The Oak Leaves (3 page)

“Your manservant informed me that Mr. Escott is away, attending to important matters. It might be best if I were to wait, but I find myself eager to impart the reason for my visit.”

“I would be pleased if you did so, Mr. Linton,” said Mama.

“My employer, Sir Reginald Hale, sends greetings and an inquiry regarding the subject of—” his gaze, which had left Cosima only a moment, now returned to her—“marriage to Miss Cosima Escott.”

Cosima saw her mother’s shock as profoundly as she felt it herself. While Cosima held back her breath, barely able to exhale, her mother’s gasp filled the silence. Cosima refused to look at either her or their guest, feeling both their gazes heavy upon her.

“Your employer has offered for my daughter’s hand in marriage without even having met her?” Excitement tinged each word of her mother’s question.

“That is correct, Mrs. Escott. I have here in my purse a letter of introduction, so that you may know my employer. May I leave such documents for your perusal?”

“Of course.”

Mr. Linton stood, his tea left untouched. “I will be staying in the village, Mrs. Escott, at the Quail’s Stop Inn. Please send word to me there if you would be open to a visit from Sir Reginald.”

He started to leave and Mama stood, pulling Cosima along. Mama all but hounded the man’s heels toward the door, despite Cosima’s effort to pull her back.

“My husband is not due until week’s end,” her mother said. “Of course, I cannot send word without—”

Mr. Linton paused. Cosima thought she saw a look of satisfaction on his face, as if her mother’s obvious eagerness had been duly noted and welcomed.

“I shall remain at the inn until I hear from you, madam.” He placed his top hat upon his head, accepting his overcoat from Melvin but only draping it on his forearm. “However long that shall be, madam. My employer is a very patient man. He will await my word.”

Cosima watched him depart. He took the cool marble stairs as if he’d used them many times before, an unmistakable bounce in his step.

Mama grabbed Cosima’s hand and squeezed, bringing it up to kiss her daughter’s knuckles. “A proposal of marriage! From a knighted gentleman! Oh, Cosima, perhaps there will be a future after all.”

Cosima’s mind wasn’t on her mother’s words or the future. Her gaze took hold of Mr. Linton again, through the multipaned glass that afforded an outside view. Mr. Linton reentered the carriage. It was emblazoned, she could see now, with a gold
H
on its side. A family carriage all the way from England? Why send it along with Mr. Linton, a servant?

Mother and daughter watched through the window as the carriage disappeared into the trees down the lane. Either its owner was a foolhardy spendthrift, paying for transport of his crested carriage just to give his favorite valet an assuredly comfortable ride, or Sir Reginald had little doubt his proposal would be accepted. He must expect to take ownership, through Cosima, of Escott Manor at any time. The pompous cad had already begun moving his belongings across the Irish Sea.

Surely the man knew nothing of Cosima or he never would have sent his servant with such an outlandish proposal. She wanted to say as much to her mother, but Mama looked so pleased Cosima had no heart to spoil her smile.

Mama pressed Cosima’s hand close, her eyes dancing merrily as they hadn’t done in months. Then she let go and seemed to float down the hall, perhaps back to her work.

Cosima went to her bedroom, longing for the familiarity and solace it provided. She would find her journal.

That Mama hoped for a
future
came as no surprise to Cosima. Trouble was, her vision of the future and Cosima’s were vastly different.

This wasn’t the first time someone had inquired about Cosima’s hand. After all, she was set to inherit the Escott property, and the income it generated was tempting. Times would improve again; the potatoes wouldn’t always grow sour. . . . God would heal the land of whatever disease it currently suffered. And if not, her father sought to improve conditions through raising sheep rather than crops, and that certainly would end their hard times.

But one thing was certain: even a prosperous inheritance wouldn’t outshine the shadow of a curse.

All County Wicklow knew about the curse. Two years before, the son of a landholder from County Cork had traveled through their isolated glen, and learning of the unmarried daughter who would receive an inheritance, he’d come to inquire about Cosima’s hand.

But a single night had been enough to warn the young man away. He’d left before the sun rose.

