The Secret of Stavewood (Stavewood Saga Book 4) Read online

  This time Louisa was certain. Across the meadow, on the edge of the woodland was the sinister figure of a man on horseback.

  “Someone is watching us,” she whispered. “There!” She pointed across the field.

  Talbot tugged at his coattails and squared his shoulders. “Who?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t recognize him.” Louisa craned her neck to peer into the darkness but the rider was gone.

  “Maybe it was that fellow you were riding with earlier.”

  “No, certainly not him. No. This man was not as tall as Luc. And I saw him when we were riding so I know it’s not Luc.” Louisa did not care for Talbot’s suggestion.

  “Then we shall see.” Talbot marched boldly into the meadow towards the woodland.

  “No! Talbot, don’t,” Louisa called after him and caught herself. It was late and she didn’t want to wake the entire household. She bit her lip.

  Talbot stopped and turned back towards her. She could see he was visibly angry.

  “Please, don’t go after him!”

  “There’s no one there.” Talbot cleared his throat loudly as he walked back.

  “But I did see someone. I’m sure of it.” Louisa took his hand in hers. “Talbot, please stay here tonight. You can use the guest room. I don’t like the idea of you walking back to the car alone. Or I can get my father to walk you.”

  “I’m not sure I would be entirely comfortable with your father escorting me to my car after trying to have my way with his daughter in the yard.” Talbot looked out across the field for a moment and then turned back to her. His mood softened. “Of course I would be a fool to turn down an invitation to be closer to you. And we could get much more done on the story too, couldn’t we?” He straightened his jacket and Louisa buttoned her blouse. “And of course, we could resume, some other evening, what was just happening here in this lovely moonlight.” Talbot winked at Louisa and took her hand, kissing it slowly.

  “Let’s get up to the house. I’ll feel better in the morning,” she promised. “Please be patient with me.”

  “Louisa, darling. I strive to be everything you want of me.” He kissed her cheek and led her up the path towards Stavewood.

  Twenty

  Talbot paced the dimly lit parlor waiting for Louisa to return from her conversation with her parents. He wanted to be close to her, but he wasn’t certain they would allow him to stay at the estate. When Louisa appeared on the stair landing he looked up at her nervously.

  She smiled sweetly, descended and took his hand. “It’s fine, Talbot,” she said. She led him silently to the upper floor into a fine bedroom.

  “My father agreed you could stay,” she whispered, “but I shouldn’t linger. He’s very concerned that we saw someone on the property.”

  “You saw someone,” he corrected. “Did you tell him we don’t need to run willy-nilly out into the darkness?”

  “I did.” Louisa turned down the bed, folding back rich coverlets to expose crisp, white sheets. “He agreed it can wait until morning.”

  He took her hands and kissed them softly. “I shall behave myself to appease your father, but once we are back in the city I will very likely feel differently.”

  “You’ve changed,” she said softly. “Did you really miss me that much after so little time apart?”

  “When you left I believed I was fine,” he said. “But very quickly I grew concerned. It was as if the light had gone out somehow without you there. Yes, I did miss you. I hadn’t realized how essential you are to me now. Now I know how much I feel for you, Louisa, and I need you beside me.”

  Louisa took a deep breath and thought about what her mother had said about being as essential to each other as the air you breathe.

  “Good night, Talbot,” she said and kissed his cheek. She smiled and hurried down the stairs to the sewing room. She felt elated, sure that, if she would only let herself, she would be falling in love at last.

  In the soft, pre-dawn light Louisa rolled over, suddenly awake. She listened in the darkness but there was nothing. She must have dreamt that she heard a voice. She stared at the ceiling remembering the things that Talbot had said to her the night before and the way his kisses had felt along her neck. She let her eyes close again and imagined herself a bit tipsy at the dinner table, working together with Talbot the way she had imagined they would. Talbot was her partner and likely, very soon, her lover.

  She stretched luxuriously and looked around the comfortable room. Her papers were laid out on the table and pinned to the heavy drapes were her notes and a list of questions. Questions about Jude Thomas.

