A Rumored Fortune

by Joanna Davidson Politano

  Heat prickled up my scalp as I searched for words that would not invite his ridicule. “I’m hoping to find a clue there. You never know what might turn up.”

  His answering frown gave the distinct impression of disapproval. No matter, though. A mere frown was far more pleasant than exposing my heart. I could not bear to reveal to him the depth of my rejection, the utter devotion to a father who had all but ignored me.

  Stony judgment settled into his gaze as it passed over me quite thoroughly. “I’ll leave you to read for the moment, but we’ll speak again soon.”

  Hopefully outside of my bedroom.

  With a powerful leap, he jumped through the window and onto the timber walk outside. The man rarely used the appropriate entrance, it seemed. His footsteps thudded across the wood and down the outdoor stairs and he was gone, leaving only the filmy curtains blowing in his absence.

  Heart pounding, I lifted the pages of translation and counted six in total. After clutching the papers to my chest for a moment, I breathed deeply and began to read in earnest the words that had been so long kept from me.

  In honor of the Malverns, I pour myself into these vines and coax life from the dead soil, drawing something good from bad.

  I stared at the word Malvern, nearly resentful of the fact that their name had earned a place in his private thoughts while his daughter did not receive mention. As I read further, it became clear these notes were not strictly about the vineyard but about life. Just as he spoke in vineyard symbolism, so his notes were rich in story and wisdom told through the lens of a viticulturist.

  A wealth of potential lies within these fields, and I will seek to tend it well. Whatever it takes, I will find a way for this to flourish and bear rich fruit. I am working against nature, growing a vineyard where one does not belong, but I will defy the climate just as they did and create something that will live long after I’ve seen my last harvest.

  Ever since the last Malvern branch was pruned away from the vine, peace and new life exist in the vineyard now in my charge. A new vineyard will flourish where the old has fallen, and the harvest will be great and plentiful. Cassius Malvern has been neatly folded into the pages of Trevelyan’s history, the final, early demise in the Malvern family with no one left to miss him, and the vineyard will now flourish freely.

  I traced those final lines with my fingertip, wondering at this poor, forgotten Cassius who had been pruned away. What had made Father record such a thing? The way he spoke of Cassius left me unsettled, but I did not dwell on it.

  From there, the lines rambled on and on about soil composition and the direction of the sun. The level of detail rang of Father and gave me a sense of his presence in the work. Dipping my pen into the ink jar, I underlined anything that seemed important. Harnessing the power of the sun—maybe he hid his money in the chandeliers or candleholders—and fully enriching the soil that fed the vines—he could have buried it beneath the vineyard.

  Perhaps I was reading too much into his dry and practical notes. As the possibilities wove around my brain and tightened into frustration, I pushed the pages away. Yet the name Cassius Malvern had burned into my brain like an eerie shadow, lingering and enticing my curiosity. No one deserved to be forgotten, and it bothered me relentlessly that he should suffer such a fate.

  I awoke the next morning to the patter of pebbles striking the house beside my window. Bunching an extra blanket around me, I ran to the window and peered down at Donegan Vance, who stood in his worn black boots and long cape. “I have news. Dress and come down.”

  Those few words lit a terrible, tumultuous excitement that spurred me through the first part of his command. I donned a cotton percale and muslin dress with Lucy’s help, waved off her attempts to arrange my hair, and slipped my feet into worn ankle boots more suitable for gardening than meeting with a gentleman.

  But Donegan Vance was not exactly a gentleman. At least, not one I cared to impress. Especially when he dangled the carrot of exciting news before me at this hour.

  The orange of dawn infused the morning mist and warmed my face as I stepped out into the courtyard and sprinted through the archway to the vineyard. Already the field had filled with brown-clad workers bent over their labor, and I wondered at the remarkable sight. The new manager had proven effective, even if he was off-putting. Donegan stood with arms crossed and feet planted as he surveyed the work and waited for me.

  “How ever did you manage to entice the workers out this early?”

