Toward the Sunrise (18 page)

It was dark now, and Quentin braced himself for the long night ahead. It seemed that ever since his wife’s death eight years ago, his life had become an endless night of darkness and despair, waiting for a dawn that never came. In a perfect world, he could promise Pieter that their lives would be filled with joy and sunlight, but Quentin had long since given up believing it could ever be so.

By morning, Quentin was exhausted. During the night, Pieter had startled awake at every creak made by the old house. Quentin had tried to explain the effect cooling temperatures had on the expansion and contraction of building materials, but Pieter suspected it was ghosts or burglars. And just when they’d finally settled into a restless sleep, a thunderstorm had rolled through the valley, keeping them both awake until sunrise.

Thunder was one of the many things that terrified Pieter. “If you look in a mirror while it’s thundering, you’ll see a ghost,” Pieter had said in a trembling voice. “Grandpa said so.”

Quentin was bleary-eyed and exhausted as he dragged himself from bed. Pieter had finally slipped into a restless sleep, but Quentin was eager to explore Dierenpark.

The house was comfortable despite its imposing size. As an architect, he could immediately spot the places where some daring ancestor had tacked on a room or wing. The seventeenth-century rooms had low, wood-beamed ceilings and a coziness that came with their smaller dimensions. The rooms added in the eighteenth century had a stiff formality, with plaster walls, high ceilings, and an imposing scale. At some point, an orangery had been attached to the house, and the abundant glass panels captured the sun and regulated the heat to permit growing tropical plants and orchids.

As much as Quentin resented the staff who had been profiting off his family’s tragedies, he couldn’t fault them for the care of the house, for the interior was in pristine condition. The bookshelves were filled with antique volumes, their leather bindings cleaned and oiled. The china cabinets displayed silver and crystal, all polished and in gleaming condition. The desk in the library was filled with paperwork that had been untouched for the past sixty years.

After he’d explored most of the ground floor, it was obvious the best place to work was going to be the large parlor adjacent to the kitchen. It was an older room with a low-beamed ceiling and a few settees and tables scattered about. A row of diamond-paned windows overlooked the river. The glass was slightly rippled, as was common of glass from the seventeenth century. The slight distortion made the river below seem to sparkle even more in the early-morning light.

Mr. Gilroy helped him lay out drafting paper on one of the tables close to the window, and he quickly sank into the day’s work. He
bid Mr. Gilroy to send Pieter to him as soon as the boy had dressed for the day.

“Are you sure you want Pieter to help with this?” Mr. Gilroy asked, his tone the embodiment of civility. “He seems a little young to learn the art of demolition.”

“It is important for Pieter to see me at work,” he said. Especially since Quentin had spent so much of the past year trapped in a convalescent hospital like a useless cripple. “I won’t allow my son to join the class of the idle rich. He can chose any profession he wishes, except a life of leisure.”

Despite his illness, Quentin had always been capable of gainful employment as an architect. He could no longer get out into the field to supervise construction, but he had been capable of drafting plans from his sickbed. Now that he was walking again, he’d mentor Pieter in the principles of architecture and scientific reasoning for as long as he could.

He took a sip of lousy coffee. None of them knew how to operate the percolating apparatus in the kitchen, and although Mr. Gilroy eventually got the contraption to work, bitter coffee grounds infused every sip. He took another taste, sucking on the grounds and trying not to laugh. How could two intelligent men be defeated by the simple task of brewing coffee?

A sudden peal of bells shattered the quiet of the morning, making him choke on the coffee. The bells came from a few feet behind him, buried somewhere in the walls. A doorbell? Mr. Gilroy looked equally startled but headed to the front door to check.

“The Vandermarks are not at home,” he heard Mr. Gilroy’s polite voice intone to whoever had the gall to ring their bell at eight o’clock in the morning. With his refined British accent, John Gilroy sounded proper enough to be butler to the queen.

“I don’t need to see the Vandermarks,” a sweet voice said. “I just need to pop up onto the roof for a few minutes.”

It was the voice of the blond woman from yesterday. As much as she irritated him, he couldn’t deny that she was probably the prettiest girl he’d ever seen on either side of the Atlantic. With flaxen blond hair and deep blue eyes, she looked like she ought to be flouncing through an alpine meadow in a flowy white blouse with a lace-up bodice. She had a heart-shaped face and a slim little nose and was
the closest thing to an angel he’d ever seen. He’d been an angry brute yesterday, but nothing he’d said seemed to fluster her.

“You’d better talk to Mr. Vandermark about that,” Mr. Gilroy said. “He was quite insistent that the household staff had been severed from employment.”

“But I’m not part of the household staff. I work for the government. And I need to get onto the roof.”

“Gilroy, send her back here!” Quentin hollered from his seat at the table.

