Until the Dawn (42 page)

“How did he end up in the river?” Quentin asked quietly.

Nickolaas flinched again and turned to gaze at the rivulets of rain tracking down the windowpanes. He seemed haggard, old, and tired.

“I was the one who found him,” he said slowly. “At first I thought he was sleeping, but then I saw the note and learned the truth. I didn’t know what to do. I had always thought my father was a hero. Everyone in New Holland thought so, too. When I read that note, I was angry and ashamed, but I still didn’t want the rest of the village to know what he had done. I burned the note and got old Mr. Broeder to help me carry him
to the river. It was easier to let his death seem like an accident than let everyone learn the truth.”

To Quentin’s horror, his grandfather’s lower lip trembled, and his eyes pooled with a sheen of tears before he looked away. Sophie darted to his side, sliding her arm around him and murmuring those soothing words she was so good at.

Quentin closed his eyes, but he couldn’t close his ears to the sounds of his grandfather’s weeping. The sobs were strangled, coming from deep in his chest as he tried to suppress them. For as long as Quentin could remember, his grandfather had been a crafty old man who delighted in being one step ahead of everyone else. Now he heard the sound of long-buried grief from a fourteen-year-old boy, broken and desperate to cover his father’s shame. Was it any wonder that Nickolaas had turned to spiritualists and fortune-tellers who might provide an easy explanation for the tragedy of Karl Vandermark’s death?

It was probably Emil’s grandfather who’d helped Nickolaas bring Karl to the river, and like other Broeders before him, he had carried the secret to his grave. What a tragic, intertwined history their two families had.

It didn’t take Nickolaas long to regain control. “I think my father figured out what had happened,” Nickolaas said on a watery sigh. “I don’t know if he found Enoch’s copy of Harold Broeder’s letter or pieced it together some other way, but he’d found copies of those Algonquin texts, and they upset him. He was convinced the Vandermarks were not entitled to our wealth, and that was why he was so determined to work as hard as any other man in the village. I remember in those final days how he tore this house apart, looking through dusty old trunks, muttering about the curse of wealth.”

Sophie sat beside Nickolaas, her arm around his back. “I don’t believe your family is cursed,” she said softly. “You can’t
change the past, but the memory of what happened here can inspire us all to live a better life.”

Quentin nodded. “For hundreds of years, we have been hiding, covering up, and deceiving. Dierenpark is filled with the portraits of people who cared about safeguarding the Vandermark fortune. I am concerned about safeguarding the tattered remnants of my soul. What if we used the fortune we’ve inherited to do something noble and generous?”

Nickolaas’s shoulders sagged. “I have neither the time nor the energy to do that.”

“I do,” Quentin said with resolve. He had no way of knowing if he’d live another month, a year, or grow to be as old as Nickolaas, but his life was going to have purpose, and it was going to begin at Dierenpark. “I won’t destroy the house. That’s not the way to change our legacy.”

Nickolaas lifted his chin. “It would be best to destroy it. I want it wiped off the map with a dynamite blast loud enough to wake up every Vandermark ancestor in the afterlife and let them see what I think of their estate. I’ll burn everything that remains until nothing but dust is left.”

Above all, love
one another
.

Nickolaas was a damaged and wounded man. Quentin needed to accept his grandfather’s scars, understand them, and love him anyway.

“If you want a spectacular show that will shake the heavens, I’ll commission a fireworks display,” he said gently. “And then I will turn Dierenpark into something more than an empty mausoleum, and the portraits of ten generations of Vandermarks can watch it all happen from the walls.” As he spoke, he felt a lightness of spirit and a surge of hope powering his body. “Let me turn Dierenpark into something amazing. Let me use it for something that would make Adrien Vandermark proud. We owe it to him, and we owe it to Pieter.”

Sophie rose, tears shining in her eyes as she came to stand beside him, slipping her hand inside his own again. He kissed her hand—her callused, scarred, and beautiful hand—and then turned to face Nickolaas again.

Nickolaas sagged but nodded his consent.

23

Q
UENTIN
KNEW
before he even got out of bed that he was in trouble. His bed sheets were soaked in perspiration, and the pain in his shin throbbed. The old wound on his leg was warm, red, and swollen. He would need to wrap it, which usually brought some relief, but he couldn’t help but feel his spirits sag. For a few weeks, that bit of hope that he might be mending had tasted so sweet.

He stretched his leg, barely able to flex the foot. It was going to be a struggle to get a shoe on today. Sweat rolled down his face as he tugged a sock on, but the first few minutes after waking were always the worst. He’d drink some willow tea, and the savage pain would ease shortly.

There was a gentle tapping at his door, and he hoped it was Sophie. He tugged up the sheet to cover the lower half of his body. “Yes?”

It was Pieter. “Are you coming downstairs?” the boy asked as he entered the room, a hopefulness in his face.

In the past when his pain was this bad, he would shoo Pieter
away to Mr. Gilroy or a governess. No longer. The fact that Pieter welcomed his company was a miracle not to be taken lightly.

“What would you like to do today?” No matter what Pieter said, he was going to make it happen.

“It’s stopped raining. I wanted to show you my animals. I found some new frogs.”

Mercifully, the window well where Pieter kept his collection of salamanders and frogs was only a few feet outside the kitchen door. Quentin dressed and then leaned heavily on his cane as he made his way to the kitchen, drawn by the scent of baking bread, although there was no sign of Sophie. A twinge of disappointment tugged at him, but if the weather held, perhaps he could coax her away for a few stolen hours at the Spanish cannon. Whether he lived for another year or another decade, those magical hours spent with her at the Spanish cannon would glimmer forever in his soul.

