By then Dickie and Nicole had returned, in a festive mood. For the moment, I set the puzzle aside and joined them in their celebration. There’d been more than enough revelations for one day. I would wait until tomorrow to fit the final pieces into place.
CHAPTER
24
I put off seeing Adam until after lunch the next day, when Nicole took Dickie upstairs to examine young Claire’s things, and the risk of interruption was remote.
The drapes were open in the blue room, and the windows framed a dark, forbidding sky. Adam was sitting up in bed, the covers smoothed to his waist, his back propped against a mound of pillows. His attire was uncharacteristically flamboyant—a pair of watered silk pajamas in a squint-worthy shade of bottle-green.
He looked very frail. His blackened left eye was swollen shut and his face bore the marks of his beating, but when he turned his head to smile at me, my heart still took off at a gallop.
“I hope you don’t intend to amuse me,” he said. “It hurts like hell when I laugh.”
“I guess that rules out my opening remarks on your jammies,” I said.
“They’re Jared’s,” he informed me dryly. “Nicole insisted. She was in here earlier, telling me the most hair-raising tale about Guy Manning saving the world from bloodthirsty fanatics. It seems to have had a happy ending, though. She’s clearly besotted.”
“The feeling’s mutual. He’s over the moon.” I crossed to the right side of the bed, to sit in the chair Mrs. Hatch had provided for visitors, but before I could take a seat, Adam patted the blankets.
“Come up here,” he said. “I’m getting a sore neck from turning my head in one direction.”
I kicked off my shoes, climbed gingerly onto the massive bed, and sat facing him, my back against the footboard, wondering where to begin.
“We always seem to end up in bed together,” I said with a rueful grin.
“Yes.” Adam sighed wistfully. “It’s a pity we’re such an honorable pair.”
I laughed and looked toward the windows. “I got it all wrong, you know. First I thought it was Jared, trying to scare Nicole. Then I thought it might be the charwomen he’d insulted, or villagers acting on their behalf. I even came up with a theory about burglars.” I shook my head. “I never suspected terrorists.”
“It would have been very strange if you had,” Adam commented. “It’s Guy’s job to think of such things, not yours.”
“Right. It’s just…” I caught my lower lip between my teeth. “I’m not sure his job’s done. There are some loose ends that have been bugging the heck out of me.”
“What sort of loose ends?” Adam asked.
“I’m not happy with Bart Little’s confession.” I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. “He admits to big things, like plotting to blow up the Scottish Parliament, but denies all sorts of little things.”
“Can you be more specific?” Adam requested.
I concentrated on my clasped hands. “He says his men went to the third floor only once, but Nicole heard someone up there at least three times. He says his men never touched the dustcovers up there, but someone did. And there’s something else…”
Adam said nothing.
“Bart denies going into the mausoleum,” I continued, still staring at my hands. “He swears that he ran into you as you were coming out of the tomb.”
“Does he?” Adam said softly.
The hint of resignation in his voice told me that I was on the right track. I would rather have been anyplace else, but there was no turning back. I had to know the truth, for Claire’s sake, and my own.
“And…. and there’s the face Nicole saw at her bedroom window,” I faltered, “and the flying ghost outside of the library. There’s the block and tackle on the east tower and… and it took pretty good climbing skills to rescue Reginald and… and…”
“What are you trying to say, Lori?” Adam asked.
His kindly tone made me feel like a badgering brute. I ducked my head and tried to speak with more composure. “I found you lying near a crypt in the mausoleum. There’s an inscription carved on the crypt. I didn’t have time to take it in right then, but later it came back to me.”
“It’s funny what you can remember when you set your mind to it,” Adam murmured.
I couldn’t bring myself to meet his gaze. “Can you remember the inscription, Adam?”
“‘Claire Eleanora Byrd,’” he recited. “‘A tribute of affection to the memory of a beloved daughter from her afflicted father.’”
“And the dates,” I pressed, though I hated myself for pressing. “I’m not usually good with numbers, but I remember the dates. Do you?”
