Chapter 5
“Is that more snow I see through the window?” Sidney’s eyes were focused behind her shoulder.
“Yes. It’s snow.” Ophelia looked out over the yard in front of the manor house, a long white counterpane interrupted by trees and a snaking drive with drifts of snow and ice on either side. “And some poor soul out in it, making their way to the house. At least the footmen cleared the drive this morning.”
Sidney started to join her at the window, but a knock at the door turned his attention.
“Come in!” Ophelia called out from her spot at the window. In the distance the figure stumbled then trudged forward. Someone with a mission or hungry.
Esther entered, and Ophelia pointed her to the window. “Do you know who that is?” She pointed to the figure almost to the house. “The business must be urgent to come out in this weather.”
Esther joined Ophelia. “It’s a woman. She came yesterday as well, but Simms sent her away.”
“You don’t like Simms.” Sidney joined them in watching the woman approach.
“He reminds me of my old employer, a mean-spirited, grasping man. He appears genial, but he wouldn’t give food to a beggar, even if the beggar were his own kin.”
At that moment, Simms left the house and met the woman in the yard, pointing for her to leave. They were too far away for their voices to be heard, but the woman’s posture made it clear she was no ordinary beggar wanting food or shelter. The woman held out what looked like a letter, and Simms snatched it from her hand. She tried to take it back, but Simms tore it into small bits of paper in front of her and flung them into the distance. The bits scattered like small birds, sinking into the wet snow. Her posture spoke of frustration, anger, and even despair.
“Sidney?”
“I see.” Sidney was already pulling on a heavy overcoat.
Simms pushed the woman away from the house, raising a fist as if he were going to hit her. The woman recoiled. Looking out at the places where the torn bits of paper had fallen, she ran away, toward the woods.
Simms leaned down to pick up the scraps closest to him, but, changing his mind, he began to follow the woman away from the house.
Sidney was already out the door when Ophelia turned to Esther. “I think that paper was important. Don’t you agree?”
Esther nodded. “I’m sure the footman and I can collect the pieces.”
* * * *
By the time Esther and the footman retrieved what bits of the letter they could find, most of the ink had run into a nearly unreadable mess. Ophelia held each one out over the fire, carefully drying them until Sidney returned, Benjamin in tow. The two men took over the task until each piece was dry. Then, sitting on the floor, the two of them worked to piece the various bit back together, hoping to be able to read enough words to learn the woman’s story. Ophelia sat in the cushioned armed chair with the recipe book, following clues to the story of another women.
“I don’t think we can hope for better than this.” Sidney pushed the final bit of paper into what might have been its place.
“How? You can’t read one word out of ten.” Ophelia looked down at their re-creation.
“But we can read one, and perhaps that will be enough to know what the message was.” Benjamin reached for a sheet of paper.
“Not if our words are the, and, and of.” Sidney pointed to three legible words.
On a new sheet of paper, Benjamin began to make what looked like a map of the original. Whenever he reached an illegible word, he counted the letterforms and drew a short line for each letter.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m creating a map of sorts. That’s what the short lines are—a graphic representation of the word itself. If I can make out one or two letters, I write those in on the line I drew. Then I make predictions based on the shape of the letterform.”
“The shape of the smudge, you mean.” Sidney raked his hand through his hair.
“Yes, but look here. This word has seven letters. None of the letters drop below the baseline, like a g or y would, and none go above it. like a b or l would. That leaves just single-height letters.”
“Single-height letters still make up fifteen of the twenty-six letters.” Ophelia shook her head. “I will have better luck turning recipes into a treasure map.”
“Think of it this way: we’ve reduced the possibilities by a third.” Benjamin turned back to his map, occasionally writing in a single letter. “This word is composed of six letters starting with t and ending with n.”
“Tavern,” Sidney thought for only a moment before answering.
“I would bet you are right. If we can fill in enough letters to predict words, then we can take places like this one which are impossibly smudged and predict what they might have said.” Benjamin tapped a spot where the words and letters were completely fused.
“Here’s a word that we can’t mistake: help.”
“Help and tavern,” Benjamin repeated.
“We must see if anyone at a tavern needs our help.” Sidney grinned, and Ophelia rolled her eyes.
“At any other time of year, Simms might be justified in sending that woman from the house while Alderson is grieving.” Ophelia shrugged. “But not in the way he did, and not at Christmas. What if she were a modern-day Mary in need of a place to lay her head?”
“And Simms sent her away just like the innkeepers of Bethlehem,” Sidney finished her thought.
“Does that mean we should search for her in the local stables?” Benjamin, not looking up from his work, missed the look of affection that passed between the newlyweds.
“Inns, taverns, and stables.” Sidney wagged his ears. “All we need is a star to lead us to her.”
Ophelia refused to laugh. “With or without a star, I have letters of my own to decipher.” She turned back to her book. In general organization, it appeared to be much like other recipe books she’d seen her friends keep. At the front, the writers had saved a large section for an index, carefully writing out a letter, then leaving an appropriate space below. In some cases, the index maker had underestimated, and her hand either narrowed to make everything fit or she had to steal space from other sections. Under q for example, she’d written “p continued.” After the index came instructions for making various foods. The items were numbered so that the cook could add randomly, using the index to keep track of the recipes. At the back of the book were recipes for medicines, cleaning pastes, and other household information.
It all seemed so typical. But nothing about the book was typical. The multiple hands made the reading slow. The easy italic hand seemed to contribute mostly recipes for pastries and other sweets, while the most obscure and complicated of the secretary hands seemed to focus on remedies and medicines. Firmly in the middle, as if the leaves had been saved for it, was a section impossible to read, though the letters were still legible. She squinted, looked away, and looked back, but the words made no sense. She turned the book upside down, then sideways. She even held up a mirror to see if the words had been written backward. But nothing worked.
