A Name Unknown

by Roseanna M. White

  But then, many a gent found it to be great fun, tearing down the streets in their overpriced vehicles, heedless of whom they might nearly run over.

  If she were mistress at a place like this, she’d sell off the carriages and have an auto, to be sure. One she could crank herself, so she didn’t have to bother the staff about it every time she had a whim to head to the village. So they wouldn’t have to plan so far in advance on days they were out.

  The carriage, filled with laughing servants, headed down the drive.

  Rosemary pushed the book farther onto the table and stood. She was already dressed for their outing—a walking dress, sturdy shoes, hat in place. Her presence in the house wouldn’t be questioned—Grammy had instructed her to come and get her breakfast from the sideboard in the dining room on Sunday mornings, as Mr. Holstein did, at her leisure.

  Holstein had already gotten his—she’d watched him through the window. So she ran little risk of running into him. He’d be buried in newsprint, in another world.

  He was always, it seemed, in another world. A German one? Was it full of secrets and lies and treason?

  She slid out of her door, shutting it more quietly behind her than she really needed to do. Her handbag was looped over her wrist, her essential tools resting, as always, in the bottom. Just in case the attic door was locked.

  The fog took on a glow as she hurried along the path, determined sunshine turning it golden and beautiful. She paused for just a moment beside the wilds of the garden to take it in. To just breathe. To wonder a bit at such beauty, full of growing things and rocks and clear skies rather than glistening gold and jewels and other valuables easily lifted.

  It was another world here. One far enough removed from London that sometimes she wondered how they could both exist a mere few hours apart by train.

  But they did. And while Cornwall seemed to inch along through time at its own pace, it didn’t stop things from hurtling forward in London. Rosemary had just yesterday gotten a note from Retta letting her know that she, Lucy, Cressida, and Jory had had to move again—some investigator had been nosing around, and as Retta had just fenced a rather distinctive box inset with gold, it had seemed wise. She’d sent along their new direction.

  Rosemary frowned to think of it as she started moving again toward the kitchen door. They’d gone farther from Pauly’s than usual this time. What they could find, Retta had said. But none of them liked it. They always kept three cheap flats—two for the girls and one for the boys—so that they could be nimble and move when necessary, and so as not to gain undue notice from any of the neighbors, who would surely note a family of twelve who looked nothing like each other. But they tried to keep those three flats within a street or two of each other, so they could pool their resources.

  Blast it all, but it felt wrong to be here, safe and well fed and in a giant “cottage” all by herself, when her family was struggling as usual in what hovels they could find in the city.

  But Olivia seemed a bit better, Retta had said. That was something. They’d had to take her back to the hospital, but only for a day, so they were doing all right in terms of funds. Thanks to that advance from Mr. V.

  From whom she’d also gotten a letter this week, which had made her palms go damp. Oh, the name on the envelope had been a private library in London—one of the ones for whom she had supposedly worked previously—but she’d known the moment she saw it that it was Mr. V.

  He’d only asked her if she needed anything else. And, if so, to write to him.

  But it had felt like someone looking over her shoulder. Breathing down her neck.

  She slipped into the kitchen and barely spared a sniff for the scents of breakfast. She hadn’t time for that. Easing the door silently shut behind her, she toed off her shoes and carried them as she tiptoed out into the hall, heading away from the master’s part of the house. Toward the back stairs, up them as silently as the old boards would allow. There was an occasional squeak, but they wouldn’t be heard from Holstein’s study—she had verified that already.

  Sunlight staked its claim on the windowpanes she passed, making a bit of anxiety ease as she climbed ever upward. There were windows in the attic, so it wouldn’t be too dark up there to see, even though there was obviously no electricity, given the lamp Holstein had had with him that night.

  At the end of the hall, she opened the narrow door that revealed crude dark steps going up. This was as far as she’d gotten last time, when she’d found that page of gibberish. Today she eased the door shut behind her and padded her way up. A bit of sunlight beckoned her forward, out of the too-dark passage.

