Chapter 14

The next morning, Beau was cutting through the thick tangle of grape vines that had claimed the old pergola. Pulling the old one down and rebuilding it promised to be a full day’s work, and Madeline had already been up early, making coffee, baking, and creating a small feast to fuel the work.

He should have been exhausted after a sleepless night, but as the first light of dawn caught the treetops, he was dressed and out the door. There was too much on his mind, and the only way to push through it was to move. By the time the low rumble of cartwheels and the gentle clinking of harnesses caught his attention, he already had most of the grapevines pulled away.

“Good morning!” Daniel called out as he and the rest of the family came into view, the now-familiar cart trundling up the road.

The Chandlers. His father, mostly likely. And his brother.

Beau waved back, aware that the simple act of being relaxed, that had come to him so naturally yesterday, took far more effort today.

“You’re going to be fine.” Madeline’s calm voice broke through his nerves. She’d just stepped out the back door, smoothing her apron as she approached. “This is supposed to feel awkward.”

“I feel like you’re a nurse, preparing me for something painful.”

“As Tilda would say, I think you’ll feel a little something. It won’t necessarily be comfortable, but it’s not really painful. And you’ll be much better afterwards.”

Her reassurance buoyed him, but not even the warmth in her smile could do much to alleviate the twists in his gut. Only yesterday, he’d known who he was. A da Silva. The wealthy son of a proud, thunderous, mighty titan of industry. He made money, and he was good at it.

As the wagon drew near, and he saw Daniel’s face with Hollis beside him, that certainty slipped away.

A moment later, the Chandlers disembarked and began unloading the tools. Beau couldn’t help but feel every glance in his direction. It would drive him crazy if he couldn’t get this out into the open. But he would do it privately first, with Hollis.

“Why don’t you take the horses to the barn?” Madeline asked him. “There’re sitting empty. Perhaps Mr. Chandler can help.”

Beau wanted to roll his eyes. She really wasn’t one for subtlety, was she?

“Perfect,” Daniel said, displaying no hint of awkwardness or even awareness of the tension running through Beau. “Dad, do you mind? Teddy and I can set up the sawhorses and we can get to work.”

Hollis shook his head and gave Beau a warm, if tentative glance. It occurred to Beau that it was entirely possible the note he found between Emily Redden and Hollis Chandler was nothing more than a youthful romance, and that every time Hollis looked at Beau, he saw her. But Beau had eyes, and every time he looked at Hollis, he saw a little bit of himself.

Or was he imagining that, too?

“I suppose you know the barn better than I do,” Beau said, as he hopped back into the cart while Hollis took the reins. He’d never been a man who found conversation hard to come by, even in the most tense of business negotiations. But this was something else, and he felt woefully unprepared.

Hollis gave the reins a gentle flick, and the horses started a leisurely walk to the barn.

“I spent a lot of time here, helping sweep out that barn,” he said, then pointed to a patch in the roof that looked darker than the shingles around it. “Damn near killed myself slipping off that roof trying to patch it. If it wasn’t for your mother, I probably wouldn’t be here now.”

The sudden and casual mention of his mother made Beau’s stomach lurch, even as the horses came to a stop. They hopped down and started unhitching the two Canadian horses from the cart.

“You knew my mother really well,” Beau asked.

Hollis’ eyes lit up with a gentle fire.

“Yes,” he said. “But I think you know that, don’t you?”

“I didn’t really know it until yesterday,” Beau replied, then pulled the letter from the old recipe book out of his pocket and held it up. “Though I think Annie knew from almost the moment she saw me.”

The older man’s eyes softened as he laid eyes on the note, and Beau held it out to him. Hollis’s hands, which were still strong, shook just a little as he reached for the folded paper.

“We found this in the cottage,” he said. “I assume you are H.C.”

A strained smile tightened Hollis’s jaw as he read over the yellowed page. He blew out a low breath, as if trying to steady his emotions, before folding it up and giving it back to him.

“I didn’t know she’d even kept that,” he said. “Of course, I suppose she didn’t, if you found it here.”

A fresh hurt seemed to cut across his face, and it occurred to Beau that whatever memories this man had of Beau’s mother, they were wrapped up in a fresh wave of emotion that wasn’t necessarily pleasant.

“Emily was a real firecracker,” Hollis said. “Smart. Hot headed. But I loved that about her. I thought she could run the world if she had the chance. You must have missed her, when she passed.”

“I was eight,” Beau replied, his mind going back to the horrible night the pneumonia took her. “I missed her very much. I remember her being a very vibrant woman.”

“That she was. This place was far too quiet for a girl like her. She wanted to outshine the sun if she could.”

“When did you last see her?”

“Not too long after I sent that note,” he said. “We were in love—or at least in that way young people sometimes think they are. I offered to marry her, you know, after—” He blushed. “But she never wanted to. I don’t know if she knew at the time you were inside her.”

