Until the Dawn (28 page)

“Good heavens, are you all right?” Dr. Clark asked.

“I’m fine, just landed on my leg wrong,” he said tightly. “If you could hand me the cane, I’d appreciate it.”

Sophie had already darted up the front steps of the house and disappeared inside. Dr. Clark never noticed her as he handed the cane to Quentin, looking down at him in concern. It was a pitying, emasculating look he’d seen far too much of over the past decade. What he wouldn’t give to be an able-bodied man who didn’t have to fear a flight of three steps. What he wouldn’t give to turn back the last sixty seconds so that Sophie wouldn’t have heard the belittling of her abilities that confirmed every one of her fears.

But most of all, he wished he hadn’t set her up for such a downfall.

Sophie needed to get away, but the house was swarming with a team of biologists at their microscopes, so she did an about-face to run back into the meadow at the front of the house. The archaeologists were on the east side, so she headed west,
where the tulip garden was nestled behind a screen of juniper trees that protected the fragile bulbs from the wind.

Whenever Sophie was upset, no place on earth was more soothing than this secluded garden, cocooned by its rim of trees and fragranced by the scent of a thousand days of both happiness and sorrow. It was where she’d come after Marten jilted her. In Albert’s final days, this was where she’d walked to soothe her aching heart. Not that the frank words from Dr. Clark in any way rivaled the despair she’d battled after Albert died, but her spirit hurt and it was soothing to look at the ancient juniper trees, their silvery bark weathered and twisted from centuries of wind atop this isolated promontory. These trees had probably been here since Caleb and Adrien Vandermark first ventured onto this land, so they had witnessed plenty of joy and heartache. Their timeless presence helped her put issues into perspective as she tried to walk away the weight of disappointment.

Perhaps an upgraded climate observatory would be built in New Holland, but she would not be invited to be part of the endeavor. She had to accept that.

But she couldn’t ignore a patch of blue dahlias that looked like they’d recently been pestered by a squirrel. The soil was turned up, exposing their root bulbs, and their velvety blooms tipped at haphazard angles. Dahlias were the latest-blooming bulbs of the season and should last until autumn if she could repair the damage. Kneeling in the soft grass, she felt the smooth surface of an upturned bulb and, finding no serious damage, she eased the bulb back into the warmth of the soil.

“You’ll be okay,” she whispered as she nudged damp earth around the abused dahlia.

“Sophie.”

She startled at Quentin’s voice coming from only a few yards behind her. She guessed he’d seen her fleeing from the cabin,
but Dr. Clark’s comments were the last thing she wanted to revisit right now.

“I’m very busy,” she said without looking up as she moved to the next uprooted bulb. “If I don’t get these dahlias tucked back into the soil, they won’t survive much longer. Which is a shame. Normally they survive until September, but some squirrel has been pestering them for no good reason. Their bulbs aren’t even very tasty. . . .”

She was rambling but dared not stop lest Quentin try to raise the subject of the climate observatory and her foolish dream to participate in the endeavor. As if the Weather Bureau would be interested in a girl who’d struggled all the way through school.

“Sophie, I know you overheard what Dr. Clark said.”

Well, that was blunt. She sat back on her heels and peered up at him. “You don’t need to look so wounded on my behalf. I should have known I wasn’t the kind of person who could be involved with something like this. It was foolish to even try.”

Quentin limped to the bench nestled amid a profusion of hollyhocks and gladiolas. “Don’t belittle the nine years of service you’ve given that bureau. Every day. With no recognition and no tangible reward. That kind of loyalty is worth a lot, Sophie.”

“Something any simple person could do.” She tried not to let bitterness seep into her voice, but this was hard. It underscored how paltry her life had become if the only thing she could point to with pride was her
simple
daily task at the weather station. She turned her attention back to the dahlias, pinching off the dead petals in hopes of encouraging more blooms later in the season.

“What about that St. Peter fellow you Christians seem so fond of? He was a simple man, wasn’t he? A fisherman?”

She was surprised he knew that, but Quentin had been to college, so he’d probably learned all kinds of interesting things. “Yes, Peter was a fisherman.”

“What about the rest of the disciples? Tax collectors. Laborers. I don’t know if any of them were cooks, but I expect you would fit in quite well with those
simple
folk, and history seems to think quite highly of them. And what about St. Paul . . . wasn’t he a . . . help me out here.” A glint of humor lightened his tone as he looked to her for assistance.

“A tentmaker,” she said. “I see where you are going with this, and it isn’t helping, and I wish you would please just leave.” The way her voice wobbled was embarrassing, and she moved farther away to prop up another dahlia.

“I worry about you, Sophie.”

It was the last thing she expected this infamously self-absorbed and cynical man to say, but there was no mockery in his voice. Only a look of gentle concern as he contemplated her from his seat on the bench.

