The Rose of Winslow Street (4 page)

“We will leave for Colden tomorrow,” her father said. “I will call on the sheriff and have the gypsies evicted. We must have our house back. We must salvage my designs and Libby's drawings.”

She looked up. It was rare for her father to acknowledge the value of her work, although he mentioned her
drawings
, not her paintings. Libby's technical drawings were for her father's benefit. Every time he designed a new invention, she created meticulous drawings of the interior, exterior, and cutaway views to document the mechanism. Her mechanical drawings were work, but her paintings were done for love. Those paintings would be the first thing she intended to rescue from the house.

Regina stepped forward. “Surely Libby can stay here on the island,” she said. “Jasper and I are planning on going to Boston to see the opera. I had hoped Libby could look after Tillie until we return on Tuesday.”

Libby's head shot up.
Four days with Tillie!
Four blissful days in which she would have the freedom to be the sort of mother, or rather, the sort of
aunt
she had always wanted to be.

Her father turned his attention to her, frazzled anxiety brimming in his expression. Had her father ever needed her more than he did at this very moment? Libby knew where all the drawings were stored, all the versions of his inventions stashed away. There were precious few times in her life when her father actually needed her, and now was one of them.

“I'm sorry, Regina,” she said with genuine regret. “I need to be in Colden with Father at this time.”

“Naturally,” Regina said a little stiffly. She was the daughter of a South Carolina congressman and had the savvy to know when she could push and when to retreat.

“Aren't you going to watch the eclipse with me?” Tillie was standing in the doorway, her voice confused. A quick glance out the window revealed the full blaze of the eclipse's glory, although it had lost its magic for Libby.

But Tillie was looking at her with love and expectation. The very soonest Libby could begin reclaiming her paintings and her home was tomorrow morning, and for tonight, there was a little girl who wanted to share an eclipse with her.

“Show me the moon, sweetheart,” she said as she picked Tillie up and carried her outside.

A scream drove Michael upright in bed. The agonized wail shattered the silence of the night as Michael leapt to his feet. The house was dark, but enough moonlight streamed through the windows to reveal nothing out of place in his bedroom.

Michael nearly tore the door from its hinges as he bolted into the hallway. The screaming was coming from Mirela's room and he flung her door open, banging it on the wall. She was alone, as he was almost certain she would be. Curled into a ball in the center of the bed, she was sound asleep and screaming as if the flesh were being torn from her body.

He settled on the bed and shook her shoulders. “You are dreaming, wake up.” He shook again, but she twisted away, filled her lungs, and let out a fresh round of heartrending screams.

He used his commander's voice. “Mirela, wake up. Stop this nonsense and
wake up
.” It made him cringe to use such a tone with a woman, but sometimes it was the only thing that could awaken her from these night terrors.

“What is happening, Papa?” Andrei's thin voice sounded from the open doorway.

He was too busy shaking Mirela's shoulders to turn around. “It is just another nightmare. Go back to bed, son.” The patter of footsteps let him know Andrei had obeyed, and he turned his full attention back to Mirela. Her face was covered in perspiration and her nightdress was damp. The night was warm, but that could not account for the heat her body was throwing off. Hadn't she been feeling better that afternoon? It had been months since she had suffered this sort of night terror and he had hoped it was a thing of the past. Was this something she was going to battle for the rest of her life?

At last she stopped fighting him and her eyes opened, still unfocused and confused. The pant of her shaky breaths filled the darkened room. “Another nightmare?” she asked him.

He nodded.

She raised a trembling hand to her forehead, brushing away the hair that had tumbled into her eyes. “Did I wake everyone up again?”

It would not surprise him if every neighbor on the street had heard her screams. Michael walked to the open window, where the weak night breeze brought the fragrance from the rose garden into the room. The moonlight illuminated the spectacular Gallica roses in various stages of bloom. His jaw tightened, but he forced his voice to remain calm. “You don't need to worry about that.”

Mirela gave a heavy sigh and rolled over to face the wall. Her voice was so faint he could barely hear it. “I feel like such a failure,” she said. “Every time I think I might be getting better, the memories keep coming back. I've traveled halfway around the world, and still they follow me, like dragons I can never outrun.”

