The Art of Inheriting Secrets

by Barbara O'Neal

  “So random,” he said from behind me. “Some rooms are completely wrecked, and others look as if someone just stepped out.”

  I nodded.

  “This is one of the spots that is supposed to be haunted.”

  “It is really cold,” I commented, half-flippantly. “Who’s the ghost?”

  “A girl who jumped from the gallery.” He pointed to an opening three stories up.

  “These must be the towers then, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why did she jump?”

  “It’s always love, isn’t it?”

  “Hmm. I guess it is.” I stared upward at the shadowed gallery, where once minstrels might have played. I imagined a girl so distraught that she would jump to her death on these tiles, and a shiver walked up my spine.

  My leg was starting to ache in the cold, and I wished suddenly that my mother was here to tell these stories, share her history with me. “How do you know so much about it?”

  “If you grow up in the village, you know all the stories.” He moved, circling a pile of what looked like rotted magazines, and looked upward. “It’s drawn me since I was a child. It just seems sad, doesn’t it? Like it wants to be set free.” He gave me a quick smile. “Uncursed.”

  That sore spot in my chest ached again. “I thought my mother was from a small, awful place. Industrial. She didn’t like to talk about her life in England, and I—” I sighed. “I thought it was because she’d run away from some grimy place.” I shook my head. “I can’t believe she never said a word about this.”

  “You should come talk to my dad. There were some things that happened here, back when everyone left, but I don’t know all of it. He was around then.”

  “How old is he?”

  His mouth turned down, and again he touched the hair on his chin. “Sixty-seven?”

  My mother had been sixty-six when she died. “I wonder if they knew each other.”

  He gave a soft chuckle. “Of course they did. Have you seen the size of the town?”

  “Good point. But they would have been in—different circles, right?”

  “Of course, but remember, our grandmothers were great friends.”

  “Were they?”

  “Yes. They were girls together in India.”

  A vast well of sadness came over me. “I don’t even know her name.”

  He only looked at me with his great dark eyes, his mouth sober. It was somehow comforting.

  From the corner of my eye, I caught some movement, which raised the hair on my neck until I whirled to see a cat sitting on a stair about halfway down. He was a big, very furry black and white, with one torn ear.

  “Hullo there,” Samir said. “Shouldn’t you be chasing mice?”

  The cat only stared down at us with big gold eyes. “My mother painted a cat like him into all of her paintings,” I said, and the words came out on a rough note.

  His hand touched my shoulder kindly. “There’s a whole troop of them. Barn cats.”

  “I think this one would call himself a house cat.”

  The cat didn’t seem at all afraid. His big fluffy tail flicked up and down, up and down. Suddenly winded, I leaned on the newel post, which was carved to a height well over my head. “Maybe we should save the rest of the exploration for another day. I need to get somewhere warm and prop my leg up.”

  “Absolutely.” He offered his arm. For a minute, I hesitated, feeling elderly and foolish in my doddering almost-forty-ness. But his ease gave me ease, and I stepped up to take his elbow. We made our way back the way we’d come, speaking little.

  “Overwhelming, is it?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  We were in the kitchen and could see Tony and Rebecca standing by the truck. Samir paused. “Be careful with those two.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He paused. “Just beware. Not everyone is happy about your arrival.”

  I gave a short laugh. “By ‘not everyone’ you mean no one.”

  “Mostly.” He gave a rueful little grin. “May as well know it.”

  “Thanks.”

  He faced me, hand spread across his chest. His eyes glittered. “I, however, am as trustworthy as a Boy Scout, as loyal as a dove.”

  Was he flirting with me? He stood ever so slightly closer than he might have. Close enough I could smell the rain in his hair and realized how very broad shouldered he was.

  I bowed, hands together in prayer. “Thank you, young sir.”

  “Not so young,” he said, and I looked up in surprise, but he was already ambling out.

  Silly, but it lifted my spirits. It had been ages since anyone flirted with me at all, much less a man with eyes like a night sea.

