Page 32 of Mistress of Misfortune

“We will give you the room.” The colonel came to Meredith and offered her his arm, and escorted her out before closing the doors. “They will likely need some time. I see you are mostly recovered from the incident at the ball. What happened has been much on my mind.”

“Think nothing of it,” she begged. “I daresay it helped more than it hurt.”

Thorne frowned. “As you wish. Would you care for some tea?”

If this was to be her last visit to Dredthorne, she wanted to make the most of it.

“I wonder if instead I might look at one of Mr. Emerson’s journals.” Meredith gestured toward the hidden library. “If you do not object, that is. I have been very curious about them.”

Thorne nodded, and walked with her into the dining room. “While removing the other books Harshad found the bulk of the journals are quite firmly wedged into the space, so it will take time to extract them. I have not had time to inspect those he managed to extricate. I cannot guarantee their contents will be suitable for a young lady to read.”

“I am not easily shocked.” After last night, she doubted she ever would be again.

He took a lamp from the table and entered the hidden library with her, where a small stack of journals sat on the desk. “Choose as you like.”

Meredith took a journal from the center of the pile. When she held it up to the lamplight and opened the cover she smiled at a sketch of flowers on the first page. She showed it to Thorne. “It seems Mr. Emerson was something of an artist himself.”

“Hopefully he wrote about gardening,” the colonel said as they emerged from the library and left the dining room. He looked up as the sound of hammering came from an upper floor. “I must go and speak to the carpenter about a delivery.”

Meredith nodded, and went past the still-closed doors of the reception room into the sitting room. She couldn’t resist looking in at Thorne’s study, and decided the colonel would not mind her use of it. Curling up in one of his large leather chairs, she sighed and glanced at the journal. “Well, Mr. Emerson, we are alone at last.”

Meredith opened the front cover and admired the sketch again before she turned the page. The first entry, which appeared to be written in a hasty manner, had no date.

Every day I awake to the stillness and listen for her; every night I enter my chambers expecting her there waiting. Sometimes I think I can still smell her sweet scent on my pillow in the morning, as if her ghost comes to lay with me when I sleep. Why did I continue to build a mansion for a dead wife? Have I finally gone mad?

“Poor man.”Meredith gnawed at her lower lip as she turned the page to find a sketch of an older woman with kind eyes surrounded by blooming roses.

On the facing page, Emerson Thorne had written more.

She is everything I see and smell and think and dream now, but the pain ebbs with each new dawn. I have done right to come here; more flowers appear in the garden each day, as if to keep me company. I think she may be sending them to me from Heaven.

“How lovely.”She settled back to continue reading, and sighed as the next pages described in detail every bloom the old man saw, with detailed sketches of each. He wrote under them the names he knew, but then he began giving them more fanciful titles and wrote of what he regarded as their personalities.

When it is quiet, Frost Rose peeks at me through the bed of new violets. Her face is all white flounces and dewy lace, and in her center, a purely golden heart. She seems to be waiting for me to appear with my tea every morning, and we are good company together.

Prince Hyacinth thrusts his pikes of blue and purple bells toward the heavens, and his scent is as mighty as his colors. Was his namesake killed by the great god Apollo, as myth would have it? I know no bloom as bold or commanding.

And then the crimson trumpets of Harlot Hollyhock draw my eye. She is all crimson in her gaudy display, almost taunting as she reminds me that I will never again know the joy of passion. I would hate her, were she not so correct in how she judges me.

I stay longer and longer in the gardens each day, and soon I think I must bring some of the flowers into the house with me, and plant them about my bed, that I may sleep and dream of my lost beloved.

To the next page a pressed,dried rose had been fixed, so ancient now it began to crumble the moment Meredith exposed the page. She quickly turned it over to find a very different passage written in a bold, slashing hand.

He took her from me, but I cannot prove it. I only know it in my heart, as surely as I know his rage at being denied his prize. I saw him yesterday in the village, and the smirk of satisfaction he gave me told all. I went directly to the magistrate, but he insists grief has addled me. He will not believe that my wife was murdered by that gloating villain. They are good friends, so I know he is protecting him.

What am I to do without recourse? I dare not seek satisfaction by challenging him, for he is renowned for his prowess with the sword. Even if I were fortunate enough to land a lethal blow before he could slay me, I have heard the whispers among the servants. His family has sworn themselves my enemies. They should never allow me to live.

I must take solace from being the means of his ruination.

Appalled by the disturbing confession,Meredith quickly turned the page, only to find it had been torn out. What followed that were pages of plans for Dredthorne Hall’s gardens, written in dull, dry terms with no further mention of the terrible crime Emerson Thorne had suspected, or the name of the man he blamed for murdering his wife.

She could show this to her cousin and the colonel, but what could be done? If the lady had been murdered a century past, then her killer would no longer live. Perhaps this was what founded that dreadful legend about the Thorne family curse.

“Here you are,” Lucetta said as she came into the study, her face slightly flushed and her tone fraught with agitation. “I have finished bickering with my dear brother, who is reassured I am not casting myself to the wolves here. Other matters, well, they have resolved themselves. Shall we have some tea before we begin the work?”

“I would like that.” Meredith took the journal and placed it on Thorne’s desk. Since the entry involved his ancestor, he would have to decide who, if anyone, should know about it.

* * *