“Born October 31, 1898,” Adam said. “Released March 15, 1918. She hadn’t yet turned twenty.”
I forced myself to go on. “She didn’t die of a broken heart, and influenza didn’t kill her. I asked Dr. MacEwan to check the old medical records, but he didn’t have to. He’d checked them very recently, you see. Someone else wanted to know how Claire Byrd died.” I looked at Adam pleadingly, through a glaze of tears. “Who are you, Adam Chase, and why did you come to Wyrdhurst?”
Adam held my gaze for a fleeting moment, then turned his face away. “I tried to tell you—”
“I know.” I recalled the melancholy glances, the half-regretful smiles, knowing that I’d gotten them wrong, too. “In the hut, after I told you about Dimity, you tried. It doesn’t matter. You can tell me now.”
Adam asked for water. I filled a glass from the carafe on the dressing table and brought it to him. He took a sip, cradled the glass in his hands, and began to speak.
“Once upon a time, there was a foundling….”
I sank onto the chair and sat motionless. There was no need to worry about Adam’s neck. He looked straight ahead as he spoke, his eye focused on nothing.
“She was found on a moonless night on the doorstep of a cottage in Holywell. The elderly couple who took her in called her a gift from God and gave her a loving home.
“It wasn’t until he lay dying that her adoptive father told her a great secret: she was the unacknowledged daughter of Claire Byrd, who’d died giving birth to her. Claire’s death had driven Claire’s father mad and, fearful for the child’s safety, the midwife had smuggled her out of Wyrdhurst and brought her to people who would love and protect her.
“My mother…” The words seemed to catch in his throat and he took a moment to steady himself. “My mother didn’t believe a word of it. She thought the dear man had invented a fable to comfort her, to make her feel like… Cinderella. That’s what she told her son when she shared the tale with him many years later.
“By then her son had become something of an expert on the Great European War. He tramped the battlefields, interviewed survivors, roamed forests of white crosses….” Adam sipped from the glass, set it aside, and let his head fall back against the mound of pillows. “He felt a peculiar affinity for the men who fought and died near Ypres. He combed archives for their letters, postcards, journals. He needed to hear them tell their stories in their own words.”
There was a ripping sound, like a sheet being torn in two, and a torrent of rain slashed the windows, as if every cloud in the sky had opened at once. Adam turned his head to watch the downpour.
“They wrote of the rain in Ypres,” he said, “the ceaseless, murderous rain….” He gave a soft sigh and faced forward. “One day the foundling’s son unearthed a series of letters in an archive at the Imperial War Museum. They’d been written by a man called Peter Mitchell to his wife.”
“Mitchell,” I whispered, the name clicking into place. “Edward’s friend.”
Adam stared up at the molded plaster ceiling. “Peter Mitchell rarely wrote about the rain. He was too caught up in a friend’s tale of forbidden love. One can hardly blame him for recounting every word Edward confided in him. Retelling Edward’s story allowed Mitchell to escape, if only on paper, the horrors that surrounded him.”
It was all there, in Peter Mitchell’s letters: Edward’s summers with his uncle, his work in Wyrdhurst’s library, his first encounter with Claire, the sunny morning on the moors when their friendship had blossomed into love. Josiah was there, too, a menacing shadow dimming the horizon.
Mitchell couldn’t understand why Josiah hadn’t squelched the budding romance by sending Claire away. He concluded that Josiah was less concerned with ending the relationship than with breaking his daughter’s will.
Mitchell told his wife about Clive Aynsworth’s role as courier while Edward was at war, and Claire’s cleverness in hiding Edward’s letters. Mitchell’s final letter, like Edward’s, told of a treasure thrown into their laps by a stray shell.
“And there the story ended.” Adam lowered his gaze to the footboard. “Peter Mitchell was killed in action ten days after he wrote to his wife. His widow eventually bequeathed his letters to the museum, where they sat, virtually untouched, until I came across them in my research.”
