6
THE NEXT WEEK WAS EXHILARATING as Sophie undertook her first professional job, tutoring Pieter and cooking for the Vandermark household. Although she had yet to figure out a way to get Emil re-hired, Florence had returned to her position as housekeeper, a blessing considering the amount of food these men devoured at every meal. It was hard not to be flattered by the enthusiasm they showed as they consumed the meals she set before them each day.
There was nothing magical about her cooking, but she loved sharing the recipes that had been handed down through generations of her family. She used the same roast duckling recipe her grandmother once cooked for her father. As she seasoned the cherry sauce with a dash of cider, she liked to imagine her grandmother looking on with approval. As she rolled out dough to make Dutch cookies, she imagined countless generations of housewives back in the old country, pleased to see their recipes had been remembered and carried all the way to the New World. Cooking these recipes was harkening back to a collective memory, passed down from mother to daughter for centuries, then shared by their families gathered around the table. Perhaps someday she would have daughters and granddaughters who would make and serve her own recipes. Food was more than just a combination of starches and proteins to fuel the body. It was comfort and celebration and joy.
Collins, the scariest of the bodyguards because he had a set of frightening metal teeth instead of real ones, went into town daily to fetch groceries. When he laid a slab of pork shoulder on the wooden counter, she dared to ask the question she had been fearing.
“Mr. Collins, are you able to eat something like pork with those teeth? If you need me to prepare something softer . . .”
The smile that spread across his face was a little chilling, as it exposed plenty of the shining metal. “No baby food for me, ma’am. But thank you for asking.”
She wasn’t quite so terrified of him after that. As the aromas of simmering chowders, meat, and baking bread permeated the house, it was secretly satisfying to watch each member of the household drift past the kitchen, surreptitiously peeking at the dishes as they emerged from the oven. Collins even politely asked for a cookie.
But Mr. Vandermark had not softened in the least. She couldn’t understand why, but he seemed to actively dislike her. Whenever she entered a room, he made an excuse to leave it. On the few occasions they spoke, he consistently had something rude to say.
But no matter how frustrating his father, working with Pieter was a joy. He smiled more when she was near. He laughed and asked questions, losing the timid streak that clung to him at other times. Each morning they went up to the roof to gather climate data while Sophie explained the principles of temperature and humidity, how heat affected rainfall, and what caused the winds to shift. After the first few days, Sophie let Pieter take the measurements while she carefully looked over his shoulder to ensure he was reading the thermometers and gauges correctly.
“Excellent,” Sophie murmured in approval the day Pieter completed an entire set of readings with no help from her at all. “Your father will be so impressed at how quickly you’re catching on.”
Pieter closed the front cover on the case protecting the thermometer, taking an unusually long time as he fastened the latch. “I’m always afraid I’m going to make a mistake. I never do anything right.”
It hurt to see a young child already riddled with such crippling anxiety. It didn’t help that Quentin constantly berated him, but all Sophie could do was try to give the boy a few tools to cope with it.
“Being young and afraid is a normal part of life,” she said gently. “It doesn’t feel good, but I don’t suppose a tulip bulb feels good once it’s buried in the cold, dark soil . . . but it works out in the end, doesn’t it? When the time is right, the tulip will grow to its full potential. It obeys the rules of science, just like your father always talks about. Maybe right now you are going through a difficult time, just like the tulip bulbs, but you’ll be okay. Just have a little faith.”
Pieter fiddled with a button on his shirt and chewed on his lip. She could tell by the way his face was screwed up that he was wrestling with a question, and she waited patiently while he searched for the words.
“Aren’t you afraid of my father?” he finally asked.
She was, but it would be cruel to admit it. And the anxiety in the boy’s voice was heartbreaking.
“Why? Are you afraid of him?”
Pieter nodded. “He’s mad all the time. I can’t ever do anything to make him happy.”
It was impossible for one person to make someone else happy, especially someone as grim as Quentin Vandermark. Pieter was a sensitive boy, and it was crushing that he blamed himself for his father’s surliness.
“You aren’t to blame for your father’s unhappiness, Pieter, and there is nothing wrong with being a little worried or afraid every now and then. It’s a normal part of life.”