  Hearing myself, I rolled my eyes. He was much too young for me, and that was slightly embarrassing in itself. There was also the fact that I had a fiancé back home.

  On the stoop, he waited. “Let me give you my mobile. If you fancy trying a tour another day, you can ring me.”

  It was entirely businesslike. I typed the password into my smartphone and opened my contacts list. Matter-of-factly, he typed his name and number in, then handed it back.

  “Thanks,” I said, but he was already heading for the truck, moving in that loose-limbed way some tall men have, as if there were no actual bones, only muscles and grace.

  Jet lag was about to make a fool of me. Time for a nap.

  The rain began again in earnest in the late afternoon. Exhausted and emotional, I ate in my room for a second evening, curled up by the fire in a blanket, sipping tea and pulling up everything I could find on the internet about the estate. Wikipedia had a solid entry, much to my surprise.

  The photo was one from an earlier era, on a sunny day. The house shone bright gold against a bucolic sky, with poplars leafed out around it.

  Rosemere Priory dates back to the eleventh century, when it was a monastery and famous medicinal garden. When the monasteries were dissolved by Henry VIII, the land was awarded to Thomas Shaw, and the title of Earl of Rosemere was created. The earl built a grand Elizabethan house on the site, which still stands. The holdings, with orchards, farmland, a lake, and a river, were extremely well positioned, and the family thrived for over a hundred years, when the estate was lost to Parliamentarians in the civil war.

  After the war, Lady Clarise Shaw, a great beauty who was rumored to be a mistress of Charles II, petitioned the king for the restoration of the estate. The king agreed, provided she married a man of his choosing, and she countered with the caveat that the estate could always pass to a woman if there was no immediate male issue. It has stayed in the family ever since, for four hundred years, until it was mysteriously abandoned in the 1970s.

  These paragraphs were followed by a genealogy of the earls—and in some cases, the female heirs of the place—from 1555. Their accomplishments and additions to the house were noted. The medicinal gardens of the monks, which Samir had mentioned earlier, had been maintained throughout the centuries, and I made a mental note to explore them. Another ancestor, the sixth Earl of Rosemere, created the Georgian-era gardens and began to fill the conservatory with plants from his explorations.

  It pained me that both were now in shambles.

  The modern entries in the genealogy were George Shaw, twelfth Earl of Rosemere, 1865–1914. Probably died in the war, I guessed. Next was Alexander Shaw, 1892–1941, maybe another war death.

  The final three were Violet Shaw, Countess of Rosemere, 1917–1973; and Roger Shaw, fourteenth Earl of Rosemere, 1938–disappeared 1975. Presumed dead.

  The last entry was Caroline Shaw, Countess of Rosemere, 1951–present day. Whereabouts unknown.

  For a long time, I sat with the tablet in my lap, staring at those bald, strange facts. I could edit them. Add my mother’s death. My own name, Olivia Shaw, Countess of Rosemere.

  Instead, I went to Google and typed in “Caroline Shaw, Countess of Rosemere.” The first entry was Wikipedia, the same one I’d been on for the house. Not m
uch else, but a line of images marched across the top of the page, and I raised my finger, hesitated, and clicked the images link.

  And there she was, my mother, younger than I’d ever known her. A delicately built teenager in a pencil skirt, laughing with a crowd of other teens. In a party dress with her hair swept up, almost certainly on the steps of the house, with that cathedral window behind her, a suave-looking man on her arm. In another, this one close-up, she looked coy and knowing at the camera, her eyes lined in a cat eye that was so recently back in fashion.

  I didn’t even realize tears were pouring down my face until they splashed on my wrist. How could she have left all of this behind and never told me a single thing about it?

  Overwhelmed, I shut the tablet and flung off the blanket. What I needed was a bath and a novel that would take me away.

  My cell rang. I glanced at the clock, which showed nearly ten, and considered letting it go to voice mail, but when I glanced at the number, I saw that it was my Realtor in San Francisco. “Hi, Nancy.”