A moment later she arrived, sadly minus the charming alpine costume but looking every bit as lovely in a simple gown with her hair in a casual braid worn over one shoulder. It annoyed him to see her looking so pretty first thing in the morning.

“Miss van Riijn, correct?”

“Yes, but everyone calls me Sophie.”

“Fine. You’re fired, Sophie.”

Smiling, she set a covered basket on the table. “I brought some fresh scones. They’re almond.”

“Excellent. Leave the scones, but you’re still fired.” It aggravated him that she found his comment amusing.

“But I’ve never worked for you, so you can’t really fire me, can you?” She drifted closer to the table, gazing through the window with a wistful expression on her face. “I always love this time of day. I like to stand at this exact spot, where I can see the goldfinches playing in the birch trees while I drink a cup of coffee and watch the sun rise. It is a perfect place to gather my thoughts and count my blessings.”

He fought not to roll his eyes. “Miss van Riijn, please be aware that I am violently allergic to your brand of doe-eyed sentimentality. That much sugary optimism spilled into the atmosphere this early in the morning is liable to render us all comatose.”

She cocked her head at a charming angle. “I don’t understand what you just said, but I think it was an insult. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a scone?”

He schooled his face into an impassive mask. It took a barrel of gall to waltz in here after being fired yesterday, and yet she’d slipped past Mr. Gilroy with ease and kept him nattering like a magpie. She was either a master of subversive tactics or was exactly what she appeared to be: a lone, naïve daisy standing in a field, begging to be shot for target practice. He normally did not feel much sympathy for
people who exuded bottomless good cheer, but there was something oddly attractive about her. Not that he would let it soften him.

“I’m still waiting for you to explain your entirely unwelcome visit.”

“I need to get up onto the roof to check the weather station. I take measurements every morning, and there was a storm last night, so it’s especially important for me to check the rain gauge right away.”

“A weather station? Explain yourself.”

“It’s very exciting,” Sophie said. “The government has a new agency called the Weather Bureau, and they’ve set up thousands of stations all across the country where volunteers keep track of the climate. After I take the readings, I telegraph the information to Washington, where scientists chart all the data onto huge maps and try to predict the weather. They’ve gotten very good at alerting people when trouble is on the horizon.”

Admirable, but he was still peeved this had been taking place on Vandermark property without their permission.

“What exactly is up on my roof?”

For the first time, she had the good sense to look a little apprehensive. “Just a metal shed to keep the equipment dry and protected from the wind. There’s a barometer, a thermometer, weather vane, and a rain gauge. I’ll just step upstairs and be a few moments.”

“You’ll do no such thing, other than make arrangements to get that equipment off my roof. It was presumptuous of you to set up a private business in my house.”

“But it’s not a business, I’m a volunteer. There are three thousand weather stations in this country and the government can’t afford to pay us, so we do it for free.”

“Then you’re an idiot. If the government valued your work, they’d find a way to pay for it. I don’t want you tromping through my house every morning, so you’ll have to find another place to work your acts of goodness and mercy. Now get out of here. You’re trespassing.”

A blush stained her cheeks, a sign he was getting to her, which was good. She had participated in a gross misuse of his property and ought to feel at least a little shame.

Instead, it appeared she was ready to challenge him.

“Sir, I have been coming to this house to take climate readings for the past nine years. I have come every single morning without fail. Through ice storms and floods. On every Easter and every Christmas. I came when I had influenza and could barely walk a straight line.
I came on the day my mother died and on the day she was buried.” Her voice wobbled a little, but instead of dissolving in tears, she straightened her spine and got stronger.

“Maybe some people don’t understand loyalty,” she continued, “but there are thousands of farmers and sailors who need me to take those measurements and get the data to Washington. They depend on accurate weather forecasts based on something more than irrational and superstitious guesswork. Our predictions are based on a solid foundation of scientific fact. I won’t let a rich, privileged outsider dissuade me from that duty.”

Quentin didn’t move a muscle. Didn’t let a hint of emotion show on his face. He stared at her until she lost a little starch and started to fidget.

“Go upstairs and take your measurements,” he said quietly.

The way she sucked in a quick little breath indicated she was surprised, but she shouldn’t be. If she knew the first thing about him, it was that his entire life was devoted to the triumph of science over superstition and quackery. He knew very little about the Weather Bureau, but if the men in Washington were basing their findings on real data rather than superstition, he would support it.

“Go on,” he prodded.

She flashed him a little smile and darted for the hallway. He clenched his fist, irritated that her smile appealed to him. A girl like Sophie van Riijn probably had healthy young men all over the village lining up for her affections. The last thing she’d welcome was a crippled, embittered recluse who couldn’t stand on his own two feet without the aid of a cane.

The moment the door closed behind her, he glanced at Mr. Gilroy. “Follow her. Find out what’s up there.”

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