A Rumored Fortune

by Joanna Davidson Politano

  “No, it’s just something odd I heard about him once.” Donegan hadn’t managed to shake the impending sense of doom and utter helplessness heaped upon him since Caine’s odd reaction to his questions about Carrington’s character. “I thank you for your hospitality to me while I worked at Trevelyan.”

  “I prayed you’d never leave.” Mrs. Campbell set a bowl of weak stew before Donegan. “Selfish of me, isn’t it? You’ve brought naught but good to Welporth.”

  Donegan smiled up at the woman before shoveling a spoonful of food into his mouth. Tasteless as it was, the warmth of the watery meal made it inviting and satisfying.

  “I don’t suppose I could convince you to change your mind, could I now? I’ll make you all the fresh bread in the world and drizzle it in honey. Or you can have Valerie. Sweeter than all the honey in the shire and pretty, besides. Isn’t she a vision in that dress?”

  Donegan eyed the girl hovering in the corner where she watched the hanging kettle, shyly avoiding his gaze. “I’ve never seen her look finer, Mrs. Campbell.” The blue dress fit her well, even if it clashed terribly with the hovel surrounding her, and it brought a bittersweet smile to Donegan’s lips. He knew immediately where the garment had come from. It seemed the color spilling forth from Tressa Harlowe could no longer be contained by the walls of her home, for it had leaked into the village as well. If it was possible, the ache for her expanded until he feared it would overtake his rational sense and keep him from leaving.

  Yet he would do as she requested. Always.

  “Come now, won’t you stay? A man deserves to see the reward of his labors at harvest.”

  “I never stay in one village long. I do thank you for fetching Ginny and putting us up last night, though.”

  “’Twasn’t a worry, Mr. Donegan.” She smiled and turned to the counter where she began sawing bread into slices of wood. “Once you fit ten in a cottage, you don’t notice two more. Won’t you stay for a bite of bread?”

  He hesitated, staring at the solid slices and remembering the taste of them. “I thank you for the offer, but we’d best get along before any more time passes. I could easily remain here forever, but my responsibilities lie elsewhere.”

  With a few final goodbyes, Donegan led Ginny out into the cloudy day toward his horse.

  “Uncle Don, I don’t want to stay here. I’m glad we’re leaving.”

  “You enjoyed living at Trevelyan, did you not?” He leaped astride Gypsy and lifted the little girl in front of him, noticing her frame had acquired a little weight. “They said you were a good help.”

  “Oh yes, but it wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t home.”

  He sank into the leather saddle with a sigh and wrapped his arms around her little body. “I know the feeling.” He’d never had strong attachment to the little glen until he’d had to leave it. Now every piece of Carin Green, including the precious girl leaning against him, seemed a treasure.

  A patter of footsteps nearby drew his attention back to the Campbell cottage where their eldest boy waved as he approached. Donegan guided his horse closer and reined him in just before the lad who held out a cloth-wrapped package. “Mum insisted. It’s an entire loaf.”

  “Please thank your mother, Sam, but I cannot take any more from your kind family.”

  But the boy shoved it into his hands with determination, meeting his glance with a desperate one of his own. “Please, sir. Please take it. Believe me, that’ll be the kindness.”

  Biting back a smile, Donegan accepted the gift that had the weight of a stone and shoved it into his saddlebag. “Then thank you. And you’re welcome.”

  The boy smiled. “It’s been a real pleasure serving you, Mr. Donegan. The fields won’t be the same without you.”

  Donegan hesitated, shifting in his saddle. It was finally time to depart, but a sense of unease had settled over him at the thought of leaving her with Carrington and it wouldn’t lift. Dr. Caine’s odd reaction to his inquiry had only strengthened it. “Sam, I need to speak to the local doctor about something. Could you tell me where to find him?”

  “The closest we have in the village is old widow Carney with her herbs. I’ve heard there’s a doctor in Haywood that old Harlowe saw, though. Same parish, just up the road a piece.”