He shut the window, the rasp sounding harsh and final in the night. Before he left the room, he turned to face her. “This will take time, Mirela. We have always known that. If it takes a decade for you to outrun the dragons, I will be with you every step of the way.”

He returned to his room and changed out of his nightshirt and into a pair of simple pants and boots, then bounded down the stairs. The moonlight was odd tonight, tinged with a curious reddish haze. Clearly it was some sort of eclipse, but Michael did not care. All that mattered was that there was enough light to see what needed to be done while Mirela could not witness his actions.

Michael grabbed his battle-ax before heading outside. There was nothing he could do to change the past, but he could ensure this home was as comfortable for Mirela as possible. His boots sliced through the long grass as he strode toward the rose garden, cursing himself for his carelessness. He had been so busy these past two days he had overlooked the roses growing in a rich profusion at the rear of the yard. Not until he stood at Mirela's open window and smelled their scent on the night air had he realized the danger that was growing just yards away from her.

The roses were gorgeous, the thickness of the stems indicating they were at least twenty years old. The way they twisted and climbed along the fence was as though an artist had carefully trained them for maximum display. The abundant blooms cast off a rich fragrance, a sign of the roses' perfect, vibrant health. He hefted the ax to his shoulder and took careful aim at the largest of the rosebushes. Two clean whacks and the bush was cleaved in half. With a booted foot, he kicked the vines down from where they had been trained to cling to the fence. He grit his teeth together as he attacked the next bush, funneling all his rage and despair into his swing. Over and over he hacked through the thick, woody stems that grew in abundance along the side of the fence.

The door opened behind him, and Michael saw Turk framed in the doorway. “You know what you are doing there, mate?”

He swung another mighty blow at a rosebush in full bloom. “I want these roses out of here by sunrise. Tomorrow I will cart them away and burn them someplace where Mirela will never have to tolerate them again.”

Turk knew better than to question him when he was in one of these moods. The man merely nodded and went back to bed, but Michael kept slashing away, unleashing the tension trapped in his muscles against the bushes. This time tomorrow, these hated roses would be gone forever.

I
'll kill him,” Professor Sawyer said as he waved a bony finger in the young sheriff's face. “I'll march over to Winslow Street and stop at nothing until those vagabonds are either out of my house or dead.”

Sheriff Alfred Barnes showed remarkable poise in the face of her father's ferocity. Libby was impressed with how the man neither flinched nor backed away from her father's aggressive stance. “Which is why you are going to wait here at your son's house while your daughter and I pay a call on Mr. Dobrescu,” Sheriff Barnes said coolly. “Liberty will assess the condition of your house to ensure no damage is being done to your belongings, but I will not have a homicidal man accompany me on a professional call.”

“Who said I was homicidal?” the professor demanded.

“You did, sir.”

Despite his bluster, the idea of her father actually resorting to violence to reclaim their house was absurd. Her father endured years of ostracism during the Civil War due to his pacifist stance. He built contraptions to capture mice alive because he was too squeamish to use a mousetrap that would slay the little beasts. Still, Sheriff Barnes was too young to know any of that.

Despite his youth, Sheriff Barnes was conscientious about his job, as evidenced by his studying of the legal situation regarding their house. “I went to the county courthouse the same day I learned of Mr. Dobrescu's seizure of the house on Winslow Street.”

Libby would have felt better if the sheriff would have referred to it as
your
house, rather than
the
house. The implication that ownership of the house was in any way precarious caused her stomach to clench. “I saw your deed from 1856 to purchase the house, but there is no clear title to the land,” the sheriff said. “The final will and testament of Constantine Dobrescu is also filed at the courthouse, and it clearly left the house to his family in Romania. It is possible the sale of the house was illegal, so this is a matter for the courts to decide. Since Constantine Dobrescu's will predates your purchase, and the Dobrescus are currently in possession of the property, we will need to wait for the court to rule before I can force an eviction.”

Her father's face flushed and he could barely get words out as he sputtered his outrage. “The courts could take months! Years!” he gasped.

“Judge Frey has already agreed to expedite your case,” the sheriff said. “This is an unusual situation and he has sent to Boston for the necessary legal periodicals to help render his decision. He expects to hear the case within a month.”

“A month!” Professor Sawyer said, scorn dripping from his voice. “Within a month those vagrants could strip the house of every matchstick. Every piece of jewelry, every article of clothing. Everything I have.”

