“That Katy!” Her eyes lighted. “She’s a spunky one. Like you, Miss Molly. I’m glad she got away from here—even though I never will.”
“I don’t think you’d stay anywhere you didn’t want to be.”
“Maybe not. Maybe there’s still unfinished business to attend to around here.”
We were walking along the hall together when she suddenly stopped and reached for my right hand. Slowly she turned it over and stared at the strawberry mark.
“They’re not the same—those marks, Miss Molly. I remember from when you were a baby. Miss Amelia has the bad sign. Maybe that’s why you have to stay. If you go away, maybe something will happen to your sister that you coulda stopped. But if you stay, it could be you’re the one in danger. You or her—one or the other. They never needed both of you.”
“What do you mean—they?”
“I told you, Miss Molly, you can’t pay me no mind. You’ll stay awhile,” she said. “You’ve got enough fight in you to stay.” With that she dropped my hand and rushed off down the hall, as though her own words had frightened her. I wondered if she’d had some vision about me that she didn’t want to share, and a chill touched me.
From down the hall the little gray-and-white cat ran toward me. She greeted me with a single mew and rubbed herself against my ankles. I picked her up and she rested her paws on my shoulders, purring.
Suddenly voices reached me from the bedroom that had belonged to Nathanial Amory—and perhaps still did. At the same moment Amelia, who had been waiting in a side room, came out to join me. “Did you upset Orva, Molly? She sounded pretty excited when she ran off.”
“Perhaps, but I didn’t mean to upset her. She told me a few interesting things about—”
Amelia stopped me. “I don’t want to know! Father always said, ‘Today is the only day that matters,’ and I believe that.”
I didn’t know whether she was right or not. It seemed that the past might be playing a larger role in the present than she thought. At least I could look at her wrist now, as I hadn’t done before. I held out my hand with the strawberry mark showing.
“I’m curious,” I said. “How much are they alike?”
This didn’t trouble her, and she held her hand beside mine. The birthmarks were smooth and flat on our skin—only a reddish pigment, Amelia’s mark was larger, and there were shadings where the pigment had broken up, as it had not on my wrist. On my sister’s wrist the markings bore a faint resemblance to a skull. Orva had spoken of a “bad” sign. Was this what she meant?
“They aren’t at all identical,” I said.
“And that makes sense,” Amelia answered. “Sometimes we seem so much alike—sometimes so very different. Never mind. In many ways we are the same person. Let’s find Honoria and start back to the city.”
We found Honoria in Nathanial’s room perched on cushions before a small desk, her legs dangling. Orva stood talking to her, and I wondered how much she had revealed of our encounter. At a window Garrett Burke stood looking out toward the river. When he heard us come in, he turned, watching.
Almost at once, Orva slipped out of the room, acknowledging Amelia and me with no more than a quick nod. Honoria returned to what occupied her—a spread of tarot cards across the desktop. She bent her head above them, and then looked up at me.
“I’ve been casting for you, Molly. There’s one card that keeps coming up.” She touched a card that lay before her—the picture of a skeleton with a scythe. I knew nothing about tarot, but this picture hardly filled me with confidence.
Honoria nodded. “Yes, it’s the death card. But don’t be alarmed. Most of the time it only means change—something entirely new in your life. An upheaval, perhaps. Perhaps the death of your past life.”
“My past life, as you call it, is quite healthy, thank you.”
Garrett changed the subject abruptly. “Too bad, Amelia, that you couldn’t put twin sisters into your play. That would make for nice complications and mix-ups. Your Confederate soldier in love with one sister, and the Union boy with the other. Only who would know which was which if the sisters chose to change roles?”
Miss Kitty suddenly dug her claws into my shoulder, and I let out a yelp as I hastily put her down. She sat on her haunches, ignoring me, and licked the pink pads of one paw so she could give her face a good scrubbing. I never found it flattering—the way cats always washed themselves energetically after contact with humans. At least she and Garrett had distracted me from thinking about the tarot card Honoria had chosen for me.
“Miss Kitty felt something just now,” I said.
Honoria looked around sadly. “I wish I could see him.” She sighed. “Never mind—perhaps it’s better that I don’t.”
Better for her present life with Porter, I wondered?
“Can we go back to Charleston now?” she asked Amelia. “Porter brought me out early this morning, but I’m counting on you to give me a lift back.”
She shuffled the tarot cards together, wrapped them in a silk cloth, and put them into a plain pine box.
“They mustn’t be contaminated by outside contact,” she explained. “I’m the only one who handles this pack.”
Garrett spoke as he moved toward the door ahead of us. “Thank you for your time, Honoria. We’ll talk about Nathanial again. I’ve just come to that period in my writing, and I’d like to put down what really happened.”
“Nobody knows what happened,” Honoria told him, looking quickly around the room. “So don’t ask me.”
I had the feeling that he would ask her anyway. He had paused in the doorway and was looking back at me, so that I felt again that he searched my face in some special way, just as he’d done yesterday in Daphne’s store.
“I hope you’ll come to the rehearsal tonight, Molly. I’ll make my earlier transgressions up to Charles by dying as dramatically as I can.”
