The Summer of Sunshine and Margot(39)

Close to six o’clock, she got up and stretched. She was stiff from too much sitting, she thought. She wasn’t hungry enough to want dinner and reading a book was too much like what she’d been doing all day. Perhaps inspired by the maps she’d seen earlier, she grabbed the flashlight she’d brought from home and headed for the small staircase that led to the attic.

She’d only found the stairs by accident while she’d been looking for extra towels. She’d opened what she thought was a cupboard door in the hallway and had discovered the steep, narrow staircase that could almost pass for a ladder. She’d been too busy then to go snooping but now she had an entire evening free to poke around.

She turned on the light at the bottom of the stairs, then made sure she could get out if someone closed the door behind her. Edna and her crew were gone, Bianca was still with Wesley and Alec rarely ventured upstairs, so the odds of her getting locked in were unlikely but she wanted to be sure.

Once she confirmed the door opened from the inside, she scrambled up the stairs only to find herself in front of a locked door. She rattled the handle a couple of times in frustration.

“Not fair,” she murmured aloud, thinking she could go ask Alec for a key. Assuming he even knew where it was. She was about to turn around when she impulsively stretched up to run her fingers along the top of the door frame. There was plenty of dust and something that felt a lot like a key.

“Gotcha!”

She blew off the key and put it in the lock. The door opened easily.

The attic was dark and musty, the ambient temperature still warm from the sunny day. She clicked on her flashlight and used it to check for a light switch. She found one on the wall, about three feet from the door. She turned it on, then spun slowly to take in the room.

The attic space was large—probably covering the entire second floor, right up to Bianca’s room. There weren’t any windows but she saw small grates that would provide some kind of air circulation. Part of the open area was still framed, as if defining incredibly small rooms. For the monks. She would guess the attic would have been used as sleeping quarters for the monks.

There were stacks of old-fashioned school desks piled up against a wall. In one corner were boxes of old robes. She found a metal container filled with medical supplies, most of which were so old she had no idea what they were, and another tin box had a ledger containing neat columns of what the monastery had purchased from local farms from 1912 until 1921.

She spent about a half hour more exploring, then retraced her steps and went back to her room. She brought the ledger with her, thinking she would show it to Alec. While it didn’t qualify as an unknown ancient language, it was still a part of his home’s history.

Thinking of Alec made her remember the previous night. At first she’d been confused as to why he thought his mother couldn’t change. The more she learned about his childhood, the more she understood his reasoning. Her actions at the cocktail party had illustrated that he must have had some challenges with her when he’d been growing up.

She would imagine that his life of solitude and study was in direct reaction to his mother’s impulsiveness. Here Alec controlled all he surveyed. And yet he’d let Bianca move in for a couple of months and had helped find someone to work with her. Like most people, he was a mass of contradictions, but on him, those contradictions looked good.

She set the ledger on her dresser, then headed downstairs to make something for dinner. She briefly considered popping into Alec’s office and asking if he would like to join her. She’d enjoyed talking to him the previous night. She’d liked getting to know him better and the man was certainly easy to look at.

She paused on the bottom stair, not sure what to do. Her head pointed out that she was an employee of his mother’s and it was best if their lives were kept as separate as possible. Her heart was fairly silent on the matter, and her girl bits thought Alec had real potential.

Margot was a believer in the philosophy of When in doubt, don’t, so she headed purposefully for the kitchen, ignoring the wave of regret that washed over her. Her brain went into sanctimonious mode, pointing out that it wasn’t as if Alec had come looking for her, either. There hadn’t been a single sign from him that he saw her as anything other than another staff member. At which point Margot thought that maybe it was time to start working on integrating the various parts of her body into a single—

“Hello.”

Margot jumped and spun toward the voice. Bianca was sitting on a bar stool by the big island, a bowl of ice cream in front of her.

“You startled me,” Margot said, pressing a hand to her chest. “How was your day with Wesley?”

“Wonderful. I’ve been thinking about the formal dinner party you want to have. Well, let’s get it scheduled. The sooner the better.”

Margot took a seat at the island. Bianca looked as beautiful as ever. Her eyes were clear, her hair perfectly curled. She had on a silk blouse tucked into tight jeans. There was no hint of the slightly frantic almost-bitch she’d been the night before.

“There are some things we have to work on before the party,” she said carefully. “Last night didn’t go as smoothly as I’d hoped.”

Bianca dismissed her with a wave of her spoon. “Nonsense. It went perfectly. You said you were going to invite your sister and her little boy?”

“Connor is the child she takes care of. Sunshine is a nanny. I thought they could both come, along with the gentleman she works for. Declan. He designed the gardens here at the monastery.”