Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil (Aunt Dimity Mystery) (25 page)

Adam held my gaze for a fleeting moment, then turned his face away. “I tried to tell you—”

“I know.” I recalled the melancholy glances, the half-regretful smiles, knowing that I’d gotten them wrong, too. “In the hut, after I told you about Dimity, you tried. It doesn’t matter. You can tell me now.”

Adam asked for water. I filled a glass from the carafe on the dressing table and brought it to him. He took a sip, cradled the glass in his hands, and began to speak.

“Once upon a time, there was a foundling.…”

I sank onto the chair and sat motionless. There was no need to worry about Adam’s neck. He looked straight ahead as he spoke, his eye focused on nothing.

“She was found on a moonless night on the doorstep of a cottage in Holywell. The elderly couple who took her in called her a gift from God and gave her a loving home.

“It wasn’t until he lay dying that her adoptive father told her a great secret: she was the unacknowledged daughter of Claire Byrd, who’d died giving birth to her. Claire’s death had driven Claire’s father mad and, fearful for the child’s safety, the midwife had smuggled her out of Wyrdhurst and brought her to people who would love and protect her.

“My mother…” The words seemed to catch in his throat and he took a moment to steady himself. “My mother didn’t believe a word of it. She thought the dear man
had invented a fable to comfort her, to make her feel like…Cinderella. That’s what she told her son when she shared the tale with him many years later.

“By then her son had become something of an expert on the Great European War. He tramped the battlefields, interviewed survivors, roamed forests of white crosses.…” Adam sipped from the glass, set it aside, and let his head fall back against the mound of pillows. “He felt a peculiar affinity for the men who fought and died near Ypres. He combed archives for their letters, postcards, journals. He needed to hear them tell their stories in their own words.”

There was a ripping sound, like a sheet being torn in two, and a torrent of rain slashed the windows, as if every cloud in the sky had opened at once. Adam turned his head to watch the downpour.

“They wrote of the rain in Ypres,” he said, “the ceaseless, murderous rain.…” He gave a soft sigh and faced forward. “One day the foundling’s son unearthed a series of letters in an archive at the Imperial War Museum. They’d been written by a man called Peter Mitchell to his wife.”

“Mitchell,” I whispered, the name clicking into place. “Edward’s friend.”

Adam stared up at the molded plaster ceiling. “Peter Mitchell rarely wrote about the rain. He was too caught up in a friend’s tale of forbidden love. One can hardly blame him for recounting every word Edward confided in him. Retelling Edward’s story allowed Mitchell to escape, if only on paper, the horrors that surrounded him.”

It was all there, in Peter Mitchell’s letters: Edward’s summers with his uncle, his work in Wyrdhurst’s library, his first encounter with Claire, the sunny morning on the moors
when their friendship had blossomed into love. Josiah was there, too, a menacing shadow dimming the horizon.

Mitchell couldn’t understand why Josiah hadn’t squelched the budding romance by sending Claire away. He concluded that Josiah was less concerned with ending the relationship than with breaking his daughter’s will.

Mitchell told his wife about Clive Aynsworth’s role as courier while Edward was at war, and Claire’s cleverness in hiding Edward’s letters. Mitchell’s final letter, like Edward’s, told of a treasure thrown into their laps by a stray shell.

“And there the story ended.” Adam lowered his gaze to the footboard. “Peter Mitchell was killed in action ten days after he wrote to his wife. His widow eventually bequeathed his letters to the museum, where they sat, virtually untouched, until I came across them in my research.”

“But you couldn’t let it go at that,” I said.

“No,” said Adam. “I couldn’t.”

Adam visited Peter Mitchell’s daughter, who showed him a diamond-encrusted tiara and an emerald brooch Mitchell
had sent home to his wife. Adam spoke with Edward’s nieces and nephews, but they had little interest in the family’s past. His effects and the letters he’d sent home had long since been thrown away.

