The Secret of Stavewood (Stavewood Saga Book 4) (2 page)

Two

          
 
I
n the soft twilight Louisa’s train wound through the countryside, making its way towards the setting sun. She watched the landscape evolving through the window. The tall grey structures and smokestacks of the city gave way to suburban backyards with lines of laundry blowing in the crisp spring wind. Then the greens of the farmlands stretched out in larger tracts of tilled earth furrowed over the rolling hillsides. She saw a farmer, shirtless in the sunlight, his arms muscled and strained from years of hard labor, driving his plow as he coaxed his mule across the fields. Sometimes the mist of the engine’s steam blew across her view and other times her perspective was crystal clear. Every sight was colored by her conflicting emotions. Louisa admitted to herself that she was eager to get home and yet was unhappy about leaving New York and Talbot behind. These sentiments had influenced her trip from the beginning and she wondered if she was using her mother’s story as an excuse to run away. If she had met
the
man, she thought, the one that she would finally bring home to meet the family, the one who would share her bed and her life, why was she so hesitant to commit herself to him?

       Louisa embraced the length of the journey. She needed to focus on the story she had set out to write. She wanted to feel what her mother had felt, to see the world passing by the train window the way Rebecca Elgerson had so many years ago. She let her own conflicting feelings drift away. Again and again she found herself going over the story in her mind, trying to recall all the details. She realized that, as a child, there were some parts she couldn’t have understood and other parts she had never even been told. Now she wanted to put it all together. She remembered that the tickets her father had sent to her mother had been exchanged for cheaper passage and her mother had made the journey in steerage on the ship and in the coach cars on the trains. She was only seventeen and had no money in her hand. Louisa decided to see the conditions for herself and asked the porter to direct her to the compartments at the back of the train.

      As she walked away from him he wondered why such a well-dressed young woman would want to go anywhere near that section.

      Louisa stepped carefully between the cars, through the dining coaches, where rich velvet drapes hung across the Pullman windows, their edges adorned in fringes of deep gold. She passed the sleepers where many of the curtains to the berths had already been pulled closed. When she reached the coach car she found the benches crowded with passengers.

      She did not go unnoticed. Louisa was striking, her dark hair contrasting with her fair complexion. She was tall and slender, dressed fashionably and expensively and she stood out as she stepped into the car.

      Here, the travelers were ragged and the densely packed car smelled of sour sweat and damp baby diapers. Louisa put her fingertips to her nose and surveyed the passengers.

      She took a step back and caught her breath. There were no velvet drapes hung here and these windows were open to relieve the oppressive heat, but instead, it only allowed the smoke and steam from the big engine to permeate the car. She looked at the crowd, their clothing in rags on thin bodies, their faces worn and dirty. Many of them stopped for a moment and looked up at her, frozen in curiosity as well. In Louisa’s mind there was a story in every face. She looked around the crowded car and imagined her gentle mother among these people, then turned and stepped from the compartment, closing the door behind her. Between the speeding cars cool air rushed up from the tracks beneath her and she stood gasping for a breath of fresh air.

      Back in her seat, Louisa recalled a time as a child when she had taken ill in the middle of the night and her mother had come to her.

      “Oh, Loo, honey. Let’s get you out of those nasty things.” She had stripped off the soiled nightgown and hurried to run a warm bath.

      Her mother rinsed her hair and dressed her in fresh nightclothes and Louisa remembered how beautiful she had looked. It was one of the few times she had seen her without her hair perfectly arranged and it tumbled in shiny dark waves over her shoulders. Her mother’s touch was kind and gentle. She smelled of honeysuckle and lavender. The way she saw her mother that night was a rare and important moment. It was the way her father saw her when they were alone, beautiful and soft and feminine. The following morning when she watched her father kissing her mother goodbye she had her first thoughts about falling in love. At every wedding or whenever she saw a couple looking into one another’s eyes she would recall how intimate and precious that feeling had been. She would always remember that night as the moment she discovered that love wasn’t a fairy tale, it was something you could touch and feel.

      At Stavewood there were bits and pieces of the story that Louisa wanted to see. She knew there was a photograph of her mother and there was the ad that she had answered. There may have been more keepsakes as well. She knew her father and was sure he would have saved them all tucked away in his comfortable study. Louisa smiled and pictured him there. His chair was so massive that she would sit in the great depths of it and not be able to bend her knees. The lamps would be lit and he would be reclining in that huge chair with his stocking feet upon the massive desk with sheets of paperwork in his hands.

      In the dim light of the carriage, Louisa made her way to her berth and prepared for bed. She had boarded this second train in Chicago and would reach Billington, Minnesota just before dawn. She would try to sleep. Louisa was anxious to get home. She donned her nightgown and lay back on the mattress, staring up at the flat surface just above her. Memories crowded her mind. She thought of her brothers and cousins and her niece and summer afternoons at the lake. They played games and made daring midnight raids on watermelon gardens. She chuckled to herself, recalling the mischief they had often gotten into together. Louisa drifted off with Stavewood clear in her mind.