“You’ll die as I tell you to! I won’t have you hamming things up,” Honoria said crossly. “I’m not sure if Charles can even handle a sword tonight—after you damaged his wrist.”
“Why are you supposed to be fighting Charles?” I asked.
Garrett grinned. “For love of fair lady, of course.” He waved a hand at Amelia. “Anyway, that was only a tap I gave Charles. He wasn’t really hurt. I suspect he dropped his sword on purpose, because I wasn’t following the script—and maybe I scared him a bit. I’ll behave tonight—I promise.”
I looked after him critically. He was definitely not the heroic type. Garrett returned to the room he’d made into his office and we all went downstairs to Amelia’s car. Honoria sat in the backseat with Miss Kitty, while I sat in the front beside Amelia. The carrier was one that allowed its occupant to look out at the world, and Miss Kitty’s perked ears were alert and interested as she stuck her head through the opening.
As we passed what had been Slave Row, I saw Charles outside the Landry cottage working on a shutter. Amelia waved at him, and he looked after us, smiling.
“Let’s stop at the Gadsden Inn when we get to Charleston,” Amelia said as we sped down the avenue of moss-hung live oaks. “I want you to move into our house right away, Molly. That’s where you belong, and Mama needs to get used to having you there. I don’t think she quite believes it’s in you yet.”
I gave up my resistance. If I was ever to find my way through this maze, I had better be close to Amelia.
“I’ll come with you,” Honoria said to me. “I can help you pack, and there’s something I need to show you at the South Battery house.”
I knew she meant the mysterious letter, and began to let my anticipation grow. In a little while I’d have read the words Simon Mountfort, my father, had written to me all those years ago.
The drive back to Charleston didn’t seem as long as the drive out. We crossed the bridge and drove down the peninsula to Hasell Street. When we’d parked the car
in front of the inn, Honoria and Amelia came up to my room with me. Packing didn’t take long, since I’d brought only one suitcase and a big tote bag.
Honoria moved around briskly, fetching my toilet articles from the bathroom and handing them to me to pack. She seemed bright and energetic, as though a source of new energy moved her, and I recognized uneasily that it had to do with me.
Miss Kitty waited for us in the car, its windows open against the warmth of the day—though the enervating humidity of true summer still lay ahead. In the old days the Low Country had been a place of malaria and other summer illnesses. Now, with screens and air-conditioning, people could live in the city the year round.
The trip from Hasell Street to South Battery was several blocks, and Amelia was able to park in front of the house.
Honoria nodded knowingly. “You can always arrange for a parking place ahead of time, you know. Just concentrate very hard on what you want and it will be ready.”
Amelia smiled. “You’ll need to get used to Cousin Honoria’s little miracles, Molly. They happen all the time.”
No one came to greet us at the door, and Amelia used her key.
I thought of what Orva had said about nobody locking doors in the days before I was kidnapped.
Honoria carried Miss Kitty in with us, and let her out of the carrier. Completely at home, she ran ahead up the stairs and leaped on top of a bookcase, to watch us climb to the second floor.
“We still have a small staff out at Mountfort Hall,” Amelia explained. “But not here in town. Mother and I enjoy cooking, and of course someone comes in to clean, so we get by nicely without any live-in help. Times have changed from the days of our grandparents. I have a room ready for you, Molly, so let’s get you settled.”
Honoria and Miss Kitty followed us up a narrower flight to the third floor. Bedrooms ranged around a small central hall, and at the far end, where shuttered windows would have looked out into the neighboring house, a partially screened section was visible. I glimpsed a few trunks and boxes, and one object that caught my eye—an old-fashioned hand-carved rocking horse. It had been stored there for some time, but obviously it had once been loved by generations of children whose hands had given it a special patina.
Amelia saw my interest. “All the Mountfort children grew up with Applejack. Great-grandfather Samuel Mountfort named him when he was a little boy out at the plantation. He thought Applejack was a pretty name, and it stuck—no matter what comments grown-ups might make.”
Honoria gave the rocking horse a sharp, humorous look, as though she expected something from it, and Amelia smiled. “Our haunted rocking horse.”
She didn’t explain, however, and when my bags had been set down in the small bright bedroom I’d been given, Honoria stopped me from unpacking.
“Let it wait, Molly. I have an appointment this afternoon, and there’s something we must do first. Amelia, dear, sit down and stop fidgeting. Your mother is probably napping, and you can look in on her later. First, I have something to tell you both.”
Amelia caught the solemn note in Honoria’s voice, and sat obediently in a small flounced chair. I chose the dressing-table bench, and Honoria, who was the one really fidgeting now, flitted around the room as she talked.
“I’ve never told you this, Amelia, there was no point, but two days before your father died he gave me a sealed letter that was never to be opened by anyone other than Cecelia Mountfort.”
“Cecelia?” Amelia echoed. “But how could he—?”
“I’d told him again and again that your sister would be found, honey. Perhaps he believed me, and he wrote a letter for me to deliver if ever the time came. I suppose he had a premonition about his death. So anyway, now is the time. I put it in a very safe place, where no one would ever look, and now we’ll retrieve it.”
