Until the Dawn (9 page)

Her naiveté was appalling. People like Sophie van Riijn smiled while allowing the government to exploit her goodwill, and that kind of gullibility annoyed him. He couldn’t deny there was something appealing about her, even as he was exasperated by her foolish benevolence.

A worm dropped onto his lap from the portico above and he reared back, brushing it onto the steps in disgust. He used his good leg to kick it farther away, but Sophie swooped in, laughing as she plucked it away from harm.

“Goodness, don’t tell me you’re frightened of a little caterpillar,” she said, holding the wiggling green and yellow worm between two slender fingers. He’d never seen a woman gladly handle an insect before, and it was a little humbling.

“I assure you, ma’am, it takes more than a caterpillar to alarm me.” No man who had allowed his leg to be broken, rebroken, and submitted his body to a live vivisection ought to be squeamish about such a thing. “Just toss it aside,” he said grimly.

She carried it to a cluster of wildflowers and set it on the ground. “It’s a monarch caterpillar,” she said as she rejoined him at the portico. “They eat milkweeds, so he will be fine over there. I always love watching the caterpillars go through their transformation every year. They are truly a miracle of nature.”

They were a pest and annoyance, especially when they dropped on unsuspecting people without provocation, but So
phie seemed to have an endless supply of patience and goodwill. Perhaps he could put that cheerful nature to good use.

“Can you tell me what causes thunder?” he asked.

“It’s an acoustic shock caused when air gets superheated by a burst of lightning. Why?”

“I was curious about what you’d say.”

Pieter liked Sophie. She was soft edges and soothing tones and radiant warmth. Pieter was accustomed to rejecting anything Quentin had to say about science and the rational world, but what if the message came from Sophie?

For the first time since arriving at the mansion, a smile curved his mouth. Sophie might be good for Pieter. And Quentin would be willing to put up with her teeth-grating cheerfulness if she could help ease Pieter into a more logical frame of mind. It would be a challenge, but he’d pay her a fortune if she would do it.

“Aside from letting the government take appalling advantage of you, what else do you do with your time?” he asked.

The question seemed to hurt her feelings. She looked away and fiddled with the lace at her cuff. “I help at the hotel.”

“What would it take to get you to agree to be our cook for the next few weeks?”

A flash of exhilaration lit her eyes, but it was quickly masked. “Well, I’ve never cooked for money before . . .”

That surprised him. She seemed so competent he’d assumed she must have worked in her father’s hotel.

“I need more than a cook,” he admitted. “I’ve decided my son would benefit from a course in meteorology, and I’d like you to teach him. Show him the scientific method. How you gather data and pass it on to scientists who use it for research. I’ll pay a great deal in exchange for such tutoring.”

“You want to pay me to be nice to your son? I’d do it for free.”

For such an intelligent woman, her repeated willingness to
let people take advantage of her was exasperating. “I don’t like to be obligated to people. I would prefer to set a salary.”

“You’d want me here every day?”

“Every day. I will tolerate no superstition. If my son inquires about fairies or goblins, or God or Jesus, I want you to squash the discussion.”

“You lump God and Jesus in with fairies and goblins?”

“Yes,” he said bluntly, hoping she wasn’t going to be one of those tedious religious types. “If something cannot be experienced by one of the five senses, it is not real. I won’t have my son instructed in anything else.”

“Are you . . . ?” Her face flushed and she lowered her voice, so soft he had to lean in to hear. “Are you an atheist?” she whispered.

She sounded so appalled she might have been asking if he carried bubonic plague. “Yes, Miss van Riijn, I am an atheist. Or as I prefer to think of myself, a free thinker. An intelligent man unfettered by the chains of folklore, superstition, and oppression.”

She pondered the words as she scanned the meadow before the house. “I’ve always felt my faith liberated rather than oppressed me. Knowing there is a kingdom of God has been very reassuring. I can’t imagine what it must be like to believe we are alone in the world.” Sophie looked at him with a bit of humor in her eyes. “No wonder you’re so grouchy.”

The laughter began deep in his chest, but he masked it as a cough rather than letting it escape. He cleared his throat until he could regain his composure and present a straight face.

“Well, this
grouchy
man is prepared to offer you a salary of one hundred dollars a week for cooking our meals and instructing my son in the basics of meteorology.”

“One hundred dollars?” she gasped.

“One hundred dollars,” he affirmed. It was an outrageous
price, but it was worth it if she could make these weeks easier for Pieter. “And your discussions shall be limited to the scientific principles of the universe, kindly omitting mention of catastrophic floods, stone tablets delivered to mountaintops, or snakes offering apples to foolish women.”

As he’d suspected, she looked tempted. People would do anything for money, and she’d pitch her godly principles into the deep blue sea if the price was right. She plucked a strand of grass peeking through the slate tiles at her feet. She methodically shredded the grass to pieces before she turned to face him.

“I won’t deny my religious beliefs,” she finally said.

“So long as you don’t foist them on my son, I’ll be satisfied.”

She smiled, and it was irritating how much her radiant face appealed to him. A girl this pretty and innocent had no understanding of the dark clouds that haunted the world. She had never known pain or fear, and her simplistic belief in God only underscored her naiveté.

“You’ve got a lot of people with you, and cooking for them all is too big a job for one person. And frankly, I don’t think my father would consent to letting me be here without some sort of chaperone. It would be best if you rehired Florence, as well.”

“The old housekeeper with the humped back? She’s too old to be working.”

“She’s tougher than she looks.”

