Chapter Eight
Olivia was pleased to have had no sight of Adam Hardacre on her walk back to the manor. She’d wondered, having refused his offer of an escort, if she would find him waiting for her and insisting on accompanying her.
With Fitzgerald coming to the house to finalize the paperwork today, she wanted her mind clear for the task. She didn’t stop for breakfast, instead getting up at first light to walk “home” to Kenstec. She let herself in through the kitchen to set a fire to heat some water for tea before going upstairs. She washed and changed her dress quickly, hoping the solicitor remained his punctual self and did not arrive early.
After hanging up yesterday’s dress to air, Olivia got to her knees and felt under the bed for the writing box. It was still there, and she breathed a sigh of relief. It was a silly superstitious act, but somehow she needed the reassurance of its presence for her meeting with Adam Hardacre this afternoon.
It was odd. Even without hearing the confirmation of his identity from his own lips, she somehow knew when she first saw him he was the man in Constance’s diary.
Of course, he would have been only an adolescent then, but there was no mistaking the sandy hair and hazel eyes. Age had merely turned the youth into a man, the experience edged into the light lines around his eyes and mouth. Years at sea had added color to his skin, making the hazel eyes even more pronounced.
Adam Hardacre was one of the most striking men she had ever seen.
She hurried downstairs and opened a couple of the study windows. She wanted to be able to hear Fitzgerald arrive before he knocked at the door. Before too long, she heard his gig turn into the drive and approach the house.
Olivia opened the front door and drew near to the horse, holding its bridle as the solicitor climbed down. She felt oblige to follow him about as he unhitched the animal.
“Good morning, Miss Collins,” he announced. “Such a fine morning – we ought to be well pleased if the weather stays like this for a few weeks.”
“It would be a most pleasant thing indeed, sir.”
Fitzgerald looked as though he was about to say something else, mayhap to advance the acquaintance beyond that of professionals as Olivia suspected he was leading to yesterday. She turned away to head back to the house while he led his horse to graze.
“I imagine you should like to get started,” she said as he entered the front door. “I shall leave you to the study while I attend to the tea.”
He was giving her that look again. It was not lascivious – although she had little direct experience in that matter – but watchful and attentive. The burden of carrying someone else’s secret weighed on her. Olivia wondered whether it showed on her face.
She would have to be careful in the solicitor’s company, mindful that her words and actions contained nothing to reproach her.
To her surprise, the morning continued pleasantly. They worked in efficient silence. The talk between them pertained only to the business at hand. And soon enough, that was concluded.
“My watch tells me it’s nearly twelve o’clock,” Fitzgerald announced. Olivia waited for a repeat of an invitation to dine with him. She readied an excuse in her mind, but he continued, “…and so I must leave you now. I have an afternoon appointment in Falmouth.”
Olivia exhaled her relief slowly as he went on, “I don’t want to take these documents with me since I’m likely to be away late…”
“Then allow me to bring them to your office in Truro tomorrow, Mr. Fitzgerald,” she said decisively. “I have a few appointments of my own in town.”
The solicitor’s face brightened. “A capital suggestion! I gladly accept on the condition that you dine with me as you promised to do yesterday.”
Olivia knew she couldn’t have one without the other, so she accepted. She allowed him to take her hand. He bowed over it and, for one awful moment, she was afraid he might kiss it, but he did not. Yet that peculiar watchful look returned.
She locked the door on his departure, but watched through the window as the gig made its way down the drive and disappeared into the trees at the front boundary. She hurried upstairs into one of the empty bedrooms and peered out through the upper story window. Fitzgerald turned left to go down toward Ponsnowyth where he would meet the main road to Falmouth.
Olivia prepared for the meeting she both anticipated and dreaded.
The butterflies in her stomach returned as she carried the writing box, covered by a shawl, in both arms into the woods where she had arranged to meet Adam Hardacre. Although she was early, he was already there waiting.
All the words she had rehearsed and practiced in her mind since yesterday fled.