  With a nod of thanks, Donegan shifted on his horse and nudged him into an easy gallop. They arrived in the bustling town of Haywood within the hour and easily located the little medical office on the east side of the main street. Slipping off his horse and tying him to a post, Donegan stepped up to the door and knocked. A tall and confident young man in a cheap suit and tiny spectacles answered the door.

  “Is the doctor in? I’d like a word with him.”

  “I’m the doctor. How can I help?”

  “I have the wrong clinic, then. I’m looking for the doctor who attends the Harlowe family.”

  “Ah, the Harlowes. Yes, I served Josiah Harlowe for years. I was his personal physician.”

  Donegan frowned. “You tended to Josiah Harlowe?”

  “Yes, ever since I came here. I monitored his heart condition until his passing, even though he refused medicine for it.”

  “I thought he had a lung condition. Something to do with toxic air.”

  The doctor crossed his arms. “The man’s lungs were fit as could be. His only medical complaint was a severely weakened heart valve due to a childhood bout of rheumatic fever. I’ve been monitoring the condition for years, as did my predecessor Dr. Field before me. He staunchly refused to see any other physician, including specialists in London.”

  “Perhaps I misheard, then.” Dread and indecision warred through Donegan as he thanked the man and left.

  “Uncle Don, we’re not going back, are we? You promised we’d go home.”

  “That we will, Ginny.” He leaped astride Gypsy and turned him back toward the road. “I just have to send a message first.”

  32

  Frost comes stealthily and silently to a vineyard, lacing it with beautiful, deadly designs in a single night, proving with all certainty that, despite his meticulous work, the vinedresser is truly never in complete control of anything he grows.

  —Notebook of a viticulturist

  Are you Tressa Harlowe? This is for you, from a gent in Haywood.” A scrawny barefoot lad stood at the service entrance that evening where I’d been summoned to receive the note. “He said I’m to deliver it into your hands and no other.” He thrust the smudged envelope toward me and I nodded my thanks, wishing I could drop a shilling into his dry palm.

  When he scampered off into the sunset, I turned to shield the missive from the curious watchers hanging about the servant’s hall and hurried from the room. Andrew? Father? My heart thudded. But when I reached the empty coolness of the entrance hall, I stared down upon the familiar handwriting of Donegan Vance. I froze. Pinching my lips, I stuffed the note in my pocket to read another time. I had no wish to hear the man’s voice, even on paper. Confusion had overwhelmed me, and his words would be dangerously swaying, especially if they were as persuasive as his presence.

  Abandoning the note in a wardrobe drawer in my room, I had the chambermaid redress me in an older serge frock. Releasing my hair from the twirls and pins placed earlier that morning, I shook out the waves and pinned a small section back and draped an old brown cloak over my arm.

  I met the butler on the landing and he took in the sight of me without a word. One could always count on faithful servants for not reacting to their mistress’s oddities. “Amos, have you done what we discussed?”

  Dark eyes flicked back and forth in his long, somber face and he crept close to whisper his reply. “We’ve gone over every inch of the cottage, and nothing has been found. Not a single farthing.”

  I’d sent my two most loyal servants, Amos and Margaret, to scour the cottage for signs of the pilfered fortune, for I knew I could trust no one else.

  “And no one intruded?”

  “We were the only ones near the place. It’s secu
red and I doubt even a mouse could gain entry.” He leaned closer and slipped a large metal key into my hand. “You are now the only one with access to it.”

  “Thank you, Amos. Tell no one of this, and be sure to let me know if anyone snoops.”

  Swiftly flying through the servant’s hall and out the service entrance, I breathed in deeply of moist air once I stepped outside. It was time to find answers. Bypassing the stables in favor of walking in the fresh air, I took long strides down the wooded path as the sun set, a basket dangling on my arm.

  I dared not call on any of the field hands, for some might even have retired for the night, but stopped instead before the home of the one man I knew would be awake, one of the few I’d met when he came to the house for candles. The door of the lamplighter’s home was answered by a slender woman with a pleasantly content face who welcomed me in before I gave my name.