Sheriff Barnes nodded his head. “Your concern is understandable, and the judge has given you permission to remove personal items from the home for safekeeping. I will escort your daughter to the house so she can identify which items should be retrieved. Any small items, such as jewelry, she can take today. I will send men with a wagon for the larger items tomorrow.”

Libby nodded, although she knew there was no jewelry to retrieve. As the only daughter, she inherited all the jewelry when her mother died twelve years ago, but it was long since gone. Paints, canvas, and fine sable brushes were expensive. Although her father was happy to supply her with everything she needed to produce technical drawings, he had no interest in her botanical paintings. Those supplies were funded by the sale of three gold bracelets, an onyx ring, and a pearl necklace she inherited from her mother. Guilt had eaten away at her when she walked into the jeweler's shop with her mother's pearl necklace, knowing she was going to trade this tangible link to her mother in exchange for money to buy pigment and canvas. She battled the sting of tears until she laid the necklace on the black velvet pad for the jeweler's inspection, when a sense of peace descended over her. Had it been a trick of her memory that made her feel as if she could sense her mother's presence? The faint scent of her perfume? Suddenly, she knew her mother would approve of the exchange she was making. Mama was the only person in the world who understood how important painting was to Libby, and now that she was gone, there would be no one to ensure she had the paint and supplies necessary to carry on her craft. A pearl necklace could do so.

Besides, her closest connection to her mother was still blooming just steps away from her bedroom window. It was her mother's love of roses that first sparked Libby's curiosity about the botanical world. Libby's earliest memories were helping her mother work bone meal into the soil of the rose garden. Rosebushes could live for generations, and that garden would always be a precious legacy to her mother's memory.

Her father stood. “We will leave immediately.”

Sheriff Barnes was resolute. For such a young man, he was completely unaffected by her father's bluster. “I will accompany your daughter to the Winslow house,” he said silkily. “I will not permit hostilities in my town, and you have already threatened Mr. Dobrescu with bodily harm. We can always return to the house if you find there is anything of value Miss Sawyer fails to identify.”

It took some finagling, but her father was eventually persuaded to wait at Jasper's house. Libby sat beside the sheriff on the driver's bench as they drove to Winslow Street, and with each passing block her nerves twisted a little tighter. Even her favorite outfit did not lend her the sense of confidence it usually imparted. Her suit had a sweeping skirt made of blue Merino wool with a matching vest and a narrow black tie fastened snugly beneath a starched white collar. Jasper had teasingly called it her “man's outfit,” but Libby felt remarkably confident whenever she wore it.

Although she dreaded the next few hours. How distasteful it would be to see a bunch of tramps making free with her home. It was bad enough to know they were there, but once she had seen their faces and watched them sitting on her furniture and eating from her dishes, the sight would be branded in her memory forever.

“Tell me what they are like,” she asked Sheriff Barnes.

“I only spoke with Mr. Dobrescu,” he replied. “I gather he is their leader.”

“Then what is
he
like?”

There was a pause as the young sheriff considered her question. “He is big.”

“Big?” Was that all he could think to say? Libby wanted to know if he was reasonable, if he was educated, if he had a scrap of human decency she could appeal to. “What do you mean by
big
?” she asked.

Sheriff Barnes's gaze drifted upward and he held his hand almost a foot above his own head. “Really big.” Then he held his hands several inches outside his shoulders. “And wide. Not fat. But very tall and very wide. Strapping, is what my mother would call him. A great big, strapping man.”

The words did nothing to comfort her. The carriage rolled to a stop and she scanned the house where she had spent most of her life, sitting quietly beneath the maple and hawthorn trees. The wrought-iron gate was cool against her sweating palms as the sheriff secured the horse to a hitching post. When the horse was secure, she took a shaky breath, opened the gate, and started walking up the slate pathway.

How strange it felt to have to knock on one's own front door. Libby mentally braced herself to confront the “big and strapping man,” but when the door opened, he was tiny, barely coming up to her elbow. She had not expected children quite this young to be among the passel of vagabonds who had invaded her home. No matter how foul the deeds of this boy's parents, she would never be hateful to a child.

“Hello,” she began cautiously. “What is your name?”

The child beamed with delight. “My name is Luke. I am an American!”

