Lady of a Thousand Treasures

by Sandra Byrd

  She had referred to him as Harry.

  I said in honesty, “I’m happy to hear of this. But now I must complete my task. Would you please excuse me?”

  We said our gracious good-byes, and then I left the summerhouse, determined to put my feelings aside and finish my task. I would retrieve the third-floor keys from Harry. I knew where I’d find him, and it wasn’t at the house.

  The stable blocks were but a further five-minute walk, and I found him there. The arena had a floor of freshly raked sand, the better to protect the horses’ hooves. The windows were high so the horses could not be distracted. Much care went into tending Harry’s treasures, for certain.

  The horses had been his mother’s treasures too, and I knew he cared for them for her sake as well as for his own. Not selfish, I thought to myself.

  I saw him before he saw me, astride his great white stallion, Abalone, whom he loved.

  “Ellie!” He walked the horse near me. “I was just about to ride out. How comes the inventory?”

  “It comes,” I said, pleasant but reserved. “I have a question for you.”

  Abalone stamped impatiently, and Harry brought him under control—but only just. “Come ride with me, and you can ask whatever you like. I daren’t tarry any longer.”

  “I really mustn’t. The work. Mr. Clarkson.”

  “Mr. Clarkson seems very capable. And he did do the last inventory on his own.” There was an unusual and slightly cool tone in his voice. Jealousy? Had he seen Mr. Clarkson and me working well together? Or was it concern over the last inventory done?

  Harry’s long legs were sheathed in brown leather boots, his trousers neatly tucked inside, one of his high-collared white shirts on.

  I weakened a little at the sight of him and with my desire for his companionship. Mr. Clarkson would do well on his own for just a short while. “I don’t have a riding habit with me.”

  Harry grinned. “Wrap your skirts a bit so they don’t scare the horses in the wind.”

  I spied the mare I once favored being walked by a stable hand. She whinnied at me. I’d missed her, too, and we both deserved a ride.

  “All right,” I agreed. I did need my answer, after all—that was a part of my work. We rode down the field and into the woods, each of us urging the horses on faster and farther. My father had seen to it that I learned to ride, as would befit a woman of better station; Harry had ensured I’d know enough to keep up with him, and I suppose, if I were truthful, I’d say that I had a way with the horses. Like me, they were skittish, always nose and ears to the wind to avoid trouble. We understood each other.

  Harry was well ahead of me, so I purposefully slowed, and he circled back to see if I was well. The moment he reached me, I put my heels into the flank of my horse and urged her toward the stable. Harry caught up with me in time, but barely.

  “Victory!” I shouted. A portion of my hair escaped the severe knot into which I’d pulled it.

  “That was a clear misdirection, Miss Sheffield,” he said as we dismounted. “Cheating to win?”

  I smirked. “All’s fair in love and war.”

  He removed a glove, then reached up and took hold of a strand of my hair, running it through his hand before tucking it back into the loosened knot. I felt his touch through my hair and onto my scalp, which tingled and prickled with pleasure. I drew my breath in sharply at the intimacy, which was at once welcome and unwelcome. Was he feigning affection to earn my trust and his treasures? Or would he prove true?

  “Is this love or war?” he asked. His face, normally strong and in command of his situation and surroundings, now betrayed real confusion, a sense of bewildered vulnerability fused with hope. I’d seen that vulnerable look before, but only directed at me. He trusted me.

  I did not answer.

  We walked back to the house slowly. “I’d originally come to ask, do you have the key to the room on the third floor, above your father’s rooms and by way of the servants’ stairs?”

  Harry stopped walking and looked at me long before answering. “I’ve given you the complete set of keys.”

  There was something unsettling about his reaction. Was it an evasion?

  “I seem to be missing one.”

  He smiled and took my hand. “I shall make enquiries about the key and deliver it forthwith.”

  Would he? My mind flitted back to Signorina Viero’s flattering account. “Tell me about your time in Venice.” I was rewarded with a smile which lit his face.