He watched her with the same intensity as Fitzgerald, yet somehow it was different. This man had good reason to be wary of her. She was a stranger to him who insisted in meeting under unusual conditions in a place that probably held great significance to him. She would be suspicious if the circumstances were turned about.
She approached one of the tumbled-down blocks from the ruin and sat down on it with the box, still covered, in her lap.
“Thank you for being punctual, Mr. Hardacre,” she said.
The man shrugged his shoulders and approached, but came no closer than a yard. “You piqued my curiosity last night, Miss Collins, as does whatever you have under that shawl, I must say.”
She drew breath to speak but the words disappeared.
After a moment Hardacre tilted his head.
“Are you unwell?”
She shook her head and fiddled with the shawl. A gift from Miss Lydia, it had come from Spain – large red roses painted on silk, edged with a black crocheted border and silk fringing.
Hardacre stood at ease, his arms folded.
She breathed out. “I scarce know where to begin…”
“The beginning usually works.”
She gave him a sideways glance and continued to fiddle with the fringing.
“Mistress Denton asked me to stay on at Kenstec to assist the solicitor with settling the estate. I accepted, grateful for the opportunity for more time to find new employment…” Her words tapered away yet again.
“And?” he prompted.
“I found this.”
She drew back the shawl to expose the writing box and watched for his reaction.
At first, there was none but slight puzzlement. Then Olivia witnessed a frown, eyebrows drawing down.
“Dear God…” he almost whispered, then a grin split his face and spilled into his voice. “Where did you find it?”
“It was in a cupboard in the study.”
Hardacre reached out. She handed him the box to examine and he turned it in his hands but did not open it.
“Not bad…but my marquetry skill has dramatically improved since then,” he said, more to himself than to her.
“Do you remember who you made it for?”
“I made two. One was an apprentice piece for my father to judge. That was among his belongings after he died. This one I made for—”
“—Constance,” she finished.
“Yes, that’s right,” he smiled wistfully. “It was so long ago. In fact, the last time I saw this box was right here.”
He held it out to Olivia and she accepted it from his hands. He shook his head slowly and with unmistakable affection.
“She must be a married woman with a brood of children by now. I take it she no longer lives in the district?”
Olivia’s chest constricted, making it difficult to draw breath.
Oh, dear God – he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know any of it!
*
Adam started as the woman before him suddenly burst into tears. He crouched down at her side and touched her elbow to draw her attention. Her warm brown eyes swam with tears. He took the box from her lap and placed it on the ground. She clasped her hands together, sobbing.
“What’s upset you so?” he asked, deliberately keeping his voice gentle.
“Constance Denton has been dead these past twenty years…” she sobbed. Adam strained to make clear her words. “She died from childbed fever.”
He bowed his head and closed his eyes a moment, desperately trying to conjure up the image of Constance in his mind’s eye, but it was not there. With nothing to remind him, he had nearly forgotten what she looked like. The revelation that she had passed away was a shock to be sure, but it did not touch him as he thought it might.
He cared. He had carried her memory in his heart through all the years and only a short time ago thought of her so fondly while sitting on the sea wall overlooking the Fal. Hearing her name spoken again was like unexpectedly coming across a pressed rose in a book, a remembrance of an earlier happier time. But it was only an echo, a refrain.
Olivia Collins would think him a heartless individual, but he could not muster up the strength of emotion she had. Too much time had passed.
He started at a gentle touch. Adam opened his eyes and saw Olivia Collins’ fine-boned hand on his, her fingers covering the purple-blue of the crossed anchors tattooed on his flesh between his index finger and thumb.
He looked up and saw the governess had recovered herself. Her eyes were clear but grave. She spoke low, ensuring the words were for his ears alone although he was certain they were alone.
“I was employed by the Dentons for ten years. I’d been here three years before I first heard Constance’s name. There was nothing of her memory in the house. The servants who’d known her were afraid that speaking of her would rouse the squire’s displeasure. A few days ago, I found notes she had hidden behind a wardrobe drawer. Your notes to her. Then I found the writing box.” She glanced at it. “It contained her diary and some letters from St. Thomas’ Hospital in London.”
