Until the Dawn (30 page)

“I did.” There was a chance someone at the university would recognize the language, but more importantly, he wanted to get it away from Nickolaas. His grandfather couldn’t be trusted to give up so easily. Mr. Gilroy was intensely loyal to Nickolaas, and between the two of them, they were likely to get their hands on the document and destroy it.

“Do you know why it upset your grandfather so much?”

It was a question that had been plaguing him all afternoon. He drew a breath and rolled his cane between his palms. “I think he knows more about this house than he is willing to share,” he finally said. “He once said that his father hired a series of
translators to go through some old papers found in the attic, and that his father became very despondent after the translations were complete. Karl Vandermark died shortly after.”

“What were they translating?” she asked.

“I have no idea. And if my grandfather knows, he’s not telling. He’s always been very tight-lipped about his father’s death.”

Which was not surprising. Karl Vandermark had been lionized by almost everyone who knew him. He was wealthy beyond all imagination but still took a genuine interest in running the timber mill. He rolled up his sleeves and learned the trade from the ground up. He mingled with his workers and gave generously to the town.

“Your grandfather once said something strange about his father,” Sophie said cautiously. “He said Karl Vandermark was no saint, although everything I’ve heard about him indicates he was an honorable, hardworking man. The people in the village adored him. Do you know what Nickolaas meant by that?”

It was a fair question, but he didn’t want to answer it. He continued rolling the cane between his palms so hard they started to hurt. The silence stretched and became uncomfortable. The tragedies of his family were not something he enjoyed speaking about, but he was as intrigued as anyone about that strange document found this afternoon, and the possibility it was related to Karl’s death.

“The people in my family don’t tend to live very long,” he said slowly. “There is a streak of melancholia that can be seen as far back as our records exist. I’ve read that physicians are now suspecting this might be a hereditary condition that is passed down from parents to their children. From what Nickolaas has told me about his father, it appears that Karl Vandermark suffered from the dark moods.”

“I see,” she whispered. “And you? Do you have this condi
tion?” She said the words cautiously, as though she feared the question too personal.

Dark mood
was too mild a term for the despondency, the despair, the days he didn’t have the energy to lift a fork to his mouth.

There had been no cataclysmic event or day he could point to and declare it the beginning of his long descent into melancholia. It was merely years of oppressive darkness that sapped the joy from his life. The knowledge that nothing endured, and ultimately nothing mattered.

“I suppose I do,” he admitted. “I was happy enough until . . . well, the past decade has been very difficult. Altogether awful, to be honest.”

“Has it been all bad?” she pressed. “In all that time, was there never a period where you were happy and hopeful?”

His response was immediate. “The day Pieter was born. That was the best day of my life. It was perfect.”

“Why?” Sophie asked. “What made it perfect?”

Only a person who had never witnessed the birth of a child could ask such a question, but he wanted to answer her rationally and reached back to analyze those few moments after Pieter’s birth and articulate exactly what he felt.

“When I first held Pieter, I felt a surge of love for him. He was so innocent, and I wanted the world to be perfect for him. I felt a sense of new hope. It was like being born again, and I felt like anything was possible if I only reached out and asked for it. I was overflowing with hope and love and the certainty that I had been put on this earth to raise this child.”

“And you don’t feel those things anymore?” she asked quietly.

He blanched. He loved Pieter . . . but that sense of hope? The belief he could conquer the world merely through the force of his love? No, he hadn’t felt that way in a long time.

“Despair is a powerful force,” he admitted. For a brief while
after Pieter was born, there was a possibility he and Portia could overcome the problems between them and find happiness once again. “I’m afraid my wife and I had a less than perfect marriage,” he said slowly. “Portia and I grew up together. Our families had neighboring estates in Newport, and we’d always been friends. Our families traveled together, took the grand tour of Europe together. We shared a love of sailing, and although our friendship was platonic, I always assumed I would marry her one day. There are reasons very rich people tend to marry one another, and it has nothing to do with amassing wealth. I trusted Portia.”

She was pretty and smart and fierce. From the time they were old enough to take a sailboat out, they’d shared a love of racing across the sea toward the edge of the known horizon. They should have had a good marriage.

But on their wedding night, Portia had wept, saying he was like a brother to her and sharing a bed would be awkward and horrible. It was something he never saw coming. He was nineteen years old and eagerly anticipating the physical side of marriage, but Portia dreaded it.

Their wedding night was a disaster. Portia knew what to expect of a marriage and was willing to endure it in order to have a child, but their friendship collapsed. She avoided him, no longer even wanting to be in the same room with him. The troubles in the marriage bed reached out to taint every aspect of their friendship.

He’d had such hopes for his marriage, but they were snuffed out quickly. For a fleeting time after Pieter had been born, he’d thought things might get better. After he set their newborn child in her arms, he held Portia, and they both wept in joy. She welcomed his embrace and laughed as he kissed her face and they took turns holding the baby. They had been so happy on that day.

It hurt even worse when she rejected him a second time. Like all decent husbands, he had moved into the adjoining suite during her pregnancy and recovery, but when he attempted to rejoin her, she refused.

“If we’d had a girl, I’d have been willing to endure it again until we had a boy, but there’s no need now,” she explained.

Endure it.
Those words still haunted him.

