The Legend of Nimway Hall Page 3

  Surely she noticed, just as she surely must have noticed him staring at her with as much naked interest as Crossley had so crudely described. Just as surely as she was, even now, plotting some offensive against his command of her fiefdom, a battle that would endure for as long as Churchill’s Special Operations Executive required the use of Nimway Hall, whoever was posted here—which looked to be for the duration.

  “Easton,” Gideon said, trying to shake off the woman’s influence over his thoughts, “you were reporting on the local topography.”

  Easton returned to the table with Durbridge, drafting compasses in hand. “As I was saying, sir, the site that we choose for the Operational Base must be well-drained–this is Somerset, after all—and, because the excavation must be done by hand, quickly and in secret, it must be free of rocky outcroppings and occlusions.”

  “We could hope for another badger sett like we dug outside of Minehead,” Crossley said, taking up a ruler. “Cut through that hillside of tunnels like a sword through butter.”

  “Unfortunately for us, Crossley,” Gideon said, “hoping won’t get the job done.” He hadn’t yet been assigned to the Royal Engineers at the time; he’d joined the group as its leader only a month before and still felt like a fish out of water. He’d supervised the construction of exactly one Operational Base in that time, but as his CO had said when he offered the posting, it was that or nothing. Better than sitting around the war on his backside, warming a desk at Whitehall.

  “What about using the ruins of that old tithe barn below the escarpment?” Durbridge asked, pointing to the ruins on the map.

  “Too central and an attractive nuisance,” Gideon said, making a note beside the barn. “I watched for a time this morning and saw the evacuee children playing there, chasing rabbits.”

  “Also true about both cattle sheds, sir,” Easton said, “abandoned, according to the groundskeeper, until after the war, but a playground for the children.”

  “That,” Durbridge added, “and we can’t have a dozen men disappearing inside a cattle shed every night and not reappearing until the next morning. Someone would notice.”

  “Miss Stirling would notice,” Gideon said. And he must do everything in his power to keep the woman out of their business. “The same is true of the stables, busier even than the dairy barn. We might look at the farms and the outbuildings to the west. Though they are doubtless just as busy and exposed. Anything else come to mind?”

  "The grist mill,” Crossley said, leaning in close to read the tiny print. “Says here it’s in ruins. Worth a look. You remember, Durbridge—that first base we constructed just outside Exeter. Sited it in the gear room below the floor of an abandoned mill.”

  “That was a brilliant find,” Durbridge said. “Removed the shaft and the workings, added plumbing, electricity, field phones, built an escape tunnel, supplied it, disguised the entrance with that trapdoor, trained the Aux Unit and Bob’s your uncle.”

  Gideon caught an anomaly that had been hiding in plain sight, tapped the map with the point of his finger. “What about this rectangle here? Looks to be in the woods on a slight rise east of the Hall. Whatever it is, it’s been unused long enough not to warrant a note.”

  “An old saw mill?” Durbridge removed his spectacles and bent down to inspect the rectangle. “Would make sense. Plenty of wind on this side of the hill to turn a blade. We may be in luck. May not have to sap like moles this time round.”

  “Good then,” Gideon said as he rolled up the map. “I’ll check out the mysterious rectangle tomorrow afternoon while you survey the farms again and walk the perimeter. Decide who does what.”

  “Durbridge and I will check out the farms,” Crossley said, heading back to his drafting table with a bit of a strut.

  “And the farmers’ daughters, if I know you two,” Easton said with a laugh. “Sir, if anyone asks, do we tell them we’re on a walk-about?”

  “Since we’re headquartered here in Somerset, gentlemen,” Gideon said, “our official cover should work for anyone asking. That we’re part of the Defense Chain Operations Task Force, surveying and siting the Taunton Stop Line.”

  Crossley snorted. “Well, if that mouthful doesn’t choke the locals, nothing will.”