Three

                
 
H
awk Bend Station, a squat, log building tucked into the wilderness, rushed by in a blur and Louisa felt the big locomotive slow. As it approached the station closest to her home the porter called out, “Elllllgersooonnn Miiiillllsss Staaaaation!”

      The quaint, wooden train stop had been built there when she was a child, when her father had expanded his massive mill operation. She was arriving far earlier than expected, before the workers and before the colossal saws would begin their deafening screams. Just as the sun was about to break over the horizon she walked the private path that led to the back entrance and the kitchen at Stavewood, bounded on either side by towering pines. She knew she would find her father there, in the big estate’s kitchen, alone with his enormous mug of coffee, sitting in a quiet moment with the soft light of dawn streaming through the windows over the big, stone sink. He’d be there before the cook, Birget, would rise and before her beautiful mother would emerge perfectly attired and ready to run her household. About that same time the earliest birds would sing out their morning calls and Timothy Elgerson would begin his day. Louisa was certain that, no matter what Mark’s letter had said about him slowing down, their father would still be up before dawn. Louisa was counting on it.

      She stepped carefully along the well-worn path in her leather heels, avoiding an exposed root in the dim light as a wide-eyed doe emerged from the woodland, tossed its head and crossed her path unhurriedly. The animals of Stavewood always seemed docile and familiar to her. Louisa realized it was because, like her as a child, they always felt safe. She watched the deer wander into the dense trees, the white tail like a teardrop disappearing into the shadows of the woodland. She caught sight of a lone man peering off into the distance.

      Louisa did not recognize him, but he was unmistakably a local man. He wore the softly faded chamois, snug trousers and heavy leather riding boots that were so popular with the locals. His shoulders were broad and his arms tanned and well-muscled. When he turned in her direction, he brushed aside sandy hair and lifted a large, weighty knapsack from the ground beside him.

      “Hello,” Louisa called out and stepped toward him.

      “Hello!” he called back to her, the deep timbre of his voice low in the quiet of the dawn. Louisa was not surprised that he seemed a bit startled.

      “Hi. Do you work for the Elgersons?” Louisa asked as he approached her. She took a step back. He was far taller than she had originally thought and his warm and friendly brown eyes met her own. His face was young and well-tanned with strongly chiseled features.

      “Oh, no,” he said. “I’m surveying, trying to catch the landscape in the early light. I’m a cartographer and I’m just taking a few measurements.” He smiled nervously and shifted the pack onto his broad back. “I’m sorry. I suppose you don’t know me or what that means.”

      Louisa felt a bit surprised finding a stranger on the property, yet she had been away a long time and no longer knew the business of the household. He smiled handsomely and she swallowed and cleared her throat.

     “Yes, I know what a cartographer is. It’s a fancy name for a mapmaker.” Louisa smiled though she felt somewhat unnerved by the way he looked into her eyes. “Do you have permission to be here on this land, making your maps?”

       “Oh, yes. Yes, I do,” he assured her. “I’m Luc Almquist.” He bowed slightly. “And you are…?”

      Louisa smiled. Charming, she thought, and rather handsome, for a Minnesota fellow. “Almquist?” She knew the name. “Isn’t your father a logger?”

      “Yeah.” He grinned boyishly and Louisa studied his face. “The log roller.”

      Louisa chuckled, feeling more at ease. “I didn’t recognize you. I guess it’s been a long time.”

      “I apologize, I don’t recognize you at all. That certainly surprises me, but I admit it’s the truth.”

      Louisa could not help but smile at the admiring look in his eye. He was very forthright and undeniably rugged, with well-muscled thighs and arms. “I am Louisa Elgerson,” she said. “Maybe if you picture me with long pigtails and as lanky as a newborn colt.”

      Luc scratched his head. “Maybe, not sure. I suppose back then I was distracted by your father and mine having a few rollicking fist fights.”

      Louisa laughed. “And do you log roll too?” she asked.

      “No, no, not since trying it once as a kid. Great disappointment to my dad and all.” He looked down at her luggage curiously. “You’ve been away?”

      “New York City,” she said, as he reached out a hand to help her with her bags. She shook her head and held onto her luggage.

      “I’m a mystery writer.”

      “Oh. Like Sherlock Holmes.” His face opened in a broad smile.

       Louisa felt the warmth of his grin. “Well, actually that would be Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but yes, like that.” She returned his smile.

      “I’ve read some of his tales. Are you any good?” He pushed the toe of his boot into the dirt absentmindedly.

      Louisa found his friendly smile and hint of shyness interesting. “I do alright. Maybe you should read one and decide for yourself.”

      “I might,” he looked her in the eye. “If there’s any loose ends I could tell you about them afterwards.”

      Louisa’s laugher floated lightly in the crisp morning air. “It’s been nice meeting you, Luc, and I do apologize, but I hope to catch my father before the entire household is awake, and I ought to go. Good luck making your maps.” She nodded and turned from him and resumed her walk along the path.

      “Sure,” he called to her. “I’ll get myself one of your books then. Do you use a pen name?”

      “Nope!” she said, back over her shoulder. “Why would I with a name like Elgerson?”

      “Louisa Elgerson,” he called out. “I’ll look forward to seeing you again!”