“But you couldn’t let it go at that,” I said.
“No,” said Adam. “I couldn’t.”
Adam visited Peter Mitchell’s daughter, who showed him a diamond-encrusted tiara and an emerald brooch Mitchell had sent home to his wife. Adam spoke with Edward’s nieces and nephews, but they had little interest in the family’s past. His effects and the letters he’d sent home had long since been thrown away.
Finally, Adam contacted Dr. MacEwan, who dug up a midwife’s report describing Claire Byrd’s death from a condition that would today be recognized as hemorrhagic shock. The influenza rumors had been just that—rumors spread in order to avoid scandal.
“Claire died nine months after Edward’s last leave.” Adam’s voice was calm, but strong emotions flickered just behind his eye, like distant lightning heralding a storm. “I believe she spent the greater part of those nine months locked in the west tower. I believe she died in childbirth because of the harsh conditions of her imprisonment. I also believe that, if the midwife hadn’t intervened, Josiah would have killed my mother.”
An image floated through my mind, of Claire huddled before the grate while cold rains whipped the tower, warming herself and the child growing within her, finding strength in Edward’s words and in Josiah’s sole indulgence—a cupboard full of harmless children’s books.
I looked up at Adam. “Do you think Edward knew that Claire was pregnant?”
“No,” Adam said softly. “I doubt that Claire knew, until after Edward was gone. By the time she realized what had happened, Josiah had killed Clive Aynsworth, and there was no one left to protect her.”
The wind moaned against the windows, as if mourning for the young girl and her baby. A sense of angry, helpless grief came over me, but I pushed it aside for the moment, and steeled myself to go on.
“You came to Wyrdhurst for revenge,” I said. It wasn’t an accusation. I was simply trying to ascertain the facts. “The fishing hut was your base of operations. You used the block-and-tackle’s rope to gain access to the hall’s upper stories. It was your footsteps Nicole heard, your face at her bedroom window, you she saw ‘flying’ down to the terrace. You snuck into the library and read through Edward’s notes while I was in Blackhope. You came here to steal the treasure.”
“No.” Adam’s face crumpled and a tear trickled down his cheek. “I wanted Edward’s letters, for my mother. I swear to you, that’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
I put a hand out to comfort him, but he waved it off.
“Don’t be kind to me, Lori. I don’t deserve it. I may not have intended to, frighten Nicole, but I… I did intend to use you.”
I sat back, blinking slowly. “Use me? How?”
“Do you remember that first night, when I left my shirt off?” Adam paused long enough for me to picture the firelight warming his lean, well-sculpted torso. “I did it on purpose. I saw the way you looked at me. I wanted you to go on looking at me in that way. You were to be my key to Wyrdhurst’s many doors.”
I flushed.
“I played the hero, rescuing Reginald and your luggage,” he went on, his voice taut with self-disgust. “And I played the lover, flattering and caressing you—not too much and not too often, just enough to keep the kettle on the boil. I came close to kissing you on several occasions, but we were always interrupted.”
I poked my head out of the pit of humiliation long enough to mutter, “We weren’t interrupted on the moors.”
“That’s true,” he agreed. “But when push came to shove, I couldn’t go through with it. By then I’d come to know you—and to care for you.” He gave a helpless laugh. “I intended to seduce you, Lori, but you ended up seducing me.”
“Claire seduced you,” I stated firmly. I allowed myself the luxury of a brief, face-saving glare before adding gruffly, “With a lot of help from me.”
We sat in silence, examining our hands, taking a moment to digest the truths we’d just admitted. It didn’t take me long to realize that they were the kind of truths only the closest of friends could share. I reached out to grasp Adam’s hand, and he raised mine to his lips.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You’re welcome.” I narrowed my eyes to slits. “Just don’t let it happen again.”
He wiped his eye with the sleeve of Jared’s pajama top, then frowned slightly. “How did you know that Nicole saw me at the windows? Did she finally recognize my face?”
