A-Splendid-Ruin(96)
It was what I’d hoped. “I told him I was bringing a friend.” I took his hand, nestling my cold fingers in his warm ones. “I admit I’ll feel better going to see Stephen Oelrichs if you’re with me. He’s a lawyer; perhaps he can help me get my inheritance back. And clear my name.”
Dante laughed. “You really don’t understand, do you? Once San Francisco society learns who you are, there won’t be anything for you to fear. They’d rather fling themselves into the ocean than accuse a Van Berckyl of murder—you can quote me on that. We’ll find out what Oelrichs wants, but whatever it is, I promise I’ll keep you as safe as I can. And that means splashing this news all over the Bulletin. By the day after tomorrow, everyone in San Francisco will know exactly who you really are. No one will dare to touch you with scurrilous rumors. Even I wouldn’t dare.”
“You? I don’t believe it.”
“I’d be run out of town.”
He was smiling. But there was something of regret in his relief and joy that checked my own, and I found myself wishing that David Emerson had not found me.
The oldest families in San Francisco, and the old money, as Goldie had once told me, were not on Nob Hill. First, they’d built on Rincon Hill, and then had spread elsewhere, many—like the Oelrichs—to Van Ness. The fire had reached Van Ness but had not crossed it, and even with the evident earthquake damage—the cracked and broken boulevard, ruptured watermains, crumbled chimneys—the residential parts had a peaceful, settled look with their shade trees and their stately homes with pillars and turrets and little of the ostentatiousness of Nob Hill.
The Oelrichs home had a genteel and reassuring solidity, no doubt accented by the fact that, from the outside, the only earthquake damage it seemed to have suffered was broken cornices, an off-balance turret already surrounded with scaffolding, and a tumbled stair, of which pieces had been carefully and neatly stacked beside it.
Stephen Oelrichs’s study too, unlike my uncle’s, had the deep, luxurious textures of old money. Worn, rich leathers and expensive carpets that looked as if they had been in place, exactly this way, for a hundred years, though San Francisco had not even existed as a city that long. An oil portrait of his father, whom Oelrichs looked very like, hung above a mantelpiece. Shelves of books, not a paper cover among them, and ones whose pages I was certain had all been cut, lined one wall. The room had the feel of having been lived in, of things purchased for beauty and utility instead of show, and with none of the frenzy that had marred my uncle’s rooms.
Which is to say that I felt comfortable, though I was acutely aware of how little I looked as if I belonged there. I was, after all, dressed in men’s clothing. Stephen Oelrichs did not seem the least taken aback by that, though he was obviously discomfited by Dante when I introduced him as a reporter for the Bulletin.
“I hope you aren’t here in a professional capacity, Mr. LaRosa.”
“I’m here as Miss Kimble’s friend,” Dante said easily, but firmly. “And to make sure she’s well treated, given that it seems to have been a problem in the past.”
“Indeed. Miss Kimble. Might I call you May? I feel we are to know one another quite well.”
“Are we?” I sat, as did Dante, when Oelrichs motioned to the facing chairs. “You appear to have weathered the earthquake well.”
“We’ve cleaned up quite a bit. Fortunately the house is sturdily built, but for the servants’ quarters in the back, which were badly damaged. Our troubles are slight compared to the rest of the city. I’d despaired of finding you in this chaos. I’ve been looking for you for weeks. Also, I feel I must offer my sincere apologies that I did not act on my first impulse.”
“What impulse was that?”
He smiled, that same charming smile he’d offered when I’d first met him at the Cliff House, smoothly assured. I remembered Goldie’s tension as she’d sat beside me, the set of her mouth. “The impulse to tell you to run screaming from the Sullivans.”
“I believe you wished me luck. And then, later, you told me to learn to swim.”
“Too little too late, I’m afraid. All I can say is that I didn’t know that you were a Van Berckyl until very recently.”
“Perhaps you could tell us how you know now,” Dante put in.
Stephen Oelrichs went to his desk and rifled through the papers there until he found what he was looking for. “Shortly after the earthquake, I received this.”
He handed it to me. It was a letter from a Peter Van Berckyl in New York City.
“Peter is a good friend of mine,” Stephen explained. “We went to school together, and he was my companion on my grand tour. As you can see there, Peter wrote to me inquiring about an inheritance received by an illegitimate daughter of his late cousin, Charles Van Berckyl. Charles was a bit of a black sheep. He kept his distance from the family. Went out west shortly after a scandal involving, well, your mother, I believe, which is where he died. Apparently, he never forgave his family for forcing him to abandon her.”
It was some consolation to know that she had mattered to him. My mother had called him honorable, and I supposed I would never know the entire story, or why she could so easily forgive him for leaving us. I didn’t think I could, but it was good to know that I agreed with my father on one thing: his sentiments regarding his family. My family. Really it was remarkable, given my bloodlines, that I’d turned out at all well.