“The matchmaker vowed to find them both and Hao spared no expense funding the matchmaker on her hunt for the young couple. When she found Zhi and her beloved Piao together, several months later, she had the young peasant killed and brought Zhi back to Hao to be wed. But Zhi was expecting and Hao treated her badly, even threatening to have her baby killed as soon as it was born. With her father’s help, Zhi escaped and went into hiding. She had a son and name him Enlai. Hao continued to search for her and, though it broke her heart, she left her son with an aunt and fled to the United States. She planned to bring her son, Enlai, to America as soon as she was able. Zhi had grown up a baroness in China and she was not prepared for what life had in store for her.”
Louisa thought about her mother’s journey from England to Minnesota. She understood that for a young Chinese girl it must have been terrifying and dangerous.
Luc stood up and Louisa watched, listening as he paced the room, continuing his story. “Zhi met other people from her homeland when she arrived in San Francisco, people that were headed east to find work on the railroad. She wrote to her father and told him she was going to an address in Billington where there was a job for her and she would be able to send for Enlai soon. Her father’s heart was broken to have lost her and he wanted to help her as best he knew how. So he sold everything he owned and bought those diamonds. Chinese money isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on here, but diamonds, Louisa, are valuable anywhere in the world. Her father sent her the diamonds to give her a stake in the United States. However, there was a problem, they never made it to Zhi.”
“Jude stole them,” Louisa said, sitting up.
“Yes, and a good haul of bank money as well,” Luc said. “Zhi ended up in a traveling laundry, working for the railroad. She basically became a slave. No one is sure where she is now. Hao died some years later and Zhi’s father spent the rest of his life trying to put together enough money to bring her home. But his health was failing. On the day he died he sent for Enlai and gave him everything he had that might help him find his mother. He had saved letters, receipts for the diamonds and newspaper clippings about the train robberies. The old baron never got over the sadness he felt for what had become of his daughter. As soon as Enlai was old enough, he came here to find his mother and the diamonds.
“That’s when I met him. I finished school and I got my first surveying job in California. We hit it off right away. His culture was fascinating and he was eager to teach me all about it.”
“That’s how you learned about the dragon and the carp,” Louisa interjected. Luc smiled and nodded.
“He looked up the old newspapers and figured out the diamonds were stolen in a train robbery on their way to Billington. He got on a train to Minnesota and I was going to meet him here once I finished the surveying job. He stayed in touch with me by telegrams. I got one from him every few days.
“One day he wired me about Victor Leach. He’d found out that Leach was Jude Thomas’ accomplice, the one who was on board and stopped the trains at gunpoint. After that telegram I never heard from him again. When I finished the mapping job I came here looking for him but I was too late. He had been shot to death and left in a ditch. He must have caught up with Victor Leach and Leach had killed him.” He continued to pace the floor and then he sat down and faced her, his expression earnest.
“He was my friend, Louisa. A good friend and I should have been here for him. He was trying to find the diamonds and his mother. I swore I would do that for him. I owe him that much.
“I started looking for Leach but he had disappeared. No one had seen him anywhere, but I knew where he was. He was here, looking for the diamonds himself. He figured out they had to be in Stavewood and he started watching the house. I thought if I was patient enough I could catch him doing that so I posed as a government surveyor. If anyone asked me I told them I was making maps for the county. I guess you know the rest.”
Luc took a deep breath. “Louisa,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you any of this. I thought I could take care of it before any of the Elgersons would have to deal with it. I didn’t know who Talbot was or I certainly would have warned you. I’m sorry. I hope you can understand.”
Louisa thought about how she had trusted Talbot. She’d shared everything she knew with him and never hesitated. If she had told him Luc was looking for Victor Leach, he and Victor Leach would have murdered Luc. It would have been easy for Talbot because Luc did not know about him. Luc was right to have kept his secret to himself. Louisa took his hands in her own and smiled at him. “I do understand, Luc. Really. I trust you completely.”
Luc held onto her hands and slid from the seat to the floor onto one knee. “I’m so glad to hear you say that. I love you and I want everything between us to be perfect. Always.”
Louisa looked into his eyes.
“Marry me, Louisa. Be my wife, my family, my friend and never mistrust me again.”
Her arms encircled his neck and she kissed him softly. “Yes,” she said quietly. Louisa reached into her pocket and pulled out the carved statue of the fish.
Luc’s eyes sparkled. “Remember what I told you about the legend of the carp? It helps you find true love against all odds.”
Louisa smiled at him. “Then it has fulfilled its purpose.”
Sixty
Louisa opened her eyes slowly and looked up. She was lying against Luc’s solid chest on the living room settee as he slept, breathing deeply and rhythmically. He had one arm around her shoulder and in his free hand he held the last page of her manuscript. She had fallen asleep while he was reading it. When she reached quietly to take the paper, his eyes opened.
“Did you read all of it?” she asked softly.