Even those few words revealed a heavy accent. “Very nice,” she said slowly and politely. “Is your father here?”

“His name is Michael, not Mikhail,” the boy stressed. “Now he is
Michael.
He is an American too. We are all Americans.”

Libby glanced at Sheriff Barnes, who seemed oddly charmed by the child. She was too, not that she could afford to be charmed by a gypsy child. He had probably been trained to say these things. “My goodness, all of you are Americans. How nice,” she said, for want of any other comment.

“Even Lady Mirela is an American now. We are not allowed to call her ‘Lady Mirela' anymore. Now we must call her
Aunt
Mirela.”

There was a heavy pounding of footsteps as another boy came bounding down the staircase. This one was older, with the same light brown hair and blue eyes as the younger boy, but he was different. This one was guarded and fierce as he hovered over the younger boy.

“Don't pay Luke any attention,” he said quickly. “He doesn't speak English and doesn't know what he is saying.”

“Yes I do.”

“No you don't,” the older one snapped back. Then there was a rapid stream of foreign words as the older boy berated the younger child in a language that was completely alien to Libby. She watched Luke's face morph from defensive to confused and then to frightened, and she had an instinctive urge to comfort the child. The boy had been so proud just moments ago, and she didn't like to see him hurt by whatever the older boy was saying in such harsh tones. She was just about to say something when a man moved into her line of sight, blocking out the view of both boys with his size.

Oh my.

Libby's mouth went dry and the bottom of her stomach lurched. He was a giant. If a medieval warrior came storming out of the pages of a history book, this is what he would look like. He was big and rugged and the way his eyes glittered above the hard planes of his face made her catch her breath. Even his clothing was odd. She had never seen pants made from leather, and was that a
hatchet
strapped to his waist?

“What have you said to my boys to upset them?” he demanded.

She took a step back. “I asked the boy his name,” she said lamely.

He towered over her, his eyes boring into her as if he were preparing to whip out that hatchet to extract more information. She refused to let herself back down, not when all she did was ask the boy a simple question. The man remained firmly planted in the doorway but turned to address the two children in the same strange language she had heard before. They both scampered upstairs, and the intensity of the warrior's stare was scorching as he swiveled his attention back to her. She moved a tiny step closer to the sheriff, but the giant followed, standing only inches away from her.

“Don't talk to my children,” he said in a low voice that felt threatening despite its soft volume. “Don't have any contact with them unless I am here. If you want something, everything goes through me. Is that understood?” He directed the question to Sheriff Barnes. Despite the sheriff's cool demeanor with her father, she saw him swallow and try to stand a bit straighter.

“As we notified you yesterday, Professor Sawyer has been granted the right to retrieve his personal belongings,” the sheriff said. “His daughter, Miss Liberty Sawyer, will be assisting me in identifying items to be removed.”

Those stormy blue eyes glowered at her, staring rudely at her smartly matching vest and tie and skimming all the way down to her tightly laced boots. “What kind of name is
Liberty
?” he asked. “It is not a proper name for a woman, it is a concept. A noun.”

She didn't quite know what to say. She had always been fond of her unconventional name. “It is a perfectly good name.”

“I don't like it.”

His statement was blunt and completely unnecessary. “Apparently, they do not teach manners in Romania, but in Massachusetts we wait until formal introductions are complete before hurling insults and seizing houses.”

The man folded his arms across his chest. “Where I am from, we do not seek out children and pump them for information. That is considered rude. Now, what is your business here?”

“I have come to retrieve my family's belongings from
our
house. I have a right to come inside and assure the safety of our belongings.”

The man's eyes narrowed. “I thought I would be dealing with a man. Is there no man to handle this?” he asked Sheriff Barnes. “I do not like to conduct business with a woman.”

Libby's mouth dropped open in astonishment, but the sheriff interceded before she could speak. “Miss Sawyer is the professor's designated choice to inspect the house. Don't try to force a delay by sending me back to fetch another.”

Mr. Dobrescu rubbed his chin and peered at her with a perplexed look on his face. His eyes darkened like the blue of a summer sky just before a storm. He was a handsome man despite the fact that he seemed as friendly as the Spanish Inquisition. A scar marred the side of his face and his hair was in desperate need of a trim, but his eyes unnerved her. They were as hard and cold as iron.