  She’d explored a dusty old attic or two in her day. Once to find a valuable stored there that supposedly belonged rightfully to the bloke who’d hired her to poke around his cousin’s house—she had her doubts about the “rightfully” part, but he’d paid up front, so who was she to judge? And then a few times to fetch things for landladies with aching knees . . . and abundant laziness. She’d seen her fair share of draped furniture, old steamer trunks, and boxes of things that could only be termed rubbish.

  She ought to have known that the Holstein attic would put them all to shame.

  Standing at the top of the stairs, she set down her shoes and whimpered. It wasn’t just the decades-old furniture one would expect, or the requisite trunks. It was the boxes. The boxes upon boxes upon boxes. And if the few little corners of yellowed-white sticking out of them here and there were an accurate indicator, they were all filled with papers.

  Blast it to London and back again. Someone needed to teach these people how to burn a letter when they were done with it.

  Well, she couldn’t tackle the whole family’s stored correspondence just now, though heaven knew it might be useful if she had endless days or an army to help her. She must focus on Peter Holstein. And Peter Holstein had put a box onto a shelf by the window.

  One of the windows, anyway. There were eight of them, going the whole length of this extensive attic room, and shelves set up almost as false walls between them, cordoning off the room into eight near-chambers. At which had she seen him? She had to close her eyes, picture it again, flip the image to make it right.

  Third from the right side, she thought. Though it had been the only window lit up—no doubt thanks to those shelves blocking the light from the others—so she wasn’t entirely sure of her count. It could have been the fourth. Or the second.

  There were certainly boxes upon those shelves that looked like the ones that had been in the library. But then, there were boxes on every shelf that matched the description. She pulled out one at random and tipped up the lid, pulling out a handful of papers from the very front.

  Letters, and they were addressed to Peter. Staying near the window for its light but out of view of the ground outside, she sat down on the floor and flipped the pages to see who they were from. Several of the addresses matched those on the letters she’d thumbed through last week. Most of the names were unfamiliar to her—though they all sounded English—but a few stood out. Namely because she’d spotted them on the bookshelves in the cottage and knew them from Barclay’s conversations.

  Authors. He apparently wrote to many of them, and they wrote back to him. But not in the way she would have expected—these letters, as she glanced through them, didn’t seem to be the typical response to a fan who had asked for an autograph.

  I cannot thank you enough for that timely prayer. It got me through a dark patch last month

  I need your advice, Peter, if you’ll give it. What is a man to do when all he thought he believed seems like so much rubbish?

  But faith can’t be as simple as you say. If there is indeed a God in heaven, it is ridiculous to think Him involved so fully in the lives of man. If He were, our world would not be so in ruins.

  Careful to keep them in their proper order, Rosemary read through the missives, her chest going tight. They all hinted at what Peter Holstein’s words had been—and those words all aligned with the
ones he’d been writing to her every day. Words about God, about Jesus, about faith. Prayers. Thoughts. Questions.

  For the life of her, she couldn’t reconcile those words with the thought that Peter Holstein was a traitor to England.

  Unless . . . unless he thought it the right thing. Unless he thought Germany in the moral right.

  Her fingers went still after flipping another page. The royal seal again. The same letter she’d seen in the library? No, this was longer. And not in the same hand, she didn’t think. She turned it over, hunting for a signature.

  Edward David

  But that meant . . . that meant Prince Edward.

  She had to force herself to read it. Because while it was arguably the most important correspondence for her to snoop through, it was from the prince. She was prying into the personal messages of the prince. It didn’t seem right. Wasn’t right. But necessary, wasn’t it? Drawing in a deep breath, she skimmed over the opening paragraph with the usual greetings and dived into the meat of the letter.

  Prince Edward, it seemed, struggled with his father’s expectations of him. And had received, apparently, some advice from Mr. Holstein that was “sound enough in theory, but impossible to implement.”