  “I promised them food.” He said the words with his usual frankness, and I could not tell if they were meant to poke at me or not.

  “Well, let’s have it then. What is your news?”

  “Come.” With firm fingertips against my shoulder blade, he led me along the east side of the vineyard, down the embankment, and toward the woods. A sudden fear passed over me as we traveled away from the house, but I shook it away. Donegan had already had a number of chances to do me harm if he so wished. Taking long strides through the tall grass, I hurried toward the woods with this man I barely knew. Oh, the lectures Mother would unleash if she knew what I now did.

  But of course, she didn’t. No one ever did. And sometimes that was to my benefit.

  “Can’t you simply tell me what it is?”

  “It’s far more dramatic to let you see it for yourself.”

  A crow’s yell startled me as we passed under the canopy of trees that blocked the sun and threw shadows in our leaf-littered path. “You aren’t taking me to a dead body, are you? Oh, you’re impossible!”

  “I do try.” A flicker of a smile passed over his face and he tucked my hand into the crook of his arm.

  We crunched through the leaves of last year’s autumn toward a thin shaft of light cutting through the branches. It lit upon a copse of trees so thick they resembled a small fortress.

  “This hardly would have caught my eye had I not read your father’s notebooks.” His chest rumbled through my arm tucked against him.

  “Why not just tell me where . . .” But my voice trailed away in the damp forest air as our destination came into focus. The copse was not a clump of trees but a thick mass of vines that covered a distinctly man-made arch. Struck with wonder, I approached the stones and touched their time-worn surface, imagining what they might have been. The masonry was exquisite, the stones perfectly shaped and smoothed to fit together. This was no temporary structure built by Gypsies.

  “What is it?” I whispered the words in the hushed aura of these ghostly woods.

  “Step back here.”

  Shaking a little from cold or from anticipation, I walked backward until I stood beside Donegan. My gaze climbed the stone arch along with the vines to the top, where a metal piece connected both pillars in an arch across the top. Cut out from that piece was the word “Malvern.”

  An involuntary shudder whipped through my body and I took a step toward Donegan. “What is this place?”

  “It’s the old gate.”

  I ran to it and yanked at the thickly woven vines to have a better look. Sure enough, a pair of rusted metal gate hinges hung from the inner arch of the stone. I ran my fingertip over them, wondering what had happened to the gate that had hung there.

  “That was the first thing I found.” Donegan crunched through the fallen leaves and kicked at the foliage beneath the arch. “I thought that was interesting, until I found this.” His rough boot kicked at a few remaining rocks and leaves to further uncover a gray stepping-stone marbled with white. “Even more intriguing.”

  Kneeling before it, I brushed dirt from its surface and my fingers slid over crude etching. The name Cassius Malvern suddenly became clear and I jerked my hand away as if I’d come in contact with a ghost. My heart thumped and I scrambled to stand, staring down at the irregularly shaped stone.

  “Is this a cemetery?” I felt light-headed.

  “This is the only stone I found.”

  I continued to stare at the etching as chills raced up and down my back. Somethi
ng seemed oddly alarming about it, as if I’d seen it before, but my mind merely circled around the truth without landing firmly on it.

  “It occurred to me last night after reading this name in the notebook that there are many people in Welporth who might know what happened to the Malverns, so I began to ask about.”

  I turned my back on Trevelyan, that great cavern of dreadful secrets, and faced Donegan. “What did you find?” I’d once thought secrets a beautiful, enchanting thing. Now I wished there were no such thing.

  “It seems that, after centuries of owning this land, they fell on hard times during the last generation, the final male heir.”

  “Cassius.” I mumbled the name of the last Malvern branch.

  “They summered here until the boy was about twelve, and his father tried to teach him to manage the vineyard so he might follow in his footsteps. The villagers say he wasn’t the sort to associate with them. Even at that young age, they knew him as entitled and elitist, watching them from his high tower and only speaking to them when he must.”

  “Perhaps he was not allowed.” I spoke from the experience of my own life.