She had been warned not to proselytize to Pieter, and she would honor that agreement, but it didn’t preclude her from talking about her own faith. “I was raised to believe that Jesus is with me always, even though I can’t see or touch him. I can feel him in my heart, and he’s never led me wrong.” She hunkered down so she could see him better, took his hand, and smiled into his eyes. “I believe he’s looking out for you too, Pieter,” she whispered.
To her surprise, Pieter launched himself at her, hugging her with all the strength in his spindly arms. “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered, rocking him gently.
“Did you know a bunch of bad men kidnapped me last year?” he asked in a muffled voice.
“I heard about it.”
“I was so scared, and I prayed the whole time. I don’t even know how to pray, but I just kept thinking, please, please, please . . . someone help me and I promise to be good forever. I don’t know who I was talking to, but maybe it was Jesus.”
“Maybe,” Sophie said with a gentle smile. It wasn’t right this boy was being deprived of a religious faith, but if she directly countermanded Quentin’s orders, she’d be shown the door as abruptly as the unfortunate governess, and then she’d never see Pieter again. Her heart urged patience, and to keep teaching Pieter by example.
She had time. Quentin had said it would take a month to create a detailed floorplan of the house, complete with measurements for the depth and density of the walls, the strength of the structural supports, and the dimensions of each room. He filled pages with mathematical equations to determine the extent of dynamite needed to bring down the walls. Most ominously, he had begun drawing large X’s on support columns, and circles where he wanted Collins to begin drilling holes in the walls. As soon as his plan was complete, sticks of dynamite would be inserted into those holes, and then Dierenpark would be demolished.
It had been ten days since the Vandermarks had returned, and the sight of those X’s and circles drawn on the walls chilled her. The only real hope she had was figuring out why Nickolaas Vandermark wanted the house destroyed, and she still didn’t even know if the man was on the American continent. Unless she could somehow persuade the eccentric old millionaire to spare Dierenpark, Quentin intended to demolish a rare treasure.
Sophie returned to the hotel every evening as soon as dinner was on the table at Dierenpark. It made for a long day, but her father had been scandalized at the prospect of his innocent daughter sleeping in a household of nine men with only an old woman as chaperone, so she still made the journey home each night.
This evening, she sat at the hotel’s kitchen work table, decorating Dutch gevulde koeken, an Old World recipe for almond cookies passed down through generations of Sophie’s family. Marten Graaf, her childhood sweetheart and former fiancé, kept her company. Marten still had a crippling weakness for her gevulde koeken, and whenever he was in town she sent him back to the city with a large tin of freshly baked cookies.
Their ongoing friendship seemed strange to many people in the village, but not to Sophie. Marten had been her fondest friend since childhood, and despite a difficult few years following his abandonment, they were friends again. Sometimes she sensed he regretted jilting her, but Sophie would never take him back. She had grown into a woman, while Marten still seemed trapped in his impetuous, carefree youth. He seemed such a pale man compared to Quentin Vandermark.
Where had that thought come from? Quentin was a bad-tempered man with no faith, no manners, and a cynical streak wider than the Hudson River. Aside from intelligence and a sense of humor, he had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. She couldn’t even credit him with being a good father. She didn’t doubt that Quentin loved his son, but he was depriving Pieter of the comfort the boy needed so desperately.
“Do you want a raspberry or blueberry topping?” she asked Marten. She had a jar of each from canning preserves last weekend, and it would take only a few moments to put a dollop on each cookie.
“Can I have both?” Marten asked with his typical audacity.
The back door to the kitchen banged open and her father clomped inside, a tower of boxes balanced in his arms.
“Marten, I need you to look the other way,” Jasper said, dumping the boxes on the wooden countertop with a thump. The way her father’s hand covered the label on the box closest to Marten immediately put Sophie on alert.
“Literally or figuratively?” Marten asked as he leaned in for a closer look. Her father scooted the boxes to the far side of the table.
“I need you to literally leave this kitchen before I figuratively annihilate Quentin Vandermark.”
Sophie held her breath. The way her father covered the labels on the boxes indicated he was up to no good, but if he had a plan to save Dierenpark, she wished Marten would leave quickly. She scooped the still-cooling cookies into a tin and pressed them into his hand.
