A Rumored Fortune

by Joanna Davidson Politano

  “I can manage.” She offered a crooked little smile with twinkling eyes. “I should sneak in the side door anyway, in case they’re still looking for me.”

  He gave a nod and again squelched the rising hope with a firm hand. Clutching Gypsy’s reins, he stood beside Trevelyan’s towering walls and watched Miss Harlowe rub his horse’s nose. She seemed in no hurry to depart and he wouldn’t urge her away.

  She looked up to him. “There’s something else I should tell you. It may be important or it may be nothing, but I did agree to tell you everything about the search. Every clue.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s this memory from my childhood in a very specific room.” Then she spoke of the workshop she so clearly remembered, with vivid descriptions of the dirty windows and rafters above. “And he’d carved something into the fireplace, so it couldn’t have been a fancy room.”

  “What did he carve?”

  She blew out a breath. “It was a title he’d given himself, in hopes it would become true one day, I suppose. Legendary Harlowe, it said.” She paused to smile up at him. “Rather conceited of him, wasn’t it?”

  But shock silenced him. If only she had told him of this earlier, so much might have been different these past months. He lifted his eyes to the great stone castle behind her and steeled himself as the internal battle began.

  For he knew exactly which chimney that box was in, and why old Harlowe had refused to tell where it was.

  27

  The best grapes are highest on the plant, in direct contact with the sun. The pity is that those are often the ones passed over simply because the effort to obtain them seems too great.

  —Notebook of a viticulturist

  Margaret, is there anything finer than fresh air?” I inhaled deeply, arms over my head as we walked along the high path over the cliffs the next morning. I’d convinced the poor housekeeper to accompany me here so that we might gather fresh mint leaves. It was another way to economize while still providing Mother with the delicacies she expected, but it had the added benefit of refreshing my spirit. “It’s so rich with energy and life. If it had color, I daresay it would be a luminescent green.”

  “You seem terribly happy for a girl being hunted by the constable. Your mother nearly sent out a search party looking for you.”

  “I told Lucy I was going out.”

  “Which she told us after we’d searched most of the house. He finally gave up last night, but he’ll be back.” She returned to her usual gentleness. “You cannot forever be slipping out when the constable comes, you know.”

  I scrambled up the highest cliff and looked out over the water, allowing my silence to answer for me. I had no idea what I’d do.

  “I suppose you’re counting on that Donegan Vance to come swooping in to rescue you again.”

  I allowed myself to think of Donegan Vance more often than I ought that morning as the phrase bad-day remedy tumbled about in my mind. I could learn to tolerate such a man.

  Margaret huddled close as we crested the hill, and I turned to look down over the water before us. “Look, there’s the pier. They’re actually building it.”

  “Well, of course they are, miss. They do believe it’ll be the magic fairy dust that brings all sorts of fancy people to our little corner of the world on holiday.”

  A powerful sea breeze flattened my skirt to my legs and unfurled it behind me like a sail as I held out my arms and relished the open sea air. “How could they stay away, once they discover our lovely little rock on the water?” Birnbeck Pier was sure to bring change to Welporth and beyond.

  Turning my back to the wind, I looked down over the village in the valley and then at my beloved Trevelyan perched on the hill above it. “I daresay, Trevelyan looks even more splendid from this height, especially with such a magnificent backdrop.” I breathed in the fresh air. “What if we made it a holiday house and opened it up to guests? Might that be a way to pay our debts and remain?”

  “Only if you could afford fresh, modern furnishings. People will expect luxury on holidays. And you’d have to convince your mother.”

  As my gaze wandered from kitchen to keep tower and along the curtain wall, examining it through the eyes of would-be holiday goers, I saw something new. “Margaret, do you see that chimney on the well tower? Am I seeing things?” Hope tickled me at the idea that there was one chimney I had not yet explored.

  “No, miss, it’s there all right.”

  “But there’s no fireplace . . .”