The moment he stepped outside it was obvious the weather would not hold much longer. The air was cool, blowing down from the north in a damp chill. The low-hanging clouds were an eerie sort of purple mixed with orange, as if the sky couldn’t decide if it wanted to permit the sunrise or concede to the gathering storm.

“Show me what you’ve got,” he said as they approached the window well tucked against the side of the house. Pieter had mounded stones over a wire rack atop the window well. Most of the creatures could probably escape if they chose, but with all the rain in recent days, they were probably happy as a pig in mud down there.

Pieter lifted the wire rack away. “I’ve got four different types of salamanders. Professor Byron said that there are two hundred different kinds, and I’m going to see how many I can catch. He said that if a salamander gets a leg chopped off, a new one will grow back.”

“That would be a useful skill,” Quentin said with a laugh, but Pieter was too busy showing him the underside of a turtle to catch the joke. Hiring the team of biologists had been an unexpected stroke of genius, helping awaken Pieter’s curiosity in natural science.

He leaned against the side of the house while Pieter continued lifting out various specimens for his approval. The sky was darkening rapidly, and it looked like they were all going to be driven back inside soon. Where was Sophie? Usually she was in the kitchen preparing breakfast by now, but perhaps she’d gone to gather berries in this brief respite from the rain. A pie would be welcome.

Eventually he had admired each of the salamanders, toads, and reptiles in the menagerie. “I need to find another turtle or else this one might get lonely,” Pieter said.

The old Quentin would have ordered Mr. Gilroy to go buy a turtle to make his son happy, but with newfound sensitivity, he sensed something else behind Pieter’s statement. Perhaps a hint of loneliness? For most of his life, the boy had been deprived of children his own age as they traveled from city to city. Perhaps he and Sophie would have a child of their own. He sensed Pieter would adore having a little brother or sister.

Pieter set the turtle back down, covered the window well, and looked at him with apprehensive eyes. “Did you love my mother?” he asked.

The question stunned him. Pieter had never asked such a question before, and it seemed to come from nowhere.

“Of course I loved your mother.”

“Miss Sophie says you didn’t sleep in the same bed because Mother didn’t like you.”

He clenched the handle of his cane and tried to keep his voice calm. “When did she say such a thing?”

“I heard her talking to Pastor Mattisen a few days ago. They
were picking blackberries, but I was hunting for salamanders, so I don’t think they knew I was there. The pastor said that’s how it is for some married people who don’t like each other very much.”

To this day, the failure of his marriage to Portia was a mortification tainted with shame, embarrassment, and regret. To have his deepest, most private humiliation bantered about in the blackberry meadow was a slap in the face.

“I loved your mother very much,” he said, trying to mask the slow burn of anger. “And she loved me, and most importantly, she loved you. Anything you heard Miss Sophie say can’t change that—”

His mouth snapped shut as the kitchen door opened and Ratface emerged, dumping a basin of wash water into the yard. Ratface nodded to them both before returning inside, but this conversation shouldn’t happen where it could be overheard. There were open windows in the house, and the estate swarmed with people. Sophie should have known that. What business did she have spilling the private details of his life to a stranger?

“Do you know where Miss Sophie is?” he asked Pieter.

“She’s with Professor Byron over by the sycamore trees. Professor Byron shot a deer, and he is getting it ready to cook. Miss Sophie is helping him, but they said I had to stay away.”

He could well imagine. Field dressing a deer wasn’t a sight for tender eyes, and he was surprised Sophie was up for it.

“Marten is helping, too. He said he and Miss Sophie used to go hunting when they were growing up, and it would be like old times. He was laughing when he said it.”

Marten again
.

A low rumble of thunder sounded from the north, a perfect reflection of Quentin’s own dark mood. He pushed away from the house, struggling to hang on to the frayed ends of his temper. “Go inside and see if Mrs. Hengeveld needs help with anything.”

The moment the door closed behind Pieter, Quentin set off for the open patch of meadow by the sycamore trees. Anger fueled his steps as he lumbered toward the clearing, heedless of the searing pain shooting up his leg with each lurch. He didn’t want to stress his leg today, but the image of Sophie and Marten enjoying
old times
out in the clearing was enough to speed his steps. Had she spilled the private details of his marriage to Marten, as well?

The sight that greeted him was appalling. The deer had been cleaned, quartered, and hung in sections from the limb of a giant sycamore tree. Professor Byron stood a few feet away, still sweating from his labors with the deer. He was shirtless, his bare flesh tanned and gleaming as he grinned at Sophie, who was wringing out cloths and passing them to Byron. There was no sign of Marten.

The professor’s trousers were stained and damp from the dripping rags Sophie passed him. “You’ve got a spot on your back,” she said, reaching around to wipe down the professor from behind.

“Don’t stop,” Byron groaned. “That feels like bliss after being cooped up for days.”

“You deserve it,” she laughed. “We were likely to starve unless you had braved the wilderness to slay the mighty beast.”

Anger burned like acid in Quentin’s veins. What an idiot he had been! His rival for Sophie’s affections wasn’t Marten Graaf; it was Professor Byron. The professor was young, his body vigorous and healthy. He had an intelligent mind and a brilliant future ahead of him.