“I’ll have blueberry gevulde koeken next time you visit.”
The moment Marten was out the door, she whirled to face her father. “What are you doing?”
“I’ve already searched through all the court records and documents relating to the title of that house,” her father said. “I’ve spent the past week looking for anything that would call their ownership of the house into question. I even consulted with descendants of the local Lanape Indian tribe to see if I could prove the original Vandermarks cheated them out of the land.”
“And?” Sophie asked.
“Adrien Vandermark paid a princely sum for it back in 1635. Which was a shame. Most of the early Dutch settlers bargained with glass beads for huge chunks of land, while Adrien paid in gold, along with bolts of cloth and some iron cooking equipment. One of the Lanape elders still had a kettle that was said to be from Adrien Vandermark.”
This gave Sophie pause. Adrien Vandermark was known to be a friend to the Indians, and yet only five years after he arrived he was killed by an Algonquin raiding party that swept down from the north. It was his brother Caleb who ultimately created the Vandermark legacy and fortune in New Holland.
“Nothing in the courthouse archives will help us,” her father continued, “but the Vandermarks had a personal vault stored in the basement of the bank on Main Street.”
“Like a safe deposit box?”
“Precisely. They didn’t call them such back when Karl Vandermark established it, but that’s what it is, and these boxes are what I found inside the vault.”
“Father! You can’t poke through their safe deposit box.”
“Why not? It’s been abandoned for sixty years. I don’t intend to steal anything; I just need to see if there is something of interest here. Why else would Karl Vandermark have locked up these boxes?”
She could think of plenty of things he’d want secured in a safe place. Bars of gold? Antiques from the Old World? People as rich as the Vandermarks surely didn’t store all their wealth in one place, and there could be any number of curiosities stored in those boxes. She didn’t know how her father had gotten the key to that bank vault, but the fact that he made Marten leave the room was a sure sign it wasn’t aboveboard. She shouldn’t have anything to do with this, but as he lifted the lid off the first box, it was impossible not to peek.
Old papers.
The same with the next box and the next. On some level, Sophie was disappointed not to see golden Spanish doubloons or a stash of pirate treasure, but her father seemed delighted.
“Never underestimate the power of a paper trail,” he said with relish as he lifted the first set of documents from a box. They were loose pages written in the spindly handwriting of the eighteenth century.
Paper trails might fascinate a lawyer, but Sophie just wanted to save Dierenpark, and it was going to take more than old pieces of paper to do it. It was going to require figuring out the strange, hidden, and deeply complex attitudes of Quentin and Nickolaas Vandermark, and given Quentin’s determination to avoid her, she still didn’t know how to accomplish it.
Sophie wished that dealing with Quentin Vandermark were as easy as dealing with the twenty thousand honeybees that lived in the eight-frame beehives on a patch of land at Dierenpark. She had no idea who first built the hives, but they seemed to have been here forever, tended by generations of Broeders, who had served as groundskeepers at Dierenpark for as far back as anyone could remember.
The groundskeeper’s cabin was the first structure at Dierenpark, built by the original Vandermark brothers in 1635. Caleb Vandermark soon began building the main house, eventually turning the cabin over to the groundskeeper. Until last week when Quentin had fired Emil, members of the Broeder family had lived in that cabin for centuries. Emil lacked the patience for beekeeping, so Sophie had taken over the task years ago.
Beekeeping required care to establish a mutually beneficial relationship, and over the years it seemed the honeybees had become accustomed to her. She never dropped her guard around the bees and always treated them with the respect they deserved, and in return, they supplied Dierenpark with golden, sweet honey.
Complete concentration was needed to extract the honey, and she welcomed the chance to take her mind off the questionably obtained Vandermark documents her father thought might be the key to saving Dierenpark. While her father might be willing to wade into the legal quagmire, Sophie wished she could merely find a way to live peaceably alongside the Vandermarks, much like she had learned to do with the bees.
Wearing a gauzy veil to cover her face, she waved a smoker beneath the hives to lull the bees into complacency. It was a delicate task to lift each frame and drain the golden sweetness from the honeycomb, but she soon had a small bucket of honey still warm from the hive.
