Until the Dawn (31 page)

Grabbing his cane, he nudged the draperies aside to see outdoors. Sunlight flooded the room, making him wince, but as his eyes adjusted he saw two figures swimming in the river, their arms pumping madly as they moved through the water. They were racing, their vigorous kicks churning up white water behind them as they were cheered by onlookers standing on the shore. The swimmers were nearly tied, but one had a slight edge and began to pull away.

Envy snaked through him. How desperately he wanted to be whole and capable of plunging into a cold river and testing his muscles against the current.

The swimmers passed the pier, apparently designated as the finish line. Both men stopped and pushed to their feet, their lungs heaving as they brushed water from their eyes. They were shirtless, their muscles enlarged from the effort, grins on their faces. One of them was Byron, the young biologist. Quentin’s mouth tightened when he recognized the other swimmer as Marten Graaf, the idiot who’d jilted Sophie. Marten had won
the race, and he clasped his hands over his head with a wide, healthy grin.

Both men waded to the shore, where one of the onlookers tossed them towels.

Quentin straightened when he spotted Sophie among the group. What business did she have ogling half-naked men climbing out of the river? Marten didn’t even have the decency to cover his body immediately. Using the towel to rub the water from his hair, he sent Sophie a grin and said something to her.

Whatever he said made her burst out in laughter. The others joined in, and soon Byron and Marten were flicking their towels at each other, playful as schoolboys.

Quentin jerked his cane away, letting the draperies fall back into place and plunge the room back into the dimness lit only by the kerosene lamp.

Envy was a useless emotion. He would give his entire fortune to trade places with either one of those healthy men in the river, but it was pointless to dwell on it. That didn’t mean he intended to wallow here like an invalid and let Sophie’s one-time fiancé have free rein in his house. He banged his cane on the wall and shouted for Mr. Gilroy. Within moments, his butler arrived.

“Go down to the river and get that young idiot Marten Graaf in here,” he growled. “I want to speak with him.”

Marten’s hair was still wet when he arrived at Quentin’s bedroom. He hesitated in the doorway, fidgeting in his ill-fitting suit jacket. This was a man Sophie once loved, a man who broke her heart. He was still boyishly handsome, radiating youthful health and revealing a dimple in his left cheek when he smiled. Quentin pointed where he wanted Marten to stand at the foot of his bed.

The only thing Quentin knew for sure about Marten Graaf
was that his unexpected arrival last night was not prompted by the delivery of tulip bulbs. He sensed Mr. Gilroy’s hand in this. Or perhaps Marten was interested in Sophie again, and that would be the worst possible scenario. Sophie was better than the fickle man who shuffled to the foot of the bed, his eyes darting around the dimly lit room, noting the swaths of velvet draperies surrounding each window and the ornately carved headboard imported from an eighteenth-century duchy.

Quentin felt no impulse to put him at ease. Still dressed in his nightshirt and propped up with his invalid’s work table across his lap, he was accustomed to receiving visitors from his sickbed and didn’t intend to spare this young whelp just because Marten would be more comfortable somewhere else in the house. Quentin was more comfortable here, so this was where they’d meet.

He used a deceptively calm voice. “My grandfather has been purchasing the Vandermark tulips for the last five decades from the Wittenberg Trading Company in Manhattan. They have never personally delivered the bulbs in the past, so it begs the question, why now?”

Marten’s face flushed a little. “I share a room with a man who works for Wittenberg,” he said. “I volunteered to deliver the tulips as soon as the ship arrived. Wittenberg is grateful for your grandfather’s patronage over the years and was happy to extend the service.”

Quentin held the younger man’s gaze but said nothing in reply. It didn’t take long before Marten began fidgeting again.

“And yet I’ve heard that you capitalize on my family’s misfortunes by telling lurid tales to the tourists.”

His eyes widened. “Sophie told you?”

No, he’d guessed, but he couldn’t blame Sophie for hiding it from him. He had never given her much reason to be forthcoming with him, but he would do better from here on out. Sophie
was about to figure into his long-term plans for his family, and he needed her to begin trusting and confiding in him.

“It doesn’t matter how I know, but I am notifying you that this house, the pier, and our land are unavailable for use by a private business.”

“You might own half of New York, but you don’t own the river,” Marten said with admirable bravado. “Steamships are earning an honest living, and you have no right to block our access to the river.”

As if he needed instruction on nautical law from a puppy. “Like any other duly licensed ship, you have the right to make use of the waterway, but you may not land on my waterfront or make use of the Vandermark pier. Is that clear?”

“It’s clear.”

“Why did you jilt Sophie?” He fired the question with no warning, hoping to catch the younger man off guard, and he did.

“Young men do stupid things. Letting go of Sophie has always been my biggest mistake.”

“What a pity that some mistakes are fatal and can never be forgiven.”

A confident gleam lit Marten’s eyes. “Have you talked to Sophie about that? Because Sophie is the most loving, forgiving woman I’ve ever met. She and I are friends again. She knows I regret what happened and forgave me long ago.”

Given the joking between the two of them he’d witnessed on the shore not long ago, Marten was right. Sophie desperately wanted children. A home and a family of her own. Now that she was throwing off the veil of mourning for her beloved Albert, she might well turn to a trusted old friend to achieve that dream.

Quentin wasn’t accustomed to feeling jealousy over a woman. He couldn’t compete with Marten in youth or health or cheerfulness. He couldn’t beat him in a swimming match or any other physical challenge.

