The Wicked Widow Read online

  But Kyla put her hand out to detain him.

  “Wait, wait,” she said also in a whisper. “We must wait until we can speak to her out of sight of The Castle.”

  Chapter Three

  Kyla waited until Nanny had reached the Bowling Green.

  Then, when she thought that she would be concealed from the house by a box hedge, she took her restraining hand from Terry’s shoulder.

  He sprang forward and ran through the bushes to Nanny, throwing his arms round her neck when he reached her.

  “Nanny, Nanny,” he cried, “We have come to you to save us.”

  Nanny looked at him in bewilderment.

  Then, as Kyla joined them, she said,

  “Miss Kyla! Whatever are you both doin’ here?”

  “We want you to help us, Nanny,” Kyla replied. “And I have so much to tell you.”

  As she spoke, she looked at the little girl standing beside Nanny.

  “We have run away,” Terry told her. “And as we were very very frightened, we came to you.”

  “Now, I don’t know what frightened you,” Nanny said, “but you’ve done the right thing in comin’ to me, both of you.”

  “I thought that was what you would say,” Kyla informed her in a low voice.

  Nanny smoothed back Terry’s hair from his forehead and said,

  “You have become a big boy since I last saw you.”

  “I am big enough to find my way here with Kyla,” Terry said, “and I saved her from a highwayman.”

  “You’ll have to tell me all about it,” Nanny answered. “But first I think you must meet Lady Jane, whom I look after, and I’m sure she’s a-wantin’ to meet you.”

  She turned to the little girl beside her, who held out her hand.

  “Did you really meet a ‒ highwayman?” she asked excitedly.

  “I will tell you all about it,” Terry said, “and Nanny will think I was very brave.”

  Nanny looked at Kyla in a rather bewildered manner.

  “I have so much to tell you, Nanny,” she said quietly, “but it is for you alone.”

  Nanny took charge in the way she had always done ever since she had looked after Kyla as a baby.

  “What you must do, Jane,” she said, “is take Terry to see your house in the trees and, if you run ahead, Miss Kyla and I’ll come along slowly.”

  “A house in the trees?” Terry exclaimed. “I would like to see that.”

  Jane held out her hand.

  “I will show it to you,” she said. “It is my own secret place. Even the gardeners are not allowed to go there.”

  “That is just what we want,” Terry enthused looking at Kyla.

  Then, as Jane began to move away, he ran after her.

  As soon as they were out of earshot, Nanny said sharply,

  “Now, what is all this about, Miss Kyla? And why have you come to see me without any warning?”

  “We have come,” Kyla said in a low voice, “because Stepmama – ”

  “I knew it would be something to do with her Ladyship!” Nanny interrupted. “If she has turned you out, I know your father, that good kind man, would turn in his grave.”

  “She has not turned us out,” Kyla replied. “We have run away because she is planning to kill Terry and drug me!”

  Nanny stared at her in amazement.

  “If I wasn’t aware that you have never told me a lie,” she said, “I would find that hard to believe.”

  “It is true, Nanny, it is true” Kyla insisted. “I eavesdropped when Mr. George Hunter, whom Stepmama is in love with, came back from trying to find out how she could get her hands on all the money that Papa left for Terry.”

  “I suppose there is no way that she can get it legally,” Nanny queried tartly.

  “Apparently none,” Kyla replied, “unless Terry is dead and I am disposed of.”

  “If ever there was a wicked woman,” Nanny exclaimed, “it’s her Ladyship! But I can hardly believe she’d resort to murder.”

  “It depends what you mean by murder,” Kyla said. “But she suggested that small boys can easily fall off a roof or drown in a lake and no one would think it in any way surprising.”

  “So that is what she’s plannin’,” Nanny replied in a low voice.

  “I am to be drugged,” Kyla went on, “and sold to a wicked man called Lord Frome, who would take me to France, where no one would ask questions about my having disappeared.”