  “I hope I’ve not disrupted your meal.”

  “It would never be a disruption to have a guest.” The older woman beamed as she ushered me toward a long, crude table.

  Her large, pleasantly gruff husband whipped aside a long curtain closing off a small washing stand and stepped out into the room to agree with her. “Give the girl some bread, Maggie.”

  She settled me in a chair and brought me the softest bread I’d ever had the pleasure of tasting. What skill languished within this simple cottage.

  I turned to the couple after a few minutes of pleasant chatter and dove into my mission with all the informality I could muster. If anyone knew of Donegan’s activities, the lamplighter, an unofficial night watchman, would be the one. “I’m wondering if either of you happened to see Donegan Vance about with a trunk.”

  “Not long ago he brought that one into the square, didn’t he?” The man frowned and looked at his wife for confirmation.

  I sat forward. “Did you see what he did with it?”

  “He merely came asking for help.”

  “To unlock it? Did he remove anything from it?”

  The man’s oversized brow lowered as he guessed my intentions, my suspicions of Donegan, but his little wife laid a hand on his arm and the motion exuded invisible calm over him. Husband and wife shared a look and the husband rose, sloshing back his mug of tea and clunking it on the table. “Come with me, Miss Harlowe. I must light the lamps. I’d like to give you a tour of our little village that you’ll find quite enlightening.”

  A polite refusal rose with immediate swiftness to my lips, but a gentle awareness of my heavenly Father quieted my spirit, opening my heart to receive what this man wished to show me. Had I not lain awake regretting my harsh response to Donegan?

  With a nod of thanks to his wife for the bread, I followed the man out the door. He paused to grab a pole leaning on the doorframe and light it in his own fireplace before he strode out into the dusky street glowing with the final traces of a red sunset. “We have five lamps in the village, all along the main street and into the square.” He paused to reach his pole up to the wick atop the ancient metal light post, another relic of the village’s medieval history, until a small gold flame glowed there.

  He walked solemnly ahead toward another tall light post and again reached his pole up to light it. “When this one lights, you can see the McEvoy cottage just down the way. Their old roof was falling into the attic after a storm until it mysteriously found itself repaired by a man who took no pay. He simply came, mended, and left while they were out in the fields.”

  “How kind.” I mumbled the words.

  “Across the square is the Widow Kearney’s place. Her two children have left the village, so Old Master Harlowe lets her stay in the little shack at the end of the road. Most of the village had quite forgotten about the old woman until a newcomer in town discovered her out on a chair clipping her grass with kitchen shears. She soon finds herself with wildflowers on her door every morning and her grass clipped.”

  On down the line he took me, interspersing each lamp-lighting with a story of someone Donegan Vance had rescued or aided. “There you see the old water pump. It brings water up to us so the women don’t have to climb down the rocks to the channel to dip buckets. It was dangerous for them. It’s been broken almost as long as I’ve lived here, until your Mr. Vance came to Welporth. Without a word he labored over it one evening and fixed it for us. He has an uncanny sense for how things work.”

  “Why did he do all these things?” The more I heard about the man, the more confused I became. These things had nothing to do with finding the fortune.

  He studied me in the flickering light of the flames overhead. “Don’t know, miss. Why do you delight in the vineyards or live in a castle? It’s just who he is.”

  “I’m glad he’s performed these acts of kindness, but—”

  He waved aside my words. “Not a few acts. A way of life.” He lit the final lamp and turned to face me in the moonlight. “Tell the man something doesn’t work or someone needs help and it’s like an official summons. It’s as good as done, with no one around to witness or give him thanks.”

  The memory of his bad-day remedy speared through my bitterness toward the man, leaving a crack in it. “Why would he do all this in secret?”

  “It’s what the Good Book says, isn’t it? Don’t let the right hand see what the left is doing. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit.”

  “Donegan isn’t the sort of man I would imagine knowing much Scripture.”