Finally, Adam contacted Dr. MacEwan, who dug up a midwife’s report describing Claire Byrd’s death from a condition that would today be recognized as hemorrhagic shock. The influenza rumors had been just that—rumors spread in order to avoid scandal.

“Claire died nine months after Edward’s last leave.” Adam’s voice was calm, but strong emotions flickered just behind his eye, like distant lightning heralding a storm. “I believe she spent the greater part of those nine months locked in the west tower. I believe she died in childbirth because of the harsh conditions of her imprisonment. I also believe that, if the midwife hadn’t intervened, Josiah would have killed my mother.”

An image floated through my mind, of Claire huddled before the grate while cold rains whipped the tower, warming herself and the child growing within her, finding strength in Edward’s words and in Josiah’s sole indulgence—a cupboard full of harmless children’s books.

I looked up at Adam. “Do you think Edward knew that Claire was pregnant?”

“No,” Adam said softly. “I doubt that Claire knew, until after Edward was gone. By the time she realized what had happened, Josiah had killed Clive Aynsworth, and there was no one left to protect her.”

The wind moaned against the windows, as if mourning for the young girl and her baby. A sense of angry, helpless
grief came over me, but I pushed it aside for the moment, and steeled myself to go on.

“You came to Wyrdhurst for revenge,” I said. It wasn’t an accusation. I was simply trying to ascertain the facts. “The fishing hut was your base of operations. You used the block-and-tackle’s rope to gain access to the hall’s upper stories. It was your footsteps Nicole heard, your face at her bedroom window, you she saw ‘flying’ down to the terrace. You snuck into the library and read through Edward’s notes while I was in Blackhope. You came here to steal the treasure.”

“No.” Adam’s face crumpled and a tear trickled down his cheek. “I wanted Edward’s letters, for my mother. I swear to you, that’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

I put a hand out to comfort him, but he waved it off.

“Don’t be kind to me, Lori. I don’t deserve it. I may not have intended to frighten Nicole, but I…I did intend to use you.”

I sat back, blinking slowly. “Use me? How?”

“Do you remember that first night, when I left my shirt off?” Adam paused long enough for me to picture the firelight warming his lean, well-sculpted torso. “I did it on purpose. I saw the way you looked at me. I wanted you to go on looking at me in that way. You were to be my key to Wyrdhurst’s many doors.”

I flushed.

“I played the hero, rescuing Reginald and your luggage,” he went on, his voice taut with self-disgust. “And I played the lover, flattering and caressing you—not too much and not too often, just enough to keep the kettle on the boil. I came close to kissing you on several occasions, but we were always interrupted.”

I poked my head out of the pit of humiliation long enough to mutter, “We weren’t interrupted on the moors.”

“That’s true,” he agreed. “But when push came to shove, I couldn’t go through with it. By then I’d come to know you—and to care for you.” He gave a helpless laugh. “I intended to seduce you, Lori, but you ended up seducing me.”

“Claire seduced you,” I stated firmly. I allowed myself the luxury of a brief, face-saving glare before adding gruffly, “With a lot of help from me.”

We sat in silence, examining our hands, taking a moment to digest the truths we’d just admitted. It didn’t take me long to realize that they were the kind of truths only the closest of friends could share. I reached out to grasp Adam’s hand, and he raised mine to his lips.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome.” I narrowed my eyes to slits. “Just don’t let it happen again.”

He wiped his eye with the sleeve of Jared’s pajama top, then frowned slightly. “How did you know that Nicole saw me at the windows? Did she finally recognize my face?”

“No. But I did. Wait here.” I stood. “I’ll be right back.”

I went to the corridor and returned with Claire’s portrait. When I propped it at the end of Adam’s bed, he seemed to melt.

“Claire,” he breathed. “Where did you find her?”

“I’ll show you, as soon as you’re up and about.” I climbed onto the bed and snuggled in beside him, sharing his mound of pillows. “I saw her resemblance to Nicole right off, but it took me a while to realize who else she reminded me of.”