  “Are you certain?” he asked. “I’d thought perhaps you didn’t want to know . . .”

  “I do,” I said softly.

  He recounted how he’d ridden back and forth, using his father’s diplomatic immunity and his ability to ride for long hours, to deliver documents which eventually led to Austria agreeing to give Venice to Napoleon, who then would cede it to Italy.

  “I had, of course, agreed to take Viero’s treasures with me, back to England. We just stayed in Austria longer than expected. My father insisted,” he said once more.

  I recalled his father’s letter, which had said quite the opposite. “He repeatedly refused to return to England despite my pleadings that he do so.”

  “Did you know there are crates of your father’s clothing and other personal belongings, not yet unpacked, in the gatehouse?” I asked.

  He nodded. “I shall have to instruct someone to go through his things and dispose of anything not of personal value. Although Father’s valet made trips home to England with new pieces from his collection over the years, he did not return after Father’s death. Of course, Father had expected his valet to take care of all his effects and belongings, as he always has, once back in England.”

  My mouth opened and closed again. Harry’s father’s valet had been indisputably devoted to him.

  “Father left him nothing in his will—and told him so just before he died. His man remained in Austria, with his Austrian wife.”

  “Your father—so ungrateful, after many years of dedicated service,” I said.

  Harry nodded. “Yes. Just as well. I plan to replace the few remaining staff after the New Year when I’ve had time to sort where to go from here. The butler has already been discharged and replaced with a man loyal to me. Until then, I keep the rest at arm’s length.”

  “Wise,” I agreed, then turned toward a more pleasant matter. “I’m going to repair your mother’s porcelain pelican,” I said. “I know it was a favorite of hers. Shall I tell you the story?” We rounded the lawn on the final approach to the house.

  “I remember her cherishing it. I await the tale and the sound of your voice telling it.”

  I smiled and began. “The pelican in its piety is the fable of that noble bird. It has a pouch under its bill, from which it withdraws fish to feed its offspring. Should the parent not have fish, however, it will peck its own breast in difficult times to draw blood with which it might feed its young.”

  “Piety, of course, is the Roman ideal of filial love. Father would certainly not have credited that to me. But Mama . . .”

  “She was a good mother,” I agreed. “And she believed you to be an excellent son.” In the end, after she’d lost Arthur and was about to die herself, she’d made the baron promise not to sell her horses but to give them to Harry.

  “Thank you for repairing her pelican.” He looked away, as he often did when trying to regain control of his emotions.

  “I take good care of what I’ve been charged with,” I answered.

  When we reached the house, I found Uncle Lewis, Mr. Clarkson, and the butler sitting near the foyer. Uncle Lewis clung to his valise like a child being put on a train to school.

  “Whatever is the matter?” I asked.

  “He’s unwell,” Mr. Clarkson said quietly. “Says he won’t stay for dinner as there are no Cornish pasties remaining—the staff stole them from him and so he must return to London with due haste.”

  I did not want a scene. I turned toward Harry. “May I come back anothe
r time and complete this?”

  “Certainly. I hope all is well.”

  “As do I,” I replied.

  “Do not worry.” He looked into my eyes, those new crinkles creasing as he smiled and paraphrased what I’d just told him. “I also take good care of what is mine.”

  Did he mean the collection? The horses? Me? I had no time to ask, as the carriage was ready to take us to the train station. As we pulled down the drive, I noticed Harry walking away from the house, in the direction of the stables.

  Or the summerhouse, wherein Francesca awaited.

  As we made our way back to London, I clasped the keys I’d forgotten to return. And then, suddenly, I remembered a portion of that earlier memory.

  “Did you get it all?” he asked. “Everything we need for our picnic?”

  I nodded and smiled. “All but the sweets.”

  Harry grinned. “Only my father’s valet has all the keys, including the one to the confectionery, and I dare not risk stealing it! He is my father’s man, and his man alone, through and through. There would be the devil to pay if we were caught.”