Her fingers curled around the palm of his hand and gently squeezed it.
“I have read the diary, Mr. Hardacre,” she continued. “You were her one and only love. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
“Constance died of childbed fever,” he said.
Olivia nodded. “Bearing your child, Mr. Hardacre.”
The full realization dawned on him. Constance Denton has been dead these past twenty years.
He rose to his feet slowly. The smell of Olivia’s honeysuckle scent touched a once potent memory in him. Her hand fell away as he stood.
“I’m more sorry than I can say,” he said. “I didn’t know. How could I?”
The woman before him stood also. She picked up the writing box and shawl, placing them on the stone that had been her seat.
“Please, don’t misunderstand me,” she said. “No blame attaches to you. Constance felt she was being watched every time she left the house. She kept the secret of her condition to herself until it was unmistakable. By that time, the squire had had you impressed into the Navy.”
“Well…” Adam couldn’t think what to say. So many emotions roiled in him as he tried to fully process the meaning of everything he had just learned.
“Thank you for letting me know,” he offered blankly, taking a step back from the woman before him. “You’ve told me much I’d wondered about these many years. I’ll be sure to go back to the cemetery and pay my last respects…”
He got as far as three yards away when Olivia Collins called out to him. “She’s not there, Mr. Hardacre. You won’t find her interred at Ponsnowyth.”
He spun about. “What the hell?”
The profanity was out of his mouth before he could censor himself – too much time at sea and not enough time in drawing rooms – yet the woman in front of him did not seem disconcerted in the slightest. Rather, he saw in her the righteous anger of an avenging angel.
At that moment, Olivia Collins was beautiful.
“Her father, in his deference to his own reputation,” she continued, contempt clear in her voice, “refused to accept charge of her mortal remains. He also refused to let anyone else in the family aid her. There was an aunt, I believe, with whom Constance was close.”
The recollection of Squire Denton’s own grave marker in the church cemetery – the large and ornate marble headstone boasting his status to the world – lit the spark of Adam’s anger.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.
He gave vent to a volcanic rise of fury. “That vicious old bastard condemned his only daughter to a pauper’s grave?”
Tears sprang once more to the woman’s eyes.
Before he knew what he was about, Adam had advanced and has his arms around Olivia, holding her close as she wept into his chest. The force of her emotion, not his, touched something deep in his soul. A desire to protect, to comfort, reached in and took hold. For a moment, with the scent of honeysuckle in his nostrils and the gentle curves of a woman in his arms, Adam embraced, and accepted the embrace, of both Olivia Collins and Constance Denton.
When he closed his eyes, Constance’s face finally appeared before him as though only twenty minutes, not twenty years had passed. He rained kisses in her hair, grateful someone as wonderful and beautiful as she would ever give him the time of day, let alone her body. Having once touched her, he wanted – needed – that feeling again. He kissed her with increasing passion.
Adam tasted a protest on her lips at his last open-mouthed kiss.
He stopped and opened his eyes. The lips did not belong to Constance.
Olivia pulled out of his arms, eyes wide with alarm and hand across her mouth, her neatly pinned chignon in disarray with one long lock tumbling down her shoulder. And, in a split second before she had raised the hand to her mouth, he had seen her lips, full and red with the force of his. To his shame, Adam felt his body stir.
He took a few paces back to protect himself as well as her.
“That was unforgivable. Miss Collins, Olivia, I…” He tried to fashion the words for an apology. He had none.
“That was unforgivable,” he repeated. “I’m sorry…”
Olivia licked her lips to wet them – or perhaps soothe them – before taking a deep, shuddering breath.
“I…I fear that, in the moment, too much emotion overwhelmed us both, Mr. Hardacre.” She was still breathless. “I hold myself equally to blame.”
He shook his head slowly, refusing to allow her to take responsibility for his actions. She paused, as though about to say more.
Instead, she glanced at the writing box and then back to him.
“I shall leave you the box. It contains your notes to Constance. They belong to you.”