Lady Jayne Disappears
Page 33
“We weren’t expecting you this quick. Not at all.” Into the warmth and muted candlelight of the narrow receiving hall Margaret guided me, and then to the dim gallery that needed three stories to properly display our collected portraits and statues. “This room’s the only one with a fire blazing at the moment, miss, but we’ll have that fixed for you.”
I soaked in the warmth of the fire and smiled at this maid who had often created a sense of sunshine in my dreary life over the years, but trouble clouded her sweet face.
“It’s perfectly all right if you haven’t had the tart made yet for my homecoming, you know. We didn’t tell you we were coming.” I peeled off my gloves and removed them, placing them on the stone mantel. “I should like to see Father at once. No, I shall need a thorough cleansing first. I’m afraid I’m wearing half the mud in the forest. Is Father in his study?” My numb fingers fiddled with the buttons of my traveling cloak.
She looked down and attended to the buttons with bustling efficiency. “Let me just help you with that.” She undid the fastenings and tugged off my wrap that was heavy with rain and called for John. She then busied herself with sending the groom on his errand and caring for my poor cloak, avoiding my gaze. Her high little voice seemed higher, more pinched than I remembered. “He’ll have my lady brought up to the house post-haste, miss. Perhaps you’d like tea and a hot water bottle for your feet.” And without awaiting my reply, she hurried through the echoey room and disappeared through the service entrance.
Then the aura of Trevelyan Castle swirled around me, as it always did when I set foot inside its great doors, stilling my bubbling excitement to a sense of awe and pure inspiration for my artist’s heart. The very air seemed clouded with centuries of living, a sense of ancientness, and all the ghosts that went along with it. It was merely a house, yet I couldn’t escape the feeling that the emotions, triumphs, and stories of generations had seeped into the walls and remained trapped there, their essence floating about the rooms.
With a deep sigh, I spun in a slow circle, taking in the familiar portraits on the elaborate gold-and-blue backdrop of the walls, working hard to push aside the worry that insisted on settling around my heart. Margaret had looked tense, burdened.
It was merely her shock at seeing us, wasn’t it?
As I slipped down the stairs after a thorough cleansing and a relaxing toilette, a fresh life had returned to my spirit. I swept into the gold-domed drawing room with the familiar massive furniture and hurried over to Mother, who had begun to recover from her ordeal of waiting in the carriage. A sense of expectancy bubbled to the surface as I entered the familiar space. “Something exciting must have happened for him to call us home and then not even meet us. What do you suppose it is?”
She touched her fingertips to her pale forehead. “Must you be so tiresome? Like a glaring light in one’s eyes. This trip has only made it worse.”
I pinched my lips, knowing she was right. Trapped in town as we had been, all the life inside me had been bottled far too long and it was brimming out. All the amusement and splendor of our social season abroad had excited Mother but utterly suffocated me beyond recognition. But now I was home.
And soon I would have the delightful reunion with Father I’d played out in my head during countless lonely nights spent in foreign beds.
“I need my vials before this headache swallows me utterly. I sent Lucy to fetch them a quarter of an hour ago. Where in heaven’s name could that girl—?”
Crash. Metal banged and clinked on hall tile, echoing through the house, and Mother cast her eyes heavenward with a sigh of longsuffering. “Never mind.”
My unfortunate lady’s maid, Lucy, peeked around the door, her frizzy hair framing the wide-eyed face with tiny heart lips pursed to hold back a flood of ready excuses and apologies.
Mother waved her in with barely veiled impatience. Even though she never lowered herself to outright anger, no one failed to miss the disapproval of Trevelyan’s mistress. “Did you bring my vials?”
“I have them here.” The girl hurried in and handed her the case with a quick curtsey. “Also, tea will be a bit delayed.” She dropped her gaze.
“Of course it will.” Mother bestowed a restrained smile upon the girl as she accepted the vials. “Perhaps you should confine yourself to the back halls while the other servants are about.”
