Chapter Four
Olivia woke at dawn and hurried down to the study the moment she was dressed.
She had spent four hours in Squire Denton’s study last night, only stopping when the lines of ink swam before her eyes in the candlelight. At least the monumental task seemed less daunting in the light of day.
Her task was to sort papers for the solicitor’s review. She had cleared the surface of the old squire’s desk. All the household receipts were placed on one corner, papers that looked like business dealings on another and, finally, personal correspondence on another.
Polly and Jory arrived soon after seven o’clock, bringing breakfast and an energy that would shame people half their age.
“Don’t mind us, Missy. We’ll be startin’ on the top floors with the cleanin’. Our Will’s joinin’ us today. Him and Jory’ll be movin’ the servants’ furniture down to the lower floor so we can close the upper wing down proper.”
By the time the hall clock chimed eight, Olivia had just one more cupboard and the bookcase to clear out. The latter would have to wait until she had access to the keys. She turned to the unlocked cupboard.
It was empty but for a mahogany box.
Olivia reached in and pulled it out. It was heavier than it appeared. She quickly turned and put it on a small side table. The box was a cube, about fifteen inches along all edges.
The top was inlaid with a beautiful multi-pointed marquetry star contained in a roundel, with depth and color brought to it by the choice of woods – ash and apple, beech and maple, walnut, pine, and oak.
Olivia stroked her fingertips over it. It was good work but, yet, something about it suggested it was not the work of a London cabinet maker.
She spied the small brass escutcheon. Would it be too much to hope that it was unlocked? Fortune favored her. The lid opened. So did the front face, which dropped to become a writing slope.
The slope was inset with a small green leather writing surface and a chiseled groove as a pen rest. Inside the box, foliage flourishes in beech decorated a shallow pen drawer at the bottom. Above the pen drawer were two square drawers with small turned knobs. She opened them and discovered the round inserts were empty where they should have contained bottles of ink.
A top drawer was decorated with two intertwined marquetry roses, the stem and thorns shaped to form a heart beneath the flower heads.
This was a love token!
Olivia sat back on her heels. This obviously did not belong to Lydia’s mother or it would have been taken with them. The idea that the dour Squire Denton would purchase such a gift for his first wife did not at all match with her decade-long experience of her parsimonious and humorless employer.
She drew out the top drawer and discovered it contained a small diary in white calf leather – clearly a woman’s accoutrement. And below it, another sheaf of letters.
Something caught her eye in the space behind the drawer. She pulled it out completely and soon all the others. She let out a gasp. There was a hidden message in the box itself!
An imposing castle in black and, beneath in pale wood, intertwined initials C and A. She thought instantly of the letters she had found last night – Constance and Adam.
And there was a date beneath the initials.
1783.
The diary! Olivia reinserted the drawers, but not before she retrieved the diary. She opened the cover and, in a young woman’s handwriting, was the owner’s name, Constance Marie Denton.
She stared at the name, transfixed. Then the spell was broken by the loud ringing of the front door bell.
Olivia dropped the diary, her hands shaking.
“That’ll be Mr. Fitzgerald from Truro,” Polly yelled. Then the old woman stuck her head in the doorway of the study. “Don’t get up, dear. I’m closest to the door.”
Olivia nodded mutely, hastily put the papers and diary back in the drawer, and closed the front and lid. And it was just a mahogany box once more.
She got to her feet at the sound of the front door opening and listened to the exchange of greetings between Polly and Mr. Fitzgerald. She wiped her still shaking hands on her olive green skirts.
Was this how Pandora felt?
At approaching footsteps, she went to the door of the study.
Peter Fitzgerald was aged about fifty, but he was a man who carried his years well. He was tall and his physique was still trim. His grey hair and a neatly trimmed Van Dyke beard gave an authoritative bearing. In the man’s hand was a leather folio case.
“Good morning, Miss Collins,” he greeted. Then he looked over her shoulder and into the study.
“My goodness, you’ve done a lot of work already. Thank you.”
Olivia bobbed a curtsy and tried to find her tongue. Fortunately, Polly appeared.
“Now, would ye like me to bring in tea?”
“Thank you, Polly. That is most kind of you.”
Olivia stood aside while Mr. Fitzgerald approached the squire’s desk. She folded her hands within her skirts; a residue of guilt for putting her nose in where it didn’t belong. She couldn’t help a sideways glance at the mahogany box on the side table.