It might have amused Cosima to think fear of a curse was enough to overcome greed. But because that so-called curse was upon her, she found no humor in it at all.

Perhaps, if the lad had come this spring instead, he might have stayed longer. But two years ago her uncle had been alive, whom everyone called Willie rather than William because he’d always been like a young boy. Simple.

And Percy had still been with them too. Percy was the firstborn of Cosima’s family, her older brother. Although Cosima hadn’t come along until a couple of years after Percy, she’d guessed the questions that had filled her parents’ minds during the time leading up to Percy’s arrival.

Would he be like her Aunt Rowena’s boy, enfeebled? Or like his uncle, unquiet of mind? Willie was loud and coarse, his language little more than the mimic of those around him. Until his sudden death at the age of forty-five, he’d been like a child—comprehending little, curious but dangerously so when it came to things like fire or fragile glassware. He seemed to crave packing his mouth with food until he gagged. It was often hard to sit at the table with Willie.

Cosima was told her brother Percy had appeared to be free of the curse for the first few years of his life. Though a pliant baby who learned to walk a little late, he slowly acquired language that went beyond that of his uncle Willie.

No, Percy was not like Willie. Nor, though, was he like other boys from other families. Cosima learned that her mother had tried to deny it for years, even through her pregnancy with Cosima herself, anticipating the birth of another child to celebrate. But somewhere during the course of the years, everyone around her, even Cosima’s father, had been forced to change Mama’s mind. Percy might not be as slow-witted as Willie, but he was slow nonetheless.

Decla, the servant closest to Mama, told Cosima that Mama had forbidden her husband his marital rights for years after that for fear of having any more children. But then, for reasons even Decla never knew or would not share with Cosima, Mary Escott had become pregnant again. This pregnancy was far different from Mama’s delusional years when children brought her only happiness and hope. No, the months while they waited for Roy were laden with worry, murmurs of the curse rumbling throughout the town among landholders and tenants alike.

At last Roy was born, and any shred of hope Cosima’s parents might have clung to all but evaporated upon first sight. Too soon to tell, Cosima’s father had said. But Mama knew. She saw Roy’s head, a little larger than those of the babies in the village, and the ears, so prominent on each side. So like Percy and Willie. Worst of all, when she tried to suckle him, she knew the truth. The roof of his mouth was just like Percy’s, so high he had to work twice as hard to latch onto his mother’s breast. The pain with each feeding reminded her all too clearly that Roy—soon to be called Royboy—would be like Percy . . . or worse, like Willie.

Two generations of males cursed under the Kennesey blood.

Mama and Cosima were not the only ones to feel the bane. Last year, Mama’s sister Rowena had come to visit. How long it had been since the sisters had seen one another! But there was little joy in the reunion, because Rowena had brought two of her own children along, one a strapping young man and the other barely eight. Half-wits, both.

There had been other children in between—a boy and a girl both healthy and bright—who had not made the journey. Two days into the visit Cosima and her mother realized the curse had been far worse for Rowena despite her healthy children. Rowena, never strong of will, had suffered the same gossip about curses as Mama. Perhaps she felt it more keenly since her husband was less tolerant than Cosima’s father. Rowena’s husband had sent her and the afflicted boys from the home, keeping the healthy children but refusing to have anything to do with a woman so obviously cursed.

Rowena had little choice. It was either enter an asylum with her sons or die on the street. Instead, she came to her sister.

But Rowena had no intention of burdening anyone with herself and the only children her husband allowed her. No, she had a plan that was, in retrospect, obviously meant to help and not hurt as it inevitably did.

On a sunny spring morning nearly a year ago, much like earlier when Cosima had sat beneath the shade tree with Royboy, Rowena took her boys and Mama’s, along with their brother Willie—indeed, all afflicted in the family—to the cottage that sat deep in the forest. It was an old hunting cabin built over a hundred years earlier by peasants serving the local lord, and now it belonged to Cosima’s father through marriage to Mama.

There, Rowena shuttered all the windows, closed off the fireplace, locked the doors. And then, quite deliberately, in what Cosima had since guessed was her aunt’s mind-set of martyr and savior, she set fire to the single-room cottage.