  CHAPTER

  Nine

  BLOOMSBURY, LONDON

  We returned home, and I settled Uncle before speaking to Orchie about the incident. “He seemed disoriented. I think it best if we keep him as close to routine as possible.”

  She agreed to make some Cornish pasties and serve them to him on a tray in his room. Then she asked, “Are you sure then about that young laundress?”

  “Are you not happy with her work? Did she bother you today?” Alice hadn’t been working at our home but for a few days, but we’d all been looking a bit spiffier.

  “It’s not that,” she said. “It’s just, well, having people we don’t know in the house, moving about freely. Maybe this business with the solicitors and robberies and police visiting ’as made me wary, that’s all.”

  Orchie returned to the kitchen, and I walked next door to the workshop and found Mr. Clarkson deep in concentration. He nodded to me but turned his back so that he was between me and the project on which he was working.

  Maybe I did trust people too readily—I tended to go with my instincts, and perhaps they were not always right. An unwelcome thought had occurred to me on the train from Watchfield. Perhaps Mr. Clarkson had taken the Roman coins and ascribed the initial mistake to my father, then implicated Harry for the potential theft. I would never know. I could test his integrity, though. He had come to us with the best of references from two of our wealthiest clients and had done well for us since. Still, I must test him. I must test Harry. Along the way, I was testing myself. Was I a discerning evaluator, worthy to carry on my family’s firm?

  Was I a clearheaded judge of the heart and intentions of the man I once loved?

  Still loved?

  As I had almost weekly, I wished my father were alive to advise. I recalled what Alice had said to me just days before. “You’ll never find your way out on your own.”

  And yet, I must.

  One day the week following, I left the workshop for a few moments to allow the fixative to set on Lady Lydney’s pelican. I thought I’d return to my rooms for a light wrap, as the day had grown cool. When I arrived at my bedroom, I found that it was not empty.

  “Alice! May I be of assistance?”

  Not only was she in my room, but she was also standing near my curiosity cabinet. Though some cabinets were as large as a room, mine was perhaps the size of a small writing desk. Papa’s was larger, squatter, and had many compartments. Uncle Lewis felt no need for a cabinet—his few treasures were openly displayed in his study.

  Alice jumped at my voice. A rope of faux pearls hung from her hand. “I’m sorry, Miss Sheffield. Mrs. Orchard said that you had not brought your laundry down to the room today, that it likely remained in your wardrobe. I wanted to help and didn’t want to disturb you. I thought I’d just fetch it.”

  Clearly, my laundry was not in the curiosity cabinet. I looked at the pearls in her hand.

  “I was only holding them, Miss Sheffield. They were on top of the cabinet—right on top, and . . . I’m sorry. I’d never seen anything so lovely.”

  It seemed my first test of integrity would not be for Mr. Clarkson after all.

  “Would you like me to tell you about the objects in my cabinet?” I asked. I closed the door behind us, locking us both in the room. I knew every item that was in the cabinet and did not want her to leave until I ascertained that all were present. If not, I would restrain her myself whilst Orchie went for a constable.

  “Oh yes.” She did not seem the least bit anxious, which brought some confidence and relief.

  I relieved her of the pearls. “These are not genuine—a rope this long would be beyond my means. They are made of blown glass—my collection includes mostly glass—and then filled with wax to make them heavy.” I handed them back to her, and she hefted the weight in one hand.

  “They shine so,” she said.

  I smiled. “They are painted on the outside with a gelatin stripped from fish intestines. Even the most discerning eye has difficulty telling the difference. Many a rich woman has been tricked.”

  I set the pearls back into my cabinet and saw her eye drawn to the perfume bottle. “That was my mother’s.”

  “Did she pass on?” Alice asked in a quiet voice.

  “In a manner of speaking. She left this behind.” I unstoppered the bottle and Otto of Roses escaped into the room. “Sometimes, without anything to touch, to hold, to feel . . . to smell, it can seem as though the person had never been with us at all.”

