I pull the covers up to my chin and barely sleep that night.
From the windowsill, Ivy’s paperweight almost seems to glint at me.
* * *
The next morning, I make a purposeful detour past Philip’s room. The door is ajar and I steal the briefest look inside. His valet sits at his bedside—a slip of a man with a small mustache and thin, nervous fingers that look like spiders. Weak sunlight pours through the window, casting Philip’s skin in a sick gray tinge. His chest barely seems to rise. For the first time, he doesn’t give me the chill of something wrong.
I actually feel sorry for him.
I hurry on to fetch a corset Helene asked me to mend. But Dr. Holm is discussing something with her in the foyer on my way back, and he stops when he sees me. “This is the seamstress that helped to stitch Philip?”
Helene nods.
“She did a good job.” He cocks his head. “I’d never thought to use magic on sutures. Perhaps you’ll let me know if you’re ever done with her services here?”
I turn away before I hear her answer, bristling at how he spoke of me like a pair of scissors or a scalpel to be wielded. Tucking the corset beneath my arm, I take the underground corridor and then slip out the back door. I need a moment of fresh air—of life and color. I unlock the latch to the greenhouse and wander through the aisles, through the murky filtered light and the orbs of glass, breathing in the moist scent of things that are living and blooming.
If Ingrid were here, would she have already solved what my father wanted us to know? Would there have been an easier way forward, a better trail to follow, if only I’d figured out the bank clue earlier? Ten years passed, ten years’ worth of bread crumbs to blow away, to shift the path. For people to die, for rulers and landscapes to change. Maybe I missed my chance and now it’s too late. Because I was so focused on the fact that my father wrote the letter to Ingrid and not to me, I couldn’t see what was right in front of my face.
I find old glass bottles meant for jam and push lavender ranunculus stems inside, tucking soil around a few new seeds as if I’m making a bed. Life, life, life. The smallest act of resistance, when everything around me seems to be ruined or dying. I return to the house and line my bedroom windowsill with the blossoms, surrounding Ivy’s glass paperweight.
When I descend the stairs again, I pause at the sound of strange voices. Male voices—two of them, coming from the kitchen, and I don’t recognize either one.
I come around the corner cautiously, still wiping the soil from my hands. A man sits at the kitchen table loudly slurping his oatmeal, his hair glistening with pomade. Muscles strain through his shirt, his face is as red as a roast, and there’s a large revolver in a holster at his pocket.
“Helene’s hired a guard,” Nina explains. “This is Peder.”
He slurps loudly in response.
I eye him and slide into the place next to Rae, who is jittery, jumping at the slightest sounds.
“Why are you still here, Malthe?” Brock asks the second man, whom I now recognize as Philip’s valet. Brock glares over the rim of his coffee cup, but the gesture almost seems defeated. There’s no point in trying to bully someone out of a spot anymore. Not now that Ivy isn’t here to fill it.
The small man clears his throat. “I’m tending to any needs Mr. Vestergaard has while he is . . . incapacitated.”
“Yes, because people who are incapacitated have so much need for a valet,” Brock says witheringly. “Rae, this has gone cold.” He taps his coffee cup. “Heat it for me?”
Rae jumps up, and the moment she lays her palm along the ceramic cup, steam wisps from its top.
The valet starts violently.
“Was that . . . magic?” he asks, looking at Rae with awe. “You use magic?”
“You don’t?” Rae retorts.
“No,” Malthe says. “Mr. Vestergaard doesn’t employ any people with magic.”
Interesting, I think. Philip continues to surprise me.
“Does anyone know what happened? I heard he was injured trying to help a young girl,” Malthe says, fishing for information while he twirls his coffee with his finger.
Brock growls, “Don’t speak of her here.” He shoves away from the table hard enough to send his chair clattering and slams the back door on his way out.
Malthe’s altogether unwanted infiltration of the kitchen area and his shock at seeing magic do nothing to endear him to the staff. They shift to put a small but definite space between him and the rest of them.