Somehow, though, Royboy had slipped away without Rowena’s notice. One of the shuttered windows was found open, and when Royboy returned to the manor smelling of smoke, Cosima had begged him to tell her where he’d come from.

But he didn’t have to say, even had he been able. Smoke rising from the forest soon revealed the source. Along with her parents and many of their servants, Cosima had raced to the gruesome discovery.

Rowena had tried to end the curse in the only way she could imagine.

Cosima rarely thought of that day without tears stinging her eyes. Aunt Rowena hadn’t ended it, though. Rather, she’d enhanced it. Prior to that, those who called her family cursed had said it ran only in the males. But after that they began to suspect the women as well.

And
this
was the family Sir Reginald Hale wished to join?

3

Talie nearly dropped the journal, and a few pages slipped from the delicate spine. She scooped them back into place with trembling hands, her breath coming in short spasms.

This
was her call back? She’d expected a family so enamored of education and history that despite poverty they’d managed to leave a family legacy. Rather than a noble, resilient ancestral line that survived the ravages of a famine, the truth involved a murder-suicide and half-wits somehow related to her. This wasn’t the kind of call back her father would have wanted for her.

She shook her head, pushing away the journal as if the pages themselves were an offense. It couldn’t be true.

Glancing down, she noticed the words on the cover sheet again.
This is my legacy to you. I assure you each word is true.

Legacy. What kind of legacy? No wonder Dad had never pulled out this journal to share with the rest of the family. Some skeletons were better left in the closet.

Part of her wanted to run upstairs and wake Luke, share with him the awful words written by her great-great-great-grandmother’s own hand. Adrenaline shot to Talie’s limbs as if prepared to carry her, but instead she forced herself to be still. The energy turned hot from lack of use, tingling in her fingers and toes.

She placed the fragile journal back into the box, stuffing it down to the bottom, beneath her father’s schoolwork, beneath all the family letters. The only item she hesitated to return was the Bible.

Talie stared at it. Did she really want to work on a family tree now? She knew Luke would make a masterpiece of whatever information she gave him, and the final product could be displayed with pride. Give him a project and he was like her when it came to scrapbooking. Perfectionist tendencies ran in both of them.

But to display something like this . . . including the dates of a murder-suicide for all to see?

Instead of placing it with the other things, she set the Bible aside on the kitchen table. Maybe she would get to the heritage record. Maybe.

She took the box upstairs, not to her own bedroom but to the guest room, a place she rarely visited except with an occasional dust cloth. She’d had enough family history for a while.

* * *

“So there I was, sitting at the top of the stairs crying a river because my husband was going back to work and leaving me alone with the baby.” Jennifer Dunlap, Talie’s neighbor, stirred the remnants of her tea and laughed. “I was sure I couldn’t handle taking care of Alison
and
the laundry, the dishes, the house, dinner. . . . As you can see, I can’t do it all if I want to take care of the baby right.”

She directed everyone’s vision to the dishes in the sink and the basket of laundry nearby. The other women joined the laughter while most, including Talie, admitted to their own work back home.

Talie and the other moms had spent the better part of the morning comparing husbands, in-laws, recipes, and the vacations they no longer took. Jennifer had suggested bringing a favorite book to exchange next week. All in all, it had been a mostly pleasant morning.

Talie glanced again at the babies on the floor in the connecting family room. Ben sat off to the side, occasionally watching the others play with the toys. He never played with toys the way they were doing. She thought he was just too young.

One of the neighbors stood, mentioning she had to leave.

Finished with her own tea, Talie stood along with Lindy. Each went to her child.

“I guess it’s true girls develop faster than boys,” Lindy said as she picked up her son, Mitchell. “Look, they’re crawling already! My little guy only scoots wherever he wants to go.”

Sure enough, the three girls on the carpet were getting along on hands and knees—racing, as if on cue, toward the same goal: a brightly colored overstuffed pillow shaped like a pony.

Jennifer came up behind them. “Alison started crawling early, but I’ve heard some babies go straight to walking.”

