A Rumored Fortune

by Joanna Davidson Politano

  I rested my back against a pillar and looked out over the lush vineyard shaded in the lovely blue-black moonlight. “I’m trying to decipher a puzzle.”

  He stepped beside me and folded his arms, following my gaze. “What sort of puzzle?”

  “It’s something I call the vineyard’s secret, and it’s eluded me since childhood.” I breathed in the fresh night air. “I’ve always thought Father would leave some clue related to the vineyard that would point to his fortune. He always spoke in vineyard riddles, and it seemed like he’d do the same for his biggest secret ever.” It sounded foolish when I voiced it aloud. “It probably seems ridiculous to pore over an old man’s notes and musings, but it’s the only glimpse of him I have left. I could search for years in that big old house for the fortune, or I could peer into the mind of the man who hid it.”

  Silence rolled over the calm night, punctuated only by wind sweeping through foliage as he studied me with rapt interest, seeming to see beyond my words to something I hadn’t intended to reveal.

  “There’s far more to you than anyone would ever guess, isn’t there? You’re quite remarkable.”

  The words stole my tongue for a moment, washing over me with surprising pleasantness. It seemed this man took me seriously in a way no one else ever had. From Mother’s self-absorption to Father’s annoyance and Andrew’s gentle condescension, I’d begun to believe I truly had nothing valuable in my head.

  I decided the man was pleasant to talk to at times.

  Emboldened by his interest, I told him about the vine tapestry that hung in the undercroft, describing the gold-centered trunk and the words. “I’ve always thought of this as a sort of treasure map, like it was somehow supposed to portray where he’d hidden the fortune, but only to the person who knew enough about his beloved vines to understand what this meant.”

  His eyebrows rose in keen fascination. “What do you suppose it means?”

  I looked away, eager to gloss over the fact that I had no good theories. After a moment I broke the silence. “Why do you always wish to know my thoughts?”

  “You’ve built such an immense fortress around yourself, but I’ve often found the highest walls hold the deepest waters. Yours should never be concealed.”

  I glanced at this man, this stranger who seemed so anxious to hear my thoughts. “Your walls are higher than mine, for I know nothing about you. And I imagine there’s much to know—much you are careful to conceal. You are not simply a vineyard manager, are you?”

  His stricken look of guilt gave a more thorough answer than any words could. He looked over the vineyard, then back to me. “The work of one’s hands does not always reflect the depth of his abilities.”

  I frowned at him, wondering if I should demand the return of Father’s notebook. If I did, it would keep the information in it safe, but it would be utterly useless to me. And with pressures bearing down on me, I had to know what was in it. Instead, I merely asked, “Have you translated more pages?”

  “That I have. I found this section quite compelling. Wait here and I’ll fetch it.”

  15

  The best fruit arises from a hostile environment—harsh winters, dry soil, and unrelenting heat from the sun deepen a grape’s flavor and heighten its sweetness. Bearable conditions bring only mediocre fruit.

  —Notebook of a viticulturist

  Donegan covered the ground to his cottage and back again in long strides, appreciative of the cool, fresh air. Inhaling and shaking his head, he willed himself to brush off the heavy enchantment of that ivy-covered pavilion. No, it wasn’t the whimsical structure, but the girl who waited there. Her nature unfurled in layers that surprised and impressed him, and he found it difficult to tear himself away. Even her sharp tongue drew him, as it so aptly displayed her keen intelligence.

  In theory, he should detest her. Who could hope to find value in the offspring of a father and mother such as hers? Both spoiled and selfish in their own ways, the lord and lady of the manor had earned his distaste immediately, and his feelings only increased as he learned more. The child they produced and raised should, by any logic, be even worse.

  But like a gemstone tumbled to perfection by adversity, she had become smoothed and polished by her life. She seemed neither rich nor poor, stuffed full of material treasures like the wealthy nor drained of life like those in service. She hovered somewhere entirely different, on her own colorful, creative plane.

  Yet the reality remained—she was the princess of the castle. Firming his jaw, he turned back and found her walking through the mist-shrouded vines. He strode out to meet her in the vineyard and held out the papers.

  “I’m grateful to you for doing this.” Hungrily she scanned the pages, a frown tugging on her features as she read. “Cassius. He wrote about Cassius again. He calls him slow-minded and simple, and without the business sense that all Malverns had.”

  “From what I can tell, Cassius refused to overwork and underpay the laborers. Either laziness or . . . mercy. I’m beginning to wonder if this man your father dislikes was truly so terrible.”

  She lifted her pained expression. “Father wasn’t always the most affirming person, but he truly wasn’t mean without cause. Cassius must have done something to Father for him to . . .”

  Her voice trailed off and Donegan shifted uncomfortably, picturing the cynical lump of a man she now spoke of. If only he could hear her speak this way. Her vision of him seemed to be tinted with a sort of hero worship despite what Harlowe had insinuated, and he couldn’t bear to be the one to tell her the truth about the man. She’d learn soon enough if she persisted with these notebooks. Donegan bridged the uncomfortable silence with the first question that came to mind. “Did he ever speak of him to you before?”