“I’m afraid the squire wasn’t especially diligent in how he managed his documents,” she said, looking back at the solicitor.
Fitzgerald flipped through one pile of papers, and then another. “You’ve done very well under the circumstances, my dear.”
She blushed in spite of herself and it didn’t go unnoticed.
Stop being a little fool. You’ve done nothing wrong.
She squared her shoulders and approached the desk.
“How should we proceed?”
“We’re looking to establish the late squire’s worth so we can finalize probate for the widow and her daughter.” Fitzgerald smiled. He opened his case and pulled out two brand new ledgers. “We’ll have to start with a process of elimination. If I may ask for you to run through these papers once again and summarize them in one of the ledgers? We’re looking for anything that suggests Beaufort Denton might have had business interests or investments.”
The day proceeded quite productively, and with the sounds of Polly and her family bustling about the cleaning, it felt as though Kenstec House lived once more. Yet soon, it would be sold.
The thought filled Olivia with sadness. She would miss this place. Ponsnowyth was a beautiful little village and the rolling green hills and the azure blue of the river that spilled into the sea just a short distance away were a delight. The climate here was the very model of temperate – never too hot, never too cold – and it almost never snowed in winter.
It suddenly occurred to her that she didn’t even own a proper winter cloak. She would need one if she had to move up north.
That was a matter she would need to consider. There had been little need to search for a new position while the family still needed her. But over the past couple of months as her tenure was approaching its end, Olivia started going through the local papers looking for a new situation. So far, it had been to no avail.
There was nothing else for it. She would have to write to the agencies and move away from Ponsnowyth for good.
The clock struck one. Olivia heard Fitzgerald release a tired sigh and close his ledger with a thud.
“I don’t know about you, Miss Collins, but I think we have worked hard enough for one day and the outdoor beckons. Will you take a turn about the garden with me?”
“That would be most agreeable, Mr. Fitzgerald.”
While Fitzgerald worked the bolt to the French door that led out to the garden, Olivia went upstairs for her hat and a light shawl. As she followed the lawyer out into the garden through the study, she glanced at the mahogany box once again.
If only she’d had the forethought to put it back in the cupboard before Fitzgerald came into the study. No one else had known it was there, and though a good box, it was clearly made by a local craftsman, not one of the major cabinet makers, so it had little intrinsic value. Furthermore, the contents, such as they were, were unlikely to be of interest to Caroline Denton or her daughter.
Olivia worried her lip. She couldn’t simply take it. That would be stealing. And yet the more she thought about the ill-starred lovers, the more intrigued she became.
She walked at Fitzgerald’s side, letting him dictate their choice of path until they reached the part of the estate that fell toward the lowlands of Ponsnowyth and the sea beyond. Caroline Denton had the gardener place a seat there. Alone. On its own. Lonely – so very much like the mistress herself.
And yet from this vantage point, she could see the village beyond and the people like miniature figures. Women were hanging out washing. Young children played on the streets or were making their way to the river to fish or have some other adventure. Men were at their labors, too – milling timber in the lean-to outside the carpenter’s shop, the fishmonger salting down a catch for preserving, farmers out in their fields.
And up here there was silence.
“Is aught amiss, Miss Collins? You seem very quiet.”
“Forgive me, Mr. Fitzgerald. I’ve been woolgathering.”
“You’re not troubled, I hope? As a friend of the family – and of the household, I hope you will feel free to call on me if I can be of assistance.”
She smiled. His attention of her was kind.
“If the truth be known,” she said, “I shall be sad to leave this place. I had feared I would have to leave following the squire’s death, so I am grateful for the extra six months. But I’m saddened to know I will have to leave the district, perhaps even the county.”
“Must you go?”
“Mr. Fitzgerald,” she said with a tinge of gentle reproof, “I have to earn a living.”
“Will you not marry, Miss Collins? Surely during your time here, there has been a bachelor you might be content to settle down with? And, if I might be so bold, you are still a very handsome woman.”
Olivia wondered whether there was supposed to be something else in those words.
“Alas, not for me,” she said, moving away from him and the conversation by pretending an interest in the fruiting of a nearby Cornish Gillyflower apple. “But do not think me ungrateful for the life I have.”
An uncomfortable moment’s silence continued before Fitzgerald made the welcome suggestion to return to the house. This time, she set the pace – and made it a little quicker.