“Did you?”

“Not right away, no,” he replied. “Her parents took the family to the city, Emily and her sister. She met your father there.”

“But not my father.”

Hollis shook his head. “I suppose not. According to your grandparents, he swept her off her feet and offered to marry her on the spot. And she said yes.”

“That must have hurt.”

“It did,” he said. “For a while, at least. Your mother and I probably wouldn’t have suited well. And living here would have killed her—or killed what made her special.”

“She was very special,” Beau agreed. “If you ever get to meet my sister Jessica, you’ll see a lot of my mother in her. Fiery. Smart as hell.”

“I’d like that, I think.” He smiled, then looked Beau up and down. “But you turned out mighty fine. I hope Mr. da Silva raised you well?”

The question caught Beau off guard, and he wasn’t sure how to answer it. Beau had wanted for nothing—food, clothes, shelter, schooling—he had the finest of all of it. But looking back now, he wondered if Frank knew—if not about Hollis, then at least about the his mother’s pregnancy. After all, if they married not long after meeting, Beau would have been born two months early weighing a strapping eight pounds.

“He did,” Beau said at last. Frank had never been loving. He’d been demanding as hell. But he’d never laid a hand on him. “Frank da Silva wasn’t the easiest man to be around. But he let me try to prove myself to him, and he must have trusted me enough to leave the business to me.”

“Well, I am sorry to hear about what happened to him,” Hollis said. “But I am happy to see you and know you’re well. I had always wondered about you. I read in the papers about you from time to time. But I was never sure you were mine until I saw your picture in the paper not that long ago.”

“That must have been a shock,” Beau said.

“It was on both accounts,” he said. “But I knew you couldn’t have done it.”

“Thank you,” Beau answered, struck by that conviction, that faith which could have easily been misguided. “I don’t know why, but that means a lot to me.”

“You’re my son,” he said, his voice wavering a little. “I’ve always had faith in you.”

Hollis’s statement rippled through Beau, nearly forcing him backward. In all the years he’d been with Frank, all the effort, the endless search for his approval, had he ever felt as if he’d truly earned it. And yet here was Hollis—a man Beau never knew—who believed in him simply because he wanted to.

Beau smiled, swallowing the lump of emotion in his throat.

“Did my grandparents know?”

Hollis shook his head. “I never betrayed your mother’s confidence. It’s hard for a woman, of course. I would have married her, and at the time I would have believed me the right person to be her husband, but I would have been mistaken. In the end, we found the people we needed. A few years later I met a nice girl—Shirley Oickle, Daniel’s mother. She’s passed, God rest her soul, but we had a good life together.”

Beau considered that. He never recalled his parents being unhappy. Frank had doted on his mother. She was the only person whose will he bent to, and he did it willingly. Beau didn’t remember any unhappiness. Any fights. The darkness came for Frank, and possibly for Beau, after she was gone.

“What about Daniel?” he asked, after he had time to compose himself. Beau recalled the jokes at the mill, and the curious look on his face when he went to the post office. Daniel may not have noticed the likeness, but it had not escaped others. After seeing them all together, he might have put it all together.

“I think he suspects something,” Hollis confirmed. “I’ll talk with him tonight, but I wanted to speak with you first.”

With the horses stabled, the men walked back toward the house, the conversation turning to much more mundane matters, such as how long ago the grapevines had been planted, and the excellent homemade wine Hollis’s wife had made. As they approached the house, the others were already busy, preparing for the work ahead. All the while, he sensed Madeline watching him. Watching out for him.

While the men cut the timbers, Madeline and Annie collected the grapes that couldn’t be left to ripen.

None of this should have mattered. He’d intended to sell the property, and what George’s College did with the grapes, the vines, or even the old pergola wouldn’t have mattered. But every day he was here, Beau saw something: possibility. It was something that seemed to come naturally to Madeline, who spent every minute she could bringing the kitchen garden back to life.

One might argue she was having the same effect on him.

After the work on the pergola had begun in earnest, Maddy and Annie took their reclaimed grapes into the kitchen. Maddy had never worked with grapes before, and she was eager to explore what was possible with them. She showed Annie the Reddens’ book, and they laughed in mutual fascination at the suggestion that rooting mustard seeds in hot horse manure could produce leaves in hours. As they flipped through the pages, exchanging stories of past gardening successes and failures, Maddy noted the differences in technique from the lessons she’d gathered from her own experience with those of Annie’s, informed by generations and generations of local knowledge from her Mi’kma’ki elders. Overall, the morning passed quickly with contentment—something Maddy never dreamed she’d feel outside the walls of Everwell.