  Donegan folded his arms across his chest. “He was eventually deemed mad and his family stopped coming here, leaving the vineyard in the hands of various managers. Some believed Cassius was violent, others say he was merely slow-minded. Either way, he made short work of the entire fortune when his parents died and never returned to Trevelyan.”

  I glanced down at the stone. Apparently he had, at least in death. My hand rose to my chest as Cassius’s story pierced even deeper into some shadowed part of me. I could not bear to think about him, but my imagination created an image of his face, etched with the supreme loneliness I felt myself, and hung it firmly at the back of my mind to dwell there.

  Donegan’s voice broke through my thoughts. “So it was that they lost their wealth. When the debts exceeded the pound notes, according to the local villagers, your father swooped in and stole the land. Not with spears and cannons, but with money.”

  “Buying is hardly stealing.”

  “When you attempt to take something money cannot buy, it is.”

  I looked at the proud, strong name of Malvern atop the arch, now reclaimed by the woods the family had sought to subdue.

  Donegan spoke quietly. “He wanted to be a Malvern. A name and a history isn’t something one can purchase.”

  “Still, there’s little harm in wanting such a thing.” Like the graft rejected by the vine, Father had tried every way possible to graft himself in the Malverns’ life, but he had died a Harlowe all the same.

  “He would have done far better to begin his own legacy instead of borrowing the wealth and sins of another.”

  I stiffened at the insult. “What sins did he take from them?”

  “The Malverns were known for abusing and underpaying their workers, asking much and giving little.”

  “My father did no such thing. His workers always had plenty, and he was a fair master. Even if they’ve not seen wages for a short spell, they live very well, I can assure you.”

  “Can you, now?” His casual tone was unnerving. “Don’t forget, I have been inside Trevelyan, and I can attest to seeing what ‘living well’ is.”

  “You can’t expect us to keep our servants in manor houses, can you? Even they don’t expect such a thing.”

  He frowned, studying me before he spoke. “Do you know what it means to call a vineyard an investment crop?”

  “It means you pour into it for years with only the expectation of a return in the future.” My words spilled easily from my memory of Father’s many lectures on the topic.

  “It means you care for and protect the vineyard because you recognize it’s a valuable asset.” He glanced toward the distant fields. “Those laborers are your vineyard, Miss Harlowe.”

  “Are they not provided with every necessity?”

  He hesitated, thoughts darkening his features. “Come. It’s time you experienced something for yourself.”

  13

  To care for the plant is to care for the grapes, for the fruit is nothing but the overflow of what a plant is fed.

  —Notebook of a viticulturist

  For the second time I perched atop the black stallion puffing from his massive nostrils, but now we climbed down the hill and daylight warmed our backs. I clung to the man before me for safety, only now he was not quite a stranger. Below us the road wound down into the village where it was lined by identical little cottages with a long stone fence.

  “How long has it been since you’ve walked through the village?” His voice carried back to me over his shoulder.

  “Long enough.” The truth was, I’d never been to the village. My childhood days had been full of my governess and tutors, without a thought for the village lying just past our woods. Now, the idea of riding into the midst of this place, walking among the people now working in my vineyard for no pay, made me recoil.

  We trotted down the ribbon of dirt road that separated two long rows of homes, and the scene was surprisingly pleasant. Sunlight glinted off the waters of the distant channel, and feathery mounds of wisteria spilled over the matching fences running along both strings of homes.

  Donegan reined his horse in before a neat green door with hens pecking at the bare yard. A crooked flower box held a few sad flowers. Dismounting, he helped me slide off the stallion’s back and then knocked at the door. A quiet greeting ushered us in. An older couple sat before an empty hearth, one working at a table and the other reclining in a rocker.

  “This is Mr. and Mrs. Hagan. Their three sons serve in the fields, and the eldest rents this home.”

  I looked at the tiny cottage. “They live together?”