“Why would you worry over me?”

“Because you are so sheltered and vulnerable to the normal slings and arrows of the world. Now calm down, don’t look at me like that. . . . I don’t mean that as an insult, but I think someone with a little more experience in the world would be able to take this in stride. I lose more contracts to design buildings than I win. That is the nature of the business, but all most people see are the successes, not the countless disappointments and rejections. People like me rarely trumpet our failures. My ego would never survive it.”

Once again, a hint of self-deprecating humor lurked behind his gray eyes. When he gave that half-smile and owned his weaknesses, it made him possibly the most attractive man she’d ever seen. Which was so odd. She had no business indulging silly daydreams about a man like Quentin Vandermark.

The last of the dahlias had been put to right, and she brushed the dirt from her hands. She prepared to stand, but his hand shot out to grasp her arm, keeping her in place.

“Don’t let that man taint your sense of worth. Maybe you’ll never operate a climate observatory, but the mark you will leave on the world will be far more important. Your legacy will be how you soothed a lonely and anxious boy. It might seem a small thing to you, but I think someday Pieter will look back on his summer with you as the most meaningful of his life. Your legacy will be how you extended basic human dignity to a passel of scary bodyguards. How you taught a cynical and embittered man to look at the world through your eyes. You touch everyone around you with kindness and grace, and that has an incalculable effect on the world. Most happiness isn’t created by acts of great heroism or prestige . . . it comes from people like you, Sophie. Your legacy of quiet grace and compassion will echo down through generations to come.”

Her mouth went dry, and she had no idea how to respond. Her life of stilted ambitions and meager contributions suddenly seemed a little more worthy for viewing it through Quentin’s eyes.

“I think that might be the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me.” And it was true. How remarkable that this cynical, difficult man recognized a piece of herself even she didn’t know was there. She wiped the dirt from her hands and turned to face him. He was only a few inches behind her on the bench, and she reached up to set her hand on his good knee. “I think you might be a very kind man beneath that mask of ice.”

He stiffened and withdrew a few inches. He blushed and looked out over the meadow. “Thank you, but I think it would be best if you did not touch me.”

“I’m sorry,” she stammered. She yanked her hand back as though burned. How embarrassing that he mistook her gesture of friendship, but yes, in a way it seemed as if she was flinging herself at him. It was mortifying and would never happen again.

He stood, fumbling with his cane. “I know you meant nothing
of it,” he said without meeting her eyes. “A girl like you would have no use for an old cripple, but I am due back at the house. The Antwerp bridge calls.”

She watched his stiff back as he lumbered toward the house.

He was right . . . any notion of a romantic attachment was foolish beyond words. How embarrassing that she had even placed the idea in his head.

She would need to be more careful in the future.

16

T
HE
FOLLOWING
MORNING
, Sophie met Pieter on the roof to take the climate readings. Dr. Clark’s dismissive comments about her intelligence still hurt, but she fell back on Quentin’s beautiful defense of her.
You touch everyone around you with kindness and
grace, and that has an incalculable effect on the world.

It was enough. She didn’t need the glory of a fancy position at a new climate observatory; she simply wanted to go on cooking for and supporting the amazing work taking place at Dierenpark. The house was alive with the sounds of men at work as they staked out excavation plots, carted mounds of dirt, and lifted out long-abandoned pieces of history from the soil. At the river, the biologists took water samples, soil samples, and plant samples. They brought them to the grand dining room, laying them on long rows of tables that had been set up with rows of microscopes. They compared the samples taken from a few miles upstream, trying to pinpoint microscopic differences that might account for the vibrant health in Marguerite’s Cove. Stacks of reference books filled the tables,
and Sophie had no idea what they were doing, but she secretly cheered the biologists on.

Not that she wished the archaeologists ill, for every day it seemed they found some new treasure to dust off—but Dierenpark would only be saved if the biologists could identify a scientific cause for the splendid lilies and oysters in Marguerite’s Cove.

After the incident in the tulip garden, Sophie hesitated to keep meeting Quentin on the overlook for their regular afternoon chats. The last thing she wanted was for him to assume she was seeking him out in hopes of a closer relationship, but she truly savored their visits each day. And when one of the biologists showed her the largest oyster she had ever seen, it was a perfect excuse to visit him.

She need not have feared Quentin’s reaction. His smile was broad and genuine as she joined him on the overlook.

“The biologists found a slew of huge oysters clinging to the underside of a long-sunk keelboat,” she said as she handed him the shell. Oysters usually lived only seven or eight years, but these had to be at least fifteen based on the size of the shells. “See how pretty the inside of the shell is?” she said as Quentin took it from her hand.

He tilted it to the sun to see the iridescent shades of pink, blue, and silver on the inside.