I looked from one face to the other and saw the same luminous dark eyes, the same fair skin, the same gleaming
ebony hair—even the hands were similar. I looked from Adam’s Gypsy curls to Claire’s twining tendrils and marveled that it had taken me such a long time to catch on.

“I resemble my grandfather as well.” Adam slid a photograph from beneath the covers. “I found it in the regimental archives. I was looking at it when you came in.”

The sepia studio portrait showed a slim young man in an overlarge uniform, standing before a painted backdrop of weeping willows. The dark-haired, dark-eyed boy looked more like a high-school student than a hardened soldier.

“You have his mouth,” I said, “and his love of words. You have his build, too. That must be why Claire wanted me to…” I touched a fingertip to Edward’s lips. “It must have been like kissing him one last time.”

“It was that kind of kiss.” Adam paused. “Rather an odd one to bestow on a grandson, don’t you think?”

“Dimity says Claire’s been insane for a long time,” I reasoned. “I suppose her grandmotherly emotions got tangled up with her…other emotions. You do look a lot like Edward. Besides,” I added, “she was filtering everything through me, and my feelings for you weren’t one tiny bit grandmotherly.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” said Adam.

I grinned up at him, then leaned my head against his shoulder. “So what do we do now?”

“I suppose another kiss is out of the question?” Adam ventured.

“You suppose correctly. We’re much too honorable.” My gaze lingered on Edward’s mouth. “Apart from that, it wouldn’t be the same. Claire packed nearly a century of longing into that kiss.”

“I’ll check back with you in another hundred years, then, shall I?”

“Please do.”

We spoke lightly, as if to relieve the strain of the past hour, but we both knew that we were only half kidding. We didn’t need to say the words aloud to know that, in another time, another place, we would have been much more than friends.

“I’m going to tell Nicole and her uncle the truth,” Adam said. “Afterwards, if they can still stand the sight of me, I’m going to offer to help them locate Edward’s treasure.”

I smiled at him, but there was gravity behind the smile. “If you ask me, Claire’s already found her treasure.”

W
hile Adam repeated his story to Nicole and Uncle Dickie, I sat in my room with the blue journal, filling Dimity in on recent events. She was disgusted by the terrorist plot, appalled by Jared’s dishonesty, enchanted by Nicole’s newfound love, and deeply touched by Adam’s search for his grandparents.

Though an accident brought you and Adam together, it’s no accident that your paths crossed here.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Something more than books drew you to Wyrdhurst.

“As I recall, I had a bad case of cabin fever.”

It wasn’t just cabin fever, Lori. Think back. Didn’t you feel a special something tugging you northward?

“Now that you mention it…” I remembered the Gypsy
in me dancing, stirred by the lure of the north’s misty hills. “I guess I did.”

You and Adam are uniquely qualified to heal Claire’s afflicted soul. You, because your relationship to me made it possible for you to act on her behalf. Adam, because he’s the answer to all of her questions.

“I’m not sure I understand,” I said.

Adam may think he came to Wyrdhurst to steal Edward’s letters, but I think he was brought here for quite another reason.

“What reason?” I asked.

Claire needed to know what had happened to her daughter.

A small knife twisted inside of me as I stared down at Aunt Dimity’s words. Until that moment I’d hadn’t grasped the full magnitude of Claire’s suffering. I looked across the room to my sons’ smiling faces and thought of Claire, dying in an agony of fear, terrified of what her father would do to the helpless infant she’d delivered.

“Couldn’t she find her child?” I asked. “Their souls must have been linked.”

As I told you before, Claire was quite mad for a very long period of time after her death. Now you know why.

I was silent for a moment, considering the desperation that had driven Claire to invade my mind. It was something only a mother could understand, and I realized that Claire had chosen me not just because of my relationship with Dimity, but because I had two children at home, for whom I would do absolutely anything.

“About these unique qualifications of mine,” I said, after a time. “Is this sort of thing likely to happen again?”