  Mr. Hagan, a scrawny man in a faded shirt with a red scarf about his neck, sat at the table, painstakingly piecing together a chipped cup. His careful handling of those mere remnants squeezed my heart. “Had me own cottage when I worked in the fields. Over twenty years I gave this vineyard, but you’d never know it, the way I was cast aside as soon as my body gave out. Neatly tucked away in this here place with promises of my own cottage, but now that he’s gone I’ve got nothing.”

  I bit my lip, eager to promise him a small pension for his service, but I couldn’t. I had nothing to give yet.

  The tightness inside me eased only when I determined that this man would receive the first outpouring of the fortune when I found it, after estate notes were paid.

  “It isn’t so bad, Mr. Vance.” The old woman rocked in and out of the shadows, her arms wilted onto the arms of her chair. “We did love that Master Harlowe. Like a father to the village, he was, and always fair. He’d have never left us out in the cold, at least. Besides, our boys are good to us and we manage.”

  I lifted grateful eyes to the sweet woman. They deserved much more than they had. Their weary bodies evidenced years of loyal service, which should be amply rewarded.

  “No one who serves one master so long should have to simply manage.” Her husband grumbled these bitter words.

  “It wasn’t always this way, Mr. Hagan. Don’t forget that.” Her soft voice blanketed the rough edges of her husband’s bitterness. “He was good to us for many years, and we have plenty. Save your pity for folks like the McEvoys. Since the storm, they still set out a pot when it rains.”

  Donegan grumbled. “No one’s been to repair the roof?”

  Hagan shook his head. “Not since the master . . .” His voice trailed off as he shifted uncomfortably at the mention of death.

  When we took our leave of the place and walked farther down the road, I followed Donegan to a house across the street and down a little. He knocked and called out as if he were a regular visitor.

  “How do you know all these people? I thought you’d just arrived.”

  “I always make it a point to know the families I work with. Besides, I did stay here for a time while waiting for the ladies of the house to return to Trevelyan.”

  I hesitated b
ehind him. “Where exactly did you come from?”

  “I’ve lived in Newcastle, Scotland, Cornwall, East Sussex. Most recently, though, I’ve come from a vineyard in the South of France.”

  “That isn’t what I mean. It’s just . . . you seem to have walked out of the mist, yet it seems you’ve been here forever too.”

  I wished he’d answer my question, although I almost dreaded the dark secrets of his past that he might reveal. I’d come to depend on him in many ways, yet what if his character came into question? Did I keep him on, giving him the journals only he could interpret and entrusting him with the vineyard only he seemed able to save?

  The second door opened to us. “Mr. Vance.” A wiry woman with rolled-up sleeves and a strip of cloth securing her frizzy hair stood in the doorway, her stiff posture and lifted chin evidencing the respect that Donegan seemed to elicit wherever he went. He introduced me as a friend and the woman greeted me with a formal nod, but she asked no further questions about my identity.

  She ushered us into the dim space full of children in patched clothing, all tumbling over one another. The scarcity I saw there twisted my heart even further, and I wondered at Father’s stinginess toward them. Donegan hovered at the fringes with a deeply shadowed expression, but I moved toward our host and apologized for calling on her without warning.

  “What a surprise to have company in the middle of the day.” Her cheery smile doused my concerns with pleasant welcome. “Come, get yourself rested while I bring some food. Bread and honey? My Stephan won’t touch it, so there’s plenty. Says it tastes stale before it comes out of me oven.” The delightful woman walked toward her cupboard and leaned in, still chattering. “Don’t mind the little ones. Just push them aside if you need the space.”

  As the cupboard muffled her voice, my attention drifted to the children playing about, and their contagious joy began to lift my burdened heart. The youngest sat on the floor, baby feet spread, arms flapping in delight. One girl braided her sister’s hair while chattering faster than her mother. Three boys tumbled as a cluster over the rug. Another gave the scene lively background music with his fiddle. When the baby fussed, his mother stooped to gather him and thrust the little being into my arms. Surprised, I anchored the tiny whining body to me, praying he did not slip out of my grasp.