  “Divide and distract, Mr. Crossley,” Gideon said, “one of the pillars of tradecraft. Learn that lesson and you’ll soon be able to hide in plain sight while you carry out the most critical of missions in broad daylight.” Just as he was doing.

  “Truth is, sir, I thought by now I’d be using my Master’s in Civil Engineering to build bridges and cities, not hidey-holes for the SOE.”

  “This war has altered everyone’s plans, Crossley.” He’d orchestrated his own post-graduate studies for just that purpose—as a career military officer, specializing in gathering intelligence. But the best-laid plans....

  “Sir, what if we meet up with Miss Stirling in our progress?” Crossley asked, his judgment of the woman on point. “She’s bound to object—what then? What do we tell her?”

  “Be respectful, obtuse, and then send Miss Stirling to me.” Gideon took a step away from the table and winced. He’d been standing too long, took a sharp breath. “That goes for all of you, gentlemen. Be respectful—”

  “What, me too, sir?” Easton asked, “I’m a happily married man. Going to be a father in a few months! I’d never!”

  “Of that, I am certain, Easton.” As certain as he was of Crossley working his charm on every woman in his path. He checked the wall clock. “Two hours until dinner. We’ll work the remainder of the day outlining tomorrow’s canvassing and setting up a grid. You need to log your routes in advance, then report the details of your findings when you return tomorrow. Include the names of any locals you might meet, notes on their attitudes, any resistance to your authority or undo curiosity about your presence.”

  He purposely left his derby-handled cane hooked over the edge of the table and steeled himself for the walk across the marble floor toward the large old desk in the corner. If only to see how far he could travel without resorting to the limp that had plagued him since he first rose out of his recovery bed. Nearly four months ago, it was. Long past time the blasted thing should have healed and set him free to return to combat.

  He managed a strong, regular stride for a dozen feet, and in his progress attempted to avoid a waste bin, mis-stepped around it, then over-compensated. A white-hot pain shot through his knee as he caught himself, straining tendon against bone, tasking his knee beyond its limit to hold him upright without grabbing the back of a chair.

  He could feel his staff watching his struggle to steady himself. Even more galling was their pretense that they hadn’t noticed his humiliation; that they weren’t each wondering how the devil a man who couldn’t walk across a marble floor without the aid of a cane was going to manage a trek through the woods tomorrow in search of the mysterious structure on the map.

  Same damned thing he was wondering about himself, same reason for welcoming such a challenge to his injured leg. No one would be watching his progress, judging him, assessing his worth to the war effort. A measured walk at his own pace, through a late September woodland in Somerset, that most bucolic of English counties, the jewel of England’s southwest, known for its lazy streams, its apple orchards, its cheese from the caves of Cheddar and scrumpy. A simple stroll compared to the terrain he’d covered in the struggle that had claimed the lives of three of his comrades, nearly cost him his own life and left him with a debilitating wound in his leg that cramped his back and stretched his patience.

  Gideon worked his way to his desk and gripped the arms of the chair, positioned his leg straight in front of him and lowered himself onto the seat cushion, holding back the groan of relief because he’d heard himself groan too often.

  Had suffered humiliation under his mother’s care while he remained delirious with fever—I love you, Son. You’ll come through this.

  His sisters’ unfounded encouragement—You’ll be up and
fighting again in no time, Brother, dear.

  Watching helplessly while the soldiers being evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk were landed at Ramsgate Harbor.

  The surgeons, his doctors—You need to let your body heal on its own, Gideon, or you’ll never return to a normal life.

  He couldn’t imagine what kind of life that would be, so he’d worked even harder, vowing to recover in record time. You’re over-doing it, Gideon. You’ll do further damage.

  And when he approached his Commanding Officer—Yes, Gideon, I see that you are able to walk across the room with a cane. But you can’t return to lead your unit. You know already that it was disbanded after Norway, the men redeployed to other units, on other missions.

  “Besides,” his CO had said, over-kindly, “until you’re at full strength, you would be a danger to fellow agents on any operations behind enemy lines.”