  Gently, I lifted a fragile glass bottle with its cork still inside. “A tear catcher.”

  “Ooh, I have heard of them. You catch your tears in them when someone dies.”

  I nodded. “And then, when the bottle dries out, the time for grief is over, and the living must move on. ‘Put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?’”

  “The Bible,” she said.

  “Psalm 56. He keeps track of our sorrows, so we know he pays us mind and carries our burdens, and therefore we need not do so forever.”

  “The tears are almost dry. If you’d take the cork out, it’d dry up right away.”

  I looked at her and then at the bottle. She was right. It was my responsibility, after all, to uncork the bottle and let the tears I’d collected—for Mother, for Father, for Harry—to dry rather than adding to them. To allow the Lord to lift my burdens rather than keeping them corked and close at heart.

  I took out a pretty hand mirror and gave it to Alice.

  “Gold!”

  I laughed. “Brass. One of the first lessons I learned as an evaluator. Sometimes brass masquerades as gold, and gold as brass. The trick is to discern the difference. This mirror I paid dearly for—believing it was gold. I’ve not made that mistake again.”

  Orchie knocked on the door, and I called out that all was well before returning to my cabinet, looking over the few further pieces.

  “What’s this one, then?” Alice lifted a little blown-glass daisy with a bumblebee affixed to it. It fit around a small cup inside which one placed a candle.

  “A fairy light. After my mother left, I had difficulty falling asleep. Orchie, Mrs. Orchard, brought this light to me each night and lit a small candle inside it. It worked: by the time the candle had burned down, I was asleep.”

  “My sister Mary would like such a thing,” Alice said. “She’s not slept well since our da died.”

  While she was distracted, I opened the tiny, secret drawer to ascertain that the ring was still inside; it was, next to the mustard seed necklace. I did not show them to her but closed the drawer again.

  “We should both return to our duties,” I said. “I shall remember to bring my laundry down so you need not come to retrieve it.”

  “Thank you. That was lovely of you to teach me about your things while counting everything to make sure I hadn’t stolen or such.”

  I kept my fa
ce impassive but held back a smile. She’d known all along.

  “What is that?” She pointed to the green bottle toward the back of my cabinet, shaded from immediate view. “It looks like spirits. Do you drink spirits, Miss Sheffield?”

  I stood silent for a moment, battling between pride and honesty, and then took the bottle in hand. “I do not drink spirits, Alice. But my father did. Like your father, he died from an overindulgence of gin.”

  She held my eye then, not realizing, perhaps, how her own forthright admission some days past had freed me to be honest in return. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I, too.”

  “Does it do you good to keep the bottle, then?” she asked.

  “That’s an odd question.” She looked frightened for a moment, like she’d overstepped. “Perhaps I keep it to remind me of what I lost him to. It might be better to remember what I’ve kept of him.” To reassure her, I set down the bottle and picked up the fairy light. “Perhaps young Mary would like to borrow this until she can sleep again? Mrs. Orchard has some tallow candles you might take with you.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  “Indeed I am.”

  “Then we shall treasure it!” She clasped her hand around the wee fairy light.

  I smiled. “That’s what treasures are for!”

  Alice took my laundry and left the room, and I looked once more at my treasures. I had thought she’d been taking from me, but in truth, she’d given. I would dispose of the gin bottle that very day. I needed nothing to remind me of what had happened, and maybe with it gone, I could allow the finer memories of Papa to assert themselves in my mind. I uncorked the tear catcher.

  Once I was certain no one could see, I opened the tiny, hidden drawer again and lifted out the ring. I counted four gems present, mourned the missing amethyst which represented the hole in my heart, and slipped it on my finger.

  Five questions to be resolved. Four stones and a hole. I counted them in my head as I touched the remaining stones. Had Harry been selling portions of the collection? Had he sold or planned to sell Arthur’s items? Had he tarried in Austria of his own free will? Did he care about the things others cared about, or was he simply selfish?