Emily's Secret

by Jill Jones

  “Okay,” she said, turning to look at Matka again. “You win. Yes, I’m…I’m uneasy because of all the horror stories you’ve told me about the curse. But I truly think it’s only a legend. How can such a thing hold power over people’s lives?”

  “Who knows how the spirits work? But I think I have found a way t’ break the spell, once and for all.”

  Selena’s heart skipped a beat. Never had she heard such an idea out of Matka’s usually pragmatic but pessimistic mouth. “How?”

  Matka pulled the worn and tattered piece of paper from beneath the one hand that never moved from her lap anymore. The hand that had cradled Selena’s head while the other stroked it. “The time has come for me t’ give this t’ y’. In so doin’, I be honorin’ Romany law, and as much as it hurts me t’ do it, I also be passin’ along t’ y’ the curse of the line of Mikel Wd. But daughter, there is more,” she said in reaction to Selena’s shaking head. “I also give y’ a way for t’ break the curse.”

  “You’ve always told me there was no way out,” Selena reminded her grandmother, curious at the old woman’s change of mind.

  “Your young man, the one y’ love, holds the key. Here. Take this. Give it t’ him. He can free y’ and all your children and grandchildren t’ come.”

  Selena decided that Matka had truly taken leave of her senses. “What does Alex know about breaking curses?” Her eyes narrowed. “And what does Alex know about this curse, Gran? What have you told him?”

  “I have told him all. And I be tellin’ y’ now, if y’ love him, give him the letter. He knows what he must do.”

  Matka motioned to the crystal ball on the table. “Take that, too, daughter. Y’ll know when to use it. And now, I’m getting hungry. Will y’ wheel me t’ tea on your way out?”

  Chapter 23

  Alex sat behind the wheel of the Jaguar in the parking lot of the nursing home, his heart slamming against his rib cage. He drummed his fingers on the dash, trying to slow his thoughts enough to make some sense of everything that had happened in the last two hours.

  Matka’s tale intrigued him, and his mind reeled when he considered the implications of both the story and the letter he’d caught only a tantalizing glimpse of. If the woman involved was who he suspected it to be, it would be one of the most important literary discoveries of the century.

  He’d been agonizingly disappointed at having to leave that letter behind in Matka’s lap, but that did not hurt nearly as much as being vigorously shown the door twice in one day by Selena. Could he do nothing right?

  “Damn it!” he swore, and struck the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. Sweat trickled down Alex’s back in the warm afternoon as he reviewed his options for the future. As far as Selena was concerned, he doubted he had any. And as for the letter, unless Selena talked her grandmother out of giving it to him, Alex was uncertain what to do with it once he had possession of it. The only thing he was sure of was that if the letter’s existence became known, a flock of literary and mercenary vultures would descend upon it at once.

  That Emily Brontë might have had a lover, or at least a boyfriend, was a continuing topic of speculation among Brontë scholars, especially in connection with the issue of the unexplainable passion in Wuthering Heights. But to date, no one had been able to produce a single shred of evidence to substantiate the notion.

  And now this.

  That not only did Emily have a lover, but that she also became pregnant by him! It was unthinkable. Inconceivable.

  Sacrilegious almost.

  But it was the strongest motive Alex could think of for her to have taken her own life.

  Emily would not have considered suicide immoral, for spiritually she believed that everything was Eternal, and death was simply a doorway back into the One. It would have been, Alex believed, far preferable to her than the alternative—the terrible shame that public knowledge of her predicament would have brought to the family she loved so much.

  And her choice of weapons, willful self-neglect, would have created no suspicion from her sisters. Emily had often used personal deprivation as a means of getting her way. Self-imposed fasting had brought her home from more than one hated boarding school. And it was how she had eased Heathcliff into the hereafter to be reunited with his beloved Catherine.

