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“I just realized that I’ve never found any of them since they died.” He tapped the cover. “Until this.” He looked around at the trunks of records. “What’s become of all the others?”
“Perhaps she destroyed them?”
“Why would she do that?”
“Well, if they were diaries, they might be private.”
A spark lit his dark eyes. He grasped the cover.
“Perhaps we shouldn’t read it?”
He gave her an incredulous look and opened the notebook, flipped a few pages, frowned.
Penelope tried to restrain her curiosity and failed. “Is it a diary?”
“I haven’t the least idea.” He handed it over.
The pages were full. Lines of text covered them, written in a strong, distinctive hand. But there was no clear narrative. The words were more like notes, random jottings. There were scraps of sentences listing birds and weather and vegetation, little drawings in the margin, French phrases, whole lines of tiny doodles. None was unusual in itself; the odd thing was that they went on and on. Penelope flipped a few pages. The whole notebook was full of this…gibberish, remarkably repetitive. “There are dates and places,” she said, latching on to something she could identify. “This one is headed Jamaica.”
Whitfield bent over her shoulder. She could feel his breath on her cheek. “It’s so disjointed.”
Penelope nodded. “I wonder what she meant by it?”
Daniel turned away. “You will never know.” He set his jaw. “As usual,” he muttered.
But she heard him. “Usual?”
“My mother was not a forthcoming person. She didn’t speak about…anything really.” Would he never learn? Daniel wondered. She’d had nothing to say to him in life. Why would death be different?
“It’s certainly odd.” Miss Pendleton was practically rubbing her hands together. Clearly, she loved a puzzle. “I wonder if there are more.”
They checked the other trunks and found eight similar notebooks, hidden in the same way and equally cryptic. When they were sure they had them all, they took the pile to the estate office.
“Fascinating,” said Daniel’s lovely companion. They sat side by side at the desk looking over their finds.
He’d never met anyone who was more so.
“There are patterns.” Miss Pendleton glanced from one notebook to another. “Repeated phrases, but I can’t make any sense of them.” She closed the slim books and set them aside. “We must keep working, as tempting as these are.”
Tempting? Daniel hadn’t fully understood the meaning of the word until he spent so much time with her. He longed to fold her in his arms. He wanted to keep her from all harm. Which was impossible, of course—the folding and the keeping. Yet he could think of little else.
“Frithgerd is full of mysteries,” she said.
“Like Rose Cottage.”
“Precisely. You are right to keep me on track.”
“I…to keep you?”
“That is the advantage of a team.”
Her smile ravished him. He hated to think of her in danger.
“Whatisthe matter?” she said.
“Matter?”
“You’ve been looking at me oddly today. And…hovering.”