Good luck, Malthe, I think dryly. “Stiff stuff,” I whisper as I walk past him. Then I take my own advice, gather every last dreg of my courage, and follow Brock outside.
He is crouched at the end of the pergola, near the entrance to the greenhouse. His back curves away from me. His face is turned down toward the dirt.
I walk toward him, through the corridor. The purple-tinged ends of wisteria blow in the breeze, light as lace. But then the ends begin to darken, from lavender into the ugly color of a bruise.
And then, bough by bough, the wisteria begins to dissolve.
Brock’s shoulders shake, and the tunnel withers and disintegrates around me with each step forward, the vines curling and shriveling up, the flowers shedding into a spray of ash.
When I reach him, I kneel and join him in the cold dirt. This magical place is gone now. The outside world has flooded in, with its gray sky and all its beauty reduced to decay and ruin.
“I am sorry, Brock,” I say, the cold wetness from the dirt spreading up to my knees. “I’m so sorry.” I shudder under the weight of the guilt I feel—the heaviest weight there is. “I took Ivy’s place,” I admit. I whisper the thought that has been haunting me, keeping me from sleep. Making me wish I never came here. “If I had given up the spot like you wanted, she might still be alive.”
The last remaining purple petals are being crushed beneath the toe of Brock’s boot.
He takes deep, heaving breaths, and then he looks up at me, his face contorted with anger and despair. The door to the greenhouse silently opens, and Dorit slips from the shadows.
As if on cue, Rae comes out from the kitchen. She saunters down the corridor and stands behind me. And suddenly I realize I am trapped. Rae hands Brock an enormous pair of shears, and a chilled wind whips my hair into my eyes and makes them sting.
Brock takes the shears. He squints up at me, his eyes bloodshot.
“Leave us alone, Marit,” he says.
I clear my throat. It feels tight and dry. “There’s something I think you should know.” Brock’s jaw twitches.
“I saw Philip at Ivy’s shop about a month ago.”
He narrows his eyes at me.
“Perhaps it was nothing. But then they ended up—she ended up—well, they were together, when it happened,” I say. I swallow hard. “And then I found this in Philip’s wound.” When I hand Brock the tiny piece of glass, his face flushes an angry red.
Dorit covers her mouth.
“You don’t trust Philip,” Brock says. He lifts the shears and points them at me. “I heard you say that to Eve in the greenhouse one time. You’re always snooping around, watching him. Why?”
I purse my lips, feel the ash of the flowers in my hair. I don’t know what the truth is. If Philip is a victim, a hero, or a murderer. “Nothing definite. It’s just . . . that bad things seem to happen whenever he is around.”
The rumors surrounding Aleks’s death, those miners, Ivy. Philip wearing the same stone as the one my father left behind. What do all these deaths and horrors have in common?
Just one person.
“I think there are some questions about the Vestergaards that still need answers,” I say carefully.
Brock looks up at the second-floor window, to the room where Philip is in his coma.
“These were Ivy’s favorite flowers,” Dorit says softly, her arms full of vibrant pink dahlias. “We’ll bury them with her.”
Brock plunges his shears into the half-frozen grou
nd with such force that I flinch. And then he extends a trembling hand to me.
“When we return,” he says, offering the most unexpected truce I could imagine, “we’re going to help you get those answers.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Brock and Dorit leave the next morning to bury Ivy. Their home is thirty miles west of here. A heavy cloud settles in my chest as their carriage pulls away. We made secret arrangements to meet in Copenhagen in three days.
I watch their carriage until I can’t see it anymore.
Then I pour myself a cup of coffee and set to work.
Tucked between the satin layers of one of Helene’s gowns are the pages of information Jakob and Liljan gave me on Christmas Eve, right before everything went nightmarish and sideways.