  “I can hardly believe what I’m hearin’,” Nanny said. “Not even about a woman I’d not trust to cross the road in a straight line.”

  “When I overheard what she was planning,” Kyla continued, “I took from her handbag some money that she was going to give Mr. George Hunter and then we came to you.”

  “Do you not think her Ladyship’ll guess that you are here?” Nanny asked.

  Kyla explained how she felt that they had covered their tracks by hiring two different post-chaises and ending up in the stagecoach.

  “That was clever of you,” Nanny said. “But now you’re here. I’m thinkin’ what I can do about it.”

  “If you cannot – keep us,” Kyla said, “perhaps you will think of somewhere we can go where Stepmama will not – find us.”

  “How can I let you go wanderin’ about the world and lookin’ as you do?” Nanny asked almost beneath her breath. “And if she wants you back, she’ll have the Law on her side.”

  “I know that,” Kyla said, “but I could not stay and wait for her to kill Terry and then give me drugs so I would not know what I was doing.”

  Even as she spoke, Kyla felt suddenly helpless.

  She looked at Nanny as a child would do, thinking in some miraculous way she would be able to save them.

  As Nanny did not speak, she said after a moment,

  “Please – Nanny – please think of something.”

  “Of course I’ll think of somethin’,” Nanny said sharply. “You don’t suppose I would let that woman hurt my babies, whom I’ve always loved.”

  She spoke so firmly that Kyla felt tears come into her eyes and they were tears of relief.

  “What – can we – do?” she asked Nanny after a moment.

  “I am thinkin’,” Nanny said, moving slowly forward over the Bowling Green.

  “I am sure you will think of something,” Kyla sighed.

  “I have to,” Nanny replied. ‘There’s no doubt, if you are missing, that woman’ll make enquiries as to whether you and Terry are here.”

  “What if she asks the little girl’s father,” Kyla said hesitatingly.

  “If you are talkin’ about his Lordship, the Earl,” Nanny replied, “he’s not Lady Jane’s father but her uncle. His Lordship’s not married.”

  “You did not explain that in any of your letters,” Kyla replied, “so, of course, I imagined that you were with a married couple and looking after their children.”

  She thought as she spoke that perhaps it was easier if there was not a lady in The Castle and she would doubtless have been more curious than a man.

  “There’s one good thing,” Nanny said as if she was thinking about it. “His Lordship’s abroad at the moment and a number of the household are havin’ their holidays.”

  “Are you suggesting,” Kyla asked, “that we might stay here with you?”

  “Of course you will stay with me,” Nanny said. “The difficulty’ll be to keep anyone from knowing that Terry has his father’s title and that you’re his sister.”

  She walked on a little further.

  Then, as she reached a clump of bushes beyond which there were some trees on rising ground, she stopped.

  “I know exactly who you’ll be, Miss Kyla,” she said.

  Kyla looked at her with wide eyes and she went on,

  “I spoke to his Lordship’s secretary a few weeks ago about her little Ladyship havin’ lessons with someone more qualified to teach her than I am myself.”

  She paused for a moment before she continued,

 
“He said he would see if there was anyone in the neighbourhood who would come in two or three times a week. But now he’s on holiday and I think it would be possible to persuade his Lordship to have a Nursery Governess in The Castle itself.”

  “Do you mean – me?” Kyla asked.

  “I mean you,” Nanny said firmly. “You know as well as I do that you can teach a child of seven and do it better than any ordinary Governess ever could.”

  Kyla smiled.

  “I will certainly try. But what about Terry?”

  “Now, that is more difficult,” Nanny admitted.

  Then she gave a little cry.

  “I have it! It has come into my head like a message from the stars.”

  “What has?” Kyla asked.

  “I had a letter just a week ago from Lady Blessingham, whom I had written to when your stepmother threw me out and claimed that Terry was too old to need a Nanny.”

  There was a bitter note in Nanny’s voice as she spoke.

  It told Kyla that she had not forgotten just how much it had upset her when she had to leave Terry and the house where she had been so happy when their mother was alive.