  Although the thought of Emily taking a Gypsy as a lover sounded at first like an improbably romantic notion, the more he considered it, the more feasible it seemed. Emily, who frequently sought freedom on the moors, could have encountered a roving horse trader. Alex recalled the story of her finding a wounded hawk and nursing it back to health.

  What if she’d found a wounded man?

  She would probably have called a doctor. But there was no record anywhere of such an incident, or at least none that had been found. Perhaps he should have been going through old medical records in Haworth instead of Brontëana.

  However, in Matka’s tale the Gypsy told his father he had been healed by a “Gorgio woman,” not a doctor. Would Emily have had the skill? Alex knew little of Emily’s medical abilities, but he did know that she and her sisters often accompanied Patrick Brontë and most likely the village doctor when they visited the sick.

  Alex ran his hands through his hair, trying to decide what to do next. He desperately needed someone to talk to about all this, to advise him on proper procedures. But who? He wasn’t about to let it out, even among Brontë scholars, that such a document had been unearthed until he could substantiate its authenticity. If he made premature claims only to have it later proven to be a fake or written by someone other than Emily, he could kiss his credibility, and his career, good-bye.

  Not only that, but if it was the real item, it would be worth a bloody fortune. Security became a sudden and real concern. He thought of the wilted, fragile paper lying crumpled beneath Matka’s twisted hands. It was as safe there as anywhere, he supposed, as long as no one knew it existed.

  But if he was lucky enough to convince Matka and Selena to release it, when it came to light he must make certain that it remained in the stewardship of legitimate and reputable trustees who would oversee the stringent forensic and academic analysis it would have to undergo to be proven authentic.

  He knew the academic world only too well. If word of the letter’s existence leaked out, professional jealousy would pit scholar against scholar, school against school, museum against museum, for the privilege of conserving the artifact. Ownership would come into question, although undoubtedly it belonged to Matka at the moment.

  Would she see its historic and literary significance and trust him with it, or would she fall prey to the offers she would invariably receive from representatives of private collectors? If it fell into the hands of the private sector, Alex thought with dismay, it could be lost again to a wealthy collector, who, unlike Henry Bonnell, would likely see no reason to share it with the rest of the world.

  Alex felt almost sick to his stomach at the thought. He must know someone he could trust, someone who, out of respect for the Brontës, would keep Emily’s letter a secret until it was proven to be an artifact.

  If indeed it was Emily’s letter.

  Only one name came to mind.

  He placed a quick phone call, and thirty minutes later Alex rang the doorbell of a stately stone mansion in a prestigious neighborhood in Leeds. A uniformed woman opened the door and ushered him in with a quiet smile.

  “Follow me.” She led him down a wide, mahogany-paneled, portrait-encrusted hallway and indicated for him to enter the parlor. “Ms. Bates is waiting for you.”

  Eleanor Bates stood to greet him. “Come in, Alex. I was glad to receive your phone call.”

  Alex stepped into the intimate, richly appointed room. Oriental carpets adorned polished wood floors. A graceful Chippendale sofa and two side chairs surrounded the marble fireplace, and a tall, ornately carved clock ticked solemnly in one corner. Eleanor was, as always, immaculately groomed, today handsomely dressed in a suit of black and white hound
stooth check.

  He shook her hand. “Thanks for seeing me on such short notice,” he said, feeling his earlier panic subside somewhat. “I have a lot of things…we need to talk about.”

  “Starting with the art collection of one Henry Houston Bonnell?” she replied sardonically.

  Alex looked directly into her magnified blue eyes. “Yes. That, and a whole lot more.”

  “Sit,” she commanded, but her tone had softened. “Would you care for tea? Or perhaps something stronger. I’m having a gin myself.”

  “Gin. Yes, gin, thank you.”

  Eleanor rang a small bell, and the woman who had answered the door stepped into the room. “Two gins, please, Anna. Mine with tonic.” She looked at Alex. “Do you like tonic, or would you prefer it neat?”

