The Oak Leaves (5 page)

No such emotion hampered Cosima. She smiled as if what had just taken place were perfectly normal. “That was my brother, Roy Escott. Did my cousin tell you about him, I wonder?”

As she spoke she stepped forward, and with her hand now firmer on his arm, Sir Reginald had little choice but to follow. They approached the table, where evidence of Royboy’s mis-behavior became clearer. He’d not only eaten the pudding but made a sizeable dent in the scalloped oysters, tipped over a water pitcher, and left large, colorful fingerprints on many of the plates and goblets.

“Cosima,” said her father, who hadn’t moved from the threshold, “let us go to the sunroom, and we’ll be served something else in there.”

“You know,” said Reginald, reaching for one of the clean plates on the far side of the mess, “there are plenty of these oysters left, and they look rather delicious.”

Cosima watched, shocked beyond belief, as Sir Reginald served himself not only oysters but a bit of salad and two frosted biscuits as well. When he looked at Cosima, he appeared perplexed as to why she wasn’t joining him.

And so she did.

“Well then,” said Father, as Cosima and Sir Reginald took seats farther down the table, where the contents of the spilled pitcher had not reached. He still did not move from the threshold. “I’ll fetch your mother, Cosima, and have this cleaned up while we eat.”

Alone with this prospective bridegroom, Cosima eyed Sir Reginald from the seat she’d taken across from him. Now she could watch him with as much interest as he seemed to be watching her.

“Royboy is my brother,” she said, serving herself salad. “He’s very much like my uncle, whom we called Willie. His name was William, of course, but he was so like a boy all his life that we could never call him anything other than Willie. Quite like Royboy being christened Roy, but we call him Royboy. I’m sure my father’s mother—Dowager Merit, did you say her name is?—must know of them. If she isn’t aware of Royboy himself, certainly she knew of my uncle Willie. He was, after all, quite grown up at the time my parents wed. I even heard that Willie made a bit of a scene at the wedding when he started to disrobe after someone slipped a pea down the back of his shirt.”

If Reginald had heard of Willie, he gave no indication. He ate the oysters, looking at Cosima as if she were discussing nothing nearly as devastating as the state of the male offspring in her family.

“I also had another brother,” she went on, still eyeing him, looking for some sign he’d heard this before. “His name was Percy. Now Percy was different from Royboy and Willie. Not nearly as handsome. But he could speak very well and even read somewhat. No one would suspect he was even different until at least a few minutes into any given conversation, when he would begin to talk about something entirely unrelated or ask inappropriate questions.”

Reginald kept eating. Had he even heard her? Was he not distressed, dismayed, even a little afraid? That was how everyone else greeted this truth.

At last Cosima set aside her fork, glancing at the threshold because she knew she didn’t have much time before both of her parents would rejoin them. No doubt they would put an end to what she must do. But she must speak so that life could go on as it always had. Without change, without surprise. Without the possibility of prolonging the curse. Therefore, without marriage for her.

“Sir Reginald—” she put away any pretense of congeniality in her voice—“this cousin of mine has done you a great disservice. She obviously had only a small portion of the facts when she told you of my supposed availability and the land I am due to inherit.”

He frowned. “You are not going to inherit this lovely manor?” He looked around, then shrugged. “A shame, I suppose, but no matter.”

“No, I
am
going to inherit, and most assuredly I will live here until the day I die. But upon my parents’ death, the very day I inherit, this manor and all its property shall be made into a school for the feebleminded. Whatever funds are garnered from the farmlands will go to support the staff and students, so that it may be self-supporting and remain so indefinitely, for as long as there are feebleminded souls needing a place to live and to learn as best they can.”

Reginald took another bite of the meal, nodding. “A noble plan indeed, Cosima. I can see you are as kindhearted as you are beautiful.”

His compliment sailed past without acknowledgment. “But do you not see the inspiration for such a plan?”

He looked at her, silently waiting for her to express her unsolicited information.

“Royboy is the reason,” she told him quietly. “And Percy. And Willie. And my two cousins on my mother’s side of the family, for they, too, were afflicted. And another set of cousins from my grandmother’s younger sister. Do you see what I’m saying, Sir Reginald? Must I tell you more plainly?”

“Tell me what?”

She held his gaze, and at last he stopped eating. “The Kennesey women are afflicted, Sir Reginald. We
may
produce healthy children, but too often we have slow-witted children instead. It is virtually guaranteed that I, like my mother, like my aunt, and like their mother before them, would produce lackwits, especially should I have any sons.”

Sir Reginald produced one surprise after another. He smiled kindly, reached across the table, and took one of her hands, pressing it gently into his. His hands were soft, his fingers long and narrow. This was, she realized, the first time anyone other than her father or brother had ever touched her in such a way. She looked down at his slender fingers and smooth nails as he stroked the top of her hand.

