Page 177 of Once an Angel
"How dear of him," she murmured.
She waited until he had bustled back to the stove before tossing the contents of the cup over her shoulder and out the window. She'd trade all the fine teas in the world for one coffee bean to suck on. The mannerly valet had been very vocal in his opinion that coffee was simply too crude a drink to pass her dainty lips. Emily was beginning to wonder if the sly Mr. Connor was smuggling not gold, but tea.
She smacked her lips on the cup's rim, pretending to drain it. "Marvelous flavor. I've never tasted anything quite like it."
Penfeld clapped his plump hands. "It warms my heart to see a young lady enjoying tea." He swept the cup from her hand. "If you like it so well, I'll pour you another."
Groaning silently, Emily buried her face in her hands. The portly valet was killing her with kindness. Every time she'd wiggled in the past three days, he had been there— fluffing the blankets beneath her ankle and pouring tea down her throat as if it were the elixir of life. She would almost swear her wary host had sicced him on her out of spite.
The mysterious Mr. Connor disappeared each day at dawn and did not return until sunset. After wolfing down some flat biscuits and a hot pasty stew consisting mostly of canned beans, he would collapse on
his pallet with little more than a grunted good night.
As attentive as always, Emily thought grimly.
A cooling breeze wafted through the window, stirring the curls at the nape of her neck. Her nose twitched at the salty tang of the sea. A twilight paradise beckoned to her with a whisper of sunlight and surf, but thanks to her own lie, she was trapped in this musty hut, watching Penfeld polish his teapot. She ached to sink her toes into the warm sand, to feel the ocean spray mist her skin. She eyed the stacks of books longingly. She was also dying for a moment of privacy to dig through the hut for some hint of the treachery her guardian had worked on her father.
Her wish was granted when Penfeld pulled a wicker basket off a peg and trotted out the door, mumbling something about a "tidy pinch of mint." Praying mint did not grow in this hemisphere, Emily jumped to her feet and whirled in a giddy circle. A teetering stack of books blocked her way. She steadied them
with her heel, torn between the books and the window. The warm breeze was too strong a temptation. She thrust her head out the window, savoring the salty bite of the sea air.
The wicker hut crouched at the very edge of a sun-dappled forest, huddled beneath the sweeping boughs of two trees that resembled gigantic ferns. The murmur of the sea was a distant sigh, luring her toward freedom. She ought to climb out that window and never look back. But how far could she get before the truth would catch up with her? She'd spent far too long eluding it.
She tightened her jaw in determination and turned back to the books. Her daddy had always said you could divine a man's soul by reading his books. Somewhere among them might be a deed, a map, or a journal holding clues to the whereabouts of her father's gold.
She picked up a leather-bound volume and blew the dust off its cover. "Mozart: The Master and His Music," she read aloud. She thumbed through the pages, then tossed it aside and plucked out another. "The Polyphonic Symphonies of Beethoven?"
Emily frowned. She had been hoping forMachiavelli's The Princeor perhaps theMarquis de Sade's
Les 120 Journées de Sodome. She examined book after book, only to discover weighty biographies of Mendelssohn and Rossini, fifteen volumes describing the rhythms and meters of the world's greatest operas, and a mildewed treatise pleading the case of the viola against the violin. She pawed through the stacks, swearing under her breath as the precious minutes ticked away.
A hefty libretto of Wagner'sTristan and Isoldeslowed her progress. She gave it a vicious yank. The entire heap weaved dangerously. She threw her arms around it, bracing the books with her chest. Dust tickled her nose. She swallowed a sneeze. All she needed was for Penfeld to return and find her buried beneath a pile of musty tomes, her skull crushed byThe Encyclopedia of West Indian Dance Rhythms.
The shift had revealed a tiny cavity between two larger books. Emily drew out a slim volume bound in morocco. Although the leather had worn well, the gilt-edged pages had tarnished with age. It was almost as if the book had been tossed aside and forgotten. Or carefully hidden.
Emily's hands began to tremble as she stroked the unmarked cover. Perhaps now she would learn her guardian's dark secrets.
She sank down cross-legged on the floor and opened the book. Inscribed across the frontpiece, not in
the strong, measured script of a man, but in the clumsy scrawl of a child were the words:This book is
the property of Justin Marcus Homer Lloyd Farnsworth Connor III. (Peek at your own peril.)
"Homer?" Emily whispered, smiling in spite of herself.
Her finger traced the ominous skull and crossbones sketched beneath the warning. She turned the page, already suspecting what she would find. But instead of hasty jottings about how many frogs he'd caught or plum puddings he'd pilfered, she found wavering lines connected into grids and splotched with ink.
She held the book up to her nose. "Why, the clever little brat was already writing his nasty secrets in code!"
Her vision blurred; the lines danced, then steadied into a recognizable pattern. Her mouth fell open as
she fanned the pages, turning them faster than her eyes could follow. Not a code after all, but wavering bars connected by blots of ink. Music. Bar after bar, note after note, transcribed with a patience that should not have belonged to any child.
Baffled and oddly touched, Emily let the little book fall shut. She almost didn't hear the warning creak
of the door.
She made a diving roll for the pallet, praying Penfeld's coat would follow. Losing it could have dire consequences. Apparently no one had thought of offering her the valet's long underdrawers.