  “I believe that may be the one your father had bricked up some years ago. The mortar inside began to crumble and he didn’t care to repair it. Instead he walled over the fireplace and closed off the room.”

  Excitement and promise exploded in me as I grabbed Margaret’s hands and tugged her forward. “Come, Margaret, let’s hurry back. I want to explore it.” Eagerness to share this with Donegan hastened my feet as I stepped down the steep embankment. If he’d warmed to my vague notions and silly ideas before, he’d be thrilled with this. At last, after all our searching and untangling, we had a solid lead.

  Drying and wiping my sandy feet in the kitchen when we returned, I crossed the hall to find Amos poised at the banister and smiled at him. “Good morning. Have any of the other guests risen?”

  “No, miss. But we did lose one last night. Mr. Carrington has asked me to relay his apologies for a hasty departure, and he left you this.” The tall butler slid a folded note from his pocket and handed it to me with a grim look of apology.

  “Thank you, Amos. I’m sure he has other business to attend.”

  T—

  Things are escalating at Trevelyan, so I must escape home for the moment. This isn’t over. The moment the fog clears from this scandal and I’ve earned the position, I’ll be there to claim you as my bride, rest assured of that.

  Don’t forget me.

  I crunched the note in my fist. No, never would I forget him. Loneliness from the night before threatened to drown me once again until I glimpsed Donegan’s profile through the cracked-open doors of Father’s study. Here, at least, I should find a friend. I crossed to the room and slipped inside. “What are you doing in here? Mother has forbidden it.”

  He lifted his furrowed countenance from the ledgers he studied, but his mind seemed to remain tangled in the papers on the desk.

  “Ah, that’s right. You don’t listen well. Not even to your employer, it would seem.” My playful smile hardly moved him.

  “I must inspect the accounts to know how desperate things truly are. There’s a chance it might be wise to harvest the bitter grapes and make some use of them.”

  I stepped forward across the plush rug. “Perhaps we won’t need this harvest, if we’re as close to the fortune as I think we are.”

  He didn’t even raise his head.

  “I’ve another piece to tell you about. There’s a walled-up chimney in the well tower—”

  I spun at a noise behind me.

  “Tressa, there you are.” Cousin Neville spoke from the doorway behind me. “Have you forgotten about church? Your mother has been looking for you.” Ellen stood behind him, watching me with eyes that always saw too much.

  It was Sunday. How could I have forgotten? “I’ll be along.” The intruders departed and I dropped my voice. “We must speak soon, Mr. Vance.”

  Finally he looked up at me, that chiseled face blandly deflecting my earnest excitement. Tiredness rimmed his eyes as if he’d lost a week of sleep, and I wondered what had occurred since we’d spoken last. “I shall have little spare time until after harvest.”

  “Let the grapes rot for all I care. We can start fresh after this season.”

  “I never leave a project unfinished. Oh, you may also tell your cook that you will have one less at the dinner table. I cannot spare the time for a formal meal anymore.”

  “But . . .” With a frown, I backed toward the open doors. “As you wish.” I turned and walked out slowly, willing him to look up at me as he alw
ays did, but he hardly seemed to notice my exit. Only then did I realize how much I’d come to depend upon being studied by that deeply intense eyes, for no one had ever seen me as thoroughly as he had.

  Shoving aside a surprising depth of pain at this simple turn of events, I moved toward the well tower to explore, but Lucy caught me in the hall. The search would have to wait until a private moment that evening.

  After my maid had dressed me for church and gone, I turned my attention to the new notebook pages left on the dressing table and wished dearly to find something comforting, something meaningful, in my departed father’s words. What I found there only made everything tenfold worse. I sank onto a bench and skimmed several pages of dry notes until I reached a section in the middle that seized my attention and held it captive.

  I am not sorry I pruned Cassius Malvern off the vine, for one has little choice when a branch is rotting away. It was an act of mercy, and I’ll never regret it.

  Pain speared my heart, and I clung to the memory of my dear father as I remembered him, refusing to let my loyalty be corrupted. For if my father was wicked, who was left to me?

