The Secret of Stavewood (Stavewood Saga Book 4) (25 page)

   
Sixty

     
L
ouisa opened her eyes slowly and looked up. She was lying against Luc’s solid chest on the living room settee as he slept, breathing deeply and rhythmically. He had one arm around her shoulder and in his free hand he held the last page of her manuscript. She had fallen asleep while he was reading it. When she reached quietly to take the paper, his eyes opened.

      “Did you read all of it?” she asked softly.

      “Every word,” he responded. “You’re very good, you know. So mysterious and tragic.”

      Louisa waited in the kitchen while Luc bathed and dressed in the upstairs bath. She wandered the main floor of the estate after watching him go up the big staircase with his pack filled with surveying equipment and his clean clothing. The house seemed different to her somehow. It felt silent and lonely with all of the family away. For the first time in years, Louisa wanted to be part of it again.

      She ran her hand along the carved stair railing and pulled closed the big pocket doors to her father’s den. She stood looking at them, remembering. They had only ever been closed in emergencies. Her father closed them when the sheriff came to the house, when Mark had gone missing, so many years ago. He had not closed them to shut her out, as she had imagined then. He had closed them to protect her and all of the family waiting for his return with breaking hearts. Her mother had lost a child then, a baby that was never born. At all other times those doors were open. Even when deeply concentrating on his business responsibilities he’d look up from his big desk and smile when she stood in the doorway. He always welcomed her in and would pull her up on his lap and say, “What troubles you today, Miss Louisa?”

      She thought back to when her brother returned with Colleen at his side. She had been terribly jealous. He was hers, her Mark, and he adored her. But he looked at Colleen the way Mr. Vancouver had looked at his bride. When she had said as a child she wanted Colleen to go away, Colleen had not left. She never would. Colleen proved to be the perfect wife for Mark and she loved him so genuinely that Louisa grew to love her.

      Louisa had decided that there would never be anyone for her. What she saw between them seemed so precious it would be impossible for any other person to find. Stavewood, with all its beauty and protection, was the only place that real love came about and over the years no one there was ever the right one for her.

      She shook her head with the memory of it all. In the foolishness of her youth she had taken everything beautiful and perfect and twisted it around. But now she was not a child any longer. She thought of Talbot’s blue eyes, now changed completely and forever in her memory. She had wanted very badly to prove that the love at Stavewood was a fairy tale and that if she went away she somehow would find a
real
love. Now she knew that what she had found were the real lies, that what was true and honest and pure and genuine was right here, at home, all the time. She thought about the stories she had read to her young brothers so many times. Louisa’s eyes filled with tears. Stavewood was like no other place in the world. It was hers, and it was her heart. When she heard Luc on the stairs she walked out into the big foyer to see him descending.

      He came down the familiar staircase, freshly shaved, his shirt open at the throat and a thoughtful look in his warm brown eyes. He stepped down beside her and looked into her delicate face.

      Without a word, Louisa wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned into him. He pulled her close. She knew what their day held and she would face it. She was safe within the circle of the great dragon. Louisa Elgerson was finally home. She had uncovered the heartbreak of the past and survived it in the present and she had found true love. For that moment she drank in the great strength of that knowledge and that perfect love.

      In the sheriff’s office in Billington, Louisa Elgerson explained that Talbot Sunderland was a man she had met in New York City. He was a man who was a friend and business partner. He was a man she had known well. He was a man who had drowned. The sheriff there offered his sympathies over his death and the death of Birget, a woman he and his father had known for years. He talked about how unfortunate her accident had been and Louisa cried.

      In the streets of town Louisa looked around. She could feel the world changing. Luc helped her back into the wagon and they set out for Stavewood. When the time was right, after the family had returned, she would put Corissa’s letter into her brother’s hand.

Sixty-One

     
L
ouisa stood in the orchards of Stavewood completely alone. In two days Talbot Sunderland would be buried. He had no family that she knew of and no way to find out. She expected that her own family would return soon, having laid Birget to rest at her birthplace near her own relatives. Luc had insisted on returning the stolen ReVere to its rightful owner and he had left for Wisconsin. Louisa would wait alone.

      “Go,” she had told him. “It’s the right thing to do. I need to be here alone when my family returns. I need to put all the things I felt for Talbot behind me. Give me the time to know my heart. Luc, I love you more than I ever imagined I could love any man. Come back to me when you’re done. I’ll be ready then.”

      They had agreed but none of the logic made it any easier when she watched him walk up the path to the roadster.

      Louisa spent hours in the rose garden on the bench, staring at the gazebo. The hinges to the staircase were gone now and it was as it should be, simple steps to a beautiful structure and no longer a doorway to a sinister tunnel. Jude Thomas was dead and buried, Louisa thought, and now his secret passage was closed at both ends.

