The Secret of Pembrooke Park (43 page)

Two days later, Abigail again bid farewell to her parents and Louisa.

Not long after they had left, she saw Mac riding his horse across the bridge, Brutus bounding alongside. He was on his way home from Hunts Hall, she guessed, surprised he had returned to his duties so quickly after his recent injuries. She waved and hurried across the drive to him. “May I talk with you a moment,” she asked.

He halted and, ignoring her protests, dismounted. “Aye. Do you mind if we walk while we do? I need to stretch my stiff legs.”

“I don’t mind at all,” she said. “But are you sure you should be walking on that ankle?”

“Only a sprain,” he insisted. “It’s bound tight.” He pulled down the stout branch tied to his saddle and used it for support as he walked toward his cottage, leading the horse by its reins.

She walked alongside. She wanted to talk to him about Duncan, but first she apprised him of her family’s departure and her decision to remain behind while they visited London for a few days.

He sent her a glinting glance. “Perhaps it’s time you learnt to shoot a gun, Miss Foster. I could teach you, if you like.”

She was surprised by the offer, and what it implied.

They reached the clearing, and Abigail glanced up at the cottage. Beside her, Mac sucked in a sharp breath and tensed. Miles sat on the bench in the little front garden, rubbing a cloth over a gun. One of Mac’s guns, she supposed, as she had seen Mac oiling his collection in the nearby woodshed on previous occasions.

Mac called, “I am not in the habit of finding strangers at my door, helping themselves to my guns.”

Miles replied casually, “Then you ought not leave them lying about for strangers to find.”

Was his manner as friendly as it outwardly appeared, Abigail wondered. Or subtly threatening? It was difficult to tell.

Releasing his horse, Mac pushed through the gate. “I was called away whilst cleaning it,” he said defensively, “and left it in harmless pieces.”

“So I guessed. But it was the work of a moment to put it back
together. Not for a novice, perhaps. But the navy did teach me something useful, in the end.” Miles tilted his head, observing Mac’s crude cane with interest. “Apparently I’ve started a fashion here.” He smirked. “Fine stick.”

Mac squared his shoulders. “To what do I owe the honor of your visit to my humble cottage, Mr. Pembrooke?”

“That’s right.” Miles looked around. “This is my first visit. I have been remiss . . . Oh no, that’s right—I’ve never been invited.”

“Is this a social call, then?”

“If you like.”

Irritation flashed over Mac’s face. “What do you want, Miles?”

Miles looked at him closely and said, “Mac, I know Robert Pembrooke confided in you.”

“That’s right,” Mac said, eyeing him warily. “He did. And proud I am of that fact. He was the best of men, Robert Pembrooke was.”

“I shall have to take your word for it.” Miles smiled thinly. “Though my father did best him in the end.”

Mac frowned. “What are you getting at? If you dare make light of what your father did to him, to us all, I’ll—”

Miles held up his palm in consolation. “Now, now. No need to get riled. Are you sure you’re Scottish and not Irish,
Red
?”

Miles grinned as though he’d made a great joke, but Abigail saw Mac fist his hands.

“So if Robert Pembrooke confided so much in you, his trusted steward,” Miles continued, “then you must know where it is.” He added cheerfully, “You can tell me, now that we know my father is dead. He can’t take anything else from your revered Robert Pembrooke. Can no longer get his bony hands on his house or his riches.”

Mac looked at Miles as he might size up an unfamiliar dog. Friendly . . . or dangerous? “True,” he allowed.

“So, where is it?” Miles urged. “Where is Robert Pembrooke’s treasure?”

“Here I am,” Leah said, stepping outside.

Miles turned to her in surprise. “Miss Chapman . . . ?”

“No.”

His brows rose. “No?”

She shook her head. “My name is Eleanor Pembrooke, daughter of Robert and Elizabeth Pembrooke. Your first cousin.”

Miles scowled. “I don’t believe you. You’re dead. That is . . . she’s dead.”

“No. I am very much alive. Mac hid me from your father. Protected me all these years.”

His eyes narrowed. “Prove it.”

“Very well.”

“Leah . . .” Mac warned. “You don’t have to do this.”

“It’s all right, Papa. I want to. It’s time.” She looked at Miles. “Give me one moment.” She retreated into the house and came back out a minute later.

She said, “Here’s the letter my father sent home with his valet after your father stabbed him. He wrote it with his last breath, his last bit of strength.”

Miles snatched it from her.

As he read it, his eyes widened. “Yes! You see . . . It’s right here!
Give him the house, anything he wants, but hide my
treasure.
This proves it! My father was right all along—there is a treasure. Show me where it is.”