  “Olivia! I’m sorry to call so late. Is this all right? I just have a bunch of news and wanted to talk to you as soon as possible.”

  I sat back down. “No, it’s fine. What’s up?”

  “I have an amazing offer on the house.”

  “But it’s not for sale yet.”

  “No, not technically. But this buyer has had her eye on the house for more than three years, and she would really like to settle with you before it goes to market.”

  I closed my eyes, thinking of the kitchen where I’d eaten my breakfasts as a child, where my mother had made her endless pots of tea. “What’s the offer?”

  “Three point two.”

  The number pinged around my brain, impossible and ridiculous for a breathless moment. When I found my voice, I croaked, “That’s insane.”

  “It is a lot of money, but in this market, it’s not at all uncommon. This neighborhood is highly prized.”

  “You think I should take it.”

  “No, actually. This makes me more eager than ever to take it to market. It might go for even more.”

  “What about all of my mother’s things?”

  “Look, Olivia,” she said gently, “we can leave everything in place when we show it, because you know it will be torn down the minute the sale goes through. But wouldn’t you rather everything be safely tucked away in a nice, climate-controlled storage unit? Then it will be safe, and you can go through it at your leisure.”

  I felt airless, exhausted. “Maybe.”

  “It’s your call. I do not want to rush you, and honestly, this lot is going to sell for a great price no matter when we put it up for sale.”

  Three million dollars. Three million, two hundred thousand dollars. That was life-changing money. Winning-the-lottery money.

  In my mind, I heard my mother’s sensible voice say, “Be practical, darling.” She said it so often it was engraved on my brain. She would want me to make the deal, give myself the possibilities the money would offer.

  “Put it on the market,” I said, “but you’re going to have to give my mother’s gallery a few days to get over there and get the paintings and drawings out. Not taking any chances on that.”

  “Done. Do you want me to handle it?”

  “No. I will.”

  “All right, I’ll await your direction.”

  “And, Nancy, I don’t want you to talk to Grant about this. Communicate with me directly.”

  “No problem. You’re the boss.”

  I hung up and looked up the other numbers I needed. Within twenty minutes, I had arranged for the removal, packing, and storage of all of my mother’s work at the gallery warehouse, safely away from . . .

  Hmm. From Grant. He’d always been so avid for her paintings, dreaming of hanging them in our apartment. Some of them were quite valuable, and I would probably sell a few. But not yet.

  Suddenly, I thought of the triptych she’d done, three gigantic paintings in a mysterious wood, so layered with detail that much was hidden until you looked deeply. I wondered if there might be secrets hidden in those paintings. I called the gallery back and asked for prints of them to be sent to me here, along with her oldest sketchbooks. It was a hunch. Maybe I could piece together her secrets if I looked at that material through the lens of all this new information.

  I looked out the window at the edge of a thatched roof illuminated by a streetlamp, my head spinning. What next?

  Chapter Four

  Three days later, I finally had an appointment with Jonathan Haver. The time in between had been quiet, which turned out to be good for me. I wrote two essays for Egg and Hen, one an ode to M. F. K. Fisher and eating some simple food alone, the other, more researched and nuanced, on the venison stew.

  I also sent my publisher, the man in charge of my fate, a note.

  Dear David,

  You will not believe the twilight zone I’ve fallen into—it turns out that my mother was heir to an estate in England, and I’ve traveled here to see what I can do to settle everything. Hope to be finished in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I’ve been thinking there might be some benefit to the magazine—maybe a series of essays on English food and cooking, keying in to the Anglophilia that’s all the rage. I’ve attached a couple of essays I’ve written this week as examples of what I have in mind. Maybe an entire English (British?) issue? The idea is still shaping up, but maybe follow the seasons or the various cultural influences . . . ? Would love to discuss when you have a moment.

  You’ve been very patient with this long, strange trip I’ve been on (cue the Grateful Dead), and I promise I’m working on ways to make it up to you.