  As long as Louisa could remember, Jude was a villain, the bad guy in all the fairy tales surrounding Stavewood. The image of Diana Weintraub, large and imposing, was frightening in the imagination of a young girl. But Jude Thomas was pure evil, the snake in the garden of paradise.

  Louisa pushed aside the covers on the bed, walked over to the drapes and unpinned her list. Who was Jude to Diana, besides a nephew? She knew he had been a zealous womanizer. He was Katie’s natural father but no one ever spoke about it. In fact, there were many things about Jude Thomas no one ever said aloud, especially not in front of the children. But Louisa was not a child anymore and if she was going to write the whole story she would need to know much more than she had ever been told in the past.

  She knew her father and Mark would answer her questions, but men did not see a Casanova the way a woman did. Louisa needed to talk to the women of Stavewood. Their point of view was what she wanted to hear.

  She bathed quickly, dressed and hurried down the stairs.

  Twenty-One

  Timothy stood in the yard scratching his head beneath his hat. In the early morning light he had taken a walk out to the field. The overnight downpour had added a refreshing sparkle to the leaves on the surrounding trees but, if there had been anyone following his daughter and her gentleman, there was no evidence of it now.

  “Good morning, Daddy.” Louisa closed the kitchen door quietly, walked out into the yard and stepped up beside her father. He put his arm around her shoulder and they stood watching the sun rise over the pines. Soft, white clouds dotted the horizon, reflecting the golden light of dawn in warm shades of oranges and rosy pinks.

  “Daddy, I’m going to talk to Mama today. I need to ask her about Jude Thomas, for my book.”

  Timothy huffed. “There’s a man better off six-feet under.”

  “Daddy!” Louisa was somewhat surprised by her father’s blunt remark.

  “A man is not that much different than any other animal, Loo, and some are just plain malicious through and through. The only thing that Jude Thomas brought to this world that was any good was Mark and Colleen’s Katie. Everything else that man brought only caused heartbreak and pain.”

  Louisa had never heard her father speak about Katie being Jude’s daughter.

  “He did a lot of cruel things, Daddy, and I know some of the memories aren’t easy. But I need all of the facts before I write about Mama.”

  “I understand, Loo. You probably should know anyway. Talk to Birget. That old woman knows more about you and me and everyone at Stavewood than anyone else.” Timothy looked down at his daughter and pulled her closer to his side.

  “Daddy, I won’t stay away so long next time. I promise,” Louisa said.

  Louisa could hear her mother’s soft voice in the upstairs hall. She was singing quietly to herself, as she often did and Louisa lingered outside the door, listening. It was a lullaby, one of many Louisa had heard as a child. Even now it made her feel safe and comfortable, like a little girl again.

  Louisa tapped gently on the master bedroom door. “Mama?” she called softly. “May I come in?”

  “Yes, Loo. Please do.”

  Louisa opened the door and found her mother with several pictures and frames laid out across her desk.

  “You haven’t seen the photographs that were taken at Katie and Joseph’s wedding,” Rebecca said. “Here’s a nic
e one of your brother, Phillip.”

  Louisa smiled at the image of Phillip grinning and looking handsome in his tuxedo.

  Rebecca handed her a frame. “Want to help?” she asked. Louisa had enjoyed helping her mother update the framed pictures around Stavewood many times as a child.

  “I would enjoy that.”

  Rebecca handed her a frame with a picture of Phillip at his graduation. Louisa turned the frame over and opened it from the back. Inside were several other pictures of Phillip, and Louisa flipped through each of them. She smiled at an image of his first birthday, another in which he sat astride a horse and a third one of him standing with his arm around a pretty girl.

  She put the wedding photograph in front of the stack, put the pictures inside, and replaced the back of the frame.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “I need to ask you something, for my book.”

  Rebecca sensed the concern and turned to face her. Louisa put down the picture frame.

  “Well?” Rebecca lifted a brow.

  “Tell me about Jude Thomas, as a woman I mean.”