  “Never. Only of the Malvern family in general. But something happened between him and Cassius that caused him a great deal of sadness, it seems.”

  Donegan recalled the words of the skinny lad called Twig he’d met when he first arrived—no one knew exactly how Harlowe had come by his fortune. Did Tressa realize that? “Perhaps it’s a private matter that is better left alone. People often have actions in their past they don’t wish anyone to know about.”

  “But I wish to know everything. There’s nothing that could ever make me hate him.”

  Her surprising words only solidified how wrong Harlowe was in his impression of the girl. As she once again buried her gaze in the words before her, he allowed himself the indulgence of simply watching her eager face. It seemed her inner nature was as lovely as her outward appearance.

  How utterly absurd was his fascination with this girl. As an heiress and employer of underpaid laborers, she was the antithesis of everything he’d worked for in his life, and he must think on that every time he looked into the deep pools of her green eyes. Like multifaceted emeralds, they shone at him as she looked up. “Why do you always stare at me so?”

  He broke the gaze and looked back to the sloping vineyards around them, keeping her face in his peripheral vision. “I’m wondering why you are so desperate to find that pile of money.”

  “One needs money to live.” But her face shuttered, closing off something vastly more important than the little she’d revealed. After a moment of silence, she opened the shutters the barest sliver. “Sometimes money is merely a way to acquire what you truly want.”

  “Trevelyan, you mean?”

  “Everything that’s here. My father toiled for years over this vineyard, and no one else would see it as more than a field.” She lowered the papers and looked out over the long rows of vines hanging off their guide wires. She traced a large leaf with her fingertip. “Sometimes I feel he’s actually here. He’s poured so much of himself into these vines that it’s almost like I can experience him when I walk among his handiwork.”

  She closed her eyes and inhaled. “I can so easily hear his voice out here, mingling with the noise of rushing water and the insects. ‘Tressa girl,’ he’d say. Then some brilliant gem of truth woul
d pour out. Something about vines, but also about life. I’ve stored them all up in my memory to pull out and use when I need them, but if we left here, I’m afraid they’d scatter like fog.”

  It struck him then what she was saying—Trevelyan Castle was a great cavern of all her most precious memories, the vineyard a field of her experiences, growing and green.

  “There’s so much about this place that I cannot even put into words. If I could, I suppose I would never need to paint it.” Her voice came out whisper-soft and then she dropped her gaze, the spell of her reminiscence broken. “Not that any of this has to do with the fortune.”

  He laid a hand on her covered arm and found surprising warmth emanating from it. “No words are wasted on me, I assure you.”

  She threw him a grateful smile, her eyes glowing with a sort of kinship that gave him more hope than it ought.

  The way she spoke of her father, as if his name were a precious pearl cradled in her palm, shed more light on her than on the man himself. She treated her self-absorbed mother with the same tenderness every day. He wondered at the girl as he attempted to attach label after label to her, discarding each with true confusion and sincere regard for her.

  He brushed away the swelling admiration and cleared his throat gruffly. Forcefully. “It seems you enjoyed being with him.”

  The clouds drifted before her face again and she smiled in a tender way that drew him to her in spite of himself, urging him to move near, but he pushed against the inclination.

  She shrugged in answer to his question. “I managed to make myself present whenever he was about the house. But I was a child, of course, with all of my foibles and silly questions.” She turned to face him then, those emerald eyes shining directly at him with full intensity in the shadows of the pillars, reeling him firmly in until he had to nearly fight against the urge to pull her close and embrace all the color and life embodied in the girl. “You can imagine what an annoyance it would be to always have me near.”

  He cleared his throat, forcing himself to shift back and grasp the post harder. “No, I cannot.”

  With a light smile, she examined him. “Do you find it impossible to agree with anyone?”

  “Only when they are wrong.”

  Her eyes sparkled in the moonlight. “I suppose everyone but you falls into that category.”

  Horse hooves rattled over the drawbridge in the distance, but it was merely background noise pricking this surreal moment. Many formless thoughts swept through his mind in those moments of quiet.

  She turned and looked toward the channel. “I cannot stop wishing to see his little boat come bouncing over the waves, returning to Trevelyan’s shores as he did so many times. I used to sit here to watch when he took the boat out. I never dreamed of him drowning. To my little girl mind, he was invincible.”

  “You miss him a lot.”

  She closed her eyes and inhaled. “I think I’ve missed him all my life. I fear it might break me, for now I’ll have to go on missing him forever.”

  Donegan cast his gaze out onto the shoreline and hardened it in place as he pictured the little island beyond, thankful she could not read his thoughts. His own secret lay perched on the edge of his tongue, ready to spill out into the night. He swallowed and clamped his jaw shut.

  He jerked as her elbow tapped his arm when she shifted. “I should not speak this way to you. My grief is not your concern.”

  Oh, but it was. How greatly it was. In a moment, he could end her grief, change everything that was happening to her now. Yet what sort of grief would erupt over this family, this girl, if he revealed what he knew?