  “I’m not begging, sir,” Gideon remembered saying, “but I’ve got to do something for the war effort. I’m a soldier. I should have been helping evacuate Dunkirk. Instead I was sitting with my mother on the lawn like a derelict from a long ago war, no more helpful to my comrades than the bin man. Please, sir, give me a job. Anything.”

  Though he realized now that he hadn’t truly meant ‘anything.’

  “The map’s all set, Colonel,” Durbridge said, bending over the long table, “ready to mark out the grid.”

  And here he was, a month later, mired in the banalities of the home front, living the life of a country squire, nanny to a pack of eager of school boys playing at soldier, the unwelcome guest of a most beguiling woman who needed taming.

  Chapter 2

  “Winnie, my girl, it’s going to be a bloody, long war if that man thinks it’s his job to command Nimway Hall!” Josie left the conservatory in a blazing fury and continued past the butler’s pantry and the door to the dining room, pushed her way out the service door, finally popping into the clutter of the great hall, which only started her blood boiling again.

  “Come, Winnie, let’s see what those barbarians have done to the library.” She dodged through the maddening landscape of sheeted furniture, took a deep breath and slid open the library door.

  Fortunately for the colonel, everything seemed to be as she’d left it, acres of books shelved safely in the bays that ringed the enormous room, island of tables and chairs, floor lamps and statuary. The pair of Chesterfield sofas still faced each other in front of the ornate fireplace in the main part of the library, in sharp contrast to her own favorite alcove with its pair of wingback reading chairs still flanking the carved wooden fireplace.

  The shutters and blackout curtains were open and with the lowering sun sending sharp rays across the room, she didn’t see her father at first, then found him two steps up on the rolling ladder, peering down at her from his perch, a book open in his hand, like a bird about to take wing. Winnie sat at the base of the ladder, smiling, tail sweeping the mahogany floor.

  “See here, Josie Bear,” he said, “Mr. Tennyson hasn’t moved from this spot in all these years.” He waved a slip of paper at her. “My own bookmark, placed here by me for your mother.

  ‘Light, so low upon earth,

  You send a flash to the sun.

  Here is the golden close of love,

  All my wooing is done.’”

  Sudden, hot tears rose in Josie’s throat, stung her eyes; the rich sound of her father’s baritone, the memory of her mother gazing into his eyes. “‘Marriage Morning,’ I remember. Mother’s favorite.”

  He sighed. “And mine.”

  What a surprising joy to have her father here at Nimway! She swallowed the knot of sorrow and scratched the top of Winnie’s head. “You seem to have settled in, Father.”

  “Reluctantly, my dear girl. A bird in a gilded cage.” He stepped down the ladder to the floor carrying the book of Tennyson.

  “Where would you be tonight then, if not for Hitler’s bombs altering your plans? Sitting in your study at Stirling House?”

  “On a Tuesday night—” he considered, with a dear and familiar tilt of his head. “At my club, the Garrick, though the place has been stripped of the art that once hung on the walls, the most valuable stored along with the treasures of the National Gallery deep in some Welsh mine or other. The rest scattered among the country houses across the land, windows draped in mourning black. Once the bombs began falling last month and the sirens began to wail, we’d all flee from the luxury of the Garrick to the tube station—quite an unsavory place. After a week of that nonsense I started staying at home—as you found me, reading The Times, listening to the wireless, indulging in my wee dram.”

  “Until a bomb dropped three blocks from Stirling House and I insisted you come live at Nimway. I’m so thankful that Aunt Kitty is living safely in Hollywood.”

  “Now, there’s an oxymoron!”

  “Have you been up to see your room? Is it to your liking?”

  “The young man who helped unload the van is delivering my entire wardrobe upstairs and, as you can see, my treasures are sitting there in the corner, still in the boxes. As they are likely to remain until I feel like unpacking.”

