She was amassing a considerable stack of tomes that had markers in them, and whose marked pages had names upon them that might be relevant to the Holstein family. Sometimes the Holstein name itself—really, who had their name in multiple books?—sometimes other German-sounding names that seemed to have some link to the house of Saxe-Coburg. At the moment, she was operating on the assumption that if Wilhelm Holstein had marked the pages, they were important. And she was jotting down the names. At luncheon or dinner, she would run them by Mr. Holstein and see if he recognized any of them.
But for every book on historical or then-current events or politics or whatnot, there were twenty on subjects surely of no relevance to the family search. These occasionally had markers in them too, but she’d given up flipping to them. If they denoted pages of interest, she couldn’t figure out why. Around the room she’d begun various stacks, and most of the next two hours she spent scurrying from one to another.
A glass of water would have been nice. She should ask about how to fetch such things for herself. Surely even the lowest of scullery maids was entitled to water now and again—it oughtn’t to be too much for her to ask. And waiting on the staff to bring her something “dreckly” was apparently a mistake.
If ever she were mistress of such a place, one could be sure she’d make certain each and every person on the property had such basic needs met.
At noon, a throat clearing in the doorway brought her to a halt mid-stride, her arms full of books bound for the wall shared by the study. She looked up to see a maid, who dipped a quick curtsy. Rosemary’s brows arched.
The girl smiled. “Luncheon is ready in the dining room, miss.”
“Thank you. Though you needn’t . . .” The girl was already gone, so Rosemary’s “curtsy to me” was spoken only silently.
Rosemary continued to the stack against the wall. She could hear the muffled knocking from the next room, presumably of the maid upon the outer door. Three knocks, a moment of silence. Three more knocks. Wait. Thrice again.
Her lips twitched up. It took fifteen knocks before Mr. Holstein’s distracted, “Just a moment!” put a halt to the summons. Worse even than when Rosemary had knocked yesterday.
No stammer or stutter on that either. And he could apparently converse well enough with Penrose to have established a friendship. What made it so much worse at other times?
She put the last of the books on the stack in the corner and dusted her hands off on her skirt. Perhaps, if they really did take meals together twice daily, he would eventually relax around her. Perhaps his tongue would be more at ease.
Perhaps if she befriended him she could lure him somehow into revealing the information she needed to prove his loyalties lay with Germany.
She detoured to the table to fetch her list of names and the eyeglasses she’d tossed down at some point, positioning them as she headed for the door.
Holstein was even then opening his door into the hallway.
The maid curtsied. “Luncheon is ready in the dining room, Mr. Holstein.”
“Th—thank you . . . Kerensa. I’ll be . . . r-right there.” But the door clicked shut again.
Not sure if his “right there” was perhaps synonymous with the Cornish “dreckly,” Rosemary granted herself the time to head to the water closet and tidy herself up before hunting down the dining room. Though when she returned, the massive table had no occupants other than a pretty set of dishes and a covered platter.
There was no point in going in there and sitting alone. Instead, she headed toward an open set of double doors through which was a room she hoped was the parlor. She might as well look at the painting of St. Michael’s Mount while she awaited her host.
Either she was in the right place or he had many landscape paintings, because the moment she stepped in she drew in a sharp breath at the oil-on-canvas across from her. It was huge, taking up almost all the space between couch and ceiling, between windows. And stunning.
Retta would love to see this—she was enthralled by all things artistic, and no doubt she’d go on for days about the light and the water and the brushstrokes and this and that. All Rosemary knew was that the result was utterly enchanting. It had the look of a magical world, this island out in the waters with the castle built so organically into it that it seemed the walls sprang directly from the trees and the earth had heaved its way with pure will out of the sea. And the pathway out to it . . . it looked even with the waters. As if it rose up to allow worthy feet to tread upon it, and then might just sink back down again to keep villains from the hallowed walls.