When no one moved, Miles glared at Mac. “I know how you idealized the man, so I am certain you obeyed this command, as you did in everything.”

“That’s right. I did.”

“So where is it? Where is Robert Pembrooke’s treasure?”

Leah slowly shook her head. “There is no treasure. Not really. It was my father’s pet name for me. He called me ‘my treasure.’”

“I don’t believe you.” His eyes narrowed. “If you’re Eleanor Pembrooke, then who’s buried in her grave in the churchyard?”

“My baby sister, who died of the same fever that took my mother.”

“But my father checked the parish records when he heard some rumor one of Robert’s children was still alive.”

Mac nodded. “The old rector agreed to change the records. To protect Eleanor.”

Miles looked at Leah. “We did wonder when you came home from school. Harriet said you looked nothing like Mac or William, though a bit like Kate Chapman, perhaps. But we never guessed . . .”

Returning his gaze to her adoptive father, Miles laid the gun on his knee and clapped lazily. “Bravo, Mac. That is quite a feat. And what do you get out of it? Fifty percent of the treasure?”

“Nothing of the kind.”

“You’re wrong, Miles,” Leah said. “It isn’t like that.”

“Does Harri know of your claim?”

“Not yet,” Leah said. “Though I plan to tell her.”

He rose, taking up his ebony stick. “Don’t bother. I shall ride over to Hunts Hall right now and tell her myself. I want to see her face when she hears. She told me she had a feeling we’d find another heir—even wished the rumor was true and one of Robert Pembrooke’s children still lived.”

He looked at Abigail, eyes glinting. “Apparently all this time I’ve been wooing the wrong cousin. . . .”

Miles turned his smile on Leah like a weapon. “And you, Le—Eleanor. Do you know where the secret room is?”

“Leah . . .” Mac warned under his breath.

“I do,” Leah acknowledged, chin high.

His eyes widened. “Where is it?”

“I shall be happy to show it to you . . . tomorrow. You want to go and speak to your sister first, and I . . . shall collect a few personal keepsakes.”

“Nothing too valuable, I trust?” His eyes glittered suspiciously.

“As you will see, there is not a great deal of value in there. Mostly family papers. A few portraits. Things that will mean more to me than to you.”

“If you say so.”

Abigail thought he might demand to go in immediately, or to extract a promise that she remove no valuables until he’d had the chance to search the room. But he did not.

Instead he drew himself up, handing Mac his gun at last. “Well.” He consulted his pocket watch. “I had better hurry over to Hunts Hall if I hope to beg a dinner invitation.” He wagged his eyebrows comically, but after the tense scene, no one smiled.

Leah and Abigail waited until he had disappeared into the stables and ridden off before making haste to Pembrooke Park.

L
eah wanted time to cull personal letters, her mother’s portrait, and the ruby necklace before giving over the rest to Miles’s frantic search. Abigail offered to help her, briefly wondering if there was still hope of claiming that reward, now that the jewels had been reunited with their rightful owner. Harriet had hinted as much, but somehow she doubted it.

They donned bibbed aprons and set to work inside the secret room—closing the door in case any servants entered the bedchamber. Leah gathered the family Bible, necklace, and a few other things and set them in a pile on one shelf. Then they carefully took down the portrait of Elizabeth Pembrooke from the back of the door and set it nearby. The nail the portrait had hung on clinked to the floor.

Abigail glanced up and was surprised to see the tiniest pinprick of light. “Look! It’s left a hole.” She stood on tiptoe and put her eye to it. “You can see into the bedchamber—a little.”

But Leah’s focus remained on the contents of the shelves in the hidden room.

“How can I help?” Abigail asked, joining her.

“I don’t want to miss anything personal. Letters between my parents, or to me.”

“I understand.”

Each took a stack and began reading through the correspondence. Leah spread a lap rug on the cushions and reclined back on them with a handful of letters. Abigail could easily imagine little Ellie snug in her private hideaway, reading a favorite book.

Abigail sat less comfortably on the child-size chair.

“Are you sure you don’t want to trade?” Leah offered.

“No, I’m fine.”

“Good.” Leah grinned. “I doubt my backside would fit in that chair nowadays.”

They continued to read, the silence broken by the occasional rustle of paper or birdcall outside the window.

Abigail then heard something else, from the other side of the door.

Leah must have sensed her unnatural stillness, for she glanced up at her. “What?”

“Shh . . . Someone’s out there. In my . . . our . . . bedchamber.”

“Who?” Leah asked.