  Two neat, Alex wanted to say, but he knew he had to stay in control of his already frazzled wits. “Tonic would be fine.”

  Their drinks served, the door closed behind them, Alex decided to get straight to the point. “About Bonnell’s art collection,” he said, unable to cover a small, self-deprecating grin. “I do owe you an explanation. But I don’t recall giving his name the night I was introduced as, er, someone’s personal representative there at Harrington. How did you know about that?”

  “I had a call from Tom Perkins, the art dealer who represents Selena.” Eleanor sat stiffly in the armchair. Her voice was candid, bordering on impatient, and Alex knew she did not take his misrepresentation as a joke. “He was trying to locate you, or your ‘client,’ Bonnell.”

  “I see. It doesn’t surprise me, although I think Perkins is more interested in the artist than her work.” He laughed bitterly. “I’m sure he has the same designs as I have on Selena. And I’m afraid I may have unwittingly given him the means to discredit me in her eyes.” Alex sipped the gin and leaned forward in the chair. “I did a really stupid thing, although at the time it seemed harmless enough.”

  Then he described his visit to the Perkins Galleries and his first impression that the words in Selena’s paintings resembled the handwriting of Emily Brontë. He told her about the second painting in Haworth, and how he’d ended up at Selena’s studio door in the pouring rain.

  “I never meant to mislead her, but I couldn’t think of any reason she would let me in unless she thought I might be a buyer.”

  “So you told her you were an art agent?”

  “I implied as much, and it was going to stop there, but then she asked me who I represented. I’d just spent days working with the Bonnell Collection, and his name just sort of…popped out.”

  Alex saw Eleanor’s expression thaw, and a smile crept into her eyes. “You didn’t know then that you were going to fall in love with her, or that your little fib would come back to haunt you?” she finished the story for him.

  Embarrassed, he shook his head. Why did everyone keep insisting that he was in love with Selena? But he didn’t bother to deny it to Eleanor.

  “Does she know the truth now?” Eleanor asked.

  “I’ve tried to tell her several times, but either it doesn’t seem like the right moment or something has interrupted us.”

  “So you drove all the way to Leeds to tell me this?”

  “Actually, no. I was here visiting Selena’s grandmother.”

  “Her grandmother? Why would you be visiting her grandmother?” Eleanor was clearly surprised.

  “Well, that’s another long story and the real reason I came to see you.” He looked up at her with a steady gaze. “Ms. Bates…Eleanor, I’m sorry about that foolishness with Bonnell. I don’t know if the end justifies the means, but because of that foolishness, I think I may have come across a significant discovery, possibly the most important Brontë artifact uncovered in our time.”

  He paused, noting the gleam of intrigue he saw in her faded blue eyes. “It is something so incredible it will set the literary world on its ear, or else it is nothing.”

  “My God, dear boy, do go on. What is it you’ve found?”

  Alex leaned back and crossed one leg on top of his knee. He hoped he wasn’t making a mistake in trusting Eleanor Bates.

  “I think I may have come across…Emily’s suicide note.”

  Eleanor rang the bell again. “Another gin please, Anna.” She looked into the open face of the young man who sat in front of her, astounded at what he’d just told her. Not the part where he’d used Bonnell’s name to gain entrance to the artist’s studio. That was relatively understandable.

  And forgivable.

  But the rest. Was he deluded? Reaching so hard for evidence to use against Maggie Flynn in the debate that he was willing to fabricate an even larger lie?

  Or was he telling the truth?

  “What brought you to such a conclusion, Dr. Hightower?” she said, trying to contain her growing excitement. She listened carefully as he expanded on the details and his own interpretation of the possibilities. The more he talked, the more she believed. Then he reached inside the envelope he’d brought along and withdrew what appeared to be several little bits of paper taped together.

  “This is what I was able to piece together on my own from the photographs I took and what I was able to copy from four of her paintings,” he explained, holding the paper to her view. “What caught my attention first was this, the word ‘Keeper.’ Then when I put this together, I recognized the words down there toward the bottom.”

