The Rose of Winslow Street (11 page)

Fortunately, Mr. Dobrescu had not caught her near slip. “Then let us try teaching you a bit of Romanian,” he said. “You have been mispronouncing our name very badly. The emphasis is on the first syllable.
Do
brescu,” he enunciated for her.

The way he pronounced his name made it sound entirely different. Musical, even. Libby tried to imitate him, but it still sounded wrong. He said his name again, and this time Libby noticed the way he rolled over the R sound. It was a difficult thing for her to master, since her tongue simply did not want to cooperate. Or was this a movement she should be making in the back of her throat?

When Libby tried for a third time, a smattering of giggles came from behind her. She turned to see both boys standing in the corner, their faces smeared with jam and laughing at her attempts to pronounce their name.

“Perhaps I will do better if you say it for me, Luke.”

The child's smile was huge as he shouted his name for her, but Libby still could not roll the trill in the middle of their name. Both boys came rushing forward, eager to provide advice on how to master the correct pronunciation, but it was a combination of rhythm and trill that was simply very difficult for her American mouth to master.

“Why don't you call me Michael,” Mr. Dobrescu said. “You will damage your throat if you keep mangling our name.”

It was terribly improper to call an unrelated man by his first name, especially one with whom her family had such a contentious relationship. But perhaps that was all to the good. If she and the Dobrescus could learn to see each other as honorable people, perhaps the looming court decision would not be so ugly.

“All right, Michael.”

The children were suffering from cabin fever, so Libby took them with her to the market. Besides, what better way to show the shopkeepers of Colden that she wished this embargo against doing business with the Dobrescu family to end?

The sidewalks of Colden had been laid down decades ago, and roots of the mighty elm and silver maples had spread out to lift and buckle the path. The roots were annoying, but the trees provided a wonderful green-tinted shade on their walk to the market. It felt so natural, the way Luke's hand was clasped in her own. A typical mother would probably take a moment like this for granted, but Libby savored every second of having a young child look up to her like she was a fairy godmother, taking him on an unexpected outing. A smile spread across her face and she clasped Luke's hand a little tighter.

However, only a fool could miss Andrei's guarded look as he scanned both sides of the street on their journey. Was it because he'd had a bumpy ride these first few weeks in Colden, or had he always been the suspicious type? If the Dobrescus were gypsies, as her father contended, the children would have been accustomed from infancy to be mistrustful of others and on the lookout for trouble.

Michael Dobrescu stood guard over his children like a grizzly bear protecting its young, and never would she have a better chance to glean a little insight into their life in Romania than at this very moment. Luke's hand was trusting within her own, but she felt no shame as she began peppering the children with questions.

“What was a typical day like in Romania?” she asked.

Both children looked confused at her question. It was very impressive how quickly they were learning English, but perhaps she needed to be more blunt if she was going to get any insight. “Did you live in a town like Colden? Or a big city like Boston?” When they did not supply an answer, she kept probing. “Or did you move a lot? Traveled from town to town?”

“No,” Luke said. He did not elaborate, so Libby tried again.

“Did you live in the country? Where there are not many people but lots of farms?”

Luke nodded vigorously. “Yes. Our house was a farm.”

It made sense. Michael seemed like a rough-hewn sort of person who belonged outdoors swinging a scythe or driving a plow behind a team of oxen.

“What kind of farm did you have?” She directed the question to Andrei, whose command of English was better than Luke's rudimentary vocabulary. “Did you have animals? Like cows and chickens, or did your grow plants?” She was not certain he would know what the word
plant
meant, so she stopped and grasped some of the fronds of wild grass that grew alongside the pathway. “Plants like this? Or corn? Or wheat?”

“Plants,” Andrei said. “But not like this.”

“Perfume!” Luke blurted out. “Papa grows the best perfume in the world.”

Libby turned an amused glance to Luke, who was skipping and tugging her hand in his excitement to move faster. She must not forget how difficult it was to learn a foreign language, and even if he got some words wrong, she could still probe for more information. “Perfume, you say!” Libby said with a forced laugh. “I can't imagine what a perfume farm looks like. Can you describe it to me?”

Luke spun away from her grasp and held his hands out as wide as he could stretch them. “Roses. Roses everywhere.” He stopped and struggled to find the words, shaking his hands in frustration. The poor child was trying so hard to communicate, but did not have the command of the language to do so. Finally, Luke turned to Andrei and spoke in a quick stream of Romanian. Andrei provided the translation.

“He says that even if you stand on the roof of our house, all you would see is roses. Everywhere you look, there are roses.”

