Until the Dawn (17 page)

“Can you walk?” she shouted.

Quentin was still doubled over, struggling to rise. “I don’t know,” he gasped. His face was chalk-white except for the bright red splotches from dozens of stings. Squatting down, she propped her shoulder beneath his arm, using all the strength in her legs to push him upright, almost toppling beneath his weight. Mercifully, one of the bodyguards rushed to Quentin’s other side, hoisting him up and lifting him over the short flight of stairs. Nickolaas opened the door as they all tumbled inside.

They lowered Quentin to the floor, his body landing with a thud. Pieter clung to his grandfather and cried. There was a sting over his right eyebrow and a few others on his neck, but he hadn’t taken nearly the brunt Quentin had. Pieter had been able to bat the bees away, while Quentin had been helpless as he dragged his son from the overturned hives. Sophie had never witnessed such an act of bravery in her entire life.

“I’m sorry,” Pieter sobbed. “I didn’t know what that thing was. I just wanted to hit something. I’m so sorry.”

Quentin still lay on the floor, breathing raggedly. “It’s okay,” he said, his eyes gentling as he looked at his son. “It’s going to be okay.”

“But you’re all stung,” Pieter said. And he was. Quentin had countless inflamed red pricks on his face and neck, and more on his hands. They would swell over the coming days. His skin was chalky and covered in a sheen of perspiration, but he still managed to sound calm.

“I’ll be all right,” he said. “I would do anything in the world for you, don’t you know that?”

Sophie’s heart turned over at that confession, for the honesty in Quentin’s voice made it impossible to doubt him. The
words made Pieter’s guilt rip deeper, and the boy cried harder. Quentin glanced at Mr. Gilroy.

“Take Pieter to the kitchen and get those stings treated,” he said, not so gently this time. From her position only a few feet away, she could see he was trembling, and both hands were clenched into white-knuckled fists.

The moment Pieter was ushered from the room, Quentin rolled onto his side, turning his face into the floor and rocking back and forth, clutching his leg. It wasn’t the bee stings that caused him to writhe in agony—it was his leg. He had fled from swarming bees without the aid of a cane, and now he was paying for it. A shudder seized Quentin’s entire body, and he vomited on the floor.

“I think his leg might have broken again,” Nickolaas said worriedly. “Go get a doctor. I’ll stay with Quentin.”

Sophie was frozen, unable to tear her gaze from Quentin’s sweat-dampened face, his eyes rolled back in pain.

“Move, girl!” Nickolaas barked, and she sprang into action.

10

I
T
WAS
ALMOST
TWO
HOURS
before Sophie was able to return with Dr. Weir. She had arrived on foot this morning, so it took a while to run to the village, and then locating the doctor at a patient’s house took another twenty minutes. He was examining Mr. Cordona’s gouty knee and was not pleased when she came bursting inside.

“It’s an emergency,” she said on a ragged breath. She didn’t know exactly what was wrong with Quentin’s leg, but she’d never seen such naked agony on any man’s face, and it was frightening.

Thank heaven Dr. Weir wasn’t the type of person to put any stock in rumors of the Vandermark curse. There were plenty of people in town who refused to get anywhere near Dierenpark, but Dr. Weir had done service in the Civil War, and few things frightened him. It worried her when he insisted on returning to his home to collect a bone saw, but she supposed he knew what he was doing. The bone saw was more than a foot long, with vicious-looking metal teeth along the serrated edge. It
was the first thing Quentin spotted when Sophie brought Dr. Weir into the parlor.

“Get that thing out of here!” Quentin snarled, his furious glare locked on the bone saw. He was on a settee, his bad leg propped before him on an ottoman. The pallor of his face made the red splotches from the bee stings stand out more dramatically.

“Now, now,” Dr. Weir said as he set his medical bag and the bone saw beside the settee. “No need to panic yet. I just need to examine your leg.”

“Not with that bone saw in here.”

“I’ll take it away,” Nickolaas said, emerging from a chair near the fireplace. “Come along, Miss van Riijn. This won’t be a pleasant sight.”

She was relieved to follow the older man from the room. Nickolaas led her back outside, where the late-afternoon sun slanted long shadows across the meadow. The bees were gone, and if they returned, she would need to use her smoker to calm them and put everything back to rights, although it would not surprise her if Quentin ordered the hives destroyed. It would be a shame, because the bees were one of the reasons this piece of land bloomed in such vibrant health.

Nickolaas headed toward a bench on the far side of the meadow. He moved with surprising agility for a man his age and beckoned her to join him on the bench. From here, they had a perfect view of the mansion, nestled amid the linden and juniper trees.

“It looks exactly the same as when I was a boy,” Nickolaas said, his eyes scanning the lines of the old house. “I used to love playing in this old meadow. There were times I was convinced I heard the echo of my ancestors’ voices, whispering in the woods. My father said it was only wind rustling in the trees, but I’ve always wondered.”

He propped the bone saw against the bench, its smooth metal gleaming in the afternoon sun. “I don’t want to go too far, in case the doctor needs this,” he said grimly.