Fifteen miles away, he had said. It would take a whole day off to get there, see it, and get back. But it would be a day well spent.
“My f-father com . . . commissioned the painting. For my mother. It was . . . was her favorite p-place. She used to s-say . . . she would say she f-fell in love with Cornwall first. Father s-second.”
Rosemary smiled, though she didn’t turn to direct it toward Holstein. “The sort of thing one only says if one loves the other person so very much they can never question it.”
“Indeed.” His sigh was the soft kind. The kind that said, I miss them. And maybe, If only they were here.
She hadn’t had the leisure to sigh so over her own parents, so busy had she been trying to survive after their deaths. But she knew the sigh. Perhaps everyone was born knowing that sigh. Born with the readiness to use it.
She looked his way now and found his gaze moving over the painting he had surely seen thousands of times. He likely saw things in it she never could—memories of the parents who had loved it first. “Where was your mother from, if not Cornwall?” she asked.
His smile was just a tight, small turning of his lips. “Rothenburg ob . . . ob der Tauber. In Germany.”
Her skin prickled. “Did you father grow up there too?”
He shook his head. “Opa . . . Opa and Oma moved here when F-Father was just a . . . a b-babe.”
So his father hadn’t been an English subject by birth. Nor, of course, his grandfather. And his father had married a German woman. So what, then, of him?
A question she suspected he would not answer here and now, when it was a veritable stranger asking. She settled for a bright smile. “Well, I can see why she fell in love with Cornwall so fast, if this is the kind of landscape to be seen.” She motioned toward the painting, then pivoted, ready to see what kind of offerings were on that tray in the dining room. “I’ve a list of names to go over with you while we eat. They were all on marked pages, so perhaps they have something to do with your family.”
He nodded his agreement and turned as well, leading the way into the dining room. He did that thing again—indicating where she should sit and then pulling out her chair for her, scooting it in as she sat. She had seen other men helping other women sit, of course, and standing when they entered a room, as he and Penrose had last night. But not for her. She’d been born to a station more apt to scurry about in a maid’s uniform than to sit at the table with the master of the house.
What was she doing here?
Stealing this man’s good name, that’s what. Now focus.
The same maid who had summoned them—Kerensa, was it?—appeared to ask them what they’d like on their plates and then fill them. As if they were incapable of reaching toward the platter themselves and selecting a sandwich. But Rosemary played along, and warned her empty stomach that they mustn’t make a spectacle of themselves, even though she wanted to try one of everything. It growled its protest, though thankfully the sound was covered by Holstein’s murmuring to the maid.
Then he looked up, met her gaze, and made her glad she hadn’t already shoved a sandwich into her mouth. “Shall we . . . pray?”
They’d done so last night, but she’d rather thought it because of the formality. Her family only ever remembered to bless the food when they had a lot of it—a rare occasion indeed. Rosemary nodded, but she didn’t bow her head as he did, nor close her eyes. It was more interesting to watch him as he d
id so. To try to find a word for the expression that settled on his face. Comfort? Peacefulness? Satisfaction? None seemed quite right.
“Dear Father. We thank you . . . for this food.” He looked perfectly at ease as he spoke, those slight hesitations between his words sounding natural. “We ask . . . ask that you bless it, and the hands that have . . . prepared it. Grammy and Kerensa and Mrs. Teague.”
Did he always pray for the servants? Did he mean it as he did? Rosemary traced a finger along the edge of a button. He’d actually named them, each person who had participated in this meal. Had anyone ever prayed for her by name?
If so, she was unaware of it.
And really, she doubted it. Who would? Pauly, perhaps. But he wasn’t a man given to religion. And his wife, if she prayed for them, would have prayed that they be removed from her life.
“Be in the midst of our conversation and . . . and show us your ways. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
Rosemary murmured an echoing amen. It didn’t matter if anyone had prayed for her. Perhaps God heard people like Peter Holstein—perhaps—but He certainly didn’t show any indication of hearing people like her. So why should anyone waste their breath?