The school had been Maddy’s home for seven years. More than a home—a haven. After years on the run from a murder charge, Maddy had found her way to Boston. She’d worked in a factory there for a time, always looking over her shoulder, waiting for the day the Ferguson family would find her and take her back to Cape Enrage to pay for the crime of killing their beloved son. She’d met Phillipa Hartley there, saving her from a man who’d cornered Phillipa in an alley. On the spot, Phillipa had offered Maddy a lifeline—a place at Everwell. It took some time, but at last, it felt like home. So much so, she could hardly imagine another.

Until now.

In amongst the pages about mustard greens and poultices, was a recipe for verjus, which used sour grapes to make an acidic liquid to be used like a wine vinegar in cooking. While the men worked on the pergola, Annie and Maddie pressed the grapes using a cider press they had Teddy fetch.

Once the last of the juice had been pressed and decanted into bottles that created more than enough verjus for both households, they rinsed down the mill and let it dry in the sun. They took a short break, finding a bit of shade on the eastern side of the house. Maddy wiped the sweat from her brow with the edge of her apron.

“This heat is something else,” Maddy said. “I should have worn my hat. I must look like an overripe tomato.”

“Why don’t you go put your feet in the water?” Annie said, then pointed to a line of trees past the meadow. “If you head down past the berry patch, you’ll see the path that will take you through the trees to the river. Nice place to stick your feet in, or even wash your hair, especially on a hot day like this. Go and breathe in the cool air by the river. That’s good medicine.”

Maddy looked over her shoulder, where Beau and the others were still at work. His skin was bright from the exertion, and the way he wiped his brow with the back of his hand shouldn’t have been as tempting as it was. And from the way her stomach fluttered when he caught her watching him and gave her a wink, he was far too alluring. She’d never been so aware of a man in her entire life. He seemed to be aware of her in a way that was so completely new she didn’t know what to make of it.

She’d been led astray once—wooed very publicly by several men who, as it turned out, wanted only one thing from her. While it was still quite common for women to be prized for their dowry, the cruelty and notoriety of the game they’d played at her expense had marked her. Once upon a time, she remembered Elouise Ashe telling her that men could never be trusted. Of course, that was before Elouise had met Dominic, who, it turned out, was an incredibly trustworthy man. So was Jeremy Webber, Gemma’s husband. Logically, Maddy knew good men existed, just like Félicité Parmentier roses, but her chances of seeing one in the flesh was practically non-existent. Following Malcolm’s betrayal—and the horror that came after it—she was quite unwilling to trust herself.

After catching herself straining to listen for the sounds of Beau’s voice, she got to her feet. At the very least, the cold water would help drive any thoughts about Beau da Silva and his taut muscles out of her mind.

“Excellent idea,” she said. “I won’t be long.”

Even as she walked away, she found herself fighting the urge to look over her shoulder, her attention drawn to Beau like a hummingbird enraptured by sweet pea blossoms. She even thought she’d caught him watching her, but before she had the chance to indulge in the idea, she reached the edge of the pasture. Ahead lay that most irresistible of temptations — a winding little path. Stands of maples, oaks, and beech trees stretched high overhead, the floor carpeted by ferns and to her delight, little clumps of spotted coralroot—a plant she had only seen in a pamphlet put out by the Nova Scotia Horticultural Society.

The sound of gently moving water joined the birdsong and hum of insects. The air turned cool and fresh as she walked amongst the trees, and bright ribbons of light danced off the moving water just ahead of her. Lured by the prospect of running her hands and feet in the cool water, she continued on the path, which sloped gently downward until she came to a small clearing. Just beyond was small waterfall.

A little bubble of joy caught in her chest.

The gentle mist cooled the air even further. No doubt the past two days of rain had made the waterfall more lively than it might normally have been. Drawn to edge of the little river, she carefully bent down and dipped her hands. It was cool but given her exertions today, refreshing. She hunched over the water, quiet in her own thoughts. It had been a long time, she realized, since she’d been so alone like this. And yet, she didn’t feel lonely. And not really afraid. She’d been afraid for so long. Afraid that the law would catch up with her. Afraid that she would die alone in a square for a crime she didn’t commit, her body hanging for ridicule in death just as it had been in life.

Taking one more moment to ensure she was alone, she unlaced one boot, and then another, and untied her garters. She rolled down her stockings, then folded them and set them neatly on a little pile of rocks along with her boots. Carefully navigating the pebbles and rocks, she winced here and there at the odd sharp rock that found the balls of her feet before reaching the water’s edge at last. The cool water skimmed her toes, and she hitched up her skirts even further, taking a few tentative steps in the water up to her mid-calf. How gorgeous would it be to submerge herself, and lose herself in the sensation? Could she risk it?

She straightened, looking back over her shoulders one last time, then, before she could change her mind, walked quickly back to the shore, where she untied her skirts and petticoat, and slipped off her blouse, draping them over a nearby branch. Unable to stifle a grin, she went back into the water in her underthings, shuddering a little bit as she walked deeper to the pool near the waterfall. When the water came just above her waist, she paused, then plugged her nose and plunged herself beneath the surface.