Talie said nothing, keeping her eyes on Ben. If anyone noticed the uneasiness surging within her, Talie didn’t want to acknowledge it. She didn’t want to count how many ways Ben was different from the others but couldn’t seem to stop herself. While Ben certainly compared favorably in size and had the most hair, his posture wasn’t like the others’. He sat with a definite curve in his back, not strong and stiff like the others. He seemed . . . floppy somehow, as if his muscles didn’t work the same way. And yet Talie knew he was strong. He could grip her finger tightly and certainly had the kick of a professional football player in the making.

“Wave bye-bye, Alison.” Jennifer Dunlap held her eight-month-old in her arms.

Talie carried Ben to the front door. Her house was so close that she hadn’t bothered to bring the stroller. She stepped outside to the sunny day. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Alison’s little hand waving much the same way her mother’s did. Talie waved back.

She held Ben snug, his arms and head resting contentedly against her. “Lindy’s right about boys and girls, I guess. But you’ll catch up, won’t you? Sure you will.”

She turned at her driveway, glancing at Jennifer’s house again. She couldn’t ignore something heavy circling her heart, something that hadn’t been there before playgroup. There was Mitchell in Lindy’s arms, waving bye-bye much the same as Alison had.

Mitchell and Ben might both be behind in the crawling department, but at least Mitchell could wave.

Maybe Talie was doing too much for Ben. He’d never once expressed the ability or the interest in feeding himself the way the others had this morning. In the past if she offered a piece of bread or soft banana, he would put his mouth around it but not bite down. It was as if he didn’t have the strength or knowledge of what to do, even with something as basic as taking a bite.

Back in her own kitchen, Talie gave Ben the yogurt snack she’d withheld in front of the others. She put the spoon in the cup and offered it to Ben in his high chair.

He looked around, barely noticing what she’d set before him.

Gently, Talie put her hand over his. He resisted her touch at first, so she took the spoon and fed him a bit, hoping to catch his interest once he realized it was his favorite flavor.

Instead of grabbing the spoon he knocked it over, spilling some of the yogurt.

Talie took up the spoon, not giving in to disappointment. “Guess you’re just not ready to feed yourself, little guy.”

She was tempted to get a slice of bread and see if he would bite into that but told herself she was being silly. So what if he liked his mother to feed him? Ben was still a baby, and she loved doing things for him. Besides, last week’s sermon at church had been devoted to the frustration that inevitably came of comparisons. She shouldn’t be comparing Ben to others anyway.

She jumped to the phone when it rang, grateful for the distraction. She didn’t have to look at the caller ID. It was Luke’s regular time to call.

“Hey.” Luke didn’t bother to identify himself.

“Hey back, boss man. How’s the new job?”

“Great. I have my very own office—four walls and a door and everything. You’ll have to come and see.”

“Love to. How are the people?”

“My old boss is now a peer, and my new boss is hardly ever around. Couldn’t be better. And everybody I used to work with is still here, just down the row of cubicles. I’ll be interviewing next week to fill the two new spots.” It sounded like he took a drink of something, probably coffee. He was an addict. “How was playgroup?”

“Nice. It’ll be good to get to know the women around here better.” Then she thought of something Luke had probably forgotten. “Remember to put tomorrow night on your calendar.”

“Tomorrow night?”

“Our promotion celebration. Just the two of us.”

“Oh yeah.” His softened tone hinted he was sorry it had slipped his mind.

“It’s all set up. Dana agreed to babysit, and she’s coming at six.”

After Talie hung up the phone she finished feeding Ben, doing her best to ignore a string of unpleasant thoughts. They wouldn’t go away despite reminding herself she had Friday to look forward to—a real date night with Luke.

She should forget this morning by going upstairs and retrieving that box she’d put so hastily away. Really, she’d only meant to keep that awful journal out of sight, not the rest. She could dig into the letters, look at the old postcards. Or she could stay down here and work on the family tree. The Bible was right there, still on the kitchen table.

But when Ben went down for his nap a little while after lunch, it wasn’t any of those things that drew her.

It was Cosima’s journal.