  At least now I had an explanation for Donegan’s distance. What a wretched end to this journey of discovery, in which I found nothing I ever wanted to know. The lonely, haunted face of that boy in the painting bore down on my mind, but I refused to believe what his accusing stare insinuated.

  I grabbed my head in my hands and steeled myself against the hatred ready to slice through my tender daughter-heart, shredding it into an irretrievable mess. Everything—everything—had been taken from me, including the very ideal of my father. Reading this was nearly worse than hearing the news of his death.

  Why, God? Why must you prune everything away from me? The word connect painted above the doorway claimed my reluctant attention. It seemed like the focal point of the entire room, mocking me in my haunting aloneness. To whom can I connect, Lord? Who is left?

  The feeling of loneliness magnified when I took my seat beside Mother in the Harlowe family balcony box and set my open hand on the vacant space beside me on our pew, wishing with a powerful intensity. Rain poured down onto the roof as I looked down upon the sanctuary where a plainly dressed man guided his little girl into a pew below. How simple their lives were. They merely lacked money.

  Together we rose as Vicar Davis walked to the front of the great stone church and stood behind the pulpit. His somber voice echoed about the huge empty space above the heads of the parishioners, silencing the last-minute shuffling and adjusting in the pews. Then we sat and my gaze flew again to the little family in the fourth row. The man had opened his Bible and laid it across their laps, one half on his leg and the other on that of his daughter, with his wife looking on from the other side. In that moment, my longing intensified to an unbearable level.

  As the vicar’s voice filled the air with his welcome and opening exhortation, thunder from the outside rolled gently across my senses. “Rise for the reading of the Lord’s Prayer.”

  We stood as a single streak of sunlight beamed through the stained-glass windows, prisming into the dreary gray air with vibrant color that caught my artist’s eye.

  “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”

  We dutifully murmured the line in response, but the words began to dig into my consciousness, at once having a powerful effect on my thoughts.

  Father.

  What a precious, painful word. I couldn’t help but stare at the father below as the sermon began, and my imagination lent him every attribute I’d craved in my own. Why couldn’t Josiah Harlowe have been like him, simple and noble and good? Someone who loved his daughter to distraction and doted on her, enjoying her presence, knowing all about her, protecting her?

  As the rain slowed and the clouds passed away from the sun outside, the streak of light shooting through the stained glass expanded until I was suddenly blinded with color and warmth that bathed my dim thoughts. I blinked rapidly, then closed my eyes as light overpowered my vision. I was aware of nothing besides the beginning of the vicar’s sermon that boomed and echoed through the air and into my mind as if spoken directly to me. “I AM, says the Lord, and that is all he has to say on the matter. Simply, I am.”

  Instantly my thoughts pivoted. Our Father, who art in heaven. The words landed on my heart afresh, soaking into what had begun to turn stony and hopeless, warming it to life again. I am, he seemed to say to my pleas. I am all those things you want. A statement directly, personally, to my wrung-out fatherless heart.

  My Father, who art in heaven.

  My heart thudded at the possibility that God was reaching out to me in this moment through a blinding abundance of color, the language of my heart.

  But this all-powerful, all-knowing Father continued taking things and people away from me. Things I needed. He could see the tangled, lonely life I now faced, so also could he see the hidden fortune.

  Yet he did nothing to change any of it.

  I took my mare out riding on the beach when we returned, giving her freedom to run across the packed sand. With a deep breath of muggy air, I soaked in the display of the receding storm’s light reflecting off the waters, sorting through everything that had occurred that morning and allowing it to absorb into my spirit.

  There must be an explanation for what Father wrote in his notebook—something that did not involve hurting Cassius Malvern. Or perhaps he had had a good and noble reason for what he’d done. I clung to those possibilities with relentless obsession, and the bitter feelings of betrayal dulled.

