The Last Refuge (18 page)

‘This isn't an original, is it?' I asked, worried that if Paul had to break the bottle to get the message out he'd be destroying a priceless antique.

‘Heavens, no. Look on the bottom where it says ‘Made in China.''

‘Ah, well, that's a relief.' When I sniffed the bottle, it smelled like my grandmother's Christmas cookies. ‘What was in it originally?'

‘Vanilla. We use a lot of that around here.'

I tucked the bottle into my pocket and followed Karen back into the kitchen where a roast duck rested on a platter, wreathed with perfectly round potatoes the size of golf balls. ‘I'm sorry if Founding Father's tea party upset your schedule, Karen.'

‘I'd be lying if I said it wasn't an inconvenience, but that's what slaves are there for, right? To be inconvenienced.'

‘Is dinner ruined?'

‘Oh, Lawsy, no!' She beamed. ‘Youse dealin' wif a pro, Miz Hannah.'

I laughed out loud. ‘How on
earth
do you manage to keep a sense of humor with all the thankless, back-breaking work we ask you to do?'

Karen shrugged her broad shoulders. ‘It is what it is.'

‘When this gig is over, Karen, have your girl call my girl. We'll do lunch.'

I trotted up to the library and sat down at the desk, grateful that everyone else seemed to be occupied, so I had the room to myself, except for the watchful eye of the SelectoZoomMini, of course. I made an elaborate show of extracting a fresh sheet of paper from a drawer and smoothing it out on the blotter. A small glass vase held three goose quill pens. I took my time selecting one of them, then uncapped the ink bottle. I dipped the pen in, and began to write, carefully at first, keeping my pressure light so the ink wouldn't squirt out all over the page on the first ‘D' of Dear Paul. One line, then two, using round letters, drawing rather than writing them.

After thirty minutes, I was done.

I waited for the ink to fully dry, then folded the letter once and tucked it into my pocket. Aiming a self-satisfied smile at the camera, I left the room.

Outside, in the privacy of the privy, I started at the narrow end, rolling the paper up carefully. I inserted it into the bottle where it uncurled, filling the bottle. A tear-jerker by Nicholas Sparks; a song by The Police; instructions to my husband. They were all messages in a bottle.

A few minutes later I stood in the wilderness area of the garden, past the bee hives, behind the spring house, nestling the bottle in one of the vertical slits in William Paca's brick wall. If Paul found the note as planned – rather than some curious tourist – he'd know exactly what I planned to do.

‘Life without my laptop totally sucks!'

Michael Rainey, tutor

I
t was four o'clock before we sat down to dinner. I'd intended to tell the family about Amy right away, but Jack had received another message from Founding Father that sent him off on a dissertation that lasted until the soup bowls were cleared away. There was to be a meeting of his compatriots at Middleton Tavern in the morning. Things weren't looking good for the owner of the
Peggy Stewart
and its cargo.

When Jack wound down, Michael Rainey seized the opportunity to discuss the children's progress with their lessons. ‘While Gabe excels in mathematics, Melody fairly dazzles us with her Greek. These abilities are natural, sir, but need to be nurtured once this . . .' He waved a fork. ‘. . . this experiment is over.'

‘
Ánthr
ō
pos métron
,' Melody said, as if to prove Rainey's point.

Her proud father beamed. ‘What does that mean, Melody?'

‘Roughly translated, “Man is the measure of all things.”'

Jack's head bobbed. ‘So very true.'

Just then, Jeffrey appeared at my elbow proffering the sauce-boat. I waggled my fingers over my plate to let him know that I'd like some gravy on my duck, please, and a bit on the roasted potatoes, too, then took a deep breath and said, ‘Mr Donovan, there's something I need to tell you.'

Jack paused, a forkful of meat half way to his mouth. ‘Yes?'

‘My lady's maid, Amy Cornell. She's gone.'

For a long moment, Jack considered me over the top of the gleaming candelabra that stood on the table between us, partially blocking our view of one another. A flash of movement in the corner by the buffet let me know that Derek had taken notice, too. Jack rested his fork on his plate, crossed it with his knife, giving me his full attention. ‘Gone, madam? What do you mean, gone?'