But he had something Sophie wanted desperately. He had Dierenpark. The estate was still owned by Nickolaas, but the ironclad Vandermark trust required it to be passed down to the oldest surviving son in the family line. He had complete confidence he would win the bet with Nickolaas, and then Sophie could live in this house for the rest of her life if she consented to marry him and be a mother to Pieter. She would be willing to tolerate a lot in exchange for that.

“Don’t start weaving any fantasies about Sophie,” he warned Marten in a quiet voice. “You’ve delivered the tulip bulbs; now you can be on your way. I won’t have the work of my scientists disrupted by swimming matches or unwanted visitors.”

“I’m not leaving.”

Quentin raised a brow, not used to being countermanded. “I am breathless to hear how you plan on overwhelming the six bodyguards I have on staff to keep intruders away from my door.”

“Mr. Gilroy wants me here.”

“Why?”

Marten shrugged his shoulders. “Seems like the old man and Mr. Gilroy think Sophie is getting too much power over you, and they want me to put an end to that.” Marten dropped his smug attitude and looked him in the eye. “They probably think I’ll be their lackey, but let me be clear. I’m here for Sophie. I know you got her hopes up over that climate observatory, and look how well that worked out for her. You’re up to something, and I don’t like it. I’m not going to stand aside and let any of the jackals in this house take advantage of her or turn her into a pawn in the strange bet going on between you and your grandfather. Sophie’s father agrees with me.” Marten’s smug grin returned. “So if you want to keep Sophie as your cook, I’m part of the deal.”

Marten was whistling as he casually strolled from the room.

Quentin waited until the door closed before flinging back the covers and reaching for his clothes. Today wasn’t a day he could afford to linger in bed. He had arrived at a decision about Sophie and had never been the sort to loiter once he made up his mind.

Sophie was growing concerned for Nickolaas Vandermark, as he hadn’t been seen since yesterday afternoon when he’d retreated to his bedroom after failing to destroy that mysterious document. There had been an impromptu race in the river this morning, and she feared the raucous outbursts from the spectators might have disturbed those sleeping late, but there was still no sign of either Nickolaas or Quentin at breakfast. It wasn’t unusual for Quentin to want to be alone, but it was almost ten o’clock and she worried about Nickolaas. His reaction to that document made her certain he knew what it was, and it didn’t bode well.

Walking quietly in the upstairs hallway, she approached the master bedroom, its doorway surrounded by painted white pilasters and topped with a hand-carved pediment. She knocked gently on the closed bedroom door.

“Mr. Vandermark?” she asked. She didn’t want to disturb his privacy, but she had the delivery of Marten’s tulip bulbs as an excuse to approach him.

Because, frankly, she was anxious. Quentin’s statement about melancholia running in the Vandermark family was worrisome, and Nickolaas seemed unusually upset by that old document. If she could coax him into talking about why it bothered him, perhaps she could help ease his despair.

To her relief, she heard shuffling behind the door. The knob turned and the door cracked a narrow sliver to show Nickolaas’s eye peering at her through the crack.

“What do you want?”

“I’ve brought tulip bulbs. I gather you asked for them.”

He looked confused. “It’s too early to plant tulips. And why would I plant tulips on a piece of land I intend to demolish?”

She tried not to wince at his persistent threat to destroy Dierenpark. “Marten said they come from the tulip farm of your Vandermark cousins in Holland. That you put in a special order for them every year.”

The door flung open. Dressed in pajamas, with bare feet and his robe hanging open, the normally meticulous Nickolaas looked bedraggled and unshaven, but a bit of life sparked in his eyes. “Excellent! I am rarely in New York to accept the order personally, so I forgot how early they arrive. Let me see them,” he said, holding out his hand impatiently.

She turned over the satchel, and he peered inside, scanning the contents with greedy eyes as he counted the bulbs. “Excellent, excellent,” he murmured. “Who brought them?”

“Marten Graaf. He works in Manhattan and must have some connections.”

“Tell him I want two hundred more.” He closed the door in her face.

She knocked again. “Mr. Vandermark? Perhaps you’d like to come tell him yourself.” She had to get him out of this bedroom. He hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday, and she was no closer to understanding why that document rattled him so.

The door jerked open again, but instead of talking about bulbs, he looked at her with accusing eyes. “Mr. Gilroy tells me Professor Winston left for Harvard this morning with my document, and you did nothing to stop him.”

She blinked. “I could hardly stop him. Everyone agreed we needed to know more about that bit of text. I’m almost certain it’s part of a Bible, but the language is so odd . . . unlike anything anyone has ever seen before.”

“You got a good look at it?”

“Not really, but all it took was a glance to know the language is very strange.”

“Mr. Gilroy is in the library. I have reason to believe there may be more documents in the same language scattered around the house. I thought they had all been found and destroyed, but apparently not.”

She caught her breath, almost certain these documents were what Karl Vandermark had hired translators to interpret.

“I want you to go help him,” Nickolaas continued. “You know this house as well as anyone, and I want you to poke through every hiding place or cubby hole. If anything else is found written in that language, I want it brought to me. There’s no need to involve Quentin in this.”

Sophie couldn’t help him. It would be a crime to destroy historic documents before they even knew what they were. Besides, Quentin had hired her to cook and mentor Pieter. She didn’t have time to go on a wild chase for documents that may not even exist.