  Her lips turned up as she read the prince’s rather colorful explanation of why he couldn’t be the same sort of heir that Victoria’s children had been, and Edward’s in turn. His script was elegant and tidy, yes. And his sentences as well put together as any in Hollow’s novel. But somehow, in Prince Edward’s words, she saw . . . a normal young man. It could have been Georgie complaining of Barclay’s iron fist. Or Barclay himself, railing at the unfairness of something Pauly had insisted on. A strange thought indeed, that the heir apparent of the throne of England had anything at all in common with a thief in one of its streets.

  She pulled out the cheap little watch she’d found in an alley three years ago and checked the time. Half-gone already. Muttering, she replaced those letters carefully and pulled out another box. She hadn’t the time to read each and every letter—she must find the ones Holstein had come up here to read.

  More of the same. But these, at least, bore more recent dates than the first box she’d pried into. Still, she didn’t really mean to do more than glance at a few to see who they were from. But one grabbed her attention.

  It was in German, unlike the rest. She flipped to the end, frowning at the signature. Christof Holstein.

  He had family still in Germany.

  Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise her—what, after all, were the chances that he didn’t have family still in Germany, when he was only the second generation to have lived his whole life in England? But still.

  She flipped back to the beginning and read. Frowning most of the while. Most of the letter was just a chat, it seemed, about aunts and uncles and cousins. But there, at the bottom of the first page, was something different. She ran a finger under the German words, translating softly as she went.

  “‘Oma asked me to thank you again for . . . Verlängerung.’ What is that?” She skipped ahead a few words for context. And frowned all the more. Miete she had come across before. It meant rent, she was sure. But why would this Holstein’s grandmother want to thank Peter Holstein about the rent?

  Her chest went tight as she kept reading. There was no mistake. Mr. Holstein had apparently granted someone an extension—that must be what Verlängerung meant—on rents due to him.

  He didn’t just have family still in Germany. He had property.

  Mr. V would be pleased.

  Buoyed at what could only be termed progress, Rosemary put that letter back and kept flipping. More royal letterhead caught her eye next, this one signed Geo. The king. And his bold scrawl proclaimed, God must have been smiling on me the day He led our paths to cross. I value your advice beyond measure, Peter. If ever a letter she ought to spend some time on . . . but oh, how she wished she had the one Holstein had written first. Though this was intriguing enough.

  My grandmother raised her children with a rigid set of ideals, of expectations. How, then, can it be that their children have ended up in such diverse places? Wilhelm is my cousin—my first cousin. Closer by rights to me than almost anyone here in England. But you’re right. His focus is very different from my focus. His goals opposed to my goals. I don’t want to wage war against my flesh and blood. But again, I fear you’re right—that there are loyalties that run far deeper than blood.

  Her eyes clung to that you’re right. But that implied . . . that implied that Peter Holstein had warned King George away from Kaiser Wilhelm’s policies.

  Which made no sense at all, if he were a traitor. Unless he were the wiliest sort, speaking out of both sides of his mouth. Maintaining ties and property in Germany, then advising the king away from his own German ties. Working so subtly that it would take far more than a couple weeks of watching and reading his correspondence to catch him in it.

  Was he that smart? That sneaky? That good at the covert?

  Rosemary lowered the crisp, thick paper to her lap and stared at the dust motes gleaming in the morning sunlight. What did she really know of this man under whose roof she’d been living? That he detested changes in his routine. That he couldn’t think well when others were talking. That he tended to cling to his preconceived notions. That he enjoyed wit. That he had mountains of correspondence. That he was overly fond of books. That he was a man of great faith. That he shared that faith with anyone willing to read a letter written by his hand.

  That he had a coded language in which he wrote notes, perhaps learned from his father or grandfather. That he spent all the day at a typewriter behind closed doors, and no one but no one knew what he was up to as he filled the room with those clicks and clacks and dings.

  If he was a spy, he was a master at it. And if he wasn’t . . . then what in blazes was he?