  “I can’t guarantee that Mr. Tennyson and his comrades won’t be conscripted for the war effort, but unless and until then, the library is yours. Please make yourself at home, Father.” She kissed him on the cheek and gazed up into his handsome eyes, still bright behind his grief over her mother.

  “I am home wherever you are, my little love.”

  Why ever did she allow this dear man to hole up in London, all alone in his family’s rambling old house? Her mother had warned her that he would probably need tending after she was gone. But what power did a ten-year old have over a parent, when her own world was dark and falling apart at the time? She stayed behind at the Hall with her Aunt Freddy and Uncle Anthony after her mother died, let her father return to London without her. She saw him often afterward, quick trips and summers, but they hadn’t lived in the same house for all that time. How could thirteen years have passed so quickly?

  “Then we are together for the duration, Father.”

  He smiled so fondly down at her, she felt tears prickle the backs of her eyes again. “My dear girl–‘til the end of time.”

  The service door at the rear of the library burst open, launching Mrs. Lamb’s rugged frame toward them. “Ah, there you are Miss Josie! I heard you was home from London, thank the good Lord for not letting one of those bombs fall on you!”

  “The bombs did fall every night, Mrs. Lamb,” Josie said as she was swept up into the older woman’s arms, “just not on Stirling House.”

  She’d felt no small amount of guilt that the bombs had fallen on other neighborhoods, with thirteen dead and hundreds left homeless, nothing more to their names than the clothes they had worn as they fled to their assigned shelters.

  “Lord keep them far away from us, Miss Josie.” Mrs. Lamb straightened Josie’s shirt collar. “But now that you’re safely back with us, ther’s summat needs doing ‘bout feedin’ our newest so-called ‘lodgers’. ‘Course, I don’t mean you, Mr. Stirling—” Mrs. Lamb nodded and blushed like a girl “—chuffed I am to see you back here again, after all this time. But it’s them soldiers’ ration books I’m needin’. Tomorrow is shopping day in the village. I have to register the lot of ‘em with the butcher and the grocer before I can buy for ‘em.”

  “Have you asked Colonel Fletcher for the ration books?”

  “Did so. But he said I wasn’t authorized. That he’d wait to hand them over to you when you got home. Said it politely enough, and with a charmin’ sort o’smile.” The woman’s eyes sparkled under the steely gray spray of hair fringing the fashionably functional scarf they had all begun to wear. “And I must say, that fellow’s right easy on the eye.”

  Not so easy on the pulse, Josie thought, but would never say. To anyone! At all.

  “Thank you for trying, Mrs. Lamb. I’ll take care of the ration books myself. You go along to the
kitchen and I’ll be right there. We’ll go over the shopping list for the week’s menu, then I’ve got a dozen things to check on before I can stop to eat.”

  “Then you’ll be too late for dinner again. Can I make you a plate?”

  “I’ll come by the kitchen when I get back, Mrs. Lamb,” Josie said, thinking again of the two hours of work ahead of her before her meeting with the colonel. In the library. At half-ten. “But I know Father’s hungry, I can hear his stomach from here.”

  “What’s that?” her father said with a broad smile as he handed Mrs. Lamb his own ration book. “You don’t like my singing, Josie Bear? But thank you Mrs. Lamb. I’ll be delighted to have one of your delicious home-cooked dinners after taking most all of my meals in the Garrick for the last decade.”

  Mrs. Lamb screwed up her face. “Cabbage stew again tonight, sir, with bread, butter and fresh elderberry jam, sweetened with Nimway’s own Top Drawer Honey. I’ll fetch it for you here, sir.” Mrs. Lamb bundled out of the library, her elbows swinging left and right like a drill sergeant’s.

  “I’ll need the library at half-ten, Father, for my meeting with the colonel. Best conducted in private, though I can’t guarantee that our conversation won’t be heard by everyone in the Hall.”

  Her father smiled that famous Stirling family smile, raised his chin and began to recite with a twinkle in his bearing: