I stood in the cobbled courtyard looking up at the shifting gray clouds, but it was Donegan’s face that came to mind, and I recalled the utter desolation on his face as I’d rejected him one final time. “I’m beginning to believe the question is whether or not he’d give me one.”
His face melted into a grin. “If he doesn’t, then I daresay he isn’t worth having.”
As we stood in the echoey courtyard draped in moonlight, I turned to face him. “Being quite frank, Dr. Caine, it is Donegan Vance who has so tangled my thoughts and feelings. I’ve heard terrible reports of his actions, but paired with what I know of him, I cannot bring myself to believe he acted against me so.”
“It is a lovely problem to have, child—a blindness to the faults of others. You will simply have to rely on the guidance of those who know the truth. Which is precisely why I spoke up about Mr. Vance the other night.”
“But you were mistaken about what happened with Mr. Prescott. Donegan did not go there to frame me at all. He went to defend me.”
He laid a hand on my arm. “Trust me, Miss Harlowe. Vance will tell you whatever it takes for you to believe he’s on your side, but I heard him myself when he came to speak to Prescott. He did not defend you, and you should never believe anything he says otherwise.”
“Dr. Caine, it was Prescott who told me this. Not Donegan.”
Silence ensued. His hesitation rang loudly in my head, shoving my mind toward a certain realization that simply could not be so. Was Dr. Caine lying? Why ever would he? “Is it possible you were mistaken on what you saw?”
Silence echoed through the courtyard again as my tension mounted to a nearly unbearable level. His soft voice broke into the night. “Come. I think it’s time I show you something.”
I looked into his face, those intelligent blue eyes that now resembled the dullness of a cloudy day. Fear mixed with a dangerous curiosity to see what he had to show me. I had the sense it would be very important. “What is it?”
His smile did not reach his eyes, but was a sad, solemn sort of thing. “You’ll see. Just follow me.”
I let him guide me out of the courtyard as I stole glances toward him and wondered what I would learn about Donegan. A vague mistrust warred with the heavy pull of curiosity.
“Let us go this way, around to the back of the house. This must be an absolute secret.”
These words made me pause. Anxiousness stilled me and rooted my feet to the ground. Yet . . . what if there was an explanation? What if this thing he must show me would make sense of everything? The sound of waves colliding with the craggy rock face met my ears as Dr. Caine turned back toward me, waiting. As I swiped loose hair back, a distant voice drew my edgy attention. Was that my name?
Dr. Caine touched my arm. “We should hurry, before someone misses you.”
Then the sound came again, closer. “Miss Tressa!”
I spun as Lucy flew toward us, her white apron flipping wildly about in the coastal breeze. “Miss, you’d best come quick. There’s been trouble.”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Caine, but I must go.”
Tension splayed over his face and he hesitated a moment before nodding. “I suppose it isn’t time for you to see it yet. Another time. Soon, I hope.”
33
Springtime is wonderful in the vineyards—weeds are small and manageable, the vines are trained and primed to grow, and next year’s crop seems like a concern for a future time. But there is one terrible danger in this season of relative ease—complacency.
—Notebook of a viticulturist
That Mr. Prescott is back, Miss Tressa.” Lucy’s breathy voice filled the courtyard as we stepped under the archway. “He says it’s important and he won’t speak to anyone but you.”
I sighed and brushed my hair back. Even after finding the fortune, the troubles would not cease. “Thank you, Lucy. Help me repair my appearance and have Amos send him into the drawing room. Say nothing to Mother.”
When I had smoothed my hair and changed my gown, I swept into the drawing room with trepidation and greeted a stern-faced guest.
“Miss Harlowe, what is the meaning of this?” He hobbled to me and extended a small pile of pound notes. “I assume you will replace this foreign money with something valid.”
I smoothed the papers on a small side table and looked at the foreign lettering, wondering what on earth I’d replace them with. With a big breath, I read the only words that were in English:
This promissory note drawn by The Mounts Bay Commercial Bank, Cornwall, promises to pay the bearer one day after sight the sum of ten pounds sterling.
A quick count of the papers told me there were eight of them, for a total of eighty pounds. Not much in the grand scheme, but far more than the small sum remaining in the box when I’d departed this man’s estate.
“Surely you will not bring trouble on us for so small a sum, will you, Mr. Prescott?” I dropped them on the table.
He sighed. “Young lady, no one can keep what she cannot afford. If you cannot produce even this small sum, then you have no business remaining at such an estate anyway.”
“Please, sir. Give me until harvest and I shall have the rest of your money.”
Indecision weakened the hard lines of tension on his face. “One week. And that’s far more generous than I normally am.”
I nodded, shoving aside the looming anxiety about where I would find the money.
When I thought he would depart, he merely lingered and watched me openly. “I do believe you’d make a fine couple, Miss Harlowe. That is, if you’re wise enough to marry outside of our social class.”
“Mr. Vance, you mean?” Heat flamed up my neck and spread across my face.
“Him with his strong opinions, and you with that pert little sense of determination . . . what a marvelous display of fireworks.”
I willed my face to cool. “He was merely coming to my aid when he spoke to you on my behalf. His defense of me does not indicate any romantic intentions, Mr. Prescott.”
He smiled in the way of a gruffly amused old man. “No, but accidentally confessing his love for you might.”
Heat poured over my entire body then, up my limbs and into my scalp.
“You’ll find no judgment on the differences in your situations from me, Miss Harlowe. Any field hand reckless enough to stand up to me might just be deserving of his heiress.”
I forced myself to swallow as the man jammed his hat onto his head and limped toward the doors.
When our guest departed, I climbed the steps and brushed into the gallery where Mother was perched at a secretary. She looked up and smiled, but her expression dissolved into keen analysis. “Daughter, I do believe you look different.” She rose and crossed the room, taking my chin in her fingertips to inspect my face flushed from the encounter with Prescott. “You look quite affected, and I find myself wondering who has breathed life into that overly serious face of yours and made it so rosy. The only explanation is that you are in love.”
I jerked my face away, letting my hair curtain it. “You are mistaken, Mother, for I have lately determined myself to be the worst judge of men and farther from the hope of marriage than I ever was.”
Still, her critical gaze remained on me. “You forget how well I know you.”
“What is it you want me to admit, Mother? That I think Donegan Vance a fine man? That I detest Andrew? Both of those things are true.”
Her eyes snapped. “Donegan Vance, a fine man? He’s taken far too many liberties with my daughter, then as soon as he gets his hands on our fortune, he disappears into the grimy smog from which he came. I know you kissed that odious man at the portrait unveiling, and I cannot stand to think of it.”
She stepped close enough to lower her voice. “I thought to be mad at you first, then I later realized he’d seduced you. It was his plan all along. Did you know he attempted to follow us home from the gallery? Imagine, that man stalking us like a shadow. He asked after us all along the route, even after you stoutl
y refused his company before we left. What do you think of your fine man now, Daughter?”
Someone has tampered with the carriage, miss. I just thought you should know. The groom’s words snapped back to my mind and brought the truth into clear focus. Somehow he’d known of the impending danger and that’s why he tried to switch the carriages, tried to ride with me. And I, so wrapped up in my misjudgments of him, had refused—then he had rescued us anyway.
I looked at Mother’s cold blue eyes. The woman who had nothing but malice on her tongue for him had received his generous help more times than she knew. I glanced at the beads from India that lay against her protruding collarbone, contrasting with the pale flesh of her neck. She hadn’t even mentioned that she had them back. Had they been dropped at her door in the middle of the night? Had she tripped over the trunk and looked down an empty hall to see who had left them? She never would have guessed.
“What do I think of him?” I prepared the words in my head to tell her everything he’d done, but the memory of his bad-day remedy stilled my tongue. He wouldn’t want her to know. Instead, I simply said with quiet confidence, “I like him even better now.”
When night cooled the walls of my bedchamber, I curled into the windowsill to look out over the starry night. I couldn’t erase Donegan’s face from my mind, and the image brought an ache that wouldn’t be dispelled. My confusion had only intensified after all I’d learned that day. I couldn’t help but feeling I’d taken a gift that God had given me and tossed it out the window without understanding what I’d truly held in my hands. Like the faraway, unreachable stars that lit up the night sky, Donegan was lost to me forever in the great wide world.
I closed my eyes, wishing I could travel back in time simply by opening the glass clock face and moving the hands backward. I desperately wanted to go back to that night in the vineyard and hear his explanation for everything, for surely there would be one. The missing fortune, keeping Father’s survival a secret . . . surely there was a reason for all of it.
A knock sounded on my door and I bid the visitor enter.
“Miss Tressa?” Margaret’s rosy face peered around the doorway.
I smiled and she slipped into the room, closing the door behind her.
“What a wonderful night for gazing at the stars.”
I smiled my assent.
“I’m glad to find you in.” She approached and settled on the high-back chair near the window. “Your mother asked me to speak with you about that vineyard manager.”
I turned my face away as my heart crumpled. “Oh, Margaret. Please.”
But her quiet voice continued. “However, she failed to tell me what exactly I should say about the man.”
I turned toward her smiling face that sparkled with mischief and took her hands. “I cannot hate him, Margaret. I’ve tried and it’s no use.”
“You have good reason to feel that way, my dear. He may not know how to craft a lovely sentence, but he’s been naught but respectful toward you, and that does wonders to my mother-hen heart. He does treat you like the gem you are.” She studied me then, tilting her face with motherly affection. “Do you love him very much, then?”
My shoulders drooped and I rested my chin on my knees. “I’ve no idea. When he left, I had no notion of love toward him, or even of tolerance, yet now that he’s gone . . .” I lifted my head again. “Margaret, how can I fall in love with a man when he isn’t even here?”
“Most women want a man for the way he makes them feel when they are with him. But you love who he truly is, and there’s evidence of that spread all over this village, whether he’s here or not. He’s left little pieces of his servant heart all around, and you’re discovering them like clues on a treasure map.”
I lifted my head with an exhale and brushed the hair off my face. That’s exactly what this resembled—a treasure hunt. There was a wealth of treasure hidden within a stony exterior, if only one knew how to remove the lens of the world to see what lay far deeper.
How vastly different was Andrew. That man lied and pretended, but he did it so poetically that the world lauded him. He resembled the deceptively sharp rocks covered by the soft, beautiful waves of the sea that lured you into danger by charming you into their presence before destroying you.
“How can you ever tell, Margaret? How am I ever supposed to know who is the good one and who the bad?”
She smiled and stroked my hair. “There’s only one way to do that, and no one can do this better than you. You must eavesdrop.”
“Eavesdrop?”
“Yes, love. For who a man is when he thinks no one is looking, that’s who he truly is.” She squeezed my hand. “I’ll bring you some tea. And I’ve had Cook make up your favorite orange-iced scones. Perhaps that’ll ease the pain a little.”
I forced a weak smile. When the motherly woman slipped out the door, I leaned my head back against the window casement and looked over the shadowed vineyard below. Margaret’s wisdom swirled through my mind and solidified into a plan far more powerful than eavesdropping. Why would I sneak about when I seemed to have direct access to the One who saw everything?
Father, what do you think of Donegan Vance? No amount of clandestine spying on the man would provide me with as much truth about his character as the One who had planted and tended him all his life.
As breeze from the open window lifted hair off my warm face, fragments of Scripture verses flittered back to mind and struck my heart. It was God’s definition of love from the book of First Corinthians. I’d studied these lines years ago when the subject of true love had fascinated me to obsession and driven me to understand it however I could. Pieces of these phrases now swirled through my mind as I climbed down from the window and ascended the ladder toward the ceiling. Stretching out on my back, I dipped a clean brush in the black pigment and rendered in long, swooping letters the essence of the verse as well as I remembered.
Longsuffering
Others first
Content
Humble
Keeps no record of wrongs
Rejoices in others’ blessings
Embodies truth
Endures being wronged
Values others
Perseveres despite adversity
My heart ached with the clarity this brought, and how well he fit these words. It was as if his name belonged at the head of each line.
I climbed down and rolled my brush through a bowl of water, turning it murky with pigment. Leaning against a bedpost to look over my work, I studied the list, focusing on the last line especially. Perseveres despite adversity. How often had he sprung to my rescue, aiding and supporting, even when I rejected him? Over and over again I’d cast him aside, only to have him tirelessly rescue, serve, and persevere. I sat on my bed and wrapped my hands around my scarred feet, remembering with profound clarity the gentle pressure of his hands as he’d tended this lowest part of me with such care.
Despite my dubbing him “black” earlier, the stark color did not fit the image I now had of the man. For when seen through the lens of my heavenly Father, the only color that described this man was love.
Regret touched me anew and the ache of longing filled me. I laid my cheek on my bent knees as the door creaked open and Margaret slipped back into my chamber, extending a rattling little teacup and saucer. “To warm your poor heart.” She sat on a chair beside the bed and caught sight of the newest artwork adorning my room.
After a moment of silence, I looked at her with desperation. “What do I do now?” The words were a mere whisper, for it was all I could manage as my heart clogged my throat.
She leaned closer and wrapped an arm around my hunched shoulders. “Let yourself love the poor man.”
A gush of admiration and desire released from my heart, yet it was chased by a wave of sorrow. What good did it do me to acknowledge the truth now? He had moved on to the next place to pour himself out for other people, his time at Trevelyan over.
And it was I who had sent him away.
Restless and distracted, I rose later that night and whipped my robe around myself. Thoughts of Donegan had poked at my sleep until I’d pulled my tired self from the bed. Hungry for a small taste of this man I’d only begun to know, I determined to visit his newly abandoned cottage and see what sort of place it was. Perhaps there I would find some condemning truth and release myself from this torment. Much as grief wrung a person out, the pain of regret was its own sort of torture.
After rescuing the long key from the bottom of my wardrobe and grabbing a candle, I slipped my feet into brown flats and stole out into the hall. Hurrying down the stairs and outside, I sprinted across the open lawn doused in moonlight and over to the cottage and fit the key into the door. I held my breath as I pushed the door open and extended my candle into the dim space.
Utter shock swept over me in powerful waves of disbelief and awe as I stepped into the cottage. The sight of it stole my breath and left me weak, my heart pounding. For here I stood in the room of my memories, the workroom where Father had hidden his fortune. It was here. I crossed the small space to the fireplace and allowed my fingertips to graze the words inscribed there—Legendary Harlowe. Yes, this was it.
My fragile heart didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at this discovery. Everything made sense—including why Donegan had suddenly found the fortune on his own. It had been here all along, and when I told him of my childhood memory, he had found it in the chimney of this cottage.
The room was precisely as I remembered it except for a few scraps of the last occupant’s trade—odd assortments of broken things in all stages of repair, crude yet smoothly clean tools, and bowls of sweets all made and ready to distribute. In all the years I’d lived here, I possessed little in great abundance except time and material goods, none of which had been spread to the people living right beside me in the village.
In the midst of that great, lavish display of generosity, a pathetic little strip of paper hung impaled on a crooked nail to one of the pillars supporting the structure.
A Rumored Fortune Page 29