  “Jude,” Rebecca said, looking off across the room. Louisa saw her swallow hard and her chest rose as she took a deep breath. “Jude. Well, let’s see. He was here the night of the party on the day I arrived. I was feeling rather overwhelmed by everything and I stepped out for a breath of fresh air. The garden was very beautiful with the smell of the roses in the soft moonlight.”

  Louisa watched her mother’s expression change as her thoughts traveled back across time, the memories forming pictures in her mind’s eye.

  “He was very handsome once, I suppose,” Rebecca mused. “But he was brash and egotistical. He had a moustache and he kept it waxed and twisted at each end. He touched it constantly and was very vain about it. Anyway, I was alone in the garden. Your father was inside with Octavia and she was announcing to the world how close they were. I knew no one, except Mark.” She took a deep breath.

  “Suddenly Jude was there, in the garden with me and he wanted to kiss me. He wasn’t really a big man, but he was strong, and insistent. I told him no, but he wasn’t listening and I was trapped. Then your father was there.” Rebecca looked off and smiled softly. “He was always there. Then bang! He hit him. Square in the face he hit him.” Rebecca balled up her tiny fist and punched the air.

  “Daddy did?”

  Her mother chuckled. “It was so… chivalrous, I suppose. I never would have imagined a man doing that for me, for my honor. But, you know your father.”

  Louisa had been right. A woman’s opinion and memories about Jude was exactly what she needed.

  “Then, there was another night when he killed the chestnut mare and stole your father’s horse, Cannonball. When they got him back here Timothy was practically insane with anger. He had Jude up against the stables and nearly killed him, right here in the yard. I’ve never seen him that angry, before or since. He had Jude by the throat,” Rebecca put her hands up to her neck. “But Jude just goaded him. He said that I would come to his bed the same way that Corissa had. Your father nearly went mad.”

  “Corissa? Daddy’s first wife? Was she involved with Jude Thomas?” Louisa had never imagined such a thing could have happened.

  “Well, Loo, Corissa was never happy here at Stavewood. She wanted to be in the city, away from all this. She felt trapped here, bottled-up I suppose. Not like you and me, Louisa. To her it was never home. Jude realized that about her and he was slick. Corissa couldn’t see that but I could. I’ve known men like him before. Sometimes a man like that tells a woman what she wants to hear just to get what he wants from her. And sometimes she listens.”

  “What happened? I know Daddy didn’t kill him.”

  “No, he didn’t kill him. That was a job for the law, and a rope,” Rebecca said thoughtfully. “Your father not only has great physical strength, he has a strong will and a good heart, too.” Rebecca sighed deeply.

  “Reason stayed your father’s hand that day.”

  Louisa wrote down every word in her notebook carefully. She thought about Corissa feeling trapped at Stavewood and how she wanted to be in the city. The image of the speakeasy in Billington came to mind. It was so like the private clubs in New York City and so wrong in Minnesota somehow.

  Twenty-Two

  Louisa checked her notes thoughtfully and put on a long cardigan sweater, dropping her notebook into the roomy pocket. She felt the fine, soft wool with her fingertips. It was one of many handmade gifts from her mother, and Louisa thought back to the day Rebecca had first put a pair of knitting needles into her hand. She was eight years old and the needles were fat and awkward but she learned how to wrap the yarn around the tip of one and then swing the long needle down to grab the stitch and slip it over the other. She had done it for weeks, fashioning lumpy scarves from colorful bits of yarn. Louisa examined the skeins of fresh, spun wool drying on the rack. She had left her knitting supplies home when she moved to New York and never missed them. Now she decided she might try to find them, maybe take up knitting again and take her needles to New York City with her this time. There were fashionable women there that knit, selling their things in fancy designer shops. She imagined her and Talbot together in a little city flat on a snowy day. She would knit between writing and Talbot would go over business papers like her father often did in the long, cold months of winter. Louisa wondered if Talbot ever imagined them in quiet domestic settings as well. She hadn’t thought of them as married much before but now she tried to imagine what it would be like for them, sharing a lifetime together. She wondered if Talbot was up yet and checked the glass-encased clock ticking softly on the stand. It was just after nine and far too early for him to rise.