He shifted in discomfort and stretched out his leg, rubbing the failing muscles in annoyance. Just thinking about the old woman made him uncomfortable. “I don’t like being waited on by someone so old and feeble. If she needs money, I’ll give it to her.”

“What she needs is to feel useful. She’s only sixty-two and wants to work.”

That was surprising. The old woman looked eighty, not barely into her sixties, but what Sophie said was correct. A vocation was
important for sustaining the spirit. There had been times when work was the only glimmer of hope he could cling to when the darkness overtook him. He wouldn’t deny the dignity of work to a housekeeper who had served his family for four decades.

It didn’t escape his notice that Sophie was manipulating him, subtly bargaining for exactly what she wanted before consenting to his plan. “Oh, very well,” he said sourly. “You can bring the housekeeper back.”

“And you will be nice to her.”

“I’m always nice.”

Her laughter rang out over the meadow. Her amusement could probably be heard in Manhattan, but he had no intention of joining in.

“Florence is a sensitive soul. You scared her within an inch of a heart attack on your first day here, so I’d like to assure her that you can be trusted to comport yourself like a gentleman.”

“Save me from the tender sensibilities of women,” he muttered. “They are the death warrant for all logic and reason in the universe.” He looked at Sophie and conceded. “In the future I shall treat Florence as though she is made of hand-blown glass. Or perhaps nitroglycerine.”

She graced him with a blinding smile. “When do I start?” she asked in that annoyingly cheerful voice.

“Now. I’ll go wake Pieter and send him to you on the roof.”

“You aren’t coming?”

It was humiliating that he lacked the ability to climb two flights of stairs, but his physical limitations were none of her business so he dismissed her question. “Pieter will join you shortly. He will be accompanied by a bodyguard.”

Sophie’s brow wrinkled in confusion. “I can assure you no harm will come to the boy on the roof. The widow’s walk is surrounded by a railing and is perfectly safe.”

“Pieter never goes anywhere without a bodyguard.”

“But why?”

“My son will someday inherit eighty million dollars, a fact that is widely known. Last summer he was kidnapped by a team of thugs while I was convalescing after surgery. For nine days he was held blindfolded in a closet while awaiting ransom.”

Sophie sucked in a horrified gasp, her hand flying to her mouth. She finally seemed to grasp that the world was not a cozy dollhouse ruled over by a benevolent Christian father. Pieter had been so traumatized by the incident that Quentin had summoned his grandfather to take custody of the boy. Too ill to leave the clinic where he’d been hovering between life and death following a string of experimental surgeries, he’d trusted Nickolaas to abide by their agreement not to subject Pieter to the rot about a family curse.

“We got him back, but it was a traumatic ordeal from which he still has not entirely recovered. He is afraid of the dark and afraid of strangers. The constant presence of bodyguards helps him feel secure.”

“I see,” she whispered, her lovely face seeming to show genuine regret, which was nonsense. Pieter was practically a stranger to her, and she didn’t need to pretend sympathy. She tossed the pieces of grass away and looked at him with a little more understanding. “I’ll be waiting for Pieter on the roof.”

He managed to stand while she excused herself, but the instant the door closed, he lowered himself onto a step again to lighten the weight on his leg, which had begun to ache.

He needed to eat. If Sophie was going to be their cook, he couldn’t keep subsisting on apples out of irrational stubbornness. Dragging the basket of orange loaf closer, he cut a large wedge and ate with his fingers, too impatient to even carry the basket inside.

He nearly went dizzy from the tangy bread dissolving in his mouth in a combination of sweet, tart, and cream. Were he a
praying man, he would thank God he’d completed the negotiation before he ate a morsel of Sophie’s food, or he would have been a puddle at her feet. No wonder Pieter adored her.

He wolfed down the rest of the slice quickly, eyeing the remainder of the loaf as he chewed. This was the best thing he’d tasted in years, and it wouldn’t take much effort to make the rest of that loaf disappear, but he needed to rouse Pieter now, before Sophie was finished with her work on the roof.

As he headed back into the house, he realized that for the first time in years—for a few precious moments while bantering with Sophie—he had been free of the relentless pain that darkened his world.

5

T
UTORING
P
IETER
would give Sophie an excellent excuse to visit Dierenpark every day. She still needed to find a way to get Emil re-hired, but for now her primary objective would be figuring out the Vandermarks’ motivation for tearing down the mansion. She hadn’t been able to sleep last night. Every time she began drifting off, hideous images of Dierenpark being consumed by fire and earthquakes, or of snakes invading the gardens to poison every living creature, jolted her awake time and again. She didn’t find much relief upon waking. If poisonous snakes didn’t ruin Dierenpark, Quentin Vandermark’s dynamite surely would—unless she could persuade him otherwise.

This meant more to her than simply saving the town’s most notable landmark. Dierenpark seemed almost holy to her. It was a place of serenity and enchantment she felt compelled to protect. As she prepared breakfast, Sophie tried to eavesdrop on the bodyguards to glean some insight, but it was hopeless. The moment she came into view, they all stopped talking and scrutinized her with suspicious eyes.

The pantry had been replenished following Mr. Gilroy’s trip into town, and she prepared a hearty breakfast of fried potatoes,
crispy bacon, and heaping mounds of scrambled eggs with freshly grated cheese. She added some fruit she plucked from the trees around Dierenpark and was pleased to see Quentin join them for breakfast this time, eating in silence at the end of the table, listening to Pieter gleefully recount his adventure on the roof with Sophie.