Heaven Sent (9 page)

The two met and engaged in a
counterfeit battle that ended with Callie taking a tumble on the
lawn. Her skirts and petticoats went flying, and Aubrey was
privileged to a view of her shapely legs encased in plain cotton
drawers.

In the time it took him to blink in
astonishment, not untainted by appreciation, she’d popped up again
and started shaking her fist at tiny Becky. “Why, you big overgrown
scoundrel, you!”

“
Aha!” cried Becky. “I
bested you in battle, Robin Hood! How do you like that?”

Aubrey shook his head and
wondered why he hadn’t figured out what they were playing at before
now. He’d been so engrossed in watching, it hadn’t occurred to him
that they were enacting the Robin-Hood-meets-Little-John scene
from
The Adventures of Robin
Hood
. Now he remembered that Becky loved to
be read to from that book. Anne used to read it to her and now
she’d obviously talked Miss Prophet into doing the same.

He was ashamed of himself for not
having thought to read to his daughter before this. Reading only
required his voice and some time. He wouldn’t even have had to
think of how to keep a conversation going. He’d only have had to
read words someone else had already made up and written down. But
he’d been too involved in his own grieving to read to Becky, and
now she had Miss Prophet to do it and didn’t need him
anyway.

“
Damnation, will you stop
that, Aubrey Lockhart?” Hearing his own voice startled him. Yet the
question that had prompted the command was a valid one, and Aubrey
contemplated it as he gazed out the window and onto the happy
scene.

Why did he always put the worst
connotation on things? He turned away from the window and wandered
to his desk. He didn’t used to be such a dismal specimen of
mankind. He seemed to have turned a corner somewhere in the last
couple of years, however, and now it was as if he barred good
thoughts at the door of his consciousness and only allowed the
depressing ones to enter. Frowning, he sat in his big chair and
drew a ledger forward. He needed to get some work done.

Although he forced himself to
concentrate, from time to time snippets of song and conversation
came through the open window from Becky and Callie. They were
having a marvelous time. Aubrey knew he had no right or reason to
harbor this sense of ill-usage in his breast. It was his own fault
if Becky turned away from him and clung to Miss Prophet, who was
paying attention to her. Dash it, he was jealous. What a lowering
reflection.

Later, he heard the word.
“monster” every now and then and assumed the play had turned from
Robin Hood to something along the lines of
Frankenstein
. Aubrey didn’t know that
he approved of Miss Prophet reading Mrs. Shelley’s eerie book to
such a young child. He might have to have a talk with her about it.
The prospect made him grip his pen more tightly and grit his
teeth.

Irked with himself, both for being
distracted and, more, for being envious of Callida Prophet, he
finally rose and walked over to shut the window. He had to get some
work done. Rearing children was women’s work. He’d finally hired a
woman to do it. He had no reason to be offended because she was
doing it.

No matter how hard he tried, however,
Aubrey couldn’t rid himself of the notion that Becky’s adoration of
her new nanny would be easier to take if her new nanny were
eighty-five years old and hard of hearing,

*****

Callie Prophet had been working as
Becky’s nanny—although it hardly seemed like work to her—for three
weeks before Becky showed her the letters.

During those weeks, Callie had helped
Becky write letters to her mother in heaven. She’d answered the
letters she’d helped to write as well, feeling only a little bit
guilty about continuing to do so. After all, she reasoned, it was
important for Becky to know that at least one of her parents cared
about her thoughts and feelings.

Becky’s father certainly
didn’t.

Well, she temporized, forcing herself
to be honest, it wasn’t that he didn’t care, exactly. Actually,
he’d seemed a little less withdrawn lately. He might even turn
human one of these days, although Callie wouldn’t have laid any
bets on the possibility. But Callie wanted Becky to be absolutely
certain of her late mother’s love.

Children were so apt to misunderstand
the loss of a loved one, believing themselves to be somehow
responsible for it. Therefore, Callie persisted.

The summer had started fading into
autumn, the days were getting shorter, and the nights had begun to
contain a decided nip. Callie and Mrs. Granger had got out the
quilts that had been packed away during the hot weather.

It was eight o’clock, Becky’s bedtime,
and Callie had just brushed and braided the little girl’s
hair.

“
You have the prettiest
hair, Becky. It’s just like your mama’s.” Callie didn’t know that
for a fact, although she imagined that when Anne was young, she had
looked just like Becky.

“
That’s what Papa and Mrs.
Granger say,” Becky told her complacently.

Callie smiled. She said, “Your mama
was a beautiful woman, inside and out, Becky. If you try hard,
you’ll be like her when you grow up.”

“
That would be
nice.”

Callie thought she detected a shade of
dreaminess in Becky’s voice. “Yes, it would.”

“
Everybody loved Mama,”
Becky acknowledged.

“
Indeed, they did.” Callie
put down the hairbrush and patted Becky’s shoulder. “There you go,
young lady. Hop into bed now, and I’ll listen to your
prayers.”

Becky was silent when she climbed into
her bed and pulled up the covers. She scrutinized Callie’s face
with an intensity Callie hadn’t seen before.

A trifle unnerved by the child’s
unusual demeanor, Callie asked, “Is anything the matter, Becky? Do
you need to tell me anything or talk about something?”

Becky shook her head. “No.” She
pressed her lips together for a moment, then burst out with, “But
you could help me, maybe.”

Startled, Callie said, “I’d be happy
to help you, sweetheart, but first you’ll have to tell me what you
need help with.”

Spots of color burned in Becky’s
cheeks. She hesitated for another moment or two, then said, “I want
you to read some letters to me. I can’t read the big
words.”

