The Worthington Wife. Sharon Page

faces bumped. “Ow!” she said and he grunted as she dissolved into giggles. Something he never expected Julia to do, but the sound enchanted him. As he helped her stand up, he looked down.

      “Your shoes are ruined,” he said. “You should’ve stayed where I put you.”

      She laughed. Rain ran down her hat and coat. “Shoes can be cleaned. I knew it was more important that we herded the pigs. And you got the worst of it, Cal. It’s ruined your rather nice suit.”

      He looked down. He looked like he used to in the New York slums. Covered in filth. “Damn it.” He rubbed hard at the muck on his trousers, trying to brush it off.

      Julia touched his arm. “You needn’t worry about some mud on your pants. Anyway, I thought you rather liked to look bohemian.”

      Normally he didn’t care what he looked like. But in front of Julia, he suddenly felt like he was a poor kid in the slums again, with a dirty coat, torn breeches and a dirty face. “Maybe I just did that to shock the countess.” He turned to the farmer and stuck out his hand for a handshake.

      “I would like to introduce you to his lordship, the new earl,” Julia said. “This is Mr. Brand, Worthington, and his family has farmed here for almost one hundred and fifty years.”

      Brand looked guilty. “Begging your pardon, yer lordship. Wouldn’t have asked you to help with the pigs, if I’d known who ye were.”

      “You didn’t object to Lady Julia helping,” Cal observed. “Does she chase pigs often?”

      He felt Julia dig him in his side. “Of course not,” she said crisply. “But it is important to pitch in where needed.”

      “A right good sport is Lady Julia,” Brand said. “Comes to see me and the missus all the time, she does.”

      “Harry!” A panicked woman’s voice came from another stone building. An elderly woman hobbled out of what must be their cottage. “Sarah’s gone. I don’t know where she is.”

      Cal hoped Sarah was a pet pig who’d just been rescued. Then he saw tears streaking the woman’s cheeks. He asked, “Who is Sarah? Are you sure she’s missing?”

      Julia’s hand touched his shoulder. Just one look and he recognized she wanted to take charge. He might be the lord, but Julia knew these people and they knew her. He stepped aside. Julia soothed the woman and led her back to the small stone farmhouse. They had to step down some stone steps and duck to go through the doorway.

      As Julia went in with Mrs. Brand, Cal turned to the farmer, who was sucking on his pipe. “Who is Sarah?”

      “She were our daughter.”

      “And she’s missing?”

      “She went missing in the spring of 1916, before all the lads went to fight at the Somme. The missus gets confused. Some days she thinks Sarah is still here. Or she thinks Sarah has just gone missing. Then she gets upset all over again.”

      “Did you never find out where Sarah went?”

      “I don’t know what ’appened to ’er. She wasn’t the sort to run off with a man. She was a good girl. Since she never came home, I think she’s gone. Gone to a better place.”

      “You think she was killed?” He hated to be brutal, but it seemed to be what the man was saying.

      “Even if she just ran away, she were on her own. Prey to the cutthroats on the roads and the scoundrels who ravish girls. If she were alive, she’d ’ave written to me and the missus. The lass never did. No, in my ’eart, I know my Sarah is gone.” The old farmer put his pipe to his lips but tears welled in his bright blue eyes.

      Cal pulled out a handkerchief, a fine soft square of linen, handing it to the man. In New York, any woman of the slum neighborhoods knew about Jack the Ripper and the New York murder of a woman in 1891. Cal wouldn’t have expected it here, on an English estate. Maybe the girl just ran away. Maybe she was ashamed to write home. She might have gotten pregnant.

      “Is there any help I can give you?” he asked.

      “We manage just fine, my lord. You may have heard some sorry tales from Mr. Pegg.”

      The farmer looked defensive, and Cal was thrown off by the shift in conversation. Who in hell was Pegg? Then he remembered the lawyer had told him Pegg was the land agent of Worthington Park. Pegg had left before Cal arrived, taking a job somewhere else. Apparently offended to work for the impoverished American heir.

      “Pegg was gone before I got here. Is it just you and your wife on the farm? Do you have other children?”

      “Another girl, but she’s married. She married a lad from Stonebridge Farm. We lost our boy in the War. At Verdun, my lord.”

      “I’m sorry. Many good men were lost.”

      The farmer led him to the house. He ducked his head and went into a rough kitchen. A wooden sideboard held dishes. A teakettle whistled on the stove. Julia plucked it off.

      Just as with Ellen Lambert, Lady Julia was making tea for a farmer’s wife. No airs and graces. No snobbery. Never once did she behave as if she were too good to make a cup of tea or too good to help these people.

      Cal went to Julia and stood behind her as she poured tea in a pot. He had to ask her this privately, so he lowered his lips so they almost touched her ear. This close he could see the skin on her exposed neck looked satin-soft. “What’s wrong with Mrs. Brand? Has she lost her mind?”

      * * *

      His warm breath. The closeness of his body. In the Brands’ kitchen, Julia felt her knees go weak.

      She was very close to crying—seeing the poor Brands always brought her to tears. For some mad reason, she wanted to press tight against Cal’s broad chest. She wanted him to hold her.

      But she had been raised to always be cool and composed. To never break down, except in private. And to never fling herself into a man’s arms. She had never done that. Not even with Anthony or Dougal. She had been kissed but she’d never been comforted by a man.

      She turned with the hot kettle of water, which forced Cal to step back.

      Thank heaven. She could barely think with his hot breath on her neck. She hoped he thought it was the weight of the kettle that made her tremble.

      “I do know the poor thing has been confused ever since her daughter’s disappearance,” Julia murmured to him as she poured hot water into the teapot.

      “Brand told me that some days she believes Sarah is at home. Or she relives the time when Sarah first went missing and she lives through the pain all over again.”

      “Yes.” Julia could understand how such pain could make you go mad. When she had lost Anthony, it hurt dreadfully. Then there was loss upon loss. All the other young men she knew who never came back from war. Will’s death. Her father’s passing. Her heart broke and broke.

      Oh, she had been strong and stoic. She never let anyone see how much her heart had been shattered. But all that was left of it was bits and pieces inside her.

      The only difference between her and Mrs. Brand was that the poor woman’s broken heart had broken her mind, too.

      “Is there any way to make her understand what happened?” Cal asked.

      “I explain it over and over, as gently as I can. But then she forgets what I’ve told her.”

      “She just can’t face the fact her daughter might be dead. Maybe if she could be snapped into reality—”

      “No!” Julia grabbed his arm. “What if that snapped her mind altogether? What if it made her so depressed she did something drastic? That would destroy Brand.”

      But Cal left her. Frightened, Julia watched him walk to Mrs. Brand.

      He dropped to one knee and clasped her hand. “Do you