Page 53 of For the Love of Lilah
“Ethan,” Lilah supplied. “My grandfather.”
“A fine little boy, he was, and a handful. He liked to slide down the banisters and play in the dirt. The mistress didn’t mind him getting dirty, but she made certain he was all polished up when the master got home. A tight ship he ran, Fergus Calhoun. Was it any wonder the poor woman looked elsewhere for a little softness?”
Lilah closed a hand over Max’s. “You knew she was seeing someone?”
“It was my job to clean the tower room. More than once I looked out that window and saw her running out to the cliffs. She met a man there. I know she was a married woman, but it wasn’t for me to judge then, or now. Whenever she came back from seeing him, she looked happy. At least for a little while.”
“Do you know who he was?” Max asked her.
“No. A painter, I think, because there were times he had an easel set up. But I never asked anyone, and never told what I saw. It was the mistress’s secret. She deserved one.”
Because her hands were tiring, she let them still in her lap. “The day before she died, she brought a little puppy home for the children. A stray she said she’d found out on the cliffs. Lord, what a commotion. The children were wild about that dog. The mistress had one of the gardeners fill up a tub on the patio, and she and the children washed the pup themselves. They were laughing, the dog was howling. The mistress ruined one of her pretty day frocks. After, I helped the nanny clean up the children. It was the last time I saw them happy.”
She paused a moment to gather her thoughts while two butterflies danced toward the pansies. “There was a dreadful fight when the master came home. I’d never heard the mistress raise her voice before. They were in the parlor and I was in the hall. I could hear them plain. The master wouldn’t have the dog in the house. Of course, the children were crying, but he said, just as cold, that the mistress was to give it to one of the servants and have it destroyed.”
Lilah felt her own eyes fill. “But why?”
“It wasn’t good enough, you see, being a mutt. The little girl, she stood right up to him, but she was only a wee thing, and it made no difference to him. I thought he might strike her—his voice had that meanness in it—but the mistress told the children to take the dog and go up to their nanny. It got worse after that. The mistress was fit to be tied. I wouldn’t have said she had a temper, but she cut loose. The master said terrible things to her, vicious things. He said he was going to Boston, for a few days, and that she was to get rid of the dog, and to remember her place. When he came out of the parlor, his face—I’ll never forget it. He looked mad, I said to myself, then I peeked into the parlor and there was the mistress, white as a ghost, just sitting in a chair with her hand pressed to her throat. The next night, she was dead.”
Max said nothing for a moment. Lilah was looking away, her eyes blind with tears. “Mrs. Tobias, had you heard anything about Bianca planning to leave her husband?”
“Later I did. The master, he dismissed the nanny, even though those poor babies were wild with grief. She—Mary Beals was her name—she loved the children and the mistress like they were her own. I saw her in the village the day they were to take the mistress back to New York for burying. She told me that her lady would never have killed herself, that she would never have done that to the children. She insisted that it had been an accident. And then she told me that the mistress had decided to leave, that she’d come to see she couldn’t stay with the master. She was going to take the children away. Mary Beals said she was going to New York herself and that she was going to stay with the children no matter what Mr. Calhoun said. I heard later that she’d gotten her position back.”
“Did you ever see the Calhoun emeralds, Mrs. Tobias?” Max asked.
“Oh, ayah. Once seen, you’d never forget them. She would wear them and look like a queen. They disappeared the night she died.” A faint smile moved her mouth. “I know the legend, boy. You could say I lived it.”
Composed again, Lilah looked back. “Do you have any idea what happened to them?”
“I know Fergus Calhoun never threw them into the sea. He wouldn’t so much as flip a penny into a wishing well, so close with his money he was. If she meant to leave him, then she meant to take them with her. But he came back, you see.”
Max’s brows drew together. “Came back?”
“The master came back the afternoon of the day she died. That’s why she hid them. And the poor thing never had a chance to take them, and her children, and get away.”
“Where?” Lilah murmured. “Where could she have put them?”
“In that house, who could say?” Millie picked up her work again. “I went back to help pack up her things. A sad day. Wasn’t one of us dry-eyed. We put all her lovely dresses in tissue paper and locked them in a trunk. We were told to clear the room out, even her hair combs and perfume. He wanted nothing left of her in there. I never saw the emeralds again.”
“Or her journal?” Max waited while Millie pursed her lips. “Did you find the journal in her room?”
“No.” Slowly she shook her head. “There was no diary.”
“How about stationery, or cards, letters?”
“Her writing paper was in the desk, and the little book she kept her appointments in, but I didn’t see a diary. We put everything away, didn’t even leave a hairpin. The next summer, he came back. He kept her room locked up, and there wasn’t a sign of the mistress in the house. There had been photographs, and a painting, but they were gone. The children hardly laughed. Once I came across the little boy standing outside his mother’s room, just staring at the door. I gave my notice in the middle of the season. I couldn’t bear to work in that house, not with the master. He’d grown even colder, harder. And he took to going up to the tower room and sitting for hours. I married Tom that summer, and never went back to The Towers.”
Later Lilah stood on the narrow balcony of their hotel room. Below she could see the long blue rectangle of the pool, hear the laughter and splashing of families and couples enjoying their vacation.
But her mind wasn’t on the bright summer sun or the shouts and rippling water. It was on the days eighty years past, when women wore long, graceful dresses and wrote their dreams in private journals.
When Max came up quietly behind her to slip his arms around her waist, she leaned back into him, comforted.
“I always knew she was unhappy,” Lilah said. “I could feel that. Just as I could feel she was hopelessly in love. But I never knew she was afraid. I never picked up on that.”
“It was a long time ago, Lilah.” Max pressed a kiss to her hair. “Mrs. Tobias might have exaggerated. Remember, she was a young, impressionable woman when it all happened.”
Lilah turned to look quietly, deeply into his eyes. “You don’t believe that.”
