his favorite aunt. “I’m not quite that much of a heartless cad. I’m sorry for her orphaned status—I know life is difficult, especially for…for women like Miss Shaw—but my first concern is you. For your safety and well-being, especially when you insist on maintaining such a small household staff. What if I hadn’t been here this afternoon? Your gardener would have expired from the exertion had he been forced to traipse through the woods, after an irresponsible woman old enough to know better than get herself lost, then spin wild tales.”

      “Neala is neither irresponsible nor given to melodrama. Really, Grayson. Last fall, for example, when she’d been here less than a month, she saved the stables from