“Every word,” he responded. “You’re very good, you know. So mysterious and tragic.”
Louisa waited in the kitchen while Luc bathed and dressed in the upstairs bath. She wandered the main floor of the estate after watching him go up the big staircase with his pack filled with surveying equipment and his clean clothing. The house seemed different to her somehow. It felt silent and lonely with all of the family away. For the first time in years, Louisa wanted to be part of it again.
She ran her hand along the carved stair railing and pulled closed the big pocket doors to her father’s den. She stood looking at them, remembering. They had only ever been closed in emergencies. Her father closed them when the sheriff came to the house, when Mark had gone missing, so many years ago. He had not closed them to shut her out, as she had imagined then. He had closed them to protect her and all of the family waiting for his return with breaking hearts. Her mother had lost a child then, a baby that was never born. At all other times those doors were open. Even when deeply concentrating on his business responsibilities he’d look up from his big desk and smile when she stood in the doorway. He always welcomed her in and would pull her up on his lap and say, “What troubles you today, Miss Louisa?”
She thought back to when her brother returned with Colleen at his side. She had been terribly jealous. He was hers, her Mark, and he adored her. But he looked at Colleen the way Mr. Vancouver had looked at his bride. When she had said as a child she wanted Colleen to go away, Colleen had not left. She never would. Colleen proved to be the perfect wife for Mark and she loved him so genuinely that Louisa grew to love her.
Louisa had decided that there would never be anyone for her. What she saw between them seemed so precious it would be impossible for any other person to find. Stavewood, with all its beauty and protection, was the only place that real love came about and over the years no one there was ever the right one for her.
She shook her head with the memory of it all. In the foolishness of her youth she had taken everything beautiful and perfect and twisted it around. But now she was not a child any longer. She thought of Talbot’s blue eyes, now changed completely and forever in her memory. She had wanted very badly to prove that the love at Stavewood was a fairy tale and that if she went away she somehow w
ould find a real love. Now she knew that what she had found were the real lies, that what was true and honest and pure and genuine was right here, at home, all the time. She thought about the stories she had read to her young brothers so many times. Louisa’s eyes filled with tears. Stavewood was like no other place in the world. It was hers, and it was her heart. When she heard Luc on the stairs she walked out into the big foyer to see him descending.
He came down the familiar staircase, freshly shaved, his shirt open at the throat and a thoughtful look in his warm brown eyes. He stepped down beside her and looked into her delicate face.
Without a word, Louisa wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned into him. He pulled her close. She knew what their day held and she would face it. She was safe within the circle of the great dragon. Louisa Elgerson was finally home. She had uncovered the heartbreak of the past and survived it in the present and she had found true love. For that moment she drank in the great strength of that knowledge and that perfect love.
In the sheriff’s office in Billington, Louisa Elgerson explained that Talbot Sunderland was a man she had met in New York City. He was a man who was a friend and business partner. He was a man she had known well. He was a man who had drowned. The sheriff there offered his sympathies over his death and the death of Birget, a woman he and his father had known for years. He talked about how unfortunate her accident had been and Louisa cried.
In the streets of town Louisa looked around. She could feel the world changing. Luc helped her back into the wagon and they set out for Stavewood. When the time was right, after the family had returned, she would put Corissa’s letter into her brother’s hand.
Sixty-One
Louisa stood in the orchards of Stavewood completely alone. In two days Talbot Sunderland would be buried. He had no family that she knew of and no way to find out. She expected that her own family would return soon, having laid Birget to rest at her birthplace near her own relatives. Luc had insisted on returning the stolen ReVere to its rightful owner and he had left for Wisconsin. Louisa would wait alone.
“Go,” she had told him. “It’s the right thing to do. I need to be here alone when my family returns. I need to put all the things I felt for Talbot behind me. Give me the time to know my heart. Luc, I love you more than I ever imagined I could love any man. Come back to me when you’re done. I’ll be ready then.”
They had agreed but none of the logic made it any easier when she watched him walk up the path to the roadster.
Louisa spent hours in the rose garden on the bench, staring at the gazebo. The hinges to the staircase were gone now and it was as it should be, simple steps to a beautiful structure and no longer a doorway to a sinister tunnel. Jude Thomas was dead and buried, Louisa thought, and now his secret passage was closed at both ends.
On the breeze she could smell the apple blossoms. She walked there through the orchards, recalling her mother’s sweet voice, as it had been when she was a child playing in the shade of these trees.
“Heaven is here,” Rebecca had told her. “It’s exactly as I dreamed it would be, and even more so because you are here to share it with me.”
Louisa remembered her mother’s skirt swishing around her feet and her contented smile as the fuzzy bees hummed around the blossoms. She already missed Luc terribly but knowing he would return made her feel strangely calm. She decided not to go back to New York City and in her heart she bid it farewell. No matter where she went now she understood that a part of her would always belong to Stavewood. It was the part that had always protected her and the love of her family.