“Forgive me, but what precisely is wrong with your grandson’s leg?” She’d always wondered, but it had seemed rude to ask.

Nickolaas gave a sad smile. “It started as a normal break. Quentin slipped on the ice as he was leaving his hotel in Vienna and fractured his shin. It should have been a simple thing, but the bone didn’t set properly. A specialist in Berlin recommended the leg be re-broken in hopes that it would set properly. They tried it, but the leg still didn’t heal.”

Sophie cringed at the thought of having to endure such a painful procedure, especially if it didn’t solve the problem.

“Quentin proceeded to visit a parade of medical experts. His leg had become so badly weakened the doctors all agreed the bone was unlikely to ever properly re-knit, and that it was in danger of snapping merely from putting his full weight on it. He suffers regular inflammations and infections in the wounded bone, which plunges his entire body into a fever. They are becoming more frequent and longer in duration.”

Was it any wonder Quentin appeared to be in constant pain? Sophie had suffered plenty of cooking burns on her hands, and they always ached for days as they healed. It was a miracle Quentin was able to walk at all.

Nickolaas continued, “You will learn that Quentin puts great faith in science. When standard medical procedures did not cure his leg, he turned to experimental science. Last year was the crowning glory of Quentin’s foolishness. He read about a new medical procedure involving transplanting a piece of his own healthy leg bone, grafting it onto his weakened tibia. In short, it was a disgusting procedure in which one part of his body was cannibalized in vain hope it could regenerate in another area.”

Sophie recoiled, and Nickolaas gave her a thin smile. “Isn’t medical technology wonderful? Quentin certainly puts all his faith in it, and the operation kept him in that clinic for the better part of a year. That was when I took custody of Pieter. Quentin tries to convince himself and Pieter that the graft is working and that it is an example of man’s mastery of technology. Despite it all, Quentin remains surly and short-tempered, and instead of learning to respect science, Pieter has learned only to fear his father.”

Sophie drew a breath to reply but then thought better of it. She had only known these people less than a month, but she’d witnessed the strained relationship between father and son. Quentin’s refusal to tolerate Pieter’s fears and superstitions only exacerbated other issues. Perhaps it was no wonder that Pieter preferred to live with a grandfather who showered him with unconditional affection.

Despite the tense cynicism in Nickolaas’s tone, the way he clenched and twisted his hands indicated he cared. She noticed the ring he wore, a roughly carved pewter ring, an odd choice for a man of his wealth. She leaned forward to study it closer, for it reminded her of something . . .

“That’s the ring from the portrait in the front hall,” she said in wonder. One of the grim-faced Vandermark ancestors from the seventeenth century had worn the same ring.

“One of a pair,” Nickolaas confirmed. “Both the original Vandermark brothers had just such a ring. One disappeared when Adrien died, but this is Caleb’s ring and has always been passed down from father to son. A few years ago, I tried to give it to Quentin, but he wants nothing to do with it. He cares very little for our family’s history.”

The sun had begun to set when Mr. Gilroy appeared and summoned Nickolaas to attend Quentin’s bedside. Sophie had not been invited, and she remained waiting on the mansion’s
portico as exhaustion set in. At least she could ride home in Dr. Weir’s carriage this evening. She closed her eyes and opened her heart to the serenity of Dierenpark. It was easy to slip into a sort of rapt, dreamlike state while surrounded by the sheltering rim of trees.

But it wasn’t all paradise. There were restless people here, and the delicate balance could be disturbed so easily. What had happened this afternoon was proof of that. The bees had attacked with ferocity when their world was disturbed. Nickolaas’s arrival had brought a new wave of tension into the house. She had always considered Dierenpark the closest thing to paradise on earth, but even this blessed spot seemed plagued by the troubles of man.

She pushed herself to her feet, considering how she could repair the damage. The bees were usually calm at this time of day, and it would be best to get the hives turned upright. She had plenty of gauze netting to protect her skin, and the little tin smoker would further lull the bees into complacency as she did her best to restore their overturned little world back into balance.

Surprisingly, the doctor told Sophie that Quentin’s leg was not broken, but he still ordered bed rest and a calcium-rich diet for the next two weeks. Since Quentin was unable to walk up even a single flight of stairs, a bed had been brought down to the formal dining room near the front of the house. The dining table was moved elsewhere, and Quentin rested on a bed installed alongside the Chippendale sideboard. It was an odd sickroom, with a crystal chandelier overhead and a grand oil painting by Thomas Gainsborough on the wall. It showed a sailboat skimming across the sea, bathed in the golden glow of a setting sun. It had always been Sophie’s favorite painting
in the house. She had never been outside the town of New Holland, but when she looked at that painting, it was easy to imagine setting sail into the great unknown.

Quentin had a table placed beside the bed, loaded down with stacks of books and his demolition plans. Beneath the mattress, he tucked the edges of two cloth sacks from which he could retrieve his drafting tools, correspondence, and reading glasses. Resting across his lap was a contraption with a slanted surface he used as a writing desk, but it could be tilted down in a few quick moves to serve as a meal tray. It made her realize that Quentin was quite accustomed to the life of an invalid.