In a beat I stepped forward and inserted myself into the incident. “How wonderful of you to protect Mother’s vials in the collision with the tea cart. Not a one is broken, and that is admirable.” I caught the girl’s eyes and flashed an encouraging, conspiratorial smile upon her, for our friendship had been forged from the plights of our common adversary. Another curtsey and the dear, pitiable Lucy hurried away with her head down and her fingers desperately picking a handkerchief from her belt to absorb her tears as soon as she was out of sight of the one who had caused them.
Still restless and haunted by the pallor that had touched Margaret’s usually rosy face, I crossed the room to stand in the dying amber light cast through the tall windows. Would he come from the vineyard or from somewhere in the house? I didn’t want to miss the first sight of Father. “It’s been many months. Do you think he’s changed a great deal?”
“In six and twenty years of marriage he hasn’t had the good sense to change yet. Why ever would he start now?”
The words pinched my heart. “Oh, Mother. Can’t you at least try to like him? He adores you so.” If only she knew how lucky she was. Perhaps I too was on the threshold of such affection from him, now that we were home.
Finally the door slid open and our housekeeper scurried in with a fresh teacart.
“Margaret, where is my husband?” Mother spoke from her graceful lounging position on the settee, her voice whisper-soft as if even the effort of speaking drained her tired soul.
Margaret turned up the teacups and poured, nervous eyes darting about, her pleasant face lined with worry. “Amos will have to tell you the news, my lady.”
Mother straightened against the floral tapestry, her elegant head tipped with sudden concern. “What? What is it? Has he had a misfortune?” Her eyes darted about. “I knew something had happened when I saw the raven. And then the branches that formed a great X . . .” She turned to me, then back to the housekeeper, speaking in a strangled, desperate whisper. “He’s lost everything, hasn’t he?”
“No, my lady, it isn’t that.” Margaret nudged the poor butler forward with her elbow. “Amos will tell it.”
“I . . . I wouldn’t know how to say it.” Amos’s long fingers worked around the empty tray he carried as he faced us.
“Come now, one of you tell me what it is or I’ll dismiss you both.”
Margaret sighed, heaving her rounded shoulders forward. “He’s died, my lady. Nearly a fortnight ago.”
Disbelief tore through me as I struggled to grasp the truth. Died! The awful word rolled around in my mind and settled like the steel of a knife, slicing the delicate thread of hope I’d held all this time. I fought against the loss with my meager argument. “But he sent for us.”
Her face softened. “Likely before he died, miss.”
It was true then. He was gone. Stiff and regal, I held my composure like a calm pond on a summer’s day. But beneath my face a tempest of the fiercest proportions roiled, the power of it swaying me on my feet as it passed over me, leaving me weak and unsteady in its wake. A few deep breaths with my eyes serenely closed and the initial shock receded, but the pain had sliced deep into my belly, where it continued to turn.
Then I remembered Mother. I held my breath for a heartbeat as I awaited her reaction, one hand to my satin bodice. But I had overestimated her attachment to the poor husband who’d adored her.
Mother’s beautifully sculpted lips turned down. “How unfortunate.” She sank back into the gild-edged settee that accented her bright gown. “Death is always such a shame.”
Dear Margaret’s lips pinched in her signature look of masked disappro
val, but Mother had turned her gaze to me.
“Now, we shall finally have all that fortune he’s held so tightly and spend, spend, spend.” Her flowery little laugh grated on my raw nerves.
I curled my hand into itself. If anger could be a noise, it whirred painfully in my ears then.
“What a glorious time we shall have. Come, let’s have it brought out this minute to give all due commemoration to the event. Pray, where has he gone and put it?”
I looked about for whom she might be talking to, but her gaze remained on me. “Why, I haven’t a clue where it is, Mother. I assumed you . . .”
The exultant look of her blue eyes froze into two orbs of ice. “He did not tell you?”
I shook my head, gladness and fear swirling through me that the fortune should be out of her grasp, at least for this moment. “He always said he’d tell me just before he died.”