  Olivia

  The rest of the time, I lazed around reading novels I found in the hotel common room, forcing myself not to dig into more about the house or the family. After the previous hard months, my soul and body were tired.

  The weather was still horrible, either rainy, wet from the rain, threatening to rain, or foggy. That morning, it was the last, so I bundled up in a pink wool sweater that was one of my favorites, with fleece-lined leggings beneath my jeans and wellies, which were the only practical shoe in such conditions, then headed for the bakery I’d been meaning to visit since my arrival.

  The street was empty. Fog eddied around lampposts, drifted down alleyways, obscured and revealed a shop front here, now gone. The butter cross loomed like an ancient pagan monolith, and I glimpsed a car making its slow, careful way down the street. The idea of driving in such weather made me shudder.

  A scent of coffee and fresh cinnamon rolls hung heavily in that thick air, a nearly visible lure to the bakery. I followed it into the shop with a growling stomach. A bell rang over the door as I entered.

  Within, the place was bustling, most of the tables were occupied, and a line snaked around a glass case filled with pastries and breads. A woman behind the counter called out, “Hello! It looks like a long line, but it goes fast.”

  “I’m not in any rush,” I said, and the woman in front of me turned around.

  “American.” She wore a brushed wool coat and expensive leather boots, obviously on her way to work. I wondered where. Surely not in this village.

  “Guilty,” I said, smiling.

  “Leave her alone, Alice,” the woman said behind the counter.

  “I wasn’t going to—”

  “Yes, you were. Next!” The baker was tall, with rangy limbs and raggedly cropped gray hair. A capable sort, my mother would have said. When I made my way to the front of the line, she said, “Hello, love. What sweet thing would you like for breakfast this morning?”

  “A pot of tea,” I said, “and whatever that is.” I pointed to a beautiful dark-glazed pastry.

  “A chelsea bun.” She called out the order over her shoulder, then leaned over the counter toward me. “I’ll bring it out to you in a trice. We’re nearly done with the commuter rush.”

  “Thank you.” I paid, then turned toward the room, looking for a s
eat, and realized that several patrons were staring at me. Openly. I flushed, feeling alternately alarmed and shy. Keeping my head down, I made my way to a two top next to the wall and looked out toward the window. The murmur of conversation stuttered back to life, then rolled into a predictable, comforting rise and fall. When I glanced around surreptitiously, they’d all gone back to their phones or companions or even a newspaper or two. My shoulders eased.

  The baker brought a tray with my tea and pastry, along with a mug of coffee. “Do you mind if I join you for a moment?”

  An odd request from a stranger, a thought that must have showed on my face, because she said, “I knew your mother, long ago.”

  “Oh!” I gestured. “Join me.”

  “I’m being cheeky because I can,” she said, sliding into the open seat. “I’m Helen Richmond, and I own the bakery. You are Olivia Shaw, the new Countess of Rosemere.”

  “Yes.”

  She inclined her head. “You have your mother’s grace.”

  A sharp sting of tears burned the back of my eyes. I swallowed. “Thank you. How did you know her?”

  “We took painting classes together.”

  “You’re a painter too?”

  “I dabble now and then. Never like Caroline. Did she end up doing anything with it?”

  “Yes.” Emotion made it hard to speak for a moment. I had not ever met anyone who’d known her as a young woman. Focusing on my tea, stirring in sugar, then milk, I found calm and had to smile at the power of tea. “She did very well, actually. Illustrated children’s books as well as painting her own work.”

  “Children’s books! Lovely.” Her eyes were a clear, light blue. “Was she happy in America?”

  Happy? She had always been so private, so utterly practical about things, that happiness would have been superfluous. “She seemed to be. Her paintings were very successful, and she had her friends and me.”

  “Your father?” She sat straight up. “Sorry. Too far?”

  “No. I’m glad to talk about her.” I sipped the hot, strong tea. “He died when I was a child. I don’t really remember him.”

  “More tragedy. I’m so sorry.” Her face showed genuine regret, a bowed head. “She didn’t have the happiest childhood, you know.”