She gave her host a small, meaningless smile and followed his lead in whether to pick up the sandwiches with her hands or use a utensil. Not that she could think of why society marks would use a fork for a sandwich, but she had seen stranger things in their circles.
He didn’t. Just picked up his roast beef, glanced at her once, briefly, and cleared his throat. “Before we b-begin. With your . . . with your questions. You’re not r-really . . . really left-handed, are you?”
She paused mid-reach for her water. Mid-reach with her right hand, blast it all. She really should have thought that lie through better, or committed to it more fully. Hadn’t she noted plenty of times how Pauly did everything backward, aside from writing? Her breath eased out. “Forgive me, Mr. Holstein. It’s just that I know my script is atrocious, and that it oughtn’t to be. I learned, you see, from a man who is left-handed but was forced to learn with his right. Pauly.”
Holstein lifted a brow that asked, with no need of words, And who in blazes is Pauly?
She sighed. “He’s my . . .” What? Technically speaking, he wasn’t her anything. She should never have mentioned him. But she had. She replenished the breath she’d sighed out. “He’s my uncle.” It seemed the safest answer. No one would believe that some random pub owner had taken in a bunch of street rats, as much as he was able. And she couldn’t claim he was the father she tended to think of him as, not when she’d just called him by his first name.
Holstein nodded. “Anything . . . anything else y-you’d like to confess?”
She was already failing at her cover? No. He was just shaving off some of the unnecessary parts of it for her, that was all. With a hint of a grin, Rosemary took off her spectacles and tossed them to the table. “I don’t really need those. Just thought they made me look the part.”
Holstein’s lips twitched too. “Is th—that all?”
All she had a mind to admit. Rosemary nodded. “Sorry to have lied about anything, sir. It’s just . . . it’s difficult enough to find a position in this field as it is, being a woman. And I’ve all those mouths to help feed.”
He nodded again and narrowed his eyes with seeming consideration at her . . . shoulder? “What of . . . what of your parents?”
Turnabout, she supposed, given that she’d asked him about his. She could lie again. Make up a set of loving parents. But when she opened her mouth, out came, “They’re both dead. Fever.”
“I’m s-sorry.” He set down his sandwich. “R-Recently? Your . . . your youngest sibling is . . . isn’t v-very old.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, when the darkness insisted on an echo of itself. Felt again that confusion of stumbling into the dingy hall. So thirsty, her skin crusted with sweat that had poured off her, had dried there. Hadn’t been sponged away by a loving mother. That dread of leaning into the doorway of the main room in their flat, the one that doubled as her parents’ room, and smelling something she couldn’t name. And yet knew was death.
She’d been eight that day. And a week later, scrounging through rubbish bins, she’d been ancient. “It seems like yesterday. And a century ago.” Always there, too clear. Always distant, beyond her reach.
His breath sounded half like a laugh, half like a sigh. “I know ex . . . exactly what you mean.”
She took a drink of blessedly cool water and then a bite of fresh greens while the silence took its own seat at the table. It couldn’t last long, she knew—she had a friendship to create and questions to ask before he shut himself up with the incessant click-clack-ding again. But he was obviously a man who deemed quiet one of his closest friends. If she could appear to be on good terms with it too, perhaps it would recommend her to him.
A minute or two later, he set down his water goblet and cleared his throat. “You . . . you have a l-list, you say?”
“I have, yes.” She drew it out of the pocket it had been nestled in and smoothed it. Drew out the stub of a pencil she’d put in her pocket too. “First from a German title.” She read him the list of names that had been mentioned on the marked page, pausing after each one. To the first, he shook his head. To the second, he informed her he was a German politician fifty years earlier. But when she said, “Hans von Roth,” his brow furrowed.
“Von Roth is . . . is my m-mother’s maiden name. What kind of b-book was this?”