“I’m sorry that Beaufort Denton wasn’t more generous in leaving you a bequest,” he said.
“In truth, I was most surprised to have been considered,” she said. “Ten pounds is not an inconsiderable sum – a pound per year of service…”
“And yet you have stayed on here and been of tremendous assistance to me. As executor of Beaufort’s estate, I should be paying you, but I think, as you’ve gathered, there is little to spare in the estate at all.”
“All of which rightfully belongs to Mistress Caroline and Miss Lydia,” she observed. “No, Mr. Fitzgerald – your offer of payment is very kind, but…” A thought cut short her words.
Fitzgerald noticed her hesitation and paused. Olivia licked her lips and prepared a question. This was an opportunity to ask for the box without revealing her true motivation.
“What is it, my dear?” Fitzgerald prompted.
“Well, as it happened, I came across an old writing box in the back of one of the cupboards. You might have seen it on the side table.” She looked up at Fitzgerald, knowing he was watching her intently.
“Uh…it’s not very expensive,” she went on. “In fact, it looks like something which might have been made here in the village.” She was aware she was rushing her words. It took just about all of her effort to not lick her lips again. She looked and sounded guilty enough as it was. “It’s little more than a trifle, a keepsake, but I’d like to have it, if I may?”
Fitzgerald inclined his head, giving her a look that seemed to waver between pity, indulgence, and condescension. Under other circumstances, Olivia would have rankled but, now, she swallowed every ounce of pride in the hopes the solicitor would not see through her ruse.
“Let’s take a look when we get back, shall we?”
Not a complete victory, but not a defeat either.
Fitzgerald offered her his arm and, under the circumstances, it seemed churlish not to take it.
Perhaps flirting and playing the coquette was the way some women achieved their ends but it was not something she felt comfortable doing – not that she even had a talent for it.
When they entered the study, Polly was there with a tray of tea and light refreshments.
She bobbed a curtsy and addressed Fitzgerald.
“Jory and me have finished doin’ the list of furniture from the top floor servants’ quarters, and the second floor with the exception of Miss Olivia’s room,” she said. “I got most of the kitchen sorted, too.”
“And an estimable job, too, I have no doubt,” said Fitzgerald.
Polly blushed and curtsied once more. “Then there’s just the ground floor to do. We can get started on that tomorrow, if it be pleasin’ ye, Mr. Fitzgerald. It will take another two to three days, by our reckonin’.”
“Yes, that will be fine, Mrs. Trellow, but I think I can lighten your load just a little.”
Olivia held her breath as he approached the box.
“Is this the one, my dear?”
She nodded mutely.
The solicitor picked it up and gave it a cursory examination from the outside. Then, cradling it with one hand, he opened the lid and allowed the slope front to sag open while he took a quick look inside. Not concerning himself with further exploration, he closed it up again and set it back down on the table.
Olivia’s heart pounded in her chest, demanding air. She compromised by letting out a small breath and taking in another.
“This is for Miss Olivia,” he said to Polly, “an ex-gratia payment, because she has been such a kind and efficient helpmeet to me.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Fitzgerald,” said Olivia, and her heart started beating again.
The solicitor smiled at her and she returned it with a mix of gratitude, delight, and relief. Then it struck her – his was not the benign smile of an acquaintance and better, but the open smile of an equal. Her face reddened and she looked away.
“Well deserved, too, if I might say,” Polly agreed. “We’ll be the poorer when Miss Olivia moves away.”
“Well, let’s hope that’s not too soon, Mrs. Trellow.”
Olivia closed the curtains and raised the wicks of two lamps until the bedroom filled with light. She stared at the writing box, running a hand over it, trying to imagine the hands that fashioned it and the hands that received it.
She didn’t want to rush her exploration. This was a twenty-year-old mystery and a romance. In doing so, she wanted to honor both Constance and Adam. At length, she opened the lid and the writing slope to retrieve the diary and the letters tenderly, as if they were written to her.
Where to start?
The letters.
Olivia opened the first.
To Beaufort Denton
Esq.
Ponsnowyth, Cornwall
It is to our regret to inform you of the passing of your daughter Constance Marie Denton following a difficult birth of a son.
Olivia raised a hand to her mouth in shock.
She was struck by childbed fever and lived a full week before succumbing. Dr. Norbert attended her and I enclose to you the bill for her care.
I beg to ask of what arrangements are we to make for your daughter’s interment?