  He laid the piece on the table between them and pointed to the lines. “They are clearly from Emily’s poem Faith and Despondency. Either she wrote that letter, or someone whose handwriting seriously imitates hers used those lines to make their own point.”

  Eleanor frowned. “Have you actually seen the letter? What does it say?”

  Alex nodded. “I saw the letter. I know it exists. But I only got a quick glance at it. But I could tell, Eleanor, I could see that the handwriting was so…tiny and cramped. It looked just like…hers.”

  “Where is the letter now?”

  “The old woman was just about to give it to me when Selena came in and all hell broke loose.” He sighed. “I suppose right now it’s back in a drawer in Matka’s room at the Sunnyside Nursing Home.”

  “Can you get it?”

  “I can try. But if I do, I need your help in protecting it. No one must know it exists until we can examine it and take appropriate steps to prove its authenticity.”

  Eleanor nodded, then saw a frown crease his brow.

  “You already know,” he continued, “that my reputation as a scholar is, shall we say, nontraditional. I can’t afford to have this come to light only to be proven a fake. I’d rather have it turn out to be something totally insignificant, written in the twentieth century maybe by some crazy Gypsy, than to have my peers think that I would stoop to fabricating something just to prove my point in the debate.”

  He paused and looked at her meaningfully. “Maggie would suspect that of me, I’m afraid.”

  Eleanor was nursing her gin as he talked, and at his last words, the glass tilted away from her mouth, spilling several drops of the clear liquid onto the lapel of her suit. Calmly, she brushed them away and looked at Alex.

  “I have a confession to make to you as well before we go on. After I heard about your use of the Bonnell name, I became so perturbed that I called around to check on you. I…I couldn’t imagine a scholar of integrity doing such a thing, you see. Still don’t exactly. At any rate, I learned that you and Dr. Flynn had…known each other before.”

  “We had a brief affair last year when she was in Virginia,” he said, holding her gaze steadily.

  “Yes, so I understand. When I didn’t get a call back from you, I called her. Now, I didn’t tell her exactly what you had done, but I did mention I’d found out you were an art connoisseur, just to see if she would validate that much of the story.”

  She heard him groan and saw him lean back and rub his eyes. She regretted her hasty action now, but there was nothing to be done about it. “I guess we have both told our little w
hite lies lately. Will you forgive me mine?”

  He raised his head and gave her a slow smile, that sexy grin that seemed to be his trademark. “Then we’re even?”

  Eleanor nodded. “For now. But we must decide what to do next.”

  “Maggie mustn’t know about this, not yet,” Alex warned. “She is a top scholar, to be sure, but…”

  “I understand. If this proves out, your theory is set in concrete. There will be no need for the debate.”

  “And if it doesn’t, I don’t want to load any more ammunition as to my lack of credibility into her cannon.”

  Eleanor wasn’t sure why she was so willing to believe Dr. Alexander Hightower, but his story seemed straight. And it would be ever so much to the Society’s benefit if she could steer that letter into its hands rather than let such a treasure wind up, like so many others, in the British Museum.

  “I’ll make a few discreet calls to locate reputable forensic experts,” she said. “But you…it’s up to you to get your hands on that letter.”

  September 15, 1848

  I sent away my love, and since that day, my heart has been as lead. At times I feel physically ill, especially in the early hours of the morning. I find many days I can scarcely face the gruel I must cook for the rest, and this morning I was wretchedly ill in the privy. I must work to overcome this weakness of spirit or I shall lose my vitality altogether. I am coming to understand even more of love. It is the most powerful force in the universe! It removes mortal control, defies convention, and changes destinies. I pray now that Mikel will return next summer, and perhaps if he still wishes to wed, I will consider it. Thoughts of our reunion must sustain me through the lonely days and nights that stretch endlessly in front of me.