I decided to skip the part where I was in collusion with Amy at St Anne's, but I didn't want to lie, so I said, ‘When we got back to the house after church, I went to Amy's room to see how she was feeling, but she wasn't there. I've looked everywhere, Mr Donovan – throughout the house, in the garden, in the summer house, even in the necessary. I don't know where she is.'

Jack leaned back in his chair, tented his fingers on his chest and flexed them, like a spider doing push-ups on a mirror. ‘Well,' he said. ‘Well, well, well.'

Melody made a little
peep
; Gabe said, ‘Can I have some more meat, please?' but the rest of us sat there in stunned silence.

Jack's gaze swept around the table. ‘Do any of you know anything about this?'

A chorus of noes, uh-uhs, and no-sirs.

Jack turned to Derek. ‘You?'

Derek shook his head, red light on his camera relentlessly winking.

While Jack was interrogating everyone with his eyes, I turned to Alex Mueller. His deer-in-the-headlights expression said it all – he had no idea where Amy was, either.

Michael Rainey was the first to speak up. ‘If you'd like my observations, sir, Amy seemed to have a lot on her mind recently. The one-year anniversary of her husband's death in Swosa is coming up, and I think it's fair to say she's been a bit melancholy of late.'

Melancholy. I hadn't heard anyone use that word in years, but it was a perfect fit.
Gloomy, sad, down in the dumps, depressed
. Amy had been all those, true, but not for the reasons everyone thought.

Jack nodded sagely. ‘Yes, yes. I remember how affected she was by that love song several weeks ago. I thought it was merely, you know, her time of the month.'

‘Daddy!' Melody snapped.

Her father raised a conciliatory hand. ‘Sorry. I was out of line.'

Melody scowled, not the least mollified.

‘I'm quite sure Amy will be back,' Alex cut in; desperation tinged his voice. ‘Do we have to report it?'

‘I believe we already have.' Jack pointed to Derek, who had moved from the corner of the buffet to a spot over by the door, presumably to better zoom in on our reactions.

‘I believe she'll be back, too,' I stated with more confidence than I felt. ‘But it will be up to Founding Father to decide what to do with her when she does.'

‘She's in breach of contract,' Michael added. ‘It might not be pretty.'

Jack's mouth formed a grim line. ‘Do we need to request another lady's maid, madam, or can you manage as we are?'

I folded my hands in my lap, squeezing hard, thinking. I risked a furtive sideways glance at Melody, who had sucked in her lips and was shaking her head almost imperceptibly from side to side. If we asked for another maid, there'd be no spot for Amy when – and if – she returned. ‘No, sir,' I replied. ‘Melody and I can assist one another with our toilette, and French can assume some of Amy's other duties.' I paused, then added to emphasize the point, and to keep my options open, ‘For the time being.'

‘Very well. So be it.' Jack tucked his napkin back into his collar, leaned forward and picked up his knife and fork. He skewered a potato and popped it into his mouth, whole. ‘I'll miss our little musicales.'

‘I can still play, sir,' Alex threw in half-heartedly.

‘Yes, yes, of course, Mueller. But you know what I mean.'

‘We can put an ad in the paper!' Gabe suddenly exclaimed, his eyes bright as crystal buttons.

His father glanced up. ‘What are you talking about, son?'

‘You know, in the old newspapers you're always reading! “Ran away from the subscriber in Annapolis, an indentured serving woman named Amy Cornell, about twenty-eight years of age, about five and a half feet high . . .”'

Jack threw back his head; his whole body shook with laughter. ‘What clever little ears you have, Gabriel Donovan. I had no idea you were even listening when I read the
Maryland Gazette
out loud.'

Melody swiveled in her chair the better to glare at her brother. ‘That is so dumb. Amy isn't an indentured servant, French is. Amy's a free woman. Besides, the
Maryland Gazette
is like three hundred years old. Duh!'

I smiled. At least one of the Donovans wasn't mired in a time warp. Like his son, Jack Donovan was sometimes so into 1774 that I amused myself by picturing him, months after the television show had aired, throwing boxes of Lipton tea off the shelves at his local Safeway.

Dinner proceeded somberly after that, momentarily brightened when French appeared – to
ohs
and
ahs
– carrying a crystal trifle bowl brimming with wine-soaked biscuits, fresh fruit and whipped cream. As I served up dessert, I remembered something that nearly caused me to drop the spoon. In the market house, Amy had said: ‘I've got the charger, too, but it's no freaking good without electricity.'