I take a sip of coffee and begin sifting through the pages. According to the records, there are five types of gemstones sourced from the Vestergaard mines: diamonds, rubies, emeralds, quartzes, and sapphires. They are distributed in four jewelry stores across Denmark, all owned by a single jeweling family named the Jeppesens. Their flagship store is in Copenhagen.
These Vestergaard jewels are the only gemstones known to be sourced in Denmark.
I reach into the depths of my petticoats and run my fingertips over the smooth facets of my father’s stone. It’s a brilliant dark red in the sunlight, almost black when it’s in the shadows. Clearly it isn’t a diamond, emerald, or sapphire. It doesn’t look like quartz to me, and Jakob didn’t think it was a ruby.
Where did it come from, if not from the Vestergaard mines?
I turn the page to see if I’ve missed anything.
Could there be more stones growing in the mines than the Vestergaards let on?
Or—if this stone didn’t come from the Vestergaard mines—where did it come from?
I chew on my lip, considering, and then turn to the financial records. It always makes sense to follow the money.
The numbers in the financial statements are neat and ordered, spanning years and alternating between two sets of male handwriting. In recent years, I notice, the writing steadily turned to just one. That must have been when Philip Vestergaard took over complete management of the mines.
When I come across the salaries for the miners, I look twice—what’s listed there is far beyond anything my father would have ever taken home. There are equally generous and regular payments to the Jeppesens, the family handling the jewel trade throughout Denmark. I whistle under my breath when I calculate the numbers, and make note of them in my petticoats.
I saw Thorsen’s accounting books. I know how much he would take from the farmers and tradesmen for selling their buttons and wool and beads. A cut of the profits. Nothing like this—exorbitant additional payments on top of that.
Why would you pay jewelers a significant amount of money to sell your jewels? Don’t the jewelers need the Vestergaards more than the Vestergaards need them?
“Marit?” Nina’s voice calls from downstairs. It’s tinged with slight annoyance, so I estimate I have approximately three and a half more minutes before her irritation escalates into something more serious. I want to get through these papers and destroy the evidence. I’ve already had them floating around for too long.
And then I come across the gifts for members of the royal family.
I run my fingertips down the descriptions, imagining the twining crown of diamonds and rubies for King Christian IX and the matching tiara described for Queen Louise.
I see the necklace of rubies meant for Princess Dagmar—now Maria Feodorovna, the future empress of Russia. That was the flash of red when Queen Louise opened the velvet case the night of the ballet.
But the list continues.
“Marit!” Nina sounds slightly more perturbed this time, and closer. I wedge my chair under the doorknob of my workroom and quickly sew a record of the gifts into my petticoats:
Diamond and emerald necklace, for Princess Alexandra, married to English royalty.
Emerald scepter, for the king’s son George I of the Hellenes.
Ruby ring, for another son, Crown Prince Frederick, rumored to be considering an engagement to the princess of Sweden.
Extraordinary, valuable gifts. Why?
“Marit!” Nina is standing right outside my door.
Perhaps the Vestergaards are very generous people.
But a more cynical person might look at these records and say: Everyone, from the bottom to the top, is getting a piece of the pot.
Nina jiggles the doorknob. “Why is this locked?”
“Coming!” I say. I hurriedly feed the Vestergaards’ records into my stove.
“What are you doing in here?” Nina asks sharply when I open the door. My face feels flushed with guilt.
“Just mending Mrs. Vestergaard’s dress,” I say. “Like I was asked to.”
Nina narrows her eyes, because she isn’t a fool. “Dorit says you need a spot of time off on Thursday,” she says. “She asked for it, for you. Personally.” She purses her lips, and we both wait each other out. I cock an eyebrow.
“Make certain that dress is ready before you go,” she says. She gives me a long look before she closes the door.
By the time I return to my worktable, the Vestergaards’ records are nothing but ash.
I feel a scratch at the back of my throat. None of the red stones in Jakob’s book appear to match the one my father left or Philip wears. The Vestergaards’ financial records shed no light either.