  “Liv, do you know where Birget is?” Louisa did not see the little, old cook in the kitchen overseeing breakfast.

  “Ah, she’s gone to visit a friend in town. Someone’s taken ill I think. She said she’d be back before lunch.”

  Louisa considered who else might know about Jude Thomas and she walked out into the yard. Mark would likely be at home, working with his ranch hands and Colleen would be there, as always, in the kitchen. She looked at the stables but instead decided she would enjoy walking to the ranch. On her way she could put together the questions she had for her brother and his wife. She looked at the ruined watch on her wrist. Maybe Mark could help her get it repaired without having to tell Talbot. She did not want to hurt him in any way.

  “Mark will be at the auction most of the morning,” Colleen said, as she poured tea in the ranch house kitchen. “It’s so good to see you back, Loo. Katie is going to have that babe this week. I just know it.”

  “Maybe it’s just as well we’re alone,” Louisa said. Colleen saw Louisa’s serious expression and sat down at the table.

  “Is there something wrong?” Colleen asked.

  “Oh, no. I’m researching my mother’s story and some questions have come up. I talked to Mama this morning.” Louisa pulled the notebook from her pocket. “Colleen, what do you remember about Jude Thomas?”

  “Humph!” Colleen blew out her breath and clenched her fists, placing them on the tabletop. “Come to me and I’ll tell you anything you might be wanting to know, Loo. But you know I love this family, and my Katie. Her father’s past is something we don’t discuss around her so don’t you be asking her about him.”

  “I wouldn’t,” Louisa assured her. “I know better than that.”

  “That man was a snake in the grass if I ever saw one. What he did to Katie’s mother was inexcusable, young as she was. He lured her to his bed and a con-artist like that, who takes a woman, no matter his method, is assaulting her in my mind.”

  Louisa listened seriously, scribbling in her notebook.

  “Now, you might say if it weren’t for what happened with Bernadette and my darling Mark I would never have found him, but it doesn’t make me a fan of the fellow. That’s for sure. I say let the ghost of Jude Thomas die with the man. He might be p
art of your mama’s story, but you don’t need to be dwelling on it. Your Mama and your Pa, well you know, their love is the real story. And you, and your brothers are all a part of that too. Your Pa’s big heart and your Mama’s kind ways are the reason I have my Katie today. If it weren’t for them, and your brother knowing what the cost of love can be, I would have a broken heart today. The day that Bernadette left Katie on our porch, skinny and newborn, she gave me my child. A child to love, to raise, to teach. You want to write your mother’s story? You write that. What Jude Thomas did to the good people of this family should be buried and forgotten.”

  Louisa was now even more determined to speak to Birget. Colleen was right, in her own way of thinking, but Louisa needed the facts. She wanted to write the true story of her parent’s love, not a fairy tale.

  She was sure Colleen didn’t know about Jude Thomas and Corissa. The man had done more to hurt the family than most of them knew and Louisa was determined to find out all she could.

  Twenty-Three

  The leaves rustled loudly in the woodland, startling Louisa as she walked back to Stavewood. Luc Almquist backed out of the woods looking as if he had seen a ghost. He stood at the edge of the trees, peering through a small telescope with a confused look on his face.

  “My word, Luc Almquist!” she scolded. “What did I tell you about getting shot sneaking up on people?”

  Luc was startled himself. He turned suddenly and took a deep breath. He smiled broadly, but Louisa was certain that his smile was for her benefit and not genuine.

  “Hi.”

  “What did you see in there?” Louisa looked past him, into the trees. “You know, I saw that man again, the one in black on horseback, while I was with Talbot, in the meadow north of Stavewood. Was it him?”

  “Nah. Might have been a moose, maybe. I saw it through my telescoping equipment.” He put the small eyepiece in the palm of his wide hand.