Chapter Three #2
So, feeling a little less tense, now that the door to Mr. Middlebrook’s room was blocked, and having realized that the door leading to the hallway had a key hanging from the lock on a loop of twine, Lizbet helped Frankie run a warm bath, then opened valises until she’d found a clean change of clothing for both children and laid the small, crumpled garments out on the bed.
“Father wants to leave us here,” Jubal announced, still sitting cross-legged on the floor.
Lizbet froze for a few seconds, then turned to look at her little brother. He was only five, but he was clever for his age. “What makes you say that?” she asked, once she’d caught her breath.
“I heard him talking to Marietta this morning, at that hotel where we stayed last night, while we were having breakfast. He said Frankie and me were his trump cards—” Jubal paused, frowning, most likely trying to work out what it meant to be a trump card.
“And Marietta said if he thought she was going to raise Gwendolyn’s brats, he was dead wrong, because she’d leave him first. And he said, real quick, that we could stay with you, then. ”
None of what Jubal said really surprised Lizbet; she’d been suspicious of her stepfather’s intentions all along, but she needed a moment to process the statement just the same.
“Are we brats?” Jubal asked. “Me and Frankie?”
“Frankie and I,” Lizbet corrected automatically. She was, after all, a teacher. “But no, you are not brats. You are very good children, and it was wrong of Marietta to say such an unkind thing.”
“She doesn’t like us,” Jubal said. He sounded matter-of-fact, sad. He sighed the sigh of a much older person then and almost broke Lizbet’s heart in the doing of it. “I guess that’s all right, though, ’cause I don’t like her right back. Frankie don’t, either.”
This time, Lizbet didn’t correct the child.
She sank into the chair in front of the vanity table and patted her lap. “Come here and sit with me for a while,” she said gently.
Jubal rose from the floor, crossed the room, and scrambled onto her lap. “I miss Mother,” he said, resting his small head against Lizbet’s breast bone.
Tears smarted in Lizbet’s eyes. “So do I,” she said.
And then they just sat together, little brother and big sister, taking shelter in the love they felt for each other.
When Frankie had finished her bath, it was Jubal’s turn.
He didn’t resist. Once Lizbet had rinsed the huge bathtub with water from a large pitcher standing on a shelf above the commode and then filled the tub again, she left him to undress in privacy and bathe himself.
Like Frankie, he was independent—except when it came to being alone with their father and Marietta. And both children were naturally wary of strangers.
By the time Lizbet’s turn to bathe came around, the children were lying on the bed in their clean underthings, having fallen deeply asleep. The hot water had been used up, for the most part; she would have the long soak she yearned for another time.
In another place.
In the meantime, a hasty but thorough scrubbing would serve.
Once she had finished her bath and dried herself off, Lizbet donned a clean, if somewhat rumpled dress, taken from a valise, and brushed her hair vigorously in an effort to remove the road dust. Then she wound it into a single plait.
Over an hour had passed when she was summoned to dinner by Mrs. Harriman, who led her and the children silently to the massive, echoing dining room.
William and Marietta were already there, seated side by side and talking in earnest undertones with Mr. Middlebrook.
Mr. Middlebrook was the first to notice Lizbet’s arrival, and he frowned when he saw the children. They were not clinging to the skirt of her dress, as they had done earlier in the day, nor were they plastered to her sides, but their caution was evident, just the same.
The old man’s sharp gaze drifted past Lizbet to Mrs. Harriman, who lingered in the wide, arched doorway.
“I believe I gave you instructions, Ruth,” Middlebrook said, with an edge to his tone, “to give the children their supper in the kitchen.”
“That would be fine,” Lizbet said, before Mrs. Harriman could rally from the rebuke and answer her employer. “The children and I will be happy to eat there, together.”
Middlebrook’s bushy brows lowered, and he frowned and glanced at William, who immediately tried to ease the moment.
