A Rumored Fortune

by Joanna Davidson Politano

  He’d make one more effort for her. Since she would not have him, Donegan would merely ensure that the other man under her consideration was worthy of her. And in the meantime, he would love her from a distance as fully and passionately as he must, even if she never knew. He only hoped it didn’t burn from his eyes when he looked at her.

  He strode to the courtyard with eager steps until he neared the clamor of voices. He hung back until the women left, then slipped through the archway to prevail upon the gentleman he must speak to, but Andrew Carrington was not present. The only one who remained to glance his way was the physician who attended Tressa’s mother, who now waited for his horse.

  “Pardon me, I don’t believe we’ve formally met. I’m Donegan Vance, manager of the vineyards at Trevelyan.”

  The man shook out his traveling suit and approached, hand extended. “Roland Caine. I’ve heard plenty about you, so I feel as if we’ve met.”

  “I’ve read a mention of you in Harlowe’s notebooks, I believe. I’m translating the notes he’s left on the vineyards, and he spoke of you here and there, but he also spoke of Andrew Carrington. That’s who I’ve come to ask you about.”

  The man’s face contorted and twitched as if Donegan had announced he’d been watching him through his private window, so he hurried on.

  “I only intend to look after Miss Harlowe and ensure she’s safe with the man. Her father thought none too highly of his character.”

  Just then the groom approached, leading the man’s chestnut-colored Arabian. The doctor took the reins and leaped astride, holding his hat in place and accepting a lantern from the groom. “I’m not one for gossip, Mr. Vance. You’ll excuse me if I’m hasty in my departure, but it’s been a long journey and I’m anxious to return home.”

  With a sharp jerk to the reins, the man spun his horse over the cobbled courtyard floor and urged him out into the night. He disappeared deep into the woods, the lantern bouncing with the horse’s gait, leaving Donegan to stand and ponder the meaning of his abrupt reaction.

  I held the lantern high in the garden and watched Donegan Vance trudge away from the house and toward the vineyard. I closed my eyes and exhaled. Tired as I was, I owed the man my thanks. Once I’d given it, I could sleep away the events of the last few days. After everything that had occurred, Donegan would likely make it hard to find a private moment in which to offer the words I needed to give him, but now he strode over the open field by himself. No one would see us speaking alone out here. Neville and Ellen had returned in the afternoon and were likely abed by now, and everyone else would be following suit.

  Yet as I made my way toward him, my lantern swinging a glow where I stepped, the darkness ahead swallowed his figure until I found myself standing at the edge of the vine rows by myself in the nearly moonless night. With a frown, I turned down one row and walked between the vines, my white boots sinking into the soil. With each step I relaxed. Ah, how glad I was to be home. A familiar jingle echoed in the darkness and I turned to see Daisy flying toward me from the house. I dropped to my knees and set the lantern in the soil to greet my little dog, sinking my fingers into her soft fur and rubbing her wiggling body. I stood to continue my search and Daisy followed, bumping my heels and drawing a tired smile from me.

  Down the row and up another I walked, breathing in the earthy scent of vines and leaves, wishing I could live among them forever. When I turned back and quickened my pace, something soft caught my foot and I stumbled forward, grabbing a post to catch myself. I bent to pick up the troublesome object, lifting it into the circle of lantern light, and found myself staring down at Father’s old wool cap. I shook it out to be sure, running my thumb along its familiar fabric. But how could this be? I quickly batted down the hope that flared in me like fire on kindling, but it refused to be fully extinguished.

  I tucked the hat under my arm beneath the cloak and held my light aloft, looking about the vineyard. “Father?” I spoke the dear name and waited as the sound was carried away on the wet sea breeze. My gaze spanned the entire vineyard as I turned slowly to take it all in, but no one lingered. Not even Donegan Vance.

  Just then Daisy’s sharp bark split the peace and I tensed. Her bark settled into a growl, then she took off toward the house.

  “Daisy!” Sprinting after her, I batted down the unreasonable fear that had gripped me. The hat came loose and fell, but I kept running, my skirt whipping against my legs.

  When Daisy fell silent and disappeared from sight, a flash of movement near the house caught my attention—someone in white moved through the softly lit garden. I strode toward the figure. As my boots thudded against the smooth path of the walk, I heard steps scuffing on the stones. Heart pounding, I slowed my pace and approached. When I peered around the tall hedge just before the house, I glimpsed Ellen in a billowing dress, her lantern glowing on a nearby bench. Daisy whined at her feet for attention.

  Gathering her hair and twisting it back, she sank onto the stone garden bench beside her lantern and absently ran her hand down my dog, who had leaped up beside her. A sliver of garish moonlight cast a sickening paleness over her features that seemed gaunter than I remembered. Sympathy warred with the bitterness that had rooted in my heart regarding this woman. She looked desperately heartsick, and there in the darkness of night with sorrow painted over her features, I could not hate her entirely. Were we not all looking to cling to something that would bring us life? Ellen had grasped at the wrong treasure, but hadn’t I done the same? I pictured Andrew’s face with a sickening ache, then Donegan’s. My father’s face rose to mind, coupled with Dr. Caine’s wisdom, but I shoved aside the thought.

  Eventually Daisy jumped down and trotted toward the courtyard and Ellen drew up her knees and laid her face in her trembling arms, twirled hair untwisting along her back.

  Hesitating for only a moment, I approached and laid a hand on her arm. “Ellen.”

  She jerked, and I stepped back. Her red-rimmed eyes studied me. Catching her thus, in her moment of despair and tears, stripped away her normal pretense of camaraderie. “So you’ve come back. Are you following me to ensure I haven’t touched your precious treasure?”

  The sight of the pain thinly veiled behind angry words affected my heart so that it was too soft to create a harsh response of any sort. “I merely wondered if I might help.” When she continued to stare at me with open aversion, I pressed on. “I know what it is to long for something. To have the hope of it and never reach it.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t act as if you understand anything about me.”

  “I understand poverty of a different sort, for I’ve been plagued with it all my life. I know the desire to be rich in something, to nearly grasp hold of it but never quite have what you want.”

  “Says the little rich girl with no worries.”

  “I may not wish for the independence and freedom you so greatly desire, but—”

  “Is that why you think I want the fortune? To gallop around the countryside and live lavishly without care?”

  “Perhaps ‘unfettered’ is a more suitable word.”

  She turned her face away. “You know nothing.”

  “I know that money offers a certain freedom, especially for a woman. There’s no harm in wanting that for yourself.”

  “I don’t want it for myself, you little fool.” She spat the words out with a fervid anger. “I want it for my child.”

  I gasped. “Ellen.” I couldn’t stop myself from glancing down at her still-flat belly. “You are . . . but this is a happy thing. We should celebrate.”

  “Celebrate what, the start of another life in poverty?” A single tear cut a path through her mussed face powder. “I have nothing to give this child. I want to give him everything, but I cannot offer a blessed thing.”

  “Neville may not be wealthy, but he can surely keep you both out of poverty.”

  “He lost his position at the bank when they discovered my past in the theater. Just before we came here.”
/>   “Oh, Ellen.” It was all my heart could squeeze out in response to this admission.

  “Neville has possibilities, but only without me.”

  I frowned and studied her wretchedly pale face. “Surely he will not abandon you over it. You are his wife.”

  She hugged her knees. “You’ll understand when you’re in my position. Marriage isn’t as certain as young girls believe it is. A man may not be able to change wives, but he can change his mind about the one he has.”

  “Is Neville . . .”

  “Real marriage means worrying over money and the future and being worn down by everyday life. It ages you. After a few years, you look in a mirror one day and see a tired, worn-out version of the lively girl you were, and you wonder . . .” Her voice became whisper-soft. “You wonder if he sees the same thing.”

  “Oh, Ellen.”

  “He wants me to return to dancing until he decides what to do. It’s my only asset, he says.”

  “But how can you? Certainly he doesn’t expect you to do such a thing in this condition.”

  Her features hardened at these words and the truth of the situation sunk into my heavy heart.

  “You’ve not told him yet.”

  She pressed her lips together as she looked into the distance, then spoke. “There’s only a slender thread still binding us. Any little thing might snap it.”

  I lifted a tentative hand toward her and laid it on her shoulder, but she lurched off the bench and hurtled toward the bushes where she retched until she trembled. When she returned, blotting her white face with a handkerchief, the look of defeat on her face nearly broke me.

  I recalled with vivid clarity the night she’d so abruptly departed from me, flying down the hall away from her own bedchamber with a face as gray as ash. “It is morning sickness that brought you out here.”

  She snorted. “Morning sickness. More like morning, noon, and night sickness. All-day sickness. Wretched, constant, pestering, overwhelming . . .” Her voice trailed off and she pulled her knees tighter to her chest and laid her cheek on them. Tears dripped down her pale skin and were absorbed by the fabric of her dress. “It’s the worst. I’ve never cried so much in my life. I’ve no control over anything.”

  I breathed slowly, absorbing this moment with wonder, relishing in the unique connection formed by cuts and pain.

  “Have you tired of him too?”

  She turned her head away, resting the other cheek on her knees. Flickering lantern light highlighted the slender white neck exposed above her collar. “I wish I had.”

  The sorrow in those words wrapped itself around my heart and squeezed.

  She refused to let me accompany her back to her room, but I couldn’t resist making a cup of peppermint tea and leaving it outside her bedroom door with a little knock. She didn’t answer my summons, but when I passed through the hallway again moments later, the cup was gone.

  I wandered back to my own bedchamber and pondered the hidden stories that lay behind every polished face. The woman I’d labeled as cunning and selfish was merely desperate in her maternal efforts to care for a child she loved before it was even born. Her obsession with finding the fortune was merely a passion to provide.

  And the wife who seemed to resent her husband was merely an insecure girl afraid to hope the man she’d married still returned her affection.

  It was only as I climbed into my own bed, still throbbing with wonder at all that had transpired, that I realized I’d forgotten the hat I’d found in the field.

  By morning it was gone, but my burgeoning hope was not.

  24

  On the heels of every failed harvest comes the start of the next season, in which the vintner has the chance to put into practice everything he learned from the failure.

  —Notebook of a viticulturist

  I unwrapped my garden cloak the next morning after a futile search for the hat and cast it on a stool as I entered my bedchamber. I hadn’t imagined that hat the night before, had I? Perhaps my wishful thinking had carried too far. It had been dark.

  The sight of papers on my dressing table caught my gaze then, capturing my attention. I perched on the stool and picked them up. In my haze of exhaustion I hadn’t realized that they were new last night.

  A line from my intrepid translator was scrawled across the top.

  I read ahead until I found this. Tell me what you think.

  Head resting on one hand, I pored over the translated notes.

  My hands are black with the soot of my past, for I cannot escape it. My shoulders stoop with the weight of it. Like the residue that lines chimneys, it stains and tarnishes whatever it touches. I find it impossible to be close to anyone, for the awareness of everything that has occurred hangs about me even more thickly than when I lived it.

  My broken heart absorbed his words as regret clawed at me, desperately wishing to reverse time and speak with him again. I grieved bitterly in those quiet moments, for Father and for everything we could have meant to one another. Oh, why hadn’t he simply held out his hand to me and let me near? I would have come running if only he’d done that much, shame or no. What was it he couldn’t bear to tell?

  The rest of the notes were ramblings about mixing soot in with the soil as a moisture repellant and how it balanced with the nutrients the plants needed for food, but I could hardly focus on the inconsequential lines that came after the first paragraph.

