Toward the Sunrise (3 page)

As was the custom, the lawyer was using the library to review the accounts and interview each of the servants to ensure all was running like clockwork. Mr. Carlyle was making notations in the estate’s ledger when she knocked on the open door.

“May I speak with you?” she asked, hoping to keep the tremble from her voice.

Mr. Carlyle was the epitome of refined elegance as he pushed the ledger a few inches away and gestured for her to join him on the opposite side of the desk.

“Please,” he said agreeably. “And what can I do for you, Miss Broeder?”

She was so nervous she couldn’t tear her eyes away from his silk vest. The fabric was a pale blue, with an intricate pattern in deeper indigo. When she stared closely at the pattern, it appeared to be tiny figures of birds, each no larger than her thumbnail. Thousands of them embroidered into the silk. They reminded her of . . .

“Are those magpies?” she asked inanely, still staring at his vest.

He seemed startled at first, but the planes of his face softened in amusement. “Yes. The magpie is the Chinese symbol of joy.”

That was where she’d seen the bird—in one of the books she feasted on while wallowing away the hours in the Vandermarks’ library. The Vandermarks were great shipping magnates, and even in the eighteenth century they’d made tremendous inroads into China and the Far East. Their library was a reflection of their interests.

She jerked her gaze from his vest and looked him straight in the eyes. “I need money for college,” she blurted out in a nervous rush. “I want to become a doctor.”

He stared at her so oddly she felt like a butterfly pinned to a card. “Pardon me,” he began delicately, “but it seems to me you are a female.”

A snort of laughter escaped. “Honestly, Mr. Carlyle, you’ve known me for three years and are only figuring that out now?”

Humor lit his eyes, but he set down his pen and steepled his hands before his face. “Tell me why you wish to become a doctor.”

She had a speech carefully prepared. It outlined the opportunities in modern medicine and her talents in math and science. It spoke of the nobility of the profession and her desire to do good things in the world. But in that stress-filled moment when she had the attention of the Vandermarks’ attorney focused entirely on her, she couldn’t remember a word of her prepared speech, and the truth tumbled out instead.

“I want to see the world,” she said. “I want to live in the city and go to museums and soak up learning and knowledge and skills. I want to learn how to treat people and work wherever I’m needed, be it in the slums of Bombay or the steppes of Mongolia. I want to trace the routes of Marco Polo, climb the Himalayas, walk the Great Wall of China. I want to carry a medical bag at my side and feel needed wherever I go.”

She ran out of breath. It was hard to keep looking at him, and her gaze strayed out the window. “And I don’t want to live the rest of my life at this abandoned estate,” she concluded, wondering if she had just spoiled her chance of going to college because she’d been too nervous to hold a proper speech in her head.

She need not have feared. Mr. Carlyle wrote her a check for her first semester’s tuition and even offered to write her a letter of recommendation to attend the school. One week after she arrived at the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, a package from the Vandermarks came in the mail. With a letter of congratulations signed by the elderly Nickolaas Vandermark himself, the box contained a laboratory jacket, a set of blank notebooks, and a brand new copy of
Gray’s Anatomy
. She was on her way.

Until that dog entered her world and an impulsive decision knocked her back to Dierenpark with no degree and no prospects.

“What about some other school?” Emil asked. “I’ll bet any college would be glad to have you.”

Not after being expelled from the world’s most prestigious medical college for women. Besides, it was almost the Christmas holidays and she wouldn’t be eligible to reenroll until January at the earliest.

“I was hoping I could live here until I figure out what to do,” she said.

Emil and Claudia exchanged quick glances. “Well, we’re not really set up for long-term guests,” Claudia said.

Guests. If ever she needed reminding that she didn’t belong in this house anymore, being labeled a
guest
did the trick.

“Maybe they can open up a room in the main house,” Emil suggested. “I’ll bet they’ve got at least a dozen empty bedrooms in that mansion.”

There were twenty-five bedrooms in the mansion, and only a few were being used by the skeleton staff. It was pretty clear that Claudia didn’t want her here, and the Vandermarks wouldn’t care if she made use of a long-abandoned bedroom in the main house.

Julia sighed and nodded, and Emil jumped into action. “Let me help you carry your things,” he said.

Dierenpark was one of the oldest and grandest estates in the entire country, but Julia knew it held a tragic and storied history. After Karl Vandermark was found dead in the river, a team of lawyers descended on the house and removed his fourteen-year-old son from the estate. That boy was now an old man, but Nickolaas Vandermark had never returned to Dierenpark. None of his children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren had ever set foot on the estate, either.

Everything in the mansion was preserved precisely as it had been that terrible morning Nickolaas Vandermark fled the house. The Vandermark family clothing still hung in the wardrobes, a king’s ransom in silver and china filled the cabinets, and even the papers in the desk drawers had been undisturbed. It was as if the mansion had been suspended in time.

