The Art of Inheriting Secrets
Barbara O'Neal
Spring
Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.
—M. F. K. Fisher
Chapter One
My first glimpse of Rosemere Priory came just before dusk, when the last of the day’s sunlight fingered the old stones a rosy gold. It was vast and rambling, bay upon bay of Elizabethan windows, with two crenellated towers pointing into an eggplant sky.
Everything I knew about my mother shattered in that instant. I recognized it, of course, from her fantastical paintings. I recognized the woods, too, and the owl that flapped its wings and flew out of an upper window and probably even the fox that dashed across the rutted road, its fat tail sailing behind it.
I simply believed that she’d made it all up.
My grief, still so raw only a month after her death, dug its fingers into my lungs. I peered through the window of the hired car as if she might appear.
My tidy, reserved English mother. She never spoke of her life before arriving in San Francisco in her twenties, where she met and married my father. Once I was born, she settled in to illustrate children’s books and create a series of exquisitely detailed paintings of a wild English wood, alternately seductive and threatening.
As the car slowed over a potholed, neglected drive, I saw where those paintings had been born. All these years, I believed that she’d fled some backward town in search of a better life, though now I didn’t know why I made that up.
“This is the house?” I asked the driver, a sixtysomething man in a black uniform, complete with a cap and a neat tie, who’d been hired by the solicitor to meet me at the airport.
“No mistaking it, is there?” he said and stopped the car.
We both stared at the vast mansion. Vines covered her face, wantonly crawling through the broken windowpanes. “How long since anyone lived here?”
He rubbed his chin. “Forty years or better, I’d say. When I was a boy, there were festivals and picnics on the grounds. All very grand.”
“What happened?”
“Now that’s the thing everybody’d like to know, miss. One day, it was all thriving and busy, and the next, the lot of them disappeared.”
“The lot of them?”
“The old lady died, as I recall. But her son and daughter went abroad and never came back.”
Son? I knew nothing about an uncle. A flutter of wings moved in my throat. “Do you remember them?”
“’Course. Lord Shaw, the Earl of Rosemere, was my age, though we had no dealings to speak of. Lady Caroline was a great beauty, but she kept to herself.”
Caroline. That would have been my mother.
Lady Caroline.
“We can head to town,” I said. “They’ll be expecting me.”
“Right.”
I found myself watching the house recede in the side mirror, imposing and impossibly huge. Ruined.
Mother, I thought, heart aching. Why did you hide from me all these years?
My mother’s solicitor had arranged for accommodations in the local village, Saint Ives Cross, which was locked up tight when we arrived at six p.m. Full dark had already engulfed it. In my jet-lagged, disconnected state, my only impression was of half-timbered second stories leaning over narrow lanes and pools of light falling on the pavement from the streetlights. A central square held an ancient stone marker, the indication of a medieval market town. I knew from an article that I’d written on the history of markets that it was called a butter cross, and something about knowing that grounded me a bit. The evening was damp and cold, but even so, I could smell earth and growth, even this early in the year, February.
The driver carried my bag into the hotel, and I followed behind him in a daze, trying to control the limp that sometimes still plagued me.
I found myself in a tiny lobby with an unmanned desk. The counter flowed directly into a pub, where a scattering of patrons stared at me openly, hands gripped around their pints. I gave a nod, but only one woman acknowledged it.
My driver gave me his card. “You give me a call if you need anything, Lady Shaw.”
I shook my head, wanting to protest the title. Behind me, a little rustle told me the people at the bar, three men and two women, had heard plainly enough. Flustered, I said, “Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.”
He tipped his hat. I focused on sliding the card firmly into my wallet, willing someone to appear at the desk to check me in before I fell over from exhaustion.
At last, a stout woman with short white hair shot through with steely streaks appeared. “Help you?”
“Yes. My name is Olivia Shaw. I believe Jonathan Haver made a reservation for me?”
She gave me a glare, took a key from a hook, and slapped it down on the counter. “Third floor. Up the stairs to the back there.”
I gripped my cane tightly. “Is there an elevator? I’m not able to navigate stairs easily.”
“Should have said in the reservation.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think to—”
“Humph.” It was an actual word. In my dizzy state, I had to bite my lip to avoid breaking into exhausted laughter. “Already the countess, are you?”
In my capacity as editor of a highly respected food magazine, I was used to travel and curt manners, but her rudeness seemed over the top. Taking a breath, I said, “Look, I’ve been traveling for nearly twenty-four hours, and stairs are a challenge for me at the moment.” Follow conciliatory with steel: that was my motto. “Do you have a room I can reach more easily, or shall I call my driver back and have him take me somewhere else?”