  “What did Lady Blessingham say?” Kyla asked.

  “Her Ladyship asked me how I was and said that one day she hoped to bring over her grandson to see me, who was getting on for nine.”

  Kyla looked at her excitedly.

  “You mean that you could pretend that Terry is Lady Blessingham’s grandson so that if Stepmama makes enquiries here, no one will think that he is his real self.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Nanny agreed. “We have first to convince the staff. You know how they all talk.”

  “Yes, of course,” Kyla murmured.

  “Who has seen you since you arrived here?” Nanny enquired.

  “No one,” Kyla answered. “And I thought it would be best if we could talk to you in the garden before we went into The Castle itself.”

  “That was very sensible of you,” Nanny said approvingly. “Where’s your luggage, if you have any?”

  “It is in the bushes,” Kyla said. “There are only two light bags because I knew we would have to carry them.”

  “Now wait a moment,” Nanny said, “while I think this out. We’ve got to do it cleverly.”

  She stood still as she spoke.

  Looking at her, Kyla thought that she had stepped back into the days when Nanny had been the compassionate Ruler of the nursery.

  Then everything had run smoothly as if on greased wheels and there never seemed to be any problems in those days.

  The nursery was always full of sunshine and she and Terry would run downstairs to the drawing room where her mother was waiting for them.

  She would smile and hold out her arms for them the moment they appeared.

  ‘We were so happy,’ Kyla thought, ‘and we were surrounded by love until Mama died.’

  Nanny was just the same as she had always been.

  ‘The Rock of Gibraltar’, she remembered that her mother had once called her and it was exactly what she was to them at this moment.

  Nanny drew in her breath.

  “I’ve thought it out,” she said, “and I knows what you have to do.”

  “What is it?” Kyla asked.

  “I want you to go back the way you’ve come without bein’ seen,” Nanny said, “and pick up the two pieces of luggage that belong to you and to Terry.”

  Kyla was listening wide-eyed and Nanny then went on,

  “You enter the drive when there’s no one about and put your bags down beside one of the trees. I’m goin’ to collect the two children and bring them to where you’ll be hidin’.”

  “Why are we doing that?” Kyla asked. “I don’t understand.”

  “What I’m goin’ to tell Mr. Jeffreys, the butler, when I reach the house, and he’s quite a sensible man, is that while Lady Jane and I were out, Lady Blessingham came by with her grandson.”

  “In a carriage?” Kyla asked.

  “Of course in a carriage,” Nanny answered. “When she saw me, she stopped and told me that she was comin’ here not only to see me but to ask his Lordship if her grandson could stay with me for a few days while she goes to visit her sister, who’s been taken ill.”

  “That is so clever of you, Nanny,” Kyla exclaimed.

  “I thought you’d think so,” Nanny replied. “All Terry has to remember is that his name is ‘Gerry Blair’ and not Terry Shenley.”

  “He is a very sensible boy,” Kyla said, “and also very afraid of what will happen to him if Stepmama finds us.”

  “Of course he is,” Nanny answered. “But I promise you that if that wicked woman gets hold of him, it’ll be over my dead body.”

  Kyla gave a little cry of relief.

  She bent forward to kiss Nanny on the cheek.

  “I knew you would think of something brilliant,” she said. “But what about me?”

  “That be easy,” Nanny answered. “Your name’s ‘Miss Taylor’ and by some misfortune you were not met as you thought you would be when you left the stagecoach.”

  She put her hand on Kyla’s shoulder before she went on,

  “I’ll be most apologetic, explainin’ that the letter you wrote to me tellin’ me about your arrival ‘on approval’, so to speak, as the Nursery Governess has not yet arrived, So that’s why you were not welcomed as you should have been.”

  Kyla clasped her hands together.

  “Nanny, you are such a genius. Everybody in The Castle will accept that story and if she makes enquiries as to who we are, no one will tell Stepmama.”