“Cosima,” he said quietly, “if you are telling me about this supposed curse Mr. Linton learned of while staying in the village, then I must assure you immediately I believe in no such thing. You are young. You are healthy, yes?”

She nodded but quickly added, “Healthy, yes, but as sure as red hair begets red, I shall bear half-wits.”

He laughed. “Nonsense, Cosima! You can prove no such thing just because . . . well, because there have been a couple of unfortunate births. If it is in the blood, as you say—and I highly doubt such a thing—how do you know it wasn’t from something on the father’s side? the families into which your mother and aunt have wed?”

She raised a curious brow. “
Are
there any afflicted with such a thing on my father’s side of the family?”

“Well . . . no, not that I know of. But,” he added, hastily holding up a hand to still her protest, “there are any number of people on the street who act very much like Royboy. It’s an eccentricity. He can speak, can’t he? And he isn’t still wetting? Well, there you have it. I’m sure there are many people out there just like Royboy. Probably there was nothing at all wrong with your brother Percy; you just wanted to label him to mollify others and their cruel gossip.”

Sir Reginald patted her hand and continued. “I’d say you listen too much to what others say, Cosima. Most of those who name-call can’t even read or write. Who’s to say they aren’t half-wits themselves? Never put society to the test of intelligence. Most would not pass.”

Cosima shook her head, knowing his words
sounded
reasonable, though perhaps a bit pompous. He did not convince her. “But my mother, her sister, my grandmother, all—”

“Now, now, then,” he interrupted, “I should think the best thing for you to do would be to come to England, which I was about to propose anyway, only you’ve given me the perfect opportunity to do so now. Marriage is a lifelong commitment and shouldn’t be rushed into, though I see no reason why we couldn’t get to know one another after we exchange our vows. To give you time to think about it, my plan is to bring you home with me, to let you see where you’ll be living, to give you a chance to adjust to me before the wedding ceremony.”

“But you don’t know it all—,” she began, about to bring up the events of last spring, events that had the villagers and other landholders all speculating as to the madness that might afflict the females of her lineage.

But her mother and father were suddenly in the room, obviously having heard at least part of their conversation.

“’Tis a sensible idea for you to take Cosima to England, Sir Reginald,” said Mama, with a smile so sweet that the incident with Royboy might never have happened. Royboy was nowhere to be seen. “And how generous of you to offer. Of course Cosima will accompany you. Darlin’,” she continued, coming up behind Cosima and leaning down to put an arm about her shoulders, “I’ve no doubt Sir Reginald will make a lovely time of it. Millicent O’Banyon can accompany you as chaperone.”

Cosima did not respond, did not even look at her mother, knowing all she would see was the sparkle of joy over the plans and preparations. No, she thought to herself, this would not be so easily settled. Sir Reginald Hale might discount the curse everyone else fixated upon, but there had to be a reason.

And she meant to find out why.

5

On Saturday morning Talie cheerfully greeted her sister with a plate of steaming hotcakes while the smell of coffee wafted among her stainless-steel appliances. Early morning sun filtered through the red-and-white-checked curtains hanging above the open window as Ben made his favorite noises—something between a gurgle and a laugh—from his high chair in the corner. He always woke up happy, just like Talie herself.

She’d already set out melon and juice, toast and jam, most of which had been consumed by Luke, who was just pushing himself away from the table. Dana poured syrup over her plate even as she yawned.

“Didn’t you sleep well?” Talie asked, surprised by the faint circles beneath her sister’s eyes. Dana was a morning person too, or at least she used to be. “You look tired. Did the neighbor’s new dog keep you up? His barking is probably loudest right below our guest-room window.”

Dana shook her head and offered a belated smile. “No, it was fine. I’m just slow today.” She looked down at the steaming plate of food. “Mom hasn’t greeted me with a breakfast like this since Dad died. Think she was trying to tell me something . . . like maybe I should’ve looked for my own place a long time ago?”

Talie took a seat across from her. “No, it’s been good for her to have you around since Dad died. But I think you’re both ready for the changes ahead.” For economy, Dana had lived at home through college and graduate work, and when their father had been diagnosed with cancer she had stayed on to help with all the doctor visits and treatments—something everyone, even Talie, was grateful she’d chosen to do.

But now Dana was a teacher in one of the North Shore school districts with a future as limitless as Talie’s had been. Talie intended to be Dana’s biggest cheerleader—whether she continued on in her career or decided to get married and stay home as Talie had done.