I looked at the new widow stiff with shock and the truth struck us both immediately. Here we were in this immense castle with a lavish vineyard and a staff of nearly sixty-five . . . and not a penny between us. At Father’s death, we were suddenly the poorest wealthy family in all of England.
Fear blanched Mother’s face and her eyes blurred behind tears. “How . . . Oh, this is the most awful . . .” Then she paused with her chin out, a picture of courage as she rose from the couch with effort, and wobbled on her feet. “I suppose we must bear it.”
Springing up, I ran to her with automatic obligation and steadied her, urging her to retire. Performing my usual service to her urged me forward when I wished desperately to crumple into a heap of ashes and blow away in the wind. Shock threatened me in cold waves, but I shoved them away. “Something will turn up. There’s nothing we cannot better deal with after a good rest. I’ll help you to your chambers and send a maid with hot milk and Eau de Cologne for your head.”
Lifeless as a willow branch, she allowed herself to be led out of the drawing room and up the great staircase as I paused to lift a candle. Three steps up, she stopped me with a faint pressure on my arm. “You knew him best, Tressa dear. Surely you can think of some place . . . you must know something. Something.”
I nearly said that I did not, but shut my mouth when I realized that would be a lie. I merely lowered my gaze as images flashed through my mind. The hidden room of books, the little hints he’d dropped throughout my childhood . . .
But one image stood out among the rest so plainly I could nearly touch it. His notebooks. In those pages of his notes and observations on the vineyard he had tucked pieces of himself that could be found in no other place. On the cover were the words that had echoed with shadowy intrigue throughout my childhood: the vineyard’s secret. If one were to understand where he’d hidden the fortune that had been his lifeblood, the answer would be buried somewhere in those volumes.
Yet I held my tongue on the matter. The idea of Mother’s casual, judgmental gaze penetrating the private words on those pages made me cringe.
“We’ll think on it later, Mother. The only thing we’ll discuss tonight is getting you to bed.” Climbing alongside the leaping shadows of the candlelight, I glanced about the familiar house anew, seeing it as a cavern of mystery. For somewhere in these rooms lay the entirety of Father’s fortune, the great secret of the man I’d barely begun to know.
“Here, miss, let me.” A little chambermaid hurried up behind me and accepted Mother’s weight, looping an arm around the woman’s slender frame. Surprisingly sturdy, the girl bore the weight of her mistress without trouble, so I nodded my thanks and retraced my steps down the stairs. More tea would do wonders for the chill that had gripped me from the inside out.
In the drawing room, I paused as voices nearby arrested my attention. They wafted out from behind the service door.
“Will you tell her about the master?” Amos’s voice warbled out in a fearful whisper.
It was Margaret’s voice that snapped out a response. “You were there when I informed them of his death, weren’t you?”
“That isn’t what I mean, and you know it.”
Acknowledgments
My deepest thanks to all the people who read this story when it was a little baby book with a lot of growing to do: Carolyn Hill, Stacey Zink, Susan Tuttle, Sonnet Fitzgerald, Allen Arnold, Bob Davidson, Jonnie Clark, KyLee Woodley, Michelle DeBruin, and Crystal Caudill.
And to the one who pushed me with a godly blend of brutal honesty, endless encouragement, and lots of sanity checks when I was a baby writer with a lot of growing to do: my Vince. I cannot fully express how much I love you.
And mostly, to the One who loved me from the start, before I’d grown at all: God.
Joanna Davidson Politano freelances for a small nonfiction publisher but spends much of her time spinning tales that capture the colorful, exquisite details in ordinary lives. Her manuscript for Lady Jayne Disappears was a finalist for several contests, including the 2016 Genesis Award from ACFW, and won the OCW Cascade Award and the Maggie Award for Excellence. She is always on the hunt for random acts of kindness, people willing to share their deepest secrets with a stranger, and hidden stashes of sweets. She lives with her husband and their two babies in a house in the woods near Lake Michigan and shares stories that move her at www.jdpstories.com.
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