  “We can only pray that she is hood-winked,” Nanny said. “So if the worse comes to the worst, we shall have to hide Terry.”

  Kyla smiled while asking Nanny,

  “In the secret passages you told us about in your last letter?”

  “Well, I did think of that,” Nanny admitted. “But it’d be best if there was no suspicion from anybody and no awkward questions.”

  She spoke firmly, as if she was trying to impress what she was saying on Kyla.

  “So I will pray. I will pray very hard,” Kyla said, “that your plan will succeed and that Stepmama will never find us.”

  “I’d like to tell that woman what I think of her,” Nanny muttered beneath her breath.

  Then, as if she thought that it was a mistake to go on talking, she said,

  “Now, you do as I tell you, Miss Kyla, and carry your bags, keepin’ in the bushes till you reach halfway up the drive.”

  “Is that anywhere near the Magic Oak?” Kyla asked.

  “Now, who’s been tellin’ you about that?” Nanny asked. “I can’t remember puttin’ it in any of my letters.”

  “It was the highwayman we met on our way here,” Kyla said. “Terry will want to tell you all about him.”

  As she said Terry’s name, she saw the expression in Nanny’s eyes.

  She knew that she would fight like a tiger to protect the little boy who had been put into her arms the moment he had been born.

  “Now I’m goin’ to find the children,” Nanny said. “You do as I tell you and there’s no hurry. They’ll not expect us back in The Castle till it’s teatime.”

  “I will go to collect our bags,” Kyla said, “and thank you, thank you, Nanny. I knew you would help us. It has been very frightening all the time we have been coming here.”

  “Now, just stop worryin’,” Nanny said, “and leave everythin’ to me. I’ll tell Terry who he’s to be and make it a secret game for him and Jane to play. They’ll both like that.”

  “Of course they will,” Kyla said. “Being with you, Nanny, is like having Papa and Mama to look after us again.”

  There was a little catch in her throat as she spoke, which Nanny did not miss.

  “Now, run along with you,” she said. “We won’t start crowin’ till we know her Ladyship has given up the chase. With God’s help, that’s what she’ll have to do sooner or later.”

  �
��Of course,” Kyla agreed.

  She moved away as Nanny started resolutely to walk through the bushes onto a twisting path.

  Kyla collected the bags that they had put down when they first saw Nanny.

  She began to walk slowly and very carefully through the shrubs and among the trees that bordered the drive.

  She found it quite heavy work to carry both bags and she was glad that she did not have to move very fast.

  In any case it was impossible to walk quickly through the undergrowth.

  There appeared to be no one about, but she kept carefully out of sight of The Castle.

  Finally, when she had walked quite a long way, she thought that she must have reached about halfway down the drive.

  Then, on the other side, she saw the Magic Oak that the highwayman had spoken about.

  It was indeed a very old tree and the main trunk was split and two or three of the lowest boughs were propped up.

  It was obviously a tree that a great number of strange objects had been attached to over the years.

  Even peeping at it from across the drive, Kyla could see that there were envelopes that might contain letters. There were also small objects like dolls that might represent people.

  She thought that she also saw a trumpet that could have been put there by a boy and there were ribbons and pieces of material that fluttered in the wind.

  There was no sign of anything red.

  She thought that, if she did need Bill’s help, it would be easy for him to notice something so bright amongst all the other objects and some of them were sodden by rain or had fallen to bits through age.

  There was still no one in sight.

  She carried the bags, as Nanny had told her, down to the edge of the drive.

  She put them on the clipped hedge, as she thought that anyone might have done who had come by in a carriage.

  She had just finished, when she saw in the distance, with The Castle silhouetted behind them, Nanny and the two children.

  It had always been such a very familiar sight, Nanny in her grey gingham gown with her silver buckle at her waist and her cape of the same material over her shoulders.

  She had a small black bonnet on her head with the ribbons tied under her chin.

  Kyla felt suddenly happy. It was almost as if she herself was now back in the nursery and everything in the world was all right.