It was so odd. The Vandermarks paid staggering property taxes to keep Dierenpark, plus the salaries of a small staff to maintain the estate, and yet none of them had set foot on the land in sixty years. Growing up, Julia had felt like she had the run of the mansion when
she and her friend Sophie, the cook’s daughter, explored the grand, stately rooms. Most of the furniture was covered in white sheets, and their footsteps echoed through the abandoned rooms, the portraits of Vandermark ancestors seeming to watch them from the walls. With their powdered wigs, military uniforms, and grim expressions, those Vandermarks always seemed a little scary.

As Julia walked down the path to the imposing granite mansion weathered by centuries of harsh New England winters, she was glad Sophie was still here to commiserate with her. Nobody knew of Julia’s far-flung ambitions better than Sophie. As children, the two of them had prowled through the attics of the mansion, trying on old dresses from the eighteenth century and daydreaming about the grand balls that once would have been held at Dierenpark. They’d sprawled side-by-side on the floor of the library, gazing in wonder at the embossed leather books that towered to the ceiling.

Julia wished Sophie had been with her that day she’d run off with Ross McKinney’s dog. Sophie would have had the entire Philadelphia Fire Department and Police Department in a puddle at her feet. That was simply the effect she had on men. With her blond hair, angelic beauty, and gentle demeanor, men simply adored Sophie. Sophie had a radiant kindness most people instinctively responded to.

Julia always felt she was pretty enough—she had a slim figure, chestnut hair, and fine brown eyes—but when she stood beside Sophie she felt like a rough hazelnut next to a luminescent pearl.

“There now,” Sophie soothed as she drew Julia into the kitchen. “This won’t seem so terrible after we have a nice cup of hot chocolate. Chocolate always makes everything better, don’t you think?”

Sophie’s mother had been the cook at Dierenpark until the older woman died of pneumonia not long before Julia left for medical school. With only a handful of staff maintaining Dierenpark, there wasn’t need for a full-time cook anymore. Sophie lived in town with her father, but she came up to the mansion every day to prepare a few meals.

Julia accepted the cup of chocolate from Sophie, who joined her at the pitted kitchen worktable that had served centuries of cooks here at Dierenpark.

“Emil thinks the Vandermark attorneys might be able to help, but money isn’t the issue,” Julia said. “I was expelled for moral turpitude because they think I stole that dog.”

Sophie winced. “Well, you did kind of steal her . . . not that I blame you! But you’re right, money can’t fix this.”

“The Vandermarks have always been very good to me,” Julia said. “Perhaps one of their lawyers would be willing to help me mount a legal challenge to get that decision overturned. I think it’s my only hope.”

Sophie fidgeted and sighed. “That’s just it,” she said gloomily. “I
don’t
think the Vandermarks are all that decent. They didn’t claw their way to the top of the world’s shipping industry by being nice people.”

It was true the Vandermarks had a ferocious reputation. Nickolaas Vandermark presented himself to the world as an elderly, dignified gentleman, but rumor had it he was as tough as Genghis Kahn in the world of business. And his grandson was even worse. The grandson was gradually assuming control over the Vandermark empire and lived somewhere in Europe. Julia was grateful she didn’t need to deal directly with any of the Vandermarks, but they’d vowed to always provide for the Broeders, and for centuries they had been delivering on that promise.

And what she needed right now was a good attorney.

“Mr. Carlyle visits the estate each December,” she said. “Maybe I should wait until his regular visit rather than barge in on him now. What do you think?”

“Don’t wait,” Sophie advised. “If the Vandermarks are paying your tuition, they need to know about your change of status immediately.”

Money was going to be an issue. After the unexpected fees for traveling back from Philadelphia, Julia had burned through most of her funds, but what choice did she have? She felt like a supplicant going on bended knee to the Vandermark law offices in Manhattan, but if she ever wanted to become a doctor, she was going to have to appeal to Mr. Ashton Carlyle.

3

The law offices for Vandermark Shipping consumed the entire ninth floor of an office building on Broad Street. There was an elevator, but Julia preferred to walk up the stairs to burn off the nervous energy that had been accumulating while she’d been trapped on the streetcar ride here.

She’d never actually visited Mr. Carlyle at his Manhattan office, and she was stunned to learn that he was only one of twenty-five lawyers who worked for the Vandermarks.

“Is Mr. Carlyle expecting you?” the clerk at the front desk asked, peering over his spectacles with suspicion.

Dressed in a simple poplin frock with a square neckline and modest bustle, she felt a bit out of place in an office lined with mahogany walls, lit with green-shaded electric lamps, and smelling of old money. “No, but I hope he can make time to see me today.” It hadn’t even occurred to her that Mr. Carlyle might not be available, but a man of his responsibilities might be anywhere in the city today. Or the world, for that matter. The walls of the office were covered with maps showing all the great trading ports of the world: Rotterdam, Shanghai, Buenos Aires, Antwerp. It made her dizzy, this reminder of how big the world was. She drifted toward the map of the port of Shanghai, reaching out to touch the cold metal frame, her gaze traveling along the shorelines of the East China Sea, wondering if she would ever have the opportunity to see them in person. To listen to the cry of the kingfishers in the harbor. To feel the salty breeze on her face.