  He studied me with a crooked smile. “No, miss. He simply lives it out.”

  An internal battle tugged at my heart, but I pressed on. Didn’t I know more than they did of the events that had occurred? I breathed a quick prayer, and the brief contact with God softened my words. “I’m glad he’s helped the village, but he’s been a great detriment to me. That trunk you saw—”

  “Was the only thing we tried to dissuade him from doing. He insisted that the mistress have her belongings restored to her, though. He told us that she went on so to an innkeeper about some beads she’d lost, and he thought she should have what was so important to her.”

  My breath suddenly thinned, my chest tight. “What color was the trunk? Do you remember?”

  “Blue steamer trunk with gold edges. Fancy little thing, but mostly a battered mess when I saw it.”

  “Mother’s trunk. That was Mother’s steamer trunk he brought into the square.”

  “Made us promise not to breathe a word of who fetched it back for her. He simply wanted her to have it. But seeing as you’re thinking this way about him, I thought it best you know.”

  With aching clarity, his words tumbled over my senses. I’m not required to impress my enemies. Only to love them.

  Including those who despised him. I shook my head. “And the strike? He knew very well I couldn’t pay anyone yet.”

  “So did that little plumed creature with the beady eyes.”

  I frowned. “What plumed creature?”

  “The one who marched her fancy self through the village one night and led all the men to the pub to pump them full of drink and notions about their rights.”

  Ellen. It was Ellen who had started the strike. Another wall crumbled and I forced myself to embrace the possibility that I’d been wrong about the man.

  Father, what is the truth?

  I took myself up the dark road alone and stared at the moonlight and its bright reflection on the distant waters of the channel. It was like Donegan Vance was two different men and I could not reconcile what I knew of him into one person. Every time he opened his mouth he was gruff and blunt, unyielding and prickly, but full of profound truth. He claimed his only goal was money, yet his every action was bursting with a selfless love so unusual I could hardly grasp the reason for it.

  As the chill of the dark woods enveloped me, I threw the cloak around me and hurried up the road, the lantern I’d brought from home extended into the dark. The crunch of footfall nearby struck a light panic in me, and I increased my pace. As the footsteps neared, I broke int
o a run.

  “Miss Harlowe.”

  Against my better judgment I threw a glance over my shoulder, but I relaxed when the form of Dr. Caine broke through the shadows behind me.

  I slowed with an exhale and smiled. “Dr. Caine. I’m not accustomed to being alone in the dark.”

  He huffed up to me and took my arm. “If there is anything unsavory in these woods, it’d be no match for you, my dear.” He patted my arm and strode beside me. “You seemed to be contemplating eternity. May I assume you were thinking of a young man?”

  I lowered my face in the coolness of night and forced aside the image of Donegan Vance. “I suppose so.”

  “Are you deeply in love with him, then?”

  I turned that question over in my head. “I’m afraid I don’t understand him well enough to know. I hardly know whether he is good or bad.”

  “Don’t write poor Carrington off because of a few faults, dear one. What heroine would ever truly want a flawless hero?”

  I smiled, but did not correct him about the identity of the man stealing my thoughts just then. “Only every woman in existence.”

  “That’s the trouble with women, and with romance for that matter. A flawless hero isn’t as desirable as you’d think. He’s only a man whose flaws have not yet been exposed, and let me tell you, that is far more dangerous than one whose flaws are known and understood.”

  I pondered then the exposed flaws of both Donegan and Andrew. The latter man seemed like a branch poorly grafted—connected enough to sprout an attractive show of leafy foliage, but unable to produce worthwhile fruit. Donegan seemed like an unadorned branch rich with fruit to offer others.

  “One has only to determine which imperfections are excusable, and which are not.”

  We reached the clearing and crossed the drawbridge in silence, padding our way into the courtyard. At the sound of our footsteps, a small cloister of doves rose and circled into the sky.

  “So have I sufficiently convinced you, my dear? Will you give your poor hero another chance?”