I resisted the urge to manufacture a reason to leave the table and check it out immediately, but my eagerness seemed to make dinner drag on interminably. Everyone required seconds on the trifle – myself included. And then there was the coffee, of course.

Released at last from my duties as hostess, I left the men at table to drown their considerable sorrows in fine port and Cuban cigars. I shooed Gabe to the kitchen with orders to play with Dex, thereby relieving the little boy of his clean-up duties in the scullery. Melody settled in the parlor with
Tom Jones
. ‘The necessary,' I said simply. ‘I'll be right back.'

A few minutes later, kneeling on the floor by the bed in Amy's room with my arm stuck up to the armpit inside her mattress, I found it. Nestled near the foot of the bed – a plastic Ziploc containing her iPhone charger.

I twirled the bag over my head in silent celebration.

Then quickly sobered up. I had a charger, true, but as Amy said, where the hell was I going to find any freaking electricity?

That night I lay in bed staring at the bed curtains as they swayed gently in the autumn breeze that wafted through my open windows. Coals still glowed hotly in the grate. I listened, ears straining, as the house grew quiet around me. No whisper of an overhead fan, no heating system kicking off then on, no icemaker churning out cubes,
ka-chunk
, into the freezer bin. Only the occasional
thrum
of a passing car kept me anchored – tenuously – to the present.

I had told myself that I'd sleep on it, and sleep on it I was: Amy's iPhone and charger were tucked under my pillow.

The solution was simple: find an electrical outlet. But the only working outlets in the house were behind a locked door, the forbidden door that led to the conference room where LynxE stored their equipment. I decided to check it out.

I slipped out of bed and into my robe. I found my candlestick and lit it from the coals in the fireplace with a twist of paper. Carrying the candlestick, and with the Ziploc bag containing Amy's iPhone and charger tucked under my arm, I let myself out the door that led to the service staircase and tiptoed downstairs, pausing at every creak of the boards beneath my bare feet.

When my feet hit the cold bricks I froze, looking right and left. I turned my back to the kitchen, thereby avoiding its ever-present camera, and scurried along to the conference room area.

I stood before the locked door, contemplating both the lock and the fatal results of feminine curiosity in song and fable. Lot's wife, Pandora . . . I was one of Bluebeard's ill-fated wives attempting to enter The Forbidden Room. Except Bluebeard's wife had a big brass key, and the lock glistening back at me in the candlelight was made of cold, hard steel, with an array of push buttons like a cell phone on steroids.

I'd learned to pick locks in college – don't ask! – but paper-clips weren't going to work on this baby. I squinted – a King Cobra by Schlage. The day Jud brought me to the room to hand me the contract I'd watch him open it, but I hadn't been paying particular attention. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to recall what buttons he pushed. There were four, I remembered, all in the same column, and he'd punched them up quickly with his thumb.

I could eliminate 1-4-7-* and 3-6-9-# because * and # are not numbers, so that left 2-5-8-0, but I didn't know the correct sequence. If Paul had been standing next to me, shivering in his nightgown, too, he would have been quick to inform me that ‘a four-digit number with no repeating digit has twenty-four possible permutations,' but I didn't find that out until much later, so I just set my candle down on the floor and started methodically punching. 2-5-8-0, push the handle, no. 2-5-0-8, push the handle, no.

I got lucky on the eighth try – 2-0-8-5 – when the lock clicked open.

Giving myself a mental high-five, I picked up my candle and Ziploc bag and let myself into the conference room.

In the candlelight I noticed a wall switch to the right of the door, but I didn't dare turn it on. Shielding the flame with my hand as best I could, I circumnavigated the conference table, searching for outlets in the walls, but they seemed to be made out of solid brick or stone. There had to be electrical outlets somewhere, I reasoned. Where else could Historic Annapolis plug in laptops for PowerPoint presentations, or recharge their equipment?

On my second lap around the room, I stepped on something even colder than the bricks. I bent down, held the candle close and discovered a circular brass outlet cover, buried flush with the floor.
Eureka!
Praying that the outlet was hot, I flipped up the cover, plugged Amy's charger in, hooked up her iPhone and held my breath. When the white Apple logo appeared, I sat down on the floor, blew out my candle, and prepared for a long wait.