There’s one place where I could find out for certain what my father’s stone is, but I can’t waltz into the Jeppesens’ jewelry store and ask . . .
Not as myself, anyway.
My eyes fall to the sumptuous layers of Helene’s dress.
I’m meeting Brock and Dorit in Copenhagen to seek out answers about Ivy. But . . . who’s to say while I’m there, I can’t uncover a few more?
* * *
Our New Year’s celebration at the house is quiet and subdued, and when I slip into the carriage bound for Copenhagen on January third, I do it with Helene’s dress stashed in a trunk at my feet.
Nina gave me a sniff this morning, narrowing her eyes slightly at my trunk, but then bit her tongue.
“Be back this evening” is all she said, and I hurried out the door before she—or I—could reconsider.
Right on schedule, Liljan darts out the door just as the carriage wheels start turning. She runs her hands over my hair and face until I feel the bridge of my nose and the hair on my scalp faintly tingle. She inspects her work, gives me a peck on the cheek, and jumps back out of the carriage. I cover my changed hair with a hat, tighten its ribbons under my chin. Every time we hit a stone, the trunk knocks against my foot, reminding me just how many things could go wrong today.
And all the terrible things that will happen if they do.
I instruct Declan to drop me off with my trunk at the corner of the Nationalbanken. I make sure the hat is completely covering my hair and confirm details with him for the return home. Then, as the horses amble back onto the cobblestone street, I take a sharp turn and head straight into the crowd.
The sky is gray and thick with pillowing clouds this morning. It’s lightly drizzling, and the snow left in the street gutters looks more like soot. Dorit and Brock are standing in the midst of a bustling center, near a fountain with stone doves taking flight. Neither of them has an umbrella, and I spot Dorit’s faded mauve hat first, then Brock next to her. Both of them look haggard, and neither is smiling.
I tighten my grip on the trunk and go to meet them.
“What’s that?” Brock asks gruffly. He nods at my trunk, which is good because it means he isn’t looking too closely at my face.
I purse my lips. “We all have answers we want to get today.”
“Has Philip woken up yet?” Brock asks.
I shake my head. “And the police want to speak with him, but they told Helene he’s not a suspect. They think Ivy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Brock’s jaw tightens. He wants to ask some more questions of his own. And so do I.
“The glass shop first” is all Brock says abruptly to me, and I give him a curt nod. We hardly trust each other in normal circumstances, and the tension of this situation only makes it worse. I walk several paces behind him and Dorit, fixing my eyes on Dorit’s heels and the small chip of leather that flaps with every step on the wet cobblestones. The air smells like smoke and salted fish, and we enter the glass shop where I saw Philip standing with Ivy all those weeks ago. A small bell tings, and a young girl with enormous, haunted eyes steps forward and says, “May I help you?”
“Yes. We’re here to see a girl named Hanne,” Brock says, taking off his hat. “Does she work here?”
The girl pales. “I am Hanne. What is this about?”
Brock reaches out his hand and says, “I’m Ivy’s brother.” He gestures to Dorit. “This is her aunt.”
“And I’m her cousin,” I say quickly.
“Oh,” Hanne breathes. “I’m sorry for your loss.” Her large eyes get even wider. She peers out the door, checking the street both ways. Then she locks the door behind us and says, “Come with me.”
The stairs creak beneath our feet as she leads us up to the second floor, then pulls open the door to a small room with two round stained-glass windows set in the walls like portholes. The room smells faintly of soap, and though it’s little bigger than a closet and the wallpaper is faded, it is neat and clean. “We have only a few minutes before the shop owner comes back,” Hanne says. “He probably wouldn’t want all of you up here. But you can fetch her things.”
I turn around and survey the room. This is where Ivy lived. Her bed has been stripped down to the bare straw mattress, and the sight of it makes me unbearably sad. As Dorit begins to collect a few of Ivy’s clothes still folded in the closet, I notice that Hanne has a glass paperweight on her nightstand too.
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