  “Ah well, all I can do now is to see this treasure hunt through and find myself a fortune.” Her lighthearted words were accompanied by a whimsical smile. “There’s no finer remedy to grief than doing, and this hunt has kept me blessedly occupied. How greatly I need something to engage my mind in good, productive things. In the words of Marcus Aurelius, the color of one’s thoughts stain the soul and I dearly wish to have a lovely, colorful soul.” A brave smile thinly veiled everything beneath.

  Heart aching, nearly suffocating with anguish as he looked at her, he despised his position. How could he possibly continue to allow her to hurt so? Tenderness lay just beneath her veneer of strength, so easily penetrated by the sharp suffering of this world.

  And her eyes. Those gorgeous jewels of radiant intelligence that took in everything and revealed just as much. How different they would look if he took her to the little island. But he couldn’t.

  Why? Why had he agreed to this? Why did he continue to be complicit in—

  “You are staring again, Mr. Vance.”

  He turned his gaze away, grinding his teeth. “Donegan. Please.”

  After an airy silence in which she studied him intensely, her voice again filled the open space. “So why is it you are searching? Do you suffer the same obsession as the others who’ve come lately?”

  “I’d hardly call myself obsessed over money.”

  But as soon as the words escaped, the truth sacked his already tense gut. Money. That was why he’d agreed to this—purely for money.

  “Don’t be ashamed. It seems to strike all men, this passion for accumulation of wealth. Even my father felt the need to hide his fortune away lest anyone—including his family—should remove it from his clenched fist.”

  Then, before he could respond, a powerful surge of conviction swept over him in that vast field of leaves and vines as he pictured his leather pouches. Of all the things he’d left behind over the years—jobs, clothes, languages, even family—that money had been his only constant attendant as he’d wandered, driven to increase it. And now it drove him into this secret he so detested. The condemnation that had gripped him earlier tightened its hold with fierce, relentless power.

  He shifted. “Money has a surprising draw, especially when it can do so much good.”

  She turned to him, curiosity in her eyes, but a distant voice disrupted the deepening conversation. She tore her gaze from his to look back at the glowing windows of Trevelyan. Just like that, the spell had broken.

  “I should go.” And without another word, she whished past him and hurried between the curling vines. Exhaling the built-up tension of the encounter, of all his thoughts, he followed the girl out of the vineyard, through the gardens, and into the torch-lit courtyard, where he focused on trying to avoid the hem of her skirt gathering leaves across the stones. Together they ascended the timber stairs to the double doors and passed through them to find a small gathering in the grand room beyond.

  “There! Ask her.” A red-faced man limped toward them, the thump of his cane punctuating his angry words. “It was you, wasn’t it? Thought you could scare me into forgetting about that little debt?”

  “Mr. Prescott, please. No one here had any reason to set that fire.”

  “It’s because you haven’t the money. You and your sorry little mother have nothing, yet you cannot be without your gaudy castle. Your showpiece.”

  “I assure you we do have the money we owe you, and it shall be repaid as—”

  “Prove it.” He spat the words. “If you have the money, prove it. Pay me now.”

  Her little hand clenched at her side. “If you’ll only give us time to—”

  He growled, leaning heavily on his cane. “A week. You have exactly one week to come forward with this money you claim you possess or I shall call in the entire debt and see you sell every stick of furniture and polished stone you own. Is that clear? And I’ll set the constable on you for arson. If I hadn’t had the deepest respect for your father . . .”

  As Donegan stood on the fringes of this scene, feeling even more an intruder than ever, he determined to protect her. Setting his jaw, he stepped between the irate man and the woman to whom he fired his angry words. “The lady said she’d pay you. Now take yourself home.”

  “There’s no use hiding behind your bully, Miss Harlowe. The truth always comes out. And when it does, I’ll h
ave the constable descending on this house faster than you can blink.”

  The nerve of this pompous stuffed shirt. Squaring his shoulders, Donegan glared a powerful warning at him. “I don’t like repeating myself.”

  With a snarling grimace, the unwelcome visitor slammed his hat onto the fine gray hair and limped toward the door. The man turned to shake his gold-tipped cane at the room. “Don’t think I’ll simply disappear. This is far from over.”

  Donegan winced, knowing it likely to be true.

  Andrew Carrington strode toward Miss Harlowe with a protective posture and laid a hand on her shoulder. “He’s only angry. This will pass, and he’ll soon forget about it.”

  “I wish I could believe that.” Miss Harlowe tipped her face toward her fine-suited guest and the storm of emotion in her eyes surprised Donegan. A palpable connection existed between them, thickly filling the narrow space between their bodies. That the girl felt something for this gentleman was obvious even to one as obtuse to these matters as Donegan. They had something between them—an established history.

  Gritting his teeth, he turned away. What sort of man was he, wishing to keep this girl for himself in any form, when one of her own kind had already stepped in beside her? With bitter envy he forced himself to glance back at the pair, their perfectly matched countenances and clothing making it even more obvious.

  No matter if she was intelligent and interesting, passionate and spirited, beautiful and bewitching to the extreme. She could be everything he’d ever hoped to find, but it mattered little if he was nothing of what she sought for herself.

  16

  A good vintner will not allow his vines to grow how they will in whatever way seems best to them, but he will work painstakingly to guide, redirect, and prune each plant so it may reach the full potential it cannot even imagine for itself.