“Elizabeth,” William said, “the table has been set for adults. Frankie and Jubal will be perfectly all right having their meal elsewhere, and Mrs. Harriman will surely look after them.”
Lizbet planted her feet, figuratively and literally, and said nothing. She felt heat climb her neck and pulse under her cheekbones.
William sighed, looking exhausted and far older than his forty-seven years. Marietta slipped her arm through his in a rare show of support and glowered at Lizbet.
Lizbet glowered back.
Henry Middlebrook, seated at the head of the table, sighed heavily. “Very well,” he said, with a touch of bitterness. “Ruth, please bring place settings for the children. Tonight, we’ll all dine together.”
Was there a slight emphasis on the word tonight ? As though there would be other nights, during which this exception would not be made?
Lizbet grew more uneasy. So uneasy, in fact, that hungry as she was, she doubted she could choke down servings of roast beef, carrots and potatoes, waiting to be eaten.
Middlebrook made a great show of rising, rounding the end of the table, and drawing back Lizbet’s chair, once again the gentleman.
Was he a chameleon, or a cobra?
Both, most likely.
“I trust you find your accommodations comfortable,” he almost purred, when they were all settled, napkins spread in their laps.
Lizbet was seated on his right, like a—wife?
Surely not?
She thought of the connecting door upstairs, and the chair she’d wedged beneath the knob and said nothing at all, because if she’d allowed herself to speak, she would have said things that should not be said in front of children.
William, seated directly across the huge table, elbow to elbow with Marietta, gave her a look of combined exasperation and pleading.
Marietta was sitting with her head tilted back, admiring the enormous crystal chandelier sparkling above them. She’d definitely dressed for dinner, wearing a bright blue silk dress, sheer stockings and a twinkling headband with a fabric rose pinned to one side.
Marietta fancied herself a flapper.
A soon-to-be film star.
She probably expected to eclipse Mary Pickford.
“Mr. Middlebrook is a widower of many years,” William said, in a tone of false pleasantry, clearly trying to appease his host, though he was addressing Lizbet.
“It’s a lonely life,” added Middlebrook, with a forlorn-sounding sigh. “My Eudora died years ago, and we never had any children.”
“Elizabeth is already an old maid,” Marietta piped up. She was thirty, but safely wed and thus inclined to be smug. “It’s time she found a husband, before her insides shrivel and she can’t have babies.”
Lizbet’s suspicions were confirmed in that moment, and, though she’d managed to keep it at bay until then, outraged panic swelled up inside her like an invisible geyser. It was all she could do not to shove back her chair, leap to her feet and run for the front door.
She might have done just that, if it hadn’t been for Frankie and Jubal. Of course she couldn’t abandon them.
So, instead of bolting, and after a poisonous glance at Marietta, who had her share of nerve talking about anyone else’s ability to bear children, she folded her hands in her lap, sat up very straight and said calmly, “When—and if—I marry, I will choose my own husband.”
“I’m not hungry,” Jubal said, in a small voice.
“Neither am I,” Frankie added.
“Eat your dinner!” William blurted, red in the face, and both children flinched.
Jubal began to cry, and Frankie put a protective arm around her brother’s shoulders.
In that instant, Lizbet felt she might burst with love for the two of them, her small brother and sister, and she wanted to weep, too, though she didn’t dare, as the others—Marietta, William and Henry Middlebrook—would surely interpret her tears as weakness.
She couldn’t afford to let them see her cry, lest they pounce.
No. She must be strong. No matter what.
She drew several deep breaths, steadying herself, and forced herself to eat. She was going to need her strength.
Tonight, she had decided, she would sit up while the children slept and keep watch. Even though the door connecting her room to Middlebrook’s was blocked, there was still the one opening onto the hallway.
She could lock that from the inside, but there were probably duplicate keys.
So she would guard herself and her brother and sister.
Tomorrow, at the first opportunity, the three of them would leave this dreadful house and pay Ornetta Parkin a visit.