She watched her sister twiddle with the food on her plate. Marriage didn’t seem on the horizon, at least not in the near future. And yet there was something about the obvious lack of sleep and now a decided lack of appetite that piqued Talie’s interest. Dana always had the best appetite in the family, in spite of her perpetually flat stomach.

“How was that wedding last week? Meet anybody . . . special?”

Dana’s gaze shot from her plate to Talie’s watchful eyes. Oh yes, that look said something was definitely up. Talie always enjoyed teasing her sister when there was someone new in the picture.

And yet Dana shook her head, taking a huge bite of one of the pancakes as if to prove Talie wrong without even a word exchanged.

Talie glanced at Luke. Maybe Dana didn’t want to talk in front of him. “Honey, why don’t you take Ben up and get him dressed? Maybe even a bath, if your grass-cutting adventure can wait a little this morning—for the neighbors’ sake, of course. Don’t want to wake anybody up with that mower.”

Luke nodded, but instead of leaving, he sipped his coffee—a cup she had just refilled. Silly her.

“I guess I should’ve asked last night,” Dana said, “but what did you say you were celebrating?”

“Luke’s promotion!” Talie said.

“Oh, that’s right.” Dana looked at Luke, who was standing now to take Ben from his high chair. “How is the new job?”

“Great. My first challenge is finding a couple of new employees. A hydroengineer and an architect.”

“An architect?”

Talie eyed her sister again. She had perked up and repeated the word as if it were the exact one she’d been waiting to hear.

“That’s right.”

“Do you know one?” Talie asked.

Dana said nothing, hiding her face by taking a drink from her large glass of orange juice. “So, how was the big date?” she asked. Her tone was polite, normal.

Talie looked at Luke, temporarily setting aside thoughts of architects and Dana’s questionable reaction to everything this morning. “We had a great time. Fabulous food, wonderful company—the works.”

“Yeah,” Luke winked at her before plopping Ben in his lap. “Talie is still a pretty hot date, Dana.” Though the words were for Dana, he’d said them in a singsong tone that made Ben laugh.

“Yuck, get
that
thought out of my mind.” Dana laughed despite her protest. “I looked through the box in the guest room, Talie—the one you brought from the attic at home. The letters make it sound like Dad’s family was a lot closer than you’d guess from the little contact we’ve had with our East Coast relatives.”

Talie’s heart dropped to her toes. She’d taken the journal out but put it back after reading only a little further. “That
box
. . .” She didn’t have to see the surprised look on both Luke’s and Dana’s faces to know her tone had sounded suddenly and surprisingly stern. She tried smiling to erase it from their minds. Obviously Dana hadn’t found the journal or she would have said something. Who wouldn’t react to a murder-suicide in the family, no matter how long ago it happened? “It’s just . . . I feel guilty about stuffing it away like Dad did, but what difference does it all make, anyway? You said yourself we don’t have any contact with Dad’s relatives. Why get to know them through ancient letters? Everybody who wrote them is dead. Dad, his mom, his brother . . .”

Dana’s brows drew together in either disapproval or confusion—Talie couldn’t tell which. “I thought you said you wanted to know our family history. History is full of dead people, only these are people we’re related to. I expected you to scrounge up some old photographs from Mom and make a sort of historical scrapbook or something.”

Talie was shaking her head before Dana had even finished her sentence, refusing to listen. “Stop, will you? Forget it.”

“Did you see the family Bible?” Luke asked Dana.

A surge of anger stiffened Talie’s spine when they refused to drop the subject.

“No, is there one?” Dana directed the question to Talie.

“It’s around somewhere,” Talie said without looking at either her sister or her husband. She felt Luke’s eyes on her. Concerned about her testy mood, no doubt.

“I saw it in our study,” he told Dana while still looking at Talie. “I thought you were going to make a rough draft of your family tree so I can make a bigger one on architectural paper.”

Talie kept her eyes on her coffee, swirling the cream into the center and lightening it from dark to light chocolate brown.

“That doesn’t sound like someone disinterested in the past,” Dana commented.

“Have you changed your mind about the family tree?” Luke asked.

Talie looked at her husband’s baffled face, her sister’s interested one. How could she tell them? Just blurt out the dismal history that belonged to her family? Of course that’s what she should do; it was a hundred and fifty years ago. Surely Luke would think it had nothing to do with her family now. And Dana had a right to know.

But even as she told herself to share what she’d learned, she wondered if her father had known. Had he purposely hidden the journal away because he didn’t think it was necessary for such a legacy of knowledge to be passed on? If he’d thought that, maybe that was what Talie should do too.

So she shrugged again and stirred her coffee some more. “I’ll get to the family tree one of these days.”

Maybe Cosima’s story wasn’t true anyway. There might be a way to find out about all those deaths on the same day if she saw actual Irish records or death certificates from 1848. Though how she would go about doing that, Talie had no idea.