Her steps stilled. What kind of farm would have nothing but flowers? Surely the boy was exaggerating. Maybe their mother liked roses and Michael Dobrescu had indulged her with a lavish rose garden. After all, Libby's own father had gone to great lengths to build a greenhouse that would please his wife, so she knew men were prone to doing such things for a woman they adored.

Why should that hurt? Whatever relationship Michael Dobrescu had with his late wife was none of her business. The woman had given him two fine sons, and based on the care Michael lavished on his sister, it was likely he would have been equally protective of his wife. What would it be like to be the object of that sort of adoration? Any man who planted acres of roses to please his wife must carry quite a torch for her. He was unlikely to be the sort who would flirt with an illiterate spinster.

Olaf Gustafson's vegetable stand was the first place they needed to stop. Libby had been to school with Olaf, where he was famous for his willingness to eat poison ivy on a dare. Now Olaf was married with two small children. Six days a week he manned the vegetable stand, and on the seventh he went to church with his wife and children. If he still ate poison ivy on a dare, Libby had not heard of it.

Luke's hand was still clasped within her own as they approached the stand, but she reached out to snag Andrei's hand too. Andrei apparently thought himself too old to be seen in such a juvenile position, but Libby tightened her grasp and pulled him closer.

“Have you any fresh spinach today?” she asked, maintaining her grip on the struggling Andrei.

“Plenty,” Olaf said. He looked with curiosity at the two children. It was not unusual for Libby to have a passel of neighborhood children following her about town, but these two were clearly strangers to Olaf. Rather than waiting for the inevitable question, Libby took the initiative.

“I've brought the Dobrescu children with me. They will be a great help carrying all these things home, right, Luke?”

“Dobrescu?” The disbelief in Olaf's eyes was as if she had said she had the children of Genghis Khan in tow. Olaf looked with confusion from the children to Libby. He scratched his head and shifted his weight from side to side. Finally, he looked her in the eye.

“Um, Libby? Do you know who these kids are?”

It was true that Libby had never won any prizes for academic brilliance in school, but did Olaf really think her this dim? She smacked her forehead with the palm of her hand. “Oh heavens, I must have a stupid spot the size of Brazil. Do you think these scamps are related to that man in my father's house?”

Olaf winced in sympathy as he nodded. “I'm afraid so.”

She clasped her hands and leaned forward with an urgent whisper. “Help me, Olaf, what should I do?”

He gave a helpless little shrug. “I think you are going to have to make the best of it.”

She allowed the tension to drain from her face. “I suppose so. How about you give me those bunches of spinach two for the price of one. I need something to perk me up from this disaster.”

To her amazement, Olaf did not quibble.

It took less than an hour to make the rounds at the vegetable stand, the bakery, and the dairy. After Libby collected the items for Mirela, she decided to stop by the pharmacy to buy a few peppermint sticks for the children, and at the milliner's shop simply to look at the new hats. At each stop she made a point of introducing the Dobrescu boys. Andrei was a quick study, and after the first incident at Olaf's vegetable stand he had figured out precisely what she was doing and began cooperating with her. She hoped he was not laying it on too thick with the way he smiled up at her and pretended to hang on her every word, but at least it was having the desired effect on the shopkeepers.

As she suspected, Michael Dobrescu was waiting for them, watching out the front window with the eyes of a hawk. He flung the front door open as soon as she came within sight of the house. “The townspeople gave you no trouble?” Worry loomed in his troubled expression.

“There was a group with pitchforks and flaming torches, but I battled them off,” she said. It took a moment for Michael to process her humor, but his look of relief was palpable. She pressed the basket into his hands. “I had no trouble,” she said softly.

The blazing smile of gratitude that lit his face almost melted her bones. If she had thought Michael Dobrescu's strength had been dangerous, it paled in comparison to his gratitude. She was helpless to resist as he opened the door wide and invited her inside.

T
he rumor mills in Colden moved faster than a summer storm, and her father was waiting for her when she returned to her brother's house. “Arthur Stockdale tells us that you went to the house and spent over two hours inside,” her father said. “Two hours! And I hear you were traipsing about town with the Dobrescu children, filling your basket like you were shopping for Christmas.” The hair on her father's head was even more wild than usual, indicating he had been dragging his hands through it, which he did whenever he was plagued by a perplexing issue. “I am giving you the benefit of the doubt and am assuming you were there in order to gather information for the coming court case. Or perhaps searching for the missing mechanical drawings.”

Libby set the empty basket down on the kitchen counter and nodded a polite greeting to Mr. Auckland, who was sitting at the kitchen table before a stack of old books. The memory of Andrei's delight as he slathered jam over the freshly baked bread was worth any criticism hurled her way. “I dropped off some food,” she said. “I also went into town to get a few other items. Both Mr. Dobrescu and his sister are ill, and the local merchants are refusing to do business with them. They have to walk almost five miles just to purchase something to eat.”

