Lavender Dreaming: A Time Travel Romance (Lavender, Texas Series Book 5) by Bartholomew Barbara

Author:Bartholomew, Barbara [Bartholomew, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2014-07-02T04:00:00+00:00

When Violet awoke it was morning and she realized gratefully that the night had passed without a raid. Her dream had come back, the dream where she’d seen Warne was safely in Lavender where the kind of bad things that were happening in London just didn’t occur.

She longed to be in such a safe place, but dismissing the thought crept from bed, leaving Maudie sleeping soundly and tiptoed from the room and downstairs to the kitchen. Her heart nearly stopped when she saw the tall, thin woman with the granite face who sat at the kitchen table.

“Mrs. Rolfe,” she said. “I thought you were dead.”

Shock showed only in the older woman’s eyes as she stared at Violet. “It was mutual I’m sure, dearie,” she said, only one note off her usual assurance. “You don’t happen to have our Margaret and Lady Laura with you, do ye? The family’s gone right out of their minds with her being missing.”

Her mouth too dry for speech, Violet seated herself while the cook poured her a cup of tea, brewed she couldn’t guess how.

She took a gulp of the scalding liquid which seemed to spread warmth through her veins. “Bad news,” she finally managed to say. “Lady Laura’s gone, though Margaret is safe and with friends.”

The iron-gray hair stayed firmly in its tight knot as the older woman nodded. “Not unexpected,” she said, “though I must say I’m pleased that two of the three I thought to be dead are still walking the earth. But where’s the body. The family will want to know. It’s a matter of inheritance, you see.”

And most of the family money and property had belonged to Lady Laura. She wasn’t sure any of them had much fondness for their relative, but they would be concerned with what she’d left them.

“Buried,” she said. “Long way off.”

Mrs. Rolfe frowned. “How did that happen?”

Violet shrugged. She wasn’t about to try to explain the unexplainable. “By kind people. None of my doing.”

“And Margaret?”

“She left London to stay with friends.”

Mrs. Rolfe nodded acceptance of that. It was wartime and many people were displaced. “I’m surprised she didn’t go to her sister in Yorkshire.”

Violet shrugged again and was glad enough to be saved the trouble of making up an appropriate reply when Maudie, tousled-haired and yawning, appeared in the doorway. “I want Mama,” she said.

Mrs. Rolfe regarded the girl with open disapproval. She didn’t much care for urchins such as the one Violet had once been. They caused her too much trouble. “Now who’s this?”

“Maudie Clarence,” Violet answered honestly. “Lost her family.”

She knew Mrs. Rolfe would take this to mean that the child had been orphaned in the raids as had so many.

“Poor thing,” Mrs. Rolfe said more out of form than from genuine concern. She was not soft-hearted was Mrs. Rolfe. Her own life had been hard and she believed others could stand what she’d stood if they’d only pluck up their stomachs and keep going.

“There’s bread and marge for breakfast to go with the tea,” she told Violet, getting to her feet.

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