True or not, maybe she should get rid of the journal. That past was better off forgotten. She wished her father had gotten rid of it instead of stashing it away.

“You know, I took some stuff from the attic too,” Dana said. “I found a few things I’m going to hang on my wall. A basket lid with a bunch of old buttons sewn on, a clock that I think I can have fixed, and some other things I might put in a shadow box. Mom said it was all from Dad’s side of the family too.”

“That’s nice.” Talie took her dishes to the sink, determined to leave the topic behind. That and her irritable mood. She turned on the water. “Remember I asked about you joining our church, Dana? Our midweek service bulletin had a note about a singles event tonight. Maybe you should go.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Luke, shifting the baby to a spot on his shoulders. Ben slumped forward over Luke’s head but was always happy up there. Luke stood, finally finished with his coffee.

“Talie wasn’t very specific about the group,” Dana said without much apparent interest. “Let me guess—I suppose there are nine women and two men?”

“Actually we’ve heard it’s a popular group,” Luke said. “People from all different churches in the area attend their social events.”

“I might try it out,” Dana said, but her tone couldn’t convince Talie that her sister was serious.

A few moments later, Luke finally walked from the kitchen to bathe and dress Ben.

Talie left the sink. She reclaimed her seat at the table across from Dana, who had barely finished half of her plateful of food. “Okay, spill it.”

Dana raised what looked like convincingly innocent, confused eyes. “Spill what? You want me to mess up your kitchen?”

“No, you know what I mean. Look at that plate.”

Dana did. “So?”

“Where’s your appetite? You’re only a picky eater when you meet somebody. So tell me, is he an architect or what?”

But Dana was shaking her head again. “No, no, no, Talie. I—”

Talie put up a palm. “You can skip the denial. Your plate and puffy eyes say it all. What’s his name?”

Dana let out a breath. Victory for Talie, and it wasn’t even much of a battle. “Okay, it’s Aidan Walker, but he’s all wrong for me.”

Talie’s hopes rose and sunk in that single statement. “He’s not a Christian?” That was the only real line they’d ever drawn when it came to dating; beyond that, things usually fell into place.

“He says he is, but he’s Melody’s new cousin-in-law. Her husband says Aidan only goes to church to scope out the women. And he hit on me the first chance he got.”

“Hit on you? How? You wouldn’t be losing your appetite if he hit on you in the classic sense. You’d have written him off right away.”

Dana shook her head. “That’s just it. Melody warned me he’s a womanizer, and she put a virtual protection squad around me as part of the wedding plan, just to keep me out of his sights. But then when we danced and he asked me out—right on cue, I thought at the time—I told him I wasn’t a casual Christian or a casual dater, and he said something I can’t really get out of my mind.”

“What was that?”

“Okay, but first let me tell you he
is
an architect. He was working out of the country for the last four months. He said while he was gone he grew up—in faith. That he has a clean slate and not Melody or Jeff or even me could take away what Christ gave him.”

“And he sounded sincere?”

Dana nodded.

“Okay . . .”

“But he was such a charmer I don’t know what to believe about him. Maybe he just said that because he knew all the right words. Just words . . . know what I mean?”

Talie stared at her sister. There was only one thing to do, and the answer was simple. “This is what you do, Danes,” she said, using the same line—and the same childish nickname—she’d used since she was in fourth grade and telling Dana how to handle her first day of kindergarten. “You let Melody or her husband tell this cousin of theirs you’ll be going to the singles group at my church. If he’s interested in you, he’ll jump on the opportunity to go too. You get to know him under the structure of the church itself, and see for yourself what kind of faith—and lifestyle—he really has. You know you have to find this out for yourself, or you’ll never be able to let it go. Right?”

A light glimmered in Dana’s eyes for the first time this morning, banishing whatever fatigue she’d brought with her to the table.

Satisfied, Talie stood to take up the remaining dirty dishes. It was a mystery to her why her sister wasn’t married yet, except that she was probably too picky and couldn’t find anyone as perfect as Luke. But maybe that was about to change. Marriage and children might be just around the bend for Danes.

Talie’s smile slipped away as memories of Cosima’s journal crept to the forefront of her mind. The suitor who came to claim Cosima had taken her away from home, away from everything and everyone familiar. An unwilling courtship at best, for reasons that were all too clear from what Cosima described.

Thank goodness Dana didn’t have such problems! The way Dana worried, the last thing she needed was to read the trials about matrimony Cosima faced. That would only cement the fear that finding someone to marry was more trouble than it was worth.

Talie supposed she ought to read a bit more of the journal before deciding whether or not to pitch the pages forever.