“All to the good,” her father said. “Neighbors should stick up for one another, and that is exactly what the people of Colden are doing. You are undermining their heartfelt efforts, and I trust it will not happen again. Now, sit down and listen to what Mr. Auckland has learned about the old Cossack.”

Mr. Auckland laid his hand across a heavy book with an ornately embossed leather cover. “I just got back from Boston, where I've been prowling through the library at Harvard,” he said. “I asked for everything they had about the 9th Duke of Vlaska. I wanted to learn if there was a legitimate connection between the duke and the old Cossack, or if their identical names were just a coincidence. We found the Duke of Vlaska's obituary from August of 1870 in the
New York Times.
The obituary mentions a brother, Constantine Dobrescu, who emigrated to America and settled in Colden, Massachusetts. So the old Cossack was in fact the younger brother of the Duke of Vlaska.”

Her father clapped his hands together and leapt from his seat. “Did you hear that?” He practically danced around the room. “Don't you understand what this means?”

Libby just stared. “No. I don't see how this helps our case at all.”

“Libby,
think
!” her father implored. “You have witnessed that this person who calls himself Michael Dobrescu is a crude boar with no manners. His children are wild animals and his henchmen are likely hired off the docks. Is this a man you believe could be the son of a duke? Offspring from near royalty?”

Mr. Auckland opened the ornately bound book, using a silk ribbon marker to guide him to a particular page. “This book chronicles modern European aristocratic families.” He turned the book so Libby could see a page where a large photograph had been tipped into the book and pasted beside the text. “That is a photograph of the 9th Duke of Vlaska and his wife,” he said. “Can you see any resemblance to the man you know as Michael Dobrescu?”

She scrutinized the photograph. A severe man in a military uniform looked directly at the camera. A sash was draped diagonally across his uniform, and a gold chain as thick as her wrist hung around his neck. One hand rested on the hilt of a jeweled sword, while the other he held stiffly forth to support his wife's hand. So proud and forbidding, the man looked like he could be the emperor of the universe.

Libby leaned closer to the photograph, scanning the structure of the Duke's face, the blade of his nose, the shape of his eyebrows, none of which resembled Michael Dobrescu. The duke's hair was oiled and scraped completely back from his wide forehead, revealing a distinctive peak in an otherwise straight hairline. There was no resemblance between Michael and the duke whatsoever.

Her attention shifted to the duchess. She looked equally rigid, a small woman poured into a satin sheath encrusted with pearls and dripping with jewels. She wore a ceremonial sash identical to her husband's, with a small tiara nestled amidst a fringe of tight curls. Her compact stature barely reached the duke's shoulder, and it was impossible to believe that this petite woman could be Michael Dobrescu's mother.

“I don't see any resemblance at all,” she said. “Neither one of them looks like Michael Dobrescu.”

Her father pulled the book toward him. “That's right!” he gloated. “The man in our house is an imposter. If he was the duke's oldest son, he would be living in a palace in Romania.”

Everything her father said made sense. If the old Cossack had been an ordinary soldier from Romania, it stood to reason that his nephew could be a simple soldier or a farmer like Michael Dobrescu. That was the scenario her father feared. Learning that the old Cossack was an aristocrat, the younger brother of a duke, made it far less likely that Michael had a legitimate claim to the house. After all, why would the oldest son of a duke be so eager to leave behind a title and come all the way to America to seize her house?

Her father continued. “Somehow the man calling himself Michael Dobrescu saw a copy of the old Cossack's will and is trying to pull off the impersonation of the century. He is a lump of coal pretending to be a diamond. He won't succeed.”

She thought of the acres of roses. Wouldn't an aristocratic household have ready access to flowers? Perhaps Michael was responsible for raising the fresh flowers that filled the rooms of the ducal palace.

“But how can we prove it?” Libby asked. “I can't imagine a court will be convinced he is an imposter just because he does not share a resemblance with the old duke.”

Mr. Auckland leaned forward in his chair. “It will be easy enough to prove who he is
not.
The oldest son of Enric Dobrescu would be the 10th Duke of Vlaska, and that is the person named in the old Cossack's will. It should be easy enough to get a picture of the current duke. Or at least find out what happened to him. I gather the region has been swept up in a number of wars for several years, and those things can sometimes be rough on reigning aristocrats. All we need to do is track down information about the current duke so we can prove Michael Dobrescu is a fraud.”