Abigail rose and started to crack open the door but then remembered the nail hole. She raised herself on tiptoe and looked through it once more. At first she didn’t see anyone. She could see only a narrow shaft of the room—her side table and the edge of the bed. But then a figure walked past and opened the drawer of her side table.

“It’s Miles,” she whispered, perplexed. There hadn’t been time for him to ride out to Hunts Hall and back, let alone to talk with Harriet. Had he come back hoping to catch them entering the secret room—catch them in the act of extracting all the “treasure”?

Miles sat on the edge of her bed and lifted a stack of letters onto his lap—the letters Harriet had sent her anonymously. Letters about the past, about coming to Pembrooke Park, about the girl with the haunted eyes, about her increasingly violent father, her troubled brother, and the secret room . . .

Oh no.
How would Miles react? Should she bolt from the room and snatch them away? She certainly couldn’t overpower the man if he refused to hand over the letters. And in so doing, she would
reveal their hiding place. And Eleanor’s treasures. And they weren’t ready to do that yet. Besides, the letters were written by his own sister. They were his business, in some ways, more than hers.

Would Harriet wish Miles to read them? Probably not. But at the moment Abigail could think of no way to forestall him without revealing the secret room to him.

“What is he doing?” Leah whispered anxiously.

“Reading the letters you returned.”

Leah’s mouth formed a silent O as she, too, thought through the implications.

There was little in the letters Miles didn’t already know or hadn’t lived through himself. If he read through them all—and found the one in which Harriet mentioned finding the secret room at last, even then the letter did not specify where it was. There was no great risk to them. If anything, reading them would likely spur him to seek out his sister, as he’d claimed he’d do earlier. Abigail did not like the thought of driving a wedge between brother and sister. To cause problems for Harriet. But better for Harriet, than for vulnerable Leah . . .

As Abigail watched, Miles lifted the glass off her bedside lamp, set it aside, and then fed the corner of one of the letters into its flame. Abigail gasped. “He’s burning one of them. . . .” She wondered which. Maybe the one in which Harriet had accused him of lighting a fire in the dolls’ house and blaming their brother.

Miles carried the letter toward the hearth, then returned empty-handed to read another.

Abigail watched for a few moments longer, then stepped away from the peephole and tiptoed back to her chair.

“Let’s see how long he stays,” she whispered. They would wait him out and keep their secret to themselves for a little while longer.

She sat down and picked up another box to sort through. Then she lifted the family Bible onto her lap and looked at the names written in the front leaves, tracing her fingers down the long list of births and deaths until she reached Eleanor’s birth date. Eight years later came the birth of
Baby Emma
. Her birth and death
dates a poignantly brief span, followed by the death of her mother, Elizabeth. Abigail traced the entries but found no notice of Eleanor’s fictional death. Nor of Robert Pembrooke’s death, which had been all too real.

Leah glanced over Abigail’s shoulder and said, “No wonder Mac hid the Bible in here.” She picked up another letter from her stack and resumed her reading.

Abigail read for a while longer as well, and then leaned her head back against the wall. Her thoughts drifted to William as she idly glanced around the room. How strange to find herself there with Eleanor, Robert Pembrooke’s “treasure.” Her gaze rested on the rusted water pipes against the far wall. What was that verse William had quoted?
“Lay not up for
yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt
. . . .”

Sometime later, Abigail looked up and wondered what time it was. From the small window, she saw fading daylight in orangey twilight hues. She’d lost track of time as she’d read a series of love letters between Leah’s great-grandparents—distant relatives of Abigail as well. Even so, she wouldn’t have expected to see the sunset from this east-facing window.

She glanced at the cushions beside her and noticed Leah had fallen asleep, a letter lying on her chest. Abigail closed her eyes and listened for movement in the next room. Was Miles still there? She heard a low roar but couldn’t identify the sound. She took a long breath and suddenly stilled. What was that smell? She sniffed the air again. Smoke.

She frowned. Was Miles still burning letters? Or had Polly come in to lay a fire for the evening? Abigail’s neck ached from bending over letters for so long. She rose on stiff legs and tiptoed to the peephole. She didn’t see Miles. But she couldn’t see the whole room from her vantage point.

She laid her palm on the panel and gingerly opened it a slit. Suddenly heat penetrated her skin, and she snatched it back. The door was hot. What on earth . . . ? Then through the crack she saw . . . Her heart banged against her ribs. The dolls’ house engulfed in
flames. As she stared, disbelieving, fire seemed to leap from the carpet before the hearth to the nearby window curtain. Then orange-red flames whipped up her bed-curtains.