“A history of the Prussian kings before German unification, I believe. Given the von in the name, your mother’s family must have been well positioned—no great surprise, I suppose, that they get a mention here or there.” She made a star beside Hans von Roth, though, and circled the title of the book so she knew to keep it in the stack of books she must read.
Her German was sure to be greatly improved by the end of this assignment.
Holstein looked none too convinced by her logic. “She . . . she always said her f-family led a . . . a quiet l-life.”
Rosemary snorted. “And I said I was left-handed. People lie, Mr. Holstein.”
Silence screamed at her, and she looked up from her notes to see storm clouds swirling in his eyes. Apparently he could accept her falsehoods more easily than he could her truths—at least if it besmirched his vision of his mother.
But people did lie. Denying it didn’t change it. It just made one guilty of lying to oneself.
She returned his silent storm with a lifted brow.
The muscle in Holstein’s jaw bunched up, then released when he opened his mouth again. “It c-could be a different . . . a different von Roth.”
On a page marked by his father or grandfather? Wouldn’t it be infinitely more logical that they’d marked it because it was the name of his mother’s family? She said nothing. If he liked silence so well, let him interpret it as he chose.
“Or . . . or as you say, j-just mention of a . . . a noble f-family.”
“Mm-hmm.” She drew a box around the name too and then added a few more stars.
“Or even . . . even if th—they were involved in . . . in politics. Mother m-may not have known.”
Rosemary reached for the discarded eyeglasses and positioned them back on her nose. At his look of confusion, she gave him a sweet smile. “You obviously prefer not to have to change your understanding of people. Far be it from me to force you to do so.”
She wasn’t sure, for a moment, if he would yell or laugh or just seal his lips into stony silence. Frankly, she wasn’t sure if he knew what he’d do either. But after a pulse, his face relaxed, and amusement kindled in his eyes. “You’re . . . you’re very c-clever, aren’t you?”
It shouldn’t have warmed her. But she couldn’t quite help that her smile went genuine. “Not the word most often chosen, sir. But I’ll take it.”
He chuckled, ate a bite of his sandwich, and pointed back to her list.
She read off the names from t
he next book . . . and made a mental note that Peter Holstein appreciated wit. And was, in fact, willing to be open-minded when someone called him on being the opposite.
It was more than she could say for most people, she supposed.
Nine
Peter may have finished his food fifteen minutes before, but he was still chewing on the conversation as he and Miss Gresham meandered down the hall toward the study and library. She was still chattering about the sheer volume of books in there and his need for more shelves somewhere if he meant to keep them all.
He let her chatter. He’d send a note to Mr. Teague when he got back in his office, asking who, either at Kensey or in the village, could outfit one of the unused rooms into a secondary library. But until he had an answer on the matter, there was little point in wrapping his tongue around unnecessary words. At least not when she was capable of filling the silence all on her own.
Besides, it wasn’t shelves he really cared about just now. It was the presence of the name von Roth in that book. They couldn’t know, of course, until someone had read it what it really meant, if anything. It could be explained by any one of the reasons he had listed. It could. Heaven knew there were plenty of von Roths in the world, and Hans was by no means a unique name either . . . even if it was his own middle name, in honor of his maternal grandfather. It could still be entirely coincidental.
Or it could be that his mother had painted him an incomplete picture when she described her family as one that enjoyed a quiet country existence, never venturing into public life.
“I do have to wonder . . .” Miss Gresham paused, drawing his attention to the fact that they’d reached their respective doors. Her brows were lifted, implying a question he hadn’t heard. Or perhaps one that was forthcoming, as she continued with, “What are you reading for entertainment these days, Mr. Holstein?”
“Ah.” He rarely read when he was this close to a deadline—not fiction, anyway. It was too easy to get distracted with someone else’s story. Or compare himself to them. Always dangerous. “I am . . . I am between b-books at the moment. But . . . but I promised you Mel . . . Melville. I c-can get it for you.”
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