The mysterious girl they called Lady Mirela had attempted suicide. Was it possible she was a member of the duke's family? And she fled her home, taking loyal servants with her? If she was a member of the duke's household, it would be reasonable to assume she had heard tales of an eccentric uncle who had emigrated to America long ago and left a house to the duke, which no one bothered to claim. If she wanted to escape from Romania, be it from the war or conflict with her parents or any one of the hundreds of reasons a young woman might run away from home, the unclaimed house in America would be a perfect place to flee. Was it possible that Lady Mirela was the mastermind behind the entire plot to take over the house?

When she voiced her suspicions to her father, he agreed. “If Lady Mirela is the duke's daughter, she would need help claiming the house,” he said. “The will specifies the house is to go to the next
male
Dobrescu. It doesn't matter if she is the daughter of the duke or not. She is precluded from inheriting the house.”

Libby narrowed her eyes and tried to remember exactly what she observed those few moments she was in the same room as Lady Mirela. Her manner and bearing were aristocratic. When Michael first tried to drag Libby from the room, Mirela held up her hand and Michael had immediately halted, as if he was deferring to her. Could Michael merely be a figurehead, while Lady Mirela was steering the ship?

They needed more information, and they needed it quickly. “The court date is just over a week away,” Libby said. “Will you be able to find what you need before then?”

The old librarian looked at her father. “Are you up for a train ride to Washington, Willard? There was nothing about the new Duke of Vlaska at the Harvard Library, but I expect we will find more current information at the Library of Congress.”

“I'll go. If it is the last thing I do on this planet, I will drive those gypsies from my house. Filthy liars. Thieves too.”

Perhaps they were liars and thieves. She did not know them well enough to vouch for their honesty, but she did know they had qualities of great love and perseverance within that family. “I'm not certain what kind of people they are,” Libby said, “but I think what the townspeople are doing is wrong. I don't think the Dobrescus should be shunned, especially not when they are battling terrible sickness and despair in the house. They don't deserve that.”

Her father sank into a kitchen chair, looking as weak as if she had punched him in the stomach. “
They
don't deserve this?
They
don't deserve what has happened to them?” he said, suddenly looking every one of his seventy years. “I am an old man. My entire life has been devoted to work. In the last forty-five years, I have taught thousands of students in exchange for a modest salary and the chance to tinker with my inventions. After years of saving, I scrimped together enough money to buy a house where my wife could be proud to raise her children. I spent years repairing that house with my own two hands.” Her father's voice started to wobble, but he would not stop speaking. “I have worked for everything
, everything
I have. I never cheated anyone or asked for something I was not entitled to. And one day, when my back was turned, a group of foreign vagabonds slid into my home and declared it theirs.”

He banged his fist on the table, rattling the cups and saucers. “What if the court says they are right? They have done
nothing
to earn that house. The old Cossack scribbled something on a piece of paper decades ago and that is supposed to wipe away all I worked for? All the years I worked and toiled and saved to buy that house?” To her horror, her father's eyes filled with tears. “Did none of my labor exist?” he asked in a thin voice. “I am an old man with pain in my joints. I have less and less energy to keep teaching hundreds of students every year, but I am the one who has been thrown out onto the street.”

He was openly weeping. When he set his hands on the table, they were shaking with palsy and his face was carved with lines of exhaustion. “I can't lose my house. I don't have enough time to start over again,” he said on a ragged breath. “I know it is not Christian of me, but I am thankful my neighbors are supporting me. It is comforting to know they see the injustice of what has happened and are using whatever small power they have to lend me support . . . because for the last four weeks, I have had no power at all.”

The tears subsided, but he leaned his forehead on his hand and stared at the floor. Libby rose to her feet and moved to stand behind her father's chair. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and hugged him. “Please don't make yourself sick over this,” she whispered. “I don't know how, but I am certain all of this will unfold in a way that will get you back into your house. It will only take a little time.”

One of her father's hands covered her own and squeezed it. “You are a good girl, Libby. I have often been disappointed in you, but that does not mean I do not appreciate your finer qualities.”

A smile tugged at the corner of her lips. Her father's compliments were as fleeting and rare as a hummingbird in the depths of winter, but she must accept these little gems whenever they occurred. His next words made her pause.

“I don't want you going back to that house. The Dobrescus are dangerous people and you are to keep away from them. If you love me, if you are
loyal
to me, you will stay away from them.”

Libby squeezed his shoulders, but carefully gave no reply.

The Dobrescus may have been dangerous people, but never had Libby seen two boys appreciate a jar of jam as fiercely as Andrei and Luke. Whatever chicanery she suspected of Michael or Lady Mirela, Libby was determined to see that those boys would enjoy the simple pleasure of another jar of jam. Besides, Libby pounced on any excuse she had to spend time with her niece, Tillie, and it was a perfect day to pick blackberries to make another batch of jam.