“
Some letters?” For goodness
sake. Was Becky carrying on a clandestine correspondence with
someone other than her mother? Callie knew the child was
enterprising, but she couldn’t imagine her being this enterprising.
She was, after all, only six years old, “I’ll be happy to help you,
Becky.”

Quick as a wink, Becky climbed out of
bed, walked to her closet, and opened the door. With a glance back
at Callie, she stooped, reached, and grabbed the handle of a
suitcase that had been sitting on the floor since Callie’s arrival
in the Lockhart mansion, and, Callie assumed, for a long time
before that. The little girl struggled to haul the suitcase out of
the closet.

“
They’re in
here.”

“
Would you like me to help
you?”

Becky shook her head. “No, thank you.
I can do it.” She grunted. “I do it every night.”

“
You do? I didn’t know
that.”

“
Nobody knows. They’re my
secret.” Becky had managed

to pull the suitcase out of the
closet. Now she sat in front of it and pressed the
latch.

When she opened the lid, Callie saw a
stack of letters, tied with a pink ribbon. It looked to her as
though Becky had untied the ribbon and tried to tie it again,
without much success. Little-girl fingers had to learn ribbon-tying
skills over a number of years. Six years wasn’t long
enough.

Callie experienced a sinking feeling
in her stomach when Becky picked up the letters and trotted over to
her bed. She laid them carefully on the pink-and-white counterpane
and stood back. “I found these,” she said simply. “It was after
Mama died. I was sad, and I was walking around the house, thinking
about things, and I found these in a drawer of Mama’s
desk.”

Oh, dear. “I see. Urn, they belonged
to your mama?”

The little girl nodded. “My papa wrote
them to her.”

Good heavens. Callie wasn’t at all
sure she wanted to delve into love letters, if these were indeed
love letters, written by the bereaved Mr. Aubrey Lockhart to his
dead wife. It seemed so . . . intrusive. Snoopy. Sly,
even.

“
They made me feel better,
so I put them in my closet and I read them after you tuck me in
bed. Only I don’t read as good as you do.”

Becky handed Callie a couple of the
letters. Callie took them, feeling more uncertain than usual. It
wasn’t proper to read someone’s private correspondence. It was
interfering and meddlesome. She turned the letters over on her lap
so that the penmanship wasn’t visible.

“
They make me happy,” Becky
said simply.

Callie was lost. Although she knew she
shouldn’t, and that she would hate herself for what she was about
to do, she took up the first letter and opened it. Becky climbed
back into bed, snuggled against a pillow, folded her hands on the
counterpane, and said, “He called her Annie.”

There was wonder in the
small voice. Callie swallowed hard.
Oh,
dear. Oh, dear
.

Carefully unfolding the paper, she saw
the firm, crisp, bold hand of a man. She cleared her throat. She
read. “ ‘My Darling Annie . . .’ ”

Chapter Five

Callie lay in her own bed for hours
that night after reading Becky two of Aubrey Lockhart’s letters to
his late wife. Becky had been wide-eyed and sparkling with joy to
have all of the words pronounced for her. Callie herself had been
fascinated, but not awfully joyful.

And now here she lay unable to sleep,
tossing and turning, pondering the nature of love and loss. Every
now and then she had to wipe a tear from her cheek.

She felt stupid. She also felt as if
she’d done something inexcusably wrong.

But when Becky had told her
that reading from the letters made her feel better, Callie couldn’t
have resisted if she’d tried. Actually, she
had
tried. A little. But not
much.

Lines from the first letter echoed in
her head: “Knowing that our love has created another life gives me
a sense of awe, darling Annie. A child of ours. It is a blessing
and a miracle.”

Another letter left her in
awe:

My Darling
Annie,

When I hold you, the world
falls away. Suddenly, miraculously, everything vanishes—my fears,
my worries, my sorrows—and I know only you. Your lips. Your eyes.
Your tender, trusting love. I hope that you will never leave my
arms. I know that you will never leave my heart.

He’d called his wife
darling
. Darling Annie.
Aubrey Lockhart, who appeared to be as cold and distant as the moon
and the stars, had once cherished a woman and called her
darling.

Callie had never been as emotionally
moved as she had been when she’d read those letters. She’d been
unable to read more than the first two, because she didn’t want to
cry in front of Becky. If she’d continued reading them, she’d have
been running like the Mississippi River in flood.

It amazed her that two people could
adore each other as Aubrey and Anne Lockhart had. They’d seemed in
perfect harmony, a sublime match made in heaven. Callie didn’t
imagine that such genuine, deep, and abiding love, complete with
passion, respect, honor, admiration, and happiness occurred very
often in the world. She wondered if her brother, George, and his
wife, Marie, shared that same kind of love. She supposed they did;
the way they looked at each other when they believed no one else
was watching was definitely a clue.

My darling
Callie
. She rolled the words around on her
tongue, but they didn’t feel right, and the not-right feeling
depressed her. She couldn’t imagine a man cherishing her or ever
calling her his darling Callie. And it wasn’t only because she
thought Anne a name with more harmonious potential than Callie,
either. The fact of the matter was that she’d believed for some
time now that she wasn’t the sort of woman a man could cherish, as
she was far too independent and opinionated.

Anne Lockhart had been a dear, gentle
creature without spine or a single thought to call her
own.

“
Stop it this instant,
Callie Prophet! Anne Lockhart was a wonderful person, and everyone
who knew her thought so, too.”

Appalled by her own mean-spirited
critique—an unjust and completely erroneous one, which made it even
worse—Callie turned over and slammed a fist into her pillow. It was
ridiculous to allow herself to be made melancholy by a couple of
letters. It was stupid. Foolish beyond reason.

Oh, but when she recalled the passage
Aubrey had written in the second letter, she wanted to
swoon: