The Cornish Secret of Summer's Promise

by Laura Briggs

  "Do you —?" I hesitated, leaving this question dangling without conclusion.

  The color quickly vanished from Brigette's cheeks as quickly as my own had blushed before.

  "Oh no — nothing like that," she said, hastily. "It's only ... I rather wondered at you liking him, given his past. You're quite clever and sensible, I thought ... so I didn't think it could be the case."

  "What about his past?" I hadn't the faintest idea what she was talking about. What past? would be a better question, since Sidney's seemed to be a string of rambling details, bits of forgotten studies, snapshots of random places on the road, and a dash of village life for flavor.

  "You know. The scandals and what not." Brigette's brow wrinkled.

  "Not ... what?"

  "Everyone in the village has heard the stories about Sidney's reputation. The wild sort who pursued all sorts of women, especially who had money," she said. "There was quite a falling out of some kind, and he left university."

  I had never heard any of this before. "Sidney Daniels?" I repeated, with a puzzled smile. "Are you sure it was him?"

  "Quite sure. It's an old story in the village. You've never heard it before?" Brigette was still more puzzled.

  "I never asked." My voice had softened slightly, as if I was sinking inwards. I never asked anybody about Sidney, not even when I first came here. Not even when I noticed the way some people looked at him. "Who told you this?" I asked, and my voice was stronger for this question.

  "Lots of people. Some of them from over Padstow way, where Sidney was before he came here. One of them met a lad from Oxford who knew Sidney from those days. He wouldn't tell the whole story — of course, some of the lot in Padstow had already figured out the failed term at university from Sidney's books and a chance remark here and there — but that lad was the one who told that there was a bad business there involving Sidney's behavior. He had a very poor opinion of Sidney for what had taken place, my friend told me. A bit of a heartbreaker, I think."

  "I see." Rumors and more rumors. I understood now why those looks Sidney received from certain villagers were akin to glares. If even a fraction of this was true, then Sidney really would be a scandal in a small village ... and he would be a very different person from the one I thought I knew.

  "They said he was a clever sort, and quite bright at his studies ... but the wrong sort from the wrong family is the usual in his case, as we all know. He upset someone among the posh crowd, I suppose, and that's how he ended up here." A polite, small sigh followed for this tale of a fellow villager's woe.

  I couldn't believe it. Not Sidney. He was a far cry from what the upper crust at Oxford or Cambridge expected of its successful graduates, but he had never claimed they sent him away on purpose.

  "Of course, he's done nothing of that sort since he came to the village," Brigette added quickly, as if afraid of besmirching Sidney's reputation completely. "He behaved himself ever since, so it might all be in the past. But if you didn't know all the stories, I thought you should. You should be a bit careful about trusting him. No one here really knows him."

  "I have heard there were stories about him." This seemed like all I could say. That I didn't know the details seemed fairly obvious, although I wished I had tried to disguise my reaction a little better. It would seem less naive and foolish — less like someone who was scrambling her defenses against these revelations, for example.

  "He's a charming bloke, and easy to like, it's true," said Brigette. "He's made friends enough since he settled here." She put the last brochure in its place, aligning their corners neatly. "But most girls in the village take his flirting with a pinch of caution — they don't want to end up brokenhearted like the ones before."

  I knew that Sidney had been at university, of course, and that something must have happened to turn him aside from whatever career he had planned to pursue. But I had never imagined this — Sidney's words led me to believe it was the gypsy call of the road that drew him to leave. Surely these stories couldn't be completely true, though I had no evidence whatsoever that could disprove them

  "Maisie? Are you all right?" Brigette sounded concern. " I didn't mean to upset you — I thought you knew some of it, at least. Did I shock you?"

  Those remarks about his 'Lothario' self and his untrustworthy friends were less funny in this light. Had there been many romantic flings? Single ones? Married ones? What sort of scandal involving a clever boy from a lower class would banish him from a prestigious university?

  "No." I shook my head. "No, it's fine. Like I said, I've heard before that there are rumors about him. You just wanted to make sure that I knew." I offered her a smile. "Thank you for being thoughtful."

  "You're welcome," said Brigette. "Oh — Mrs. Finny revised her schedule for the day, by the way. You've been assigned to help wait tables tonight. Janine had a fever, so she's home for the evening."

  "Great." It would spare me from an entire evening of laundry. I went upstairs to change into my uniform, trying not to think too hard all the while about the burden of knowledge now crushing my brain with Sidney's scandals.

  I truly wanted to say it was all impossible, but it wasn't. Everything about Sidney's charming 'devil may care' self seemed more like a conviction of it: daring me to disbelieve this past, the way his gaze sometimes dared me to decipher between simple teasing and the truth. It was all too easy to imagine Sidney breaking hearts and getting into scrapes that would offend the higher echelons. It was on the surface of his character daily, in the spark in his eyes and in his smile.

  Was it possible for someone who could seem to feel as deeply as he did to stop caring just as quickly — leap from passion to passion the way he leaped from subject to subject in his studies?

  But he was only a boy then. Did that make any difference? Sidney never talks about what he was like in those days.

  "Veal parmesan for table three," announced Sam, handing me a plate still hot to the touch. "Mind the heat," he warned me.

  "Table five wants their salad undressed," I reminded him, as I balanced the plate for table six on my other arm, a light pasta salad in vinaigrette.

  "Tell them if they want scandal like that to go over to the Greendale Hotel," said Sam. "We've moral standards when it comes to public nudity."

  "Very funny," I said, although my smile was slightly vacant and mostly false, even though I was trying to remain focused on the present. "Just don't forget."

  "You haven't met all my friends," Sidney reminded me. "Some of them might be quite awful, you never know."

  "Are they Lotharios, thieves, and strangers?" I asked.

  Sidney's smile became lopsided. "Maybe more the manipulative and underhanded types," he said. "It's a special breed that can convince someone to part with treasures based on certain philosophies."

  I had pictured pickpockets, weed smokers, and petty thieves he had met on the road. But they could have been students who persuaded him to join a lifestyle of freewheeling emotional damage and thievery of a more dangerous kind — like answers to exam questions, or liaisons with 'off-limits' romantic partners.

  That wasn't the core of Sidney's character, only a facade — he wasn't really like that, not now. The man I knew wasn't the kind who burned passionate one moment and coldly the next, and he wouldn't be selfish if it would hurt someone else deeply. That was the person I knew and what I believed, even though the grains of truth that seemed to exist in these rumors could not be swept away.

  I placed the veal parmesan before a familiar-looking guest, the woman in white. She was writing in a little notebook, a pair of eyeglasses on a pearly chain slipping low on her nose. At first, she didn't hear me when I announced her plate, then hastened to move aside her work.

  "Sorry, my dear," she said. "Lost in my own little world, wasn't I? I always am whenever I'm alone ... or when I'm with another, truthfully." A thoughtful look for this admission." I suppose I could blame the magic of your charming hotel if I wished, but that would hardly be fair, given
how I behave elsewhere. Take Madrid, for example." This was as far as she was taking Madrid, apparently, making it seem as if I was already privy to this experience.

  "Is your friend not dining with you tonight?" I said. "The guest who arrived at the hotel with you, I mean."

  "Paige, you mean? She left for Penzance this morning, to finish touring Cornwall alone. Crowds bore her silly. She only came with me because she loves the Cornish coast this time of the year. Otherwise, she usually goes to visit her cousins in Kent."

  "I hope you enjoy your time here, since you've decided to stay instead," I answered. "It's a shame she couldn't stay until the opera singer arrived, at least."

  "How did you know that Paige was a fan of Pashma Turner?" she asked. "That's the opera singer to whom you refer, isn't it? Pashma Turner, lately of Verona — supposedly coming to snatch a bit of press by studying the diamonds firsthand?"

  Embarrassment rushed over me, because I had spoken without thinking. "I — apologize for that," I said. "I overheard your conversation at the desk the day you checked in. Your friend was talking about a singer from Verona. I guess it got stuck in my memory." Lots of things did, because my brain had always stored snippets of conversations and bits of everyday color in a mental box as if for safekeeping, even ones involving strangers on the street, or random passers by in shops.

  "Fancy noticing that little remark, or even remembering it at all after two days," said the lady. Thoughtfully, "You have quite a memory — or an eye for life's minute details, either one."

  At least she wasn't offended by my nosiness, which was lucky for me. "Bad habits, both of them," I said, quickly. "I should definitely make a better effort to mind my own business." I collected her salad plate and fork.

  "You're an American, aren't you?" she asked, interestedly. In her little notebook, I glimpsed a pencil protruding, wrapped in old-fashioned decorative paper. Stop spying on people by accident, I ordered myself.

  "What gave it away?" I put on a smile, trying to be my cheerful self again.

  "I think it's splendid, meeting an American working in a Cornish hotel. However you came to be here must surely be a fascinating story. Expatriate experiences are always so romantic." She removed her eyeglasses, then lifted her fork and knife to carve a piece from the breaded cutlet beneath its sauce.

  "Mine is just an ordinary one," I answered. It was an odd one at best, and not for telling to random hotel guests, even with Mr. Trelawney safely tucked in his office upstairs, out of earshot. My heart wasn't in it, anyway — not the nonsense about Alistair Davies and his encouraging letter, or the ludicrous part where I pretended to be someone I wasn't to masquerade as a maid.

  This lady didn't seem like a safe choice of confident for one's personal stories. And she might not want her dinner served by someone with impulsive motivations and questionable judgment.

  Stop thinking those ridiculous thoughts about Sidney. You know him, Maisie. Whatever happened in his past, you know what he's truly like, and you shouldn't think otherwise. So there. I was a good judge of character in the past — I had pegged swiftly that the Sutcliffe family was never going to accept me and my former boyfriend Ronnie as a couple long before Ronnie's weak-willed speech that he and I were doomed. In college, I had detected the insincere friend who only wanted to copy my class notes on days she skipped, and I always knew which coworkers at Fiesta Cafe were only schmoozing me so I would work their shift.

  But it was easy to imagine that smile of Sidney's living on in a heartbroken girl's memory. It was easy to imagine myself becoming her, if Sidney left the village tomorrow.

  "Do you have any soy sauce?" A guest tugged my sleeve as I placed the pasta salad before the neighboring guest at table four. A young blond woman whose American accent was the second one I had heard in so many days, besides that of the Hollywood rep Blane.

  "I'll ask the chef," I answered.

  "Thanks." A house salad was before her, and her tablet's screen held oddly-spaced lines and paragraph blocks. A script, I perceived. This must be the actress. She closed her document, and beneath it was a photo of one of the auction items, a glare on its glass case from a camera flash — she closed the photo app with a quick motion of her finger, tapping her frosted pink fingertips against her silverware afterwards as she waited for her request.

  "Here you are," I said. I placed the bottle on the table. "Are you here for the auction of Lady Von Patterson's estate?" I asked. "She had quite the collection of valuable items, definitely worth seeing."

  "I am." She smiled this time, politely. "I'm looking forward to it."

  "I hope you're a fan of her movies," I added, as I collected her untouched bread plate.

  "One of her biggest," answered the actress. She sprinkled the soy sauce over her salad in place of its dressing.

  The undressed salad belonged to the wealthy collector's representative Thornton, who thanked me politely and began eating with impeccable table manners. He was one of the rare diners who was not texting, reading, or otherwise distracted at dinner — not like his American counterpart, who was still discussing terms regarding the upcoming auction's items and which ones were essential for bidding.

  I picked at my own dinner later that night, a sandwich and a cup of tea as I took a short break during laundry duty. The two Scandinavian laundresses chatted away in Swedish — at least, that's what I assumed it was — as they folded sheets into perfect squares. One of them laughed, and lost track of her end of the sheet, which became a rumpled mass between them until they sorted it again.

  I smeared stain treatment on a smudged porter's jacket, and worked a cleansing solution into the sleeve of one of Ligeia's smocks. I hoped that the English guest from dinner wasn't planning to complain about the chatty American waitress who eavesdropped on guests.

  "Her breath is coming, but only with such a battle that the cost outweighs the gain," she whispered, though none could hear her through the closed wooden door.

  "Where can he be? Did they not say the physician would return directly?"

  "Yes, but he had not his carriage." Ada covered James's hand, which was wringing the arm of his chair with a grip of iron. "When he comes, the hope is but little. We know it well — though it gives pain, it is the truth, and we must try —"

  "Where is he? Why doesn't he come!" The other hand, a fist, struck hard the table's top, and the pitcher of porcelain danced on its edge briefly before it shattered on the floor. A second blow followed, a weaker one, but still full of rage and frustration.

  His face crumpled, features collapsing as his massive frame trembled badly from the pain trapped within him. Ada laid her hand on his shoulder, though he shook it away.

  "We must try to be strong." Her voice, however, could not manage to do so. She could go no further.

  "But I ...

  "But if ...

  "But...

  With a sigh, I stopped typing and gave up on trying to express James's pain in words that were better suited to his character than before. I laid my chin on my folded arms, my eye glancing at the time on my tablet's clock. Four thirty in the morning. Not the witching hour, just a sleepless one for me, despite having morning duty tomorrow.

  I chewed my thumbnail, absently as I tried to decide if something more would come to me creatively. I should change one or two lines of dialogue when Annabel arrives at her sepulcher, which had never quite rung true with the scene's characters' grim despair.

  It would help me if I would stop obsessing over tiny little fragments of my novel that didn't make a true difference to its tale, keeping me from making bigger choices for my work. It wasn't only the jarring truth about the village's rumors regarding Sidney that made my brain so restless, although they were muscling to the front for attention every second I let my guard down. Sidney's words about my writing were equally strong in my head as I struggled with my pages tonight; words reminding me that only I could recognize the next stage of my process.

  That was a much better thought than the rumors circul
ating about Sidney himself.

  I pulled on my dressing gown over my short pajamas and tucked my cell phone in my pocket. I opened my curtains to the pre-dawn world, where silent ships floated on the distant, restless sea. The scent of cool spring air from the early morning as I cracked open my panes.

  If I took Sidney's advice to heart, then I would sort through all of my choices, from least likely to best option. I would walk until the answer sifted itself from the heap, and maybe feel ready for that brave new step when the dawn came. I put on my flip-flops lying beside my book bag and slipped into the quiet hall, after glancing around to make sure no security guards were lurking around by staff quarters.

  All was quiet on the second floor, where guests were slumbering, and the lamps were dimmed to create shadows on the walls. It could be creepy, wandering here in the silence, especially with the soft creaks and groans of the old manor settling around me. I couldn't help but think of scenes from The Haunting, and shivered a little as the hall's floorboards groaned under my feet. No supernatural forces were going to push me down the stairs, but moving silent as a ghost in the shadows makes one think of those scenarios.

  No guests would be on the terrace at five in the morning, so it was a safe place to exit and cross to the steps that descended to the beach. Only I had forgotten about the security team posted outside of the ballroom all night, headquartered in the parlor a few doors down — I paused with my foot on the next to last step of the stairs as I remembered them.

  A soft thud in the distance, a crash that involved something fragile breaking into bits. That wasn't a normal sound for the hotel at this hour, unless the security team was bumping into tables and curios in the dark.

  "Hello?" I stepped into the hall, where the lamps were still bright, making the distant glass door to the terrace a tall, dark window. There was a chair beside the ballroom door, but there was no one sitting in it. The large steel bar that covered its locks was folded back, and the door was faintly ajar, as if the guard had stepped inside for a moment.