Panic gripped her.

Miles.
Had the letters he’d burnt fallen to the floor by accident? Or had he set the fire intentionally—somehow knowing Leah was there and meaning to snuff out her life, to follow in his father’s footsteps and do away with the rightful owner of Pembrooke Park?
Please, God, no . . .

Nerves zinging to high alert, she whirled to her companion.

“Leah? Leah, wake up!”

Leah groggily turned her face away. Was the smoke affecting her already? Abigail crouched beside her and shook her shoulder. “Leah! Get up. The room is on fire.”

Leah’s eyes opened, and Abigail’s words penetrated, chasing the dazed look away.

“Fire? Where?” Panicked, Leah lumbered to her feet, and Abigail gripped her arm to help steady her.

“In the bedchamber. We have to get out. Now.”

She yanked the lap robe from the cushion and told Leah to cover her nose and mouth. Lifting her foot, she pushed open the hot door with her shoe. The room beyond was now nearly engulfed in flames. Their way to the door blocked—the carpet runner between them and the door burned like a pathway of hot coals, and fire licked its way hungrily up the doorframe.

Pulse pounding, Abigail whirled to look at the nearest window. Though high above the ground, they would likely survive the fall, far better than remaining trapped as they were.

She glanced back at the window inside the secret room, but it was so small, and let out only to the steep roof, not to safety. Hardly an appealing escape route, even if they could squeeze through. Was the whole house on fire? Or just her room?

Oh, God, help us!
Abigail prayed.

Flames leapt toward the bedchamber window, consuming the frilly curtains and cutting off that final way of escape. The fire bil
lowed and roared closer. Abigail leapt back, the fumes slamming the hidden door and barely missing her face. Abigail turned and met Leah’s wide eyes.

“What now?” Leah breathed.

Abigail thought a moment, then prised open the small window, a welcome breeze rushing in to cool the stifling air within. If she yelled from it, would anyone hear her? What could they do about it, even if they heard her calls? Abigail’s mind whirled, searching desperately for a way out. To hatch an escape plan.

To hatch . . .
The word echoed in her mind, and she pictured the old building plans for the water tower. She and Leah now stood in one level of that tower, finished into a storeroom at some later date after the water tower had been abandoned. She recalled the rough sketch of stairs. Her assumption that the sketch represented a possible set of servants’ stairs, never completed. But what if they were never meant to be permanent stairs. While workmen were building the tower they had likely used a series of ladders to ascend and descend from one level to the next. Might they still be there?

Clutching the desperate thread of hope, Abigail threw back one end of the square carpet covering the floor.

“What are you doing?” Leah asked.

Abigail studied the wood. No obvious hole or hatch cover—but wait . . . there. A seam. She fell to her knees and tried to tug it up, but even her small fingers were too big.

“Find something I can prise this up with.”

Leah searched the room, then snatched up the nail that had hung the portrait. “Try this.”

Abigail slid it into the seam and tried to prise up the hatch, if hatch it was. Nothing. She came at it along the opposite seam, but it didn’t give. “Find something longer, to use as a lever.”

From the bedchamber beyond came the sound of breaking glass—windows shattering from the heat. Would the sound draw help in time? Or would it allow in wind that would fuel the fire into a frenzy?

William saw Miles Pembrooke leaving the manor, walking in the direction of his family’s cottage. Unease instantly nipped at him.

“Mr. Pembrooke!” He strode over to meet the man.

“Ah, Mr. Chapman. Perhaps you know. I have been looking for Miss Foster and your sister without success. The servants tell me they saw the two ladies enter the manor an hour ago but haven’t seen them since. And I can’t find them anywhere. Have you seen them?”

“No,” William answered in mild surprise, having seen the girls enter the house from his own window.

Suddenly the front door banged open and Polly ran out, waving her arms. “Fire! The house is on fire!”

“Where?” William called, hoping for a simple kitchen fire.

“Upstairs! I saw it from the landing!”

William’s heart lurched. Panic gripped him and in turn he gripped Miles’s arm. “Did you check Miss Foster’s room?”

“I did, yes. But no one was there.”

“But what about . . . the secret room?”

Miles stared at him. “How could I check that, when I don’t know where it is?”

William’s stomach clenched. Were Leah and Abigail even aware of the fire? He said, “I wager that’s where they are.”

Miles paled. “Is the secret room anywhere near Miss Foster’s bedchamber?”

“Yes—opens right into it.”

“God, no . . . The room was empty. I made sure, before I . . .”

“Before you . . . what? Good lord, Miles. What did you do?”