  When I eventually turned my steed up the path to the house and trotted her across the yard, quiet blanketed the fields. This stillness did not strike me as odd until I led the mare into the stables and found no groom to attend me, no stable boy to take the horse. I slid off her back and guided her into the stall, reaching below to unbuckle her heavy saddle and tug it off. With a frown I slipped through the yard and wandered toward the house.

  When I crossed under an archway into the courtyard, running footsteps greeted me, echoing in the closed space. Lucy flew down the steps with a speed that threatened to send her tumbling. “Oh, Miss Tressa, Miss Tressa. There you are.” She fell into my arms and pushed back to clutch my hands. “You’d better come quick.” She paused to suck in air.

  “What’s happened, Lucy? Slow down and let your brain catch up with your mouth.”

  “It’s the fortune, miss,” she gasped. “They’ve found it.”

  28

  The biggest danger of mold is simply its stealth. When it’s significant enough to be seen, it has already done irreversible damage.

  —Notebook of a viticulturist

  I followed my maid up the stairs of the well tower into the top room that now stood open for the first time in my memory. A crowd had gathered in the cramped attic space, from servants to guests, and the stale air filled with anxious chatter.

  “Mother, what has happened? What is this?” Then as I stepped inside, my gaze locked onto the big black trunk of my memories, its presence consuming the room as it drew the focus of everyone. A few servants worked to clear splintered crates and debris off its lid.

  “It was here all this time, buried under a great many crates and boxes beside the old chimney. I returned home from church this morning to find our dear cousins scouring the well tower because of some tip they’d had.”

  Because I’d told them where to look. Why had I spoken so openly to Donegan that morning in front of these people? Ellen must have overheard as they left the room.

  Servants huddled in gossiping bunches on the fringes of the room, their words swirling and strengthening in volume. Through it all I merely stared at the box that had haunted my memories. I could barely breathe. I’d almost begun to believe it a fanciful idea from my childish imagination, but here it was in real life, before me and ready to be explored.

  “Perhaps an even split between us,” Neville suggested as he eyed the trunk.

  “She’ll be pa
ying the local shops what she owes first. She’s a lady of breeding.” This from Margaret who hovered near the door.

  “I’ll need my kitchen stocked too,” called Cook.

  The chatter around us increased as the trunk was cleared of all debris, and then one voice cut through the mess.

  “All of you, back away.” Mother strode to stand before the coveted box and spoke in that deadly quiet tone that arrested every movement in the room. “How dare any of you lay claim to this fortune?” She paused to allow the power of her authority to humble them all. Even our guests watched submissively from the fringes. “This is a special moment that has nothing to do with any of you. It is for my daughter and I alone. I must ask the rest of you to leave.”

  The voices died out as our staff and guests filtered out of the room and onto the narrow stairway, many throwing backward glances as they left.

  “Tressa, lock the door.”

  I turned the little latch and walked over to where Mother stood by the chest, an eerie calm blanketing her.

  “And now, everything has come to this.” She knelt in a poof of skirts and skimmed her fingertips over the top of the dirty box. “We shall see if it’s all been worthwhile.”

  With nimble fingers, she worked the latches until they popped. I joined her and together we lifted the great lid. I held my breath and strained to see into the dark cavity as light filled it.

  We gasped together. There lining the bottom of the trunk was a mere remnant of all the money I’d seen there years before, and the sight of it burst my anticipation. My heart pounded as I forced my eyes to assess the situation again and again, wondering what could possibly explain what we saw before us. “Mother, was the trunk ever out of your sight? Could Neville and Ellen have—”

  Mother sat back with a cry of despair and trembled. “It’s his final retribution, isn’t it?” She turned to me with a humorless smile. “The man always did have to have the last word, and now he’s done it again, even in death.” She grasped the edge of the trunk and stared at the end result of her tumultuous years of marriage to Josiah Harlowe. “So this is the fortune he raved about for so many years. The great fortune befitting a great man.” She released a dry laugh. “How right he was. Nothing better represents the man than this paltry sum he’s left us.”