Honoria’s flitting took her out into the hall, and to its far end, where the rocking horse waited beyond the screen. When Amelia and I hurried after her, Honoria waved a dramatic hand at the toy horse.
“Applejack has kept Simon’s secret all these years! Perhaps it’s the presence of the letter that has haunted him.”
Miss Kitty prowled after us, as though she stalked some prey. No one paid her any attention, and she chose her own way to make us notice by springing onto the back of the rocking horse, to set it moving gently. Honoria had no time for her now and she plucked the little cat off Applejack and handed her to me.
“Hold her for a minute, Molly.”
Miss Kitty put her claws into my shoulder and clung, but I endured this discomfort as I watched Applejack and Honoria. The horse had probably been made on a hand lathe, its body a smoothed, rounded oblong of dark wood. The head was set into one end, while the wooden stub of a docked tail protruded at the other. The head was flat on each side, with no modeling; a strip of once-varnished bentwood formed the mane and was painted with brown scallops to indicate hair. Straight boards fastened to the rockers formed the legs, and the whole was put together with round wooden pegs of various sizes. Two painted brown dots formed eyes that seemed intent on something far away that we couldn’t see.
I scratched Miss Kitty’s ears to keep her contented, and she drew her claws back into their pads and turned her head, watching every move Honoria made. Applejack’s stubby tail had been fitted into a slot, and with a mighty tug Honoria removed it, leaving a square open space where it had rested. Into this slot an envelope had been thrust, folded many times so it would fit. Miss Kitty, always curious, leapt from my shoulder to Applejack’s back and set him rocking again while she examined the empty slot where the tail had been. No one but Honoria would have chosen so unusual a hiding place.
The writing on the envelope Honoria handed me was addressed to Miss Cecelia Mountfort, and the flap had been closed with sealing wax, now cracked and broken.
Amelia sat down on a box, trembling, and Honoria touched her hand to quiet her as she spoke to me.
“Go into your bedroom, Molly, so you can read the letter alone. Amelia and I will wait for you in her room across the hall.”
I took the envelope into the bedroom, feeling vulnerable and a little frightened. When I opened it and read the words Simon Mountfort had written, everything in my life might change, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for that. Nevertheless I broke the cracked red seal and took out three creased sheets of notepaper that bore the Mountfort crest.
Before starting to read, I glanced down the pages at handwriting that might have been familiar to me if I had grown up in this house. It continued boldly, line after line, until the bottom of the third page, where it seemed to waver into uncertainty. The final signature was again strong, however. I went back to the salutation and began to read.
My Darling Lost Cecelia:
Honoria believes that you are alive somewhere and I trust her. She is sure you will return to Charleston someday. Sometimes Honoria sees what the rest of us cannot. She tells me you will be a grown woman by the time you read this, and you will have a life of your own. Yet the blood of an old family flows in your veins, my darling girl. This may be hard for you to accept, since you have grown up elsewhere, but you do belong here.
Even as a, baby you were strong and sure of yourself. Amelia, on the other hand, is a gentle, loving child. A child too easily hurt. Your loss has made a difference in her life that you may never understand. I fear I will not be here when she needs me, but perhaps the time will come when she will need you—and you will be here.
All is not well here. I have lived with an uneasy conscience for too many years, but I am convinced that I cannot mend anything now. Let me just say that I have been false to my integrity, both as a judge and a gentleman of the South. I have been told that my heart is not strong, so I am writing this before it is too late. In endeavoring to protect the Mountfort name I am as guilty as the man I am protecting.
I love your mother devotedly, but I can no longer
reach her. Perhaps you will be able to.
When you return to Charleston, my darling Cecelia, it will be as a stranger to your own family. You cannot know how much you were loved unless I tell you in this letter. Your mother loved you too well—and your loss nearly killed her.
The past has a way of turning into the future. According to Honoria, that’s what karma is—cause and effect. As we sow . . . I have reaped my own ending, since even silence and the fear of action are action and cause. Wrong, once done, must sooner or later surface and be paid for. Though perhaps not always in this life.
Your return may cause muddy depths to surface dangerously. If I am wrong, and everything remains quiet, then regard this letter as an expression of what may only be foolish anxiety. Be gentle with your mother—she has been damaged most of all.
As a way of attempting to make up to you much of what has happened, I am leaving you Mountfort Hall. No one knows of this decision except my attorney and now you. If you do not return to read this letter, my dear daughter, then my attorney will never divulge my wishes and Amelia will inherit Mountfort Hall.
After my death—whenever it comes—my dearest wife and my beloved Amelia will receive the letters I have written to them. My words will say nothing of matters I touch on here. I will place this letter in Honoria’s hands for safekeeping. I know she will hide it safely, so no one can find and destroy it. I cannot say more to a daughter I do not know, but whom I somehow trust.
For this reason I must set a heavy burden on you. Whoever is responsible for your kidnapping and Nathanial’s death must be exposed and not allowed to wreck other lives. I have no proof, so I cannot guide you. I only know that I have acted wrongly, with terrible consequences I cannot mend.
Perhaps that Higher Power Honoria believes in will have brought you here for this purpose. I hope and pray you will know the truth and do whatever must be done to reveal it.
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