The Art of Inheriting Secrets(8)

“This is venison?” I asked and took a larger spoonful. “It’s amazing.”

“Thank you,” Rebecca said mildly. “Have you never had it?”

“Not like this. We don’t really eat it in the US.” I tasted again, mulled the flavors: red wine, garlic, bacon, and something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. “There’s a hint of sweetness. Not honey, I don’t think, or brown sugar.”

Tony chuckled. “She’ll never tell you her secrets.”

“Of course I will. Red currant jam.” She inclined her head. “Well done, actually. Are you a chef?”

“Food writer. Until I broke my leg, I was the editor at a food magazine. I mean, I still am, just on a leave of absence.”

“Editor,” Samir echoed. “Would we know it?”

“I don’t know.” He didn’t strike me as the foodie type, not to mention it was an American magazine. “Egg and Hen?”

His lips turned down in a quizzical expression. “Really.”

“Do you know it?”

“I do. My sister has a stack of them. She’s really into all that,” he said. “She runs the Indian restaurant in town.”

“Oh! I saw it this morning. It looks like a nice place. Upscale.”

“Yeah. She’s worked very hard. And she’ll be dying to meet you when I tell her.”

“I’ll have to check out her food. North Indian, South?”

“She’s created something new. She should tell you about it herself.” He returned his focus to the stew, eating with the gusto of a man who’d been doing hard physical work all morning. When he’d taken a sip of tea, he looked at me again. His lashes were remarkably thick, giving his eyes the same softness as the deer in my mother’s neighborhood. “It must be pretty exciting, a job like that.”

“Yeah.” My chest ached a little. “It’s a great job. I miss it.”

“But now,” Rebecca said, “you have this amazing new adventure, and you won’t have to work, will you?” Before I could say I couldn’t imagine a world without working, she said, “Go back, though. Why is it ridiculous to inherit?”

“I don’t know.” I paused, trying to bring my discomfort into focus. “The woman I knew as my mother was a painter, not an heiress. She lived in the same house my entire life. And”—I paused, my hands in my lap—“she never told me about any of this. There must have been a reason. But . . .”

“But what?”

“I don’t know. I guess maybe that’s what I need to find out before I make any decisions.”

Tony said, “It’s cursed, you know.”

“Of course it is,” Rebecca said. “All old English houses are cursed.”

“This is worse. Real. The Rosemere men die violent deaths,” Tony said, glowering from below heavy brows. “Murder, war, suicide. Hard to deny it.”

I thought of my mother running to America. “What about the women?”

“They’re fine. Just the men.”

“Why the curse?” I asked.

Samir said, “It was the curse of a village girl who fell in love with a monk when it was a priory. She’s said to haunt the ruins of the church. Or the well, depending on who tells it.”

Rebecca said, “I’ve never heard that. How did you know it?”

“My grandmother was part of the household there when the old countess came back from India.” Samir looked at me. “Your grandmother.”

My grandmother. The sense of my life as a box of puzzle pieces struck me again. I met his open, somehow cheerful gaze. “What else do you know?”

“A bit. My father knows more.” He broke a hearty chunk of bread and dipped it in his bowl, holding it in long fingers as he added, “If the rain stops, I’ll drive you up to the house after lunch, and you can look around. If you like.”

“Sam, you surprise me!” Rebecca said. “A man of hidden depths.”

He gave her a half shrug, and I thought there was something droll in a slight lift of his eyebrows as he stirred the stew. “You see what you wanna see,” he said.

It made me think of a cartoon I’d loved as a child, The Point. “In the Pointless Forest,” I said without thinking and tried to whistle the song “Me and My Arrow.”

He looked at me, something new in his expression. “This is the town, and these are the people.”

I wanted to give him a high five. “My dog’s name was Arrow.”

“Bit obvious, isn’t it?”

I laughed. “I suppose. It’s just easier than Oblio. And he did have a very pointed nose.”

“Point made,” he said without smiling but shot me a sideways look to see if I got it.

I laughed.

“Sam,” Rebecca said. “More stew?”

“Yes, please.”





Chapter Three

As if it wanted to accommodate me, the rain did stop after lunch. Rebecca and I drove up in her Range Rover while Tony and Samir followed in Tony’s work truck. Under other circumstances, the distance would have been walkable, if a little steep, on a road that wound along the fields and climbed the hill. Today it was too muddy.