  When Lucy knocked on my door and slipped inside, I set a novel over the pages and shook away the private grief. Her sunny face greeted me with a smile. “Nothing like an adventure to make one appreciate an ordinary day at home.”

  “Adventures certainly have their value.”

  She shook her head as she dug through my armoire. “You’ve a funny way of thinking, Miss Tressa.” Sliding a frock off its hanger, she draped it over her arm and approached me. “That Mr. Vance, I imagine he appreciates your taste for adventure, hmm?” Her coy grin drew mine in response, and I immediately welcomed the distraction.

  “I suppose you’d like to know about the evening.” When her face broke into the brightest grin, I told her in evasive language befitting a lady about the balcony encounter, the dance, and our conversation by the paintings.

  The girl’s cheeks glowed. “I knew you’d find one better than that Mr. Carrington. You always were too good for him, if you don’t mind me saying it.”

  “What happened with Mr. Vance was a single night, Lucy. A dip into romance that I shouldn’t have taken, and now it’s over.”

  “You don’t mean it, Miss Tressa. You truly won’t have him? After the way he walked into that room, looking like a knight . . .” Her starry eyes lifted dreamily to the ceiling as she hugged my garment to herself, then flung it on the bed. “Is it because of Mr. Carrington’s rescue? I don’t care a whit what the mistress says, he only did it to impress you. If you wed him, don’t expect rescues and gallantry forever, because it isn’t him.”

  “You’re right, it isn’t.” I couldn’t bring myself to tell her what I’d seen as the carriage had pulled away from the inn, for that would only make her more persistent. I instinctively sucked in my torso, making it flat and narrow against the boning as she tied my stays. I let out my breath as she secured the corset, relaxing into the frame aligning my posture. “Yet Donegan Vance isn’t the man for me either. I’m nothing but a novel creature who piqued his interest for a moment.”

  “He looked to my eagle eyes like a man in love, nearly from the start.”

  I rested my hands on my abdomen as she secured the garment again. “Precisely. Any man who can fall in love that easily can fall out of it with just as much ease, don’t you think?”

  She frowned, her tiny heart-shaped mouth pinched together. “Not for a man who knows his mind. My Stewart knew the second time he saw me.”

  “Stewart? The one you wavered over for years?”

  Her eyebrows shot up to the lace of her cap. “It’s him who’s quick, miss, not me. And once I saw him in that
uniform, I near fainted dead away, and that cinched it.”

  When she’d finished dressing me, I sighed in relief at her exit. Silly girls and their notions on love. Yet the man did deserve thanks, and it seemed no one else would be giving it to him. I hurried out the back and through the garden to the slopes of the vineyard. A dozen men hacked away at the soil, and among them was the constant feature of the vineyard—Donegan Vance. Awkwardness tightened my limbs as I neared and I clenched my clammy palms into fists when I paused before him. Here was the man who had kissed me. And with those same lips he’d spoken some of the bluntest words that had ever stung my ears. Then he’d rescued me. I hardly knew what to think.

  Despite my efforts to forget it happened, the balcony moment had remained in the background of my thoughts, called to the surface with the slightest provocation. Standing so near to him now made it impossible to think about anything else. What was it about the man’s kiss that had so engrained itself upon my mind, in spite of the sort of man he was?

  No, it was because of who he was that made the moment so indelible. Blunt and honest to a fault, the man did nothing falsely. If he kissed a girl, he meant it tenfold.

  It was with these thoughts that I hovered behind him and watched his labor, my brain collecting the words for a conversation I had no desire to have. Again and again he brought the hoe down into the soil, carving a long trench beside the vines.

  “I see you are making way for a new row of vines in between the old ones.” I forced a teasing lightness into my words, but they hung dully in the air.

  “Drainage. We’ve had a long, wet spring.” He did not look up.

  I twisted my fingers in the lace of my long sleeve. “I’m sure you heard about our misadventure. They say Andrew pulled our carriage out of the road and repaired it.”

  “Sounds like a lot of work.”