  Thirteen

  Peter realized ten minutes into their drive to Marazion that the longest he’d been with Miss Gresham outside his own home was the seven-minute trip to the village and back that first Sunday he’d taken her to church. He realized it because he’d never before really seen her face lit by sunlight rather than electricity. And sunlight changed her look rather startlingly.

  Were she Rosita instead of Rosemary, her skin would be a sunkissed brown from tromping undaunted through the Argentinean wilds. Her hair would be in a constant state of being-put-back-up. Her clothing would be prim at first glance but quickly changeable into an outfit suitable for hiking a trail. But such obvious things were all Locryn had noted about her. He hadn’t observed, because Peter hadn’t observed, how she tilted up her face to the warmth of the sun and smiled. How she drew in the fresh air as if it tasted of honey. How her eyes went wide at each new sight.

  But then, Rosita wouldn’t react so—it was her home she led Locryn James through, not an unfamiliar countryside. These weren’t observations he could put into his book, not for Rosita. These were simply Rosemary Gresham.

  She pointed at a field full of sheep. “How do they keep them there without a fence?”

  His lips twitched up. Anyone from the countryside would know that answer—but she had apparently not been joking when she said she’d never been out of London. “Th—there are . . . are ha-has.”

  The lift of her brows seemed to accuse him of making that up.

  Peter chuckled. “D-Ditches. Dug around . . . around the edges of the p-pastures. The sheep s-stay away from them. But p-people occasionally fall . . . fall in. M-Making their companions say—”

  “Ha-ha.” Miss Gresham rolled her eyes but grinned. “A fitting name, then.” She leaned back against the seat and craned her neck as they entered a wooded section of the journey and the road sank down.

  The earthen walls rose up on either side, the tree branches stretching across the road above them and twining with their neighbors from the other side. He’d always loved the way they made a tunnel, sunlight filtering down through leaves and turning them emerald.

  Miss
Gresham’s eyes darted from place to place, taking it all in. “Bet this road was a favorite of highwaymen, back in the day. Think how easy it would be to hide in those branches and drop down on the roof of an unsuspecting stagecoach.”

  No doubt. “Not un . . . unsuspecting. Th—those drivers were . . . were always w-well armed.”

  “Even so.” As they emerged again from the tunnel, she lowered her head to a normal angle. But her smile didn’t quite fade away, like a child awaiting a holiday. She was lighter out here, away from books and shelves and questions of Holstein and von Roth heritage.

  He wasn’t sure what he thought about that. So he just let her enjoy the day and didn’t object when she kept ruining the bird-chirping silence with other exclamations about what she saw. Few of those exclamations required a response.

  At thirty minutes into their drive, she sat up abruptly, eyes wide, and said, “Oh, I’ve finished it! I told you I’d give my opinion when I did, though I daresay you hardly care what I think about some random book. But all the same, I’ve finished. I would have done so much sooner had Jenny not had me working on her gown.”

  For a moment, Peter’s brows stayed knit. What in the world was “some random book”? Then he realized she must mean This Mad Caper, and his throat went dry. “Ah. You m-mean . . . Hollow’s n-novel?”

  Her nod was energetic, her eyes bright. She turned a bit toward him, tucking back a strand of hair that the wind had whipped into her mouth. “It was great fun—far, far better than Melville.”

  He chuckled, because he couldn’t help it. Even if it was far, far from true. “The c-critics would . . . would disagree.”

  She waved a hand in the air. Dismissive. And loosed a snort no lady would ever let pass her lips in company. “What do critics know? Talk all you want about Melville’s subtextual treatment of the soul and his gaining popularity in recent years, but I’d rather have a nice adventure story any day. Well, any day I can’t get one with a bit of romance.”

  It should make him smile. But it chafed instead. “Well, it isn’t . . . it isn’t all adventure. D-Don’t you think he . . . that he introduced deeper thoughts as well? Through T-Thomas?”