      On the breeze she could smell the apple blossoms. She walked there through the orchards, recalling her mother’s sweet voice, as it had been when she was a child playing in the shade of these trees.

      “Heaven is here,” Rebecca had told her. “It’s exactly as I dreamed it would be, and even more so because you are here to share it with me.”

      Louisa remembered her mother’s skirt swishing around her feet and her contented smile as the fuzzy bees hummed around the blossoms. She already missed Luc terribly but knowing he would return made her feel strangely calm. She decided not to go back to New York City and in her heart she bid it farewell. No matter where she went now she understood that a part of her would always belong to Stavewood. It was the part that had always protected her and the love of her family.

      She pulled the little wooden carp from her pocket and held it up, letting the sunlight shine softly against the smooth wood. Louisa had asked Luc to tell her again about the fable of the little fish, the big river and the perseverance to find love. He had learned many things from his Asian friend. Now Louisa had learned things as well. Though she had resolved to stay away, somehow she had still come home and, strange as it was, it had been Talbot who made that happen. Now she knew what it was that Luc was going to say she caught that day fishing. She had captured his heart.

      She heard the wagons in the distance. The family was home. Louisa squared her shoulders. She had her family and Luc’s love and she was not alone. She never had been. She walked through the orchards towards Stavewood.

 
Sixty-Two

     
R
ebecca climbed down from the wagon and spoke softly to the younger boys and they walked up the trail towards the mill. Louisa watched them disappear as she stood on the edge of the tree line.  The Vancouvers waved as they pulled their wagon towards home and Mark and Colleen hugged her parents warmly before driving away in their own wagon. Her mother stood in the yard while her father parked the coach beside the stables and then walked back to her. He put his big arm around her shoulders and she took his hand and they walked towards the house together.

      Louisa watched silently as they shared their grief and comforted one another. They stopped in the yard and both looked up at the house. They did not speak but their thoughts showed plainly on their faces. Her family was glad to be back at Stavewood. She waited for a while there, looking up at the massive home. The wide wings of the building spread like welcoming arms along either side. Louisa crossed the yard, turned the knob on the back door and stepped inside.

      Rebecca looked up, the big teapot in her hand. “Oh, Loo. I’m so glad to see you.”

      Louisa could see the tears welling up in her eyes. She hurried to her mother and wrapped her arms around her. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here, Mama. I’m so sorry.”

      “I was worried. Is everything alright?” Rebecca looked up and touched her daughter’s cheek softly.

      “Oh, Mama.” Louisa broke down in sobs.

      “I liked him,” Rebecca said as she put on the tea sometime later and choked back tears. “He was trying so hard to impress me, I could tell. He wanted your father and me to like him so much. I’m sorry I didn’t get to know him well enough for him to just be himself.”

      Louisa nodded silently.

      Timothy watched his daughter from across the kitchen table. First Birget and now Louisa’s gentleman. He shook his head. He considered asking her if they had resolved the tiff that Talbot had told him about and then thought better of it. Something in Louisa’s demeanor told him to let her come to him in her own time. He put his hand on her shoulder and stroked her hair, then left the kitchen without a word and walked out into the yard.

      Louisa watched him leave. She could not help but think that now he would be safe outside, walking in deep thought around the gardens. There would be no one out at the gazebo to threaten him. No one would be watching him from across the meadow plotting to harm him. There was no one there to resurrect an evil past that would break his heart again.

      “Your father told me that Talbot had asked you to marry him.”

      Louisa turned to her mother and looked into her eyes. “Yes, Mama. He did. I cared for him very much but I was not in love with him. Something happened when I came home. I found love but not the way I expected. I’m not sure how to explain it. You told me I would know when it happened and I did. But none of it has gone the way I expected.”

      Rebecca smiled wistfully. “You’re talking about that boy who took you fishing, aren’t you?”

      Louisa pulled the wooden carp from her sweater pocket and set it on the table. “It’s hard to explain but I’m in love with Luc Almquist. It was not as it should have been between Talbot and me. He should never have come here.”

      Rebecca sighed. “I know,” she said.

      “How?” Louisa asked.

      “That morning you came home from fishing I saw the way you looked at Luc in the yard. Then I saw how uncomfortable you were when Talbot was here. Love never makes you uncomfortable, Loo. Not like that. Does Luc know?”

      “Luc knows everything, Mama. Everything.”

      Rebecca looked at her daughter’s face. Something in her eyes looked older, perhaps tired, as if she bore a great burden. “Do you feel guilty about not loving Talbot?”

      “No, Mama, I don’t,” Louisa sighed. She had made a decision, and she believed it was the best one. She would never tell them about what had happened that night and that Talbot was not at all who he pretended to be. “I feel sad, Mama. But I have you, and Daddy and Mark and Colleen and all of the rest of the family. You all mean everything to me. I just need a little time. In the morning I will say goodbye to Talbot. It will all be fine.”