“I learned that sometimes platonic friends don’t work out so well in a marriage,” he said to Sophie. “It wasn’t what I hoped for or expected in a marriage, but it gave me Pieter, so I will be forever grateful.”

“What happened to her?”

“Cholera. She died when Pieter was only ten months old. I’ll always wonder if it could have been a real marriage if we’d had more time to overcome our troubles.”

He shook away the memories, wondering why it was so easy to confide these deeply personal things to Sophie. She seemed to have that effect on people. She was kind and open and didn’t have a mean bone in her body.

And she had been good for Pieter. It wasn’t until he saw the way Pieter responded to Sophie that he regretted not providing a real mother for the boy. The series of nannies and governesses were employees who were paid to be nice to the child. Sophie did it from genuine love.

Above all, love one another
.

The phrase popped into his head without warning. He knew it was one of Sophie’s fussy Bible quotations, but she truly lived her faith. He was deliberately rude and mean to her when he first arrived, venting years of accumulated pain and disappointment on her simply because she seemed so cheerful. It hadn’t blunted her kindness. She had a gentle dignity in the face of his rudeness, consistently being kind, compassionate, and, in her own way . . . wise.

She would be good for Pieter. She would be an excellent mother. He’d never considered remarriage after the disaster with Portia, but there was something undeniably appealing about Sophie van Riijn. And when one found a treasure, it was only logical to try to secure it for himself.

A flicker of hope flared to life. Sophie was everything he could ever hope for in a woman. He didn’t need money or connections in a marriage, he simply wanted a wife who would complete his family. Complete
him
. Maybe it was time to make Sophie more than just his family’s cook.

He glanced over at her, but she was staring into the distance in confusion. He followed her gaze, surprised to see a handsome, auburn-haired man heading toward them in the distance. Grabbing the rim of the balustrade, he pulled himself to his feet, Sophie rising at the same time. The man noticed them and waved his arm in a wide arc over his head.

“Hello, Sophie!” he called out.

“Marten?” The confusion in her voice was obvious, and Quentin narrowed his gaze on Sophie’s delinquent, one-time fiancé. Dressed in a dapper suit and carrying two traveling bags, he had a reckless smile and a confident air that put Quentin on alert.

“What are you doing here?” Sophie asked, mild reproach in her voice. He was glad to hear it. Any red-blooded man who would throw over Sophie van Riijn for life as a steamship tour guide in Manhattan wasn’t worth his salt.

Marten lifted one of the bags. “I’ve brought tulip bulbs, a special order for Nickolaas Vandermark. Once they arrived, I figured I would deliver them in person.”

Sophie crossed her arms, an unusual spark of annoyance on her face. “Bulbs,” she said dryly. “You’ve come all this way to deliver tulip bulbs.”

“Not just any bulbs. These are from his cousin’s estate in
Holland. Very hard to get in this country, but I was happy to oblige. What’s this I hear about a gang of college professors living in the mansion? Everyone in town is talking about it. The butcher says he can barely supply enough beef to keep you all fed.”

Sophie reached out for the bag. “Thank you for the bulbs. If you wait a moment, I’ll fetch you a tin of cookies to thank you for delivering them, but you’d best hurry if you are to get home before dark.”

Marten’s grin was annoyingly wide. “Sorry, Sophie. I met that Mr. Gilroy fellow in town, and he said I could stay for a few days.”

Quentin narrowed his eyes. The story would be easy to verify, which meant it was probably true. And that meant that either Mr. Gilroy or his grandfather saw some underhanded use for Marten Graaf here at the mansion.

Which meant there was no getting rid of him. Dierenpark had just acquired yet another houseguest.

17

T
HE
PAIN
IN
HIS
LEG
WOKE
HIM
. It was a ferocious ache deep in the marrow, running from his ankle all the way up to the base of his knee. Quentin lay perfectly still, the fog of sleep clearing from his brain as he tried to assess the situation and locate what had caused the abrupt worsening of his condition.

He hadn’t put undue stress on his leg yesterday. He’d worn the brace overnight as instructed by the specialists in Berlin. The brace was uncomfortable and made sleep difficult, but it spared him the agony of inadvertently rolling onto his leg at an awkward angle. Chronic osteomyelitis was an insidious disease he’d been battling ever since the first surgery on his leg. He hoped this flare-up wouldn’t further weaken what was left of his shin bone.

He wished for a fraction of Sophie’s faith so that he could pray to a loving God who would magically heal his leg, but he couldn’t accept that God would design a complex, magnificent world and then simply abandon it to the ravages of war, famine, and disease. He was learning to respect Sophie, but he couldn’t
respect her God. Her God either didn’t exist or he didn’t care, and it was more logical to conclude he didn’t exist.

It would be better to stay in bed today. He pushed himself upright and closed his eyes against the pain pulsing throughout his body. Perspiration beaded on his forehead. It was hot in here, and he flipped the sheets back, wishing he knew if this was a simple fever or the beginning of a more serious bone infection.

He lit the kerosene lantern for some reading light. In short order, he snagged the reading table he’d designed to slide across his lap and propped a book atop it. Eventually Mr. Gilroy would come to check on him when he didn’t materialize for breakfast. He’d read two chapters on hydraulic engineering when the sounds of laughter from somewhere outside penetrated his concentration. He tried to ignore them, but they weren’t stopping.