“No. But I did. Wait here.” I stood. “I’ll be right back.”
I went to the corridor and returned with Claire’s portrait. When I propped it at the end of Adam’s bed, he seemed to melt.
“Claire,” he breathed. “Where did you find her?”
“I’ll show you, as soon as you’re up and about.” I climbed onto the bed and snuggled in beside him, sharing his mound of pillows. “I saw her resemblance to Nicole right off, but it took me a while to realize who else she reminded me of.”
I looked from one face to the other and saw the same luminous dark eyes, the same fair skin, the same gleaming ebony hair—even the hands were similar. I looked from Adam’s Gypsy curls to Claire’s twining tendrils and marveled that it had taken me such a long time to catch on.
“I resemble my grandfather as well.” Adam slid a photograph from beneath the covers. “I found it in the regimental archives. I was looking at it when you came in.”
The sepia studio portrait showed a slim young man in an overlarge uniform, standing before a painted backdrop of weeping willows. The dark-haired, dark-eyed boy looked more like a high-school student than a hardened soldier.
“You have his mouth,” I said, “and his love of words. You have his build, too. That must be why Claire wanted me to…” I touched a fingertip to Edward’s lips. “It must have been like kissing him one last time.”
“It was that kind of kiss.” Adam paused. “Rather an odd one to bestow on a grandson, don’t you think?”
“Dimity says Claire’s been insane for a long time,” I reasoned. “I suppose her grandmotherly emotions got tangled up with her… other emotions. You do look a lot like Edward. Besides,” I added, “she was filtering everything through me, and my feelings for you weren’t one tiny bit grandmotherly.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” said Adam.
I grinned up at him, then leaned my head against his shoulder. “So what do we do now?”
“I suppose another kiss is out of the question?” Adam ventured.
“You suppose correctly. We’re much too honorable.” My gaze lingered on Edward’s mouth. “Apart from that, it wouldn’t be the same. Claire packed nearly a century of longing into that kiss.”
“I’ll check back with you in another hundred years, then, shall I?”
“Please do.”
We spoke lightly, as if to relieve the strain of the past hour, but we both knew that we were only half kidding. We didn’t need to say the words aloud to know that, in another time, another place, we would have been much more than friends.
“I’m going to tell Nicole and her uncle the truth,” Adam said. “Afterwards, if they can still stand the sight of me, I’m going to offer to help them locate Edward’s treasure.”
I smiled at him, but there was gravity behind the smile. “If you ask me, Claire’s already found her treasure.”
CHAPTER
25
While Adam repeated his story to Nicole and Uncle Dickie, I sat in my room with the blue journal, filling Dimity in on recent events. She was disgusted by the terrorist plot, appalled by Jared’s dishonesty, enchanted by Nicole’s newfound love, and deeply touched by Adam’s search for his grandparents.
Though an accident brought you and Adam together, it’s no accident that your paths crossed here.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Something more than books drew you to Wyrdhurst.
“As I recall, I had a bad case of cabin fever.”
It wasn’t just cabin fever, Lori. Think back. Didn’t you feel a special something tugging you northward?
“Now that you mention it…” I remembered the Gypsy in me dancing, stirred by the lure of the north’s misty hills. “I guess I did.”
You and Adam are uniquely qualified to heal Claire’s afflicted soul. You, because your relationship to me made it possible for you to act on her behalf. Adam, because he’s the answer to all of her questions.
“I’m not sure I understand,” I said.
Adam may think he came to Wyrdhurst to steal Edward’s letters, but I think he was brought here for quite another reason.
“What reason?” I asked.
Claire needed to know what had happened to her daughter.
A small knife twisted inside of me as I stared down at Aunt Dimity’s words. Until that moment I’d hadn’t grasped the full magnitude of Claire’s suffering. I looked across the room to my sons’ smiling faces and thought of Claire, dying in an agony of fear, terrified of what her father would do to the helpless infant she’d delivered.
[Aunt Dimity 06] - Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil Page 18