Luckily, Aunt Millicent believed that any curriculum made for a man was more important for a woman to learn. In a world where women’s brains were less well trained, educated women would always have to defend their learning. Their aunt insisted that the girls should, with the help of a dictionary, be able to translate a smattering of languages even if they couldn’t speak them. Ophelia eventually realized that the words were in an idiosyncratic Latin, based on the sound of the word, not a standardized spelling.
In the middle section—in a hand narrow and spindly—she still found recipes with ingredients and preparation methods, but interspersed among them were bits of a journal, with pieces of poetry, the stages of the moon, the time for planting particular crops, and other information, even several long passages in what she assumed were Welsh. Though she had no proof, somehow she was convinced Mistress Thorpe had written these sections.
She focused on the recipe titles, but they made no sense…until they suddenly did.
To win the undying devotion of your true love. To be certain of your beloved. To bring your true love home. To discover if what you believed is true. To win a friend. To gain the confidence of an enemy. To turn a bad love good. To know the truth. To stop a rumor. To heal a betrayal.
Suddenly the book had more in common with the witches’ brew in Macbeth than the cookery books of Mrs. Hepburn of Smeaton. She lost herself in the slow process of translation, not even noticing when the light from the window faded and night fell.
“Do you intend to spend the night reading how to stuff a goose?”
Ophelia looked up to find Benjamin gone, and her husband already in undress. She rose and gave Sidney one of her translations. He read as she changed into her night shift and crawled under the covers beside him.
“It looks like an incantation of some sort.” He pulled her against his chest, nuzzling her hair.
“There’s dozens of them. That one is titled ‘To Know the Truth.’”
“If, my darling scientist, you must experiment with an incantation, choose something less dangerous. A spell for warm feet, or perhaps you can find one to put the shed back together.”
“There’s one for finding your true love.”
He kissed her forehead, then moved down her nose to her lips. “I already have all the magic I need in the circle of your arms.” He kissed her, a lazy, tired kiss. But it slowly grew into a passionate, heady kiss, one that made her stomach tighten in pleasure, and her kisses grow more and more ardent. He pulled her against him and rolled her over on top of him. “There, I can see your face above me, like an angel looking down from Heaven.”
“At this moment, I would rather be a devil.” She bit the sides of his neck, then kissed each breast, nipping at his nipple in short, delicious contact.
“Angel or devil, you are my enchanting Ophelia.”
She kissed the middle of his chest. “You used to call me charming.”
“Ah, my charming Ophelia. That’s what I call you when you are wearing clothes. But here, like this, you are enchantment itself. My enchanting Ophelia, you have bewitched me.”
“No, you are the wizard, brewing potions that you call perfumes and soaps. Perhaps I love you because you have beguiled me with rose water and hyssop.”
His hand roved down the front of her chest, between her breasts, then below them, then stopping to cradle each one in the palms. His thumb brushed the brown tips of her breast until she gasped with pleasure; then he moved his hand down, pressing against her waist and hips with his palms. He slid against her, and she felt the warmth of him against her thighs and stomach.
She gasped with the heat of him, warming her core, as it always did, and she wondered, as she had for the last months, why she had waited so long to accept him, and this pleasure.
When they were both boneless and sated, Sidney curled her against him, wrapping her gently in his arms, until they were both asleep.
* * * *
Sidney pulled back the curtains to reveal sunlight on snow, and Ophelia squinted and covered her eyes.
“I prefer to remain in bed.”
“Yes, but that has nothing to do with sleeping.”
“It might.” She rolled over, pulling the covers over her head, and waited.
As he had each morning since their marriage, Sidney tugged the covers away and slipped back in the bed. His warm body curving into hers, he tugged her back into his chest. “In fact, you woke me more than an hour ago.”
“Is that a complaint?”
“If it is a complaint, it is a complaint that the kisses ended, not that they began.” And as she had hoped, he kissed a line from her shoulder to her ear.
“Kisses form a never-ending line, sometimes interrupted but never concluded.” She rolled to face him, kissing him deeply until they were both breathless.
A tap on the door made them pause. A note slid under the door.
“I suppose we must read it.” Ophelia traced his lips with her finger.
“I suppose we must.” Sidney teased her finger with his teeth.
“I suppose we must read it now.” Ophelia blew softly into his ear, then snuggled into his side, laying her head on his chest.
“If it could wait, it would have waited until we came down for breakfast.” Sidney dragged himself from her side, and she watched him as he walked.
He unfolded the note. “Benjamin believes he has found the place where our mystery woman spent the night.” Sidney pulled a small valise from beside the wardrobe and took out several changes of clothes. “She left this morning, traveling west. He believes we should be able to find her quickly.”
“Why are you going? And why are you taking enough clothes for a two-day journey?”
“Benjamin says he has an instinct about this, and it’s best to trust him when he does. As for the clothes, I prefer to take clothes I don’t have occasion to wear.”
“Rather than wear clothes you’ve worn for every occasion?”
“How did I marry such a clever woman?” He leaned over and kissed her forehead. “I’ll be back tomorrow or the next day, but certainly before Twelfth Night.”
“Twelfth night is ten days away.”
“Then certainly before then.” He kissed her again, then, picking up his valise, he left to join Benjamin.
Ophelia lay in bed, feeling the warmth of the sheets beside her grow cold in his absence. A dark foreboding clutched her heart.