She pulled the little wooden carp from her pocket and held it up, letting the sunlight shine softly against the smooth wood. Louisa had asked Luc to tell her again about the fable of the little fish, the big river and the perseverance to find love. He had learned many things from his Asian friend. Now Louisa had learned things as well. Though she had resolved to stay away, somehow she had still come home and, strange as it was, it had been Talbot who made that happen. Now she knew what it was that Luc was going to say she caught that day fishing. She had captured his heart.
She heard the wagons in the distance. The family was home. Louisa squared her shoulders. She had her family and Luc’s love and she was not alone. She never had been. She walked through the orchards towards Stavewood.
Sixty-Two
Rebecca climbed down from the wagon and spoke softly to the younger boys and they walked up the trail towards the mill. Louisa watched them disappear as she stood on the edge of the tree line. The Vancouvers waved as they pulled their wagon towards home and Mark and Colleen hugged her parents warmly before driving away in their own wagon. Her mother stood in the yard while her father parked the coach beside the stables and then walked back to her. He put his big arm around her shoulders and she took his hand and they walked towards the house together.
Louisa watched silently as they shared their grief and comforted one another. They stopped in the yard and both looked up at the house. They did not speak but their thoughts showed plainly on their faces. Her family was glad to be back at Stavewood. She waited for a while there, looking up at the massive home. The wide wings of the building spread like welcoming arms along either side. Louisa crossed the yard, turned the knob on the back door and stepped inside.
Rebecca looked up, the big teapot in her hand. “Oh, Loo. I’m so glad to see you.”
Louisa could see the tears welling up in her eyes. She hurried to her mother and wrapped her arms around her. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here, Mama. I’m so sorry.”
“I was worried. Is everything alright?” Rebecca looked up and touched her daughter’s cheek softly.
“Oh, Mama.” Louisa broke down in sobs.
“I liked him,” Rebecca said as she put on the tea sometime later and choked back tears. “He was trying so hard to impress me, I could tell. He wanted your father and me to like him so much. I’m sorry I didn’t get to know him well enough for him to just be himself.”
Louisa nodded silently.
Timothy watched his daughter from across the kitchen table. First Birget and now Louisa’s gentleman. He shook his head. He considered asking her if they had resolved the tiff that Talbot had told him about and then thought better of it. Something in Louisa’s demeanor told him to let her come to him in her own time. He put his hand on her shoulder and stroked her hair, then left the kitchen without a word and walked out into the yard.
Louisa watched him leave. She could not help but think that now he would be safe outside, walking in deep thought around the gardens. There would be no one out at the gazebo to threaten him. No one would be watching him from across the meadow plotting to harm him. There was no one there to resurrect an evil past that would break his heart again.
“Your father told me that Talbot had asked you to marry him.”
Louisa turned to her mother and looked into her eyes. “Yes, Mama. He did. I cared for him very much but I was not in love with him. Something happened when I came home. I found love but not the way I expected. I’m not sure how to explain it. You told me I would know when it happened and I did. But none of it has gone the way I expected.”
Rebecca smiled wistfully. “You’re talking about that boy who took you fishing, aren’t you?”
Louisa pulled the wooden carp from her sweater pocket and set it on the table. “It’s hard to explain but I’m in love with Luc Almquist. It was not as it should have been between Talbot and me. He should never have come here.”
Rebecca sighed. “I know,” she said.
“How?” Louisa asked.
“That morning you came home from fishing I saw the way you looked at Luc in the yard. Then I saw how uncomfortable you were when Talbot was here. Love never makes you uncomfortable, Loo. Not like that. Does Luc know?”
“Luc knows everything, Mama. Everything.”
Rebecca looked at her daughter’s face. Something in her eyes looked older, perhaps tired, as if she bore a great burden. “Do you feel gu
ilty about not loving Talbot?”
“No, Mama, I don’t,” Louisa sighed. She had made a decision, and she believed it was the best one. She would never tell them about what had happened that night and that Talbot was not at all who he pretended to be. “I feel sad, Mama. But I have you, and Daddy and Mark and Colleen and all of the rest of the family. You all mean everything to me. I just need a little time. In the morning I will say goodbye to Talbot. It will all be fine.”
Sixty-Three
Louisa stood beside Talbot’s casket in the parlor at the funeral home near the cemetery. Her father had made all of the arrangements as generously as she knew he would. The room was filled with sprays of flowers. Louisa took a deep breath and pulled the watch Talbot had given her from her pocket. She tucked it into his folded hands. It ticked softly.
“You did not care about me, Talbot,” she said. “But I genuinely cared about you. Once you were my friend and my partner and more, but I can never see you that way again. I give this back to you now because I no longer want to remember you, or the way I found out about you. I want to forget you as Clayton, too. Today I bury you both and it’s all over. To you it was about a tiny bag of stones but to me it was about my heart and my family.
The Secret of Stavewood (Stavewood Saga Book 4) Page 19