As she approached the mansion with her honey, she spotted Quentin sitting on the front steps of the house, peering into a small mirror while he dragged a razor across his soapy face. It was a little unnerving to see a man at such an intimate moment.
“What were you doing back in the woods?” he asked, distrust heavy in his voice.
“Gathering a bit of honey. We’ve got a couple of eight-frame beehives behind the juniper trees.”
“Bees?” he asked. “You’ve been harboring a colony of dangerous bees on my property without permission?”
She supposed it was natural for people to fear things they didn’t understand, but the alarm in his voice made her worry he’d try to dispose of the hives. “Honeybees are a wonderful blessing,” she said calmly. “If you treat them gently and with respect, they are usually harmless. And look around you! None of the apple trees, the cherries, the roses, or the herb gardens could propagate without the cooperation of the bees. They are one of the reasons the plants at Dierenpark have always been so abundantly healthy. And their honey is divine.”
“Miss van Riijn,” he said tightly, “do you actually believe that if you smile for the bees they will not sting you? That you can appease them with the force of your sweetness and light?”
He was mocking her, but yes, she actually did believe it was possible to live in harmony with the bees. “I usually say ‘good morning’ to them whenever I open up a hive,” she admitted. “But I’m not stupid about it. I put them in a drowsy mood by waving a smoker beneath the box for a few minutes. I’ve been doing it for years.”
“And you’ve never been stung?”
She shrugged. “I’ve been stung a few times, but I survived. I really do believe that if a person treats all living things with respect, eventually the enemy will soften and we can all live together in peace.”
She looked him directly in the eye, the veiled challenge obvious. Since arriving in New Holland, Quentin Vandermark had banished the servants, fired his governess, and threatened to demolish a cherished landmark, all without patience, understanding, or bothering to ask anyone’s opinion. He was a smart man and knew exactly what she was implying. His eyes glinted with cynical humor.
“Then heaven help you,” he said brusquely. “One of these days the world is going to clobber you flat.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in heaven,” she teased.
“I don’t. It is an expression of sympathy for a naïve woman who thinks the world is populated by benevolent enemies and friendly bees.”
She smiled as she stepped around him and up onto the landing. “I’m sorry, Mr. Vandermark, even your surly words can’t dampen my mood today.” After all, the morning was dawning bright and clear, the scent of jasmine perfumed the air, and she was going to bake a delightful honeycake this afternoon.
No matter what, she was going to try kindness to soften Quentin. If that didn’t work, perhaps her growing affinity with Pieter might buy her some goodwill. Or three hearty meals a day. It would take time and patience, but she intended to establish a rapport with Quentin, just as she had done with the bees.
But it wasn’t going to be easy. She returned home that night to find her father grim-faced and holding a letter for her.
“You’ve had a message from the Weather Bureau,” he said as he turned the note over.
A trickle of anger awakened as Sophie read the letter.
We have been informed your station needs relocation due to improper installation on private property without the owner’s consent. Please select a new location immediately and re-read the manual for station volunteers. Unauthorized intrusion on private property is a violation of the bureau’s standards and will not be tolerated.
She’d never been reprimanded by the Weather Bureau before, and it hurt. A slow burn began to build, for this was Quentin Vandermark’s doing. The man had a lot of nerve to tattle on her, especially given that she was using Weather Bureau equipment to mentor his son. Even worse, this did not show her in a good light for persuading the government to build a climate observatory in New Holland.
Why did he dislike her so much? Although Pieter and the bodyguards appreciated her presence, Quentin found endless fault with her. He criticized the way she sang in the kitchen, the happy faces she drew with icing atop her spice cookies, even the way she skipped up and down the staircases.
It was one thing for him to be rude to her face, but she couldn’t let him damage her reputation with the Weather Bureau. She wasn’t going to let him hobble away like he typically did whenever she was in his presence. Sometimes a person had to stand up to a tyrant. Sophie would much rather bake her enemy a nice blueberry pie and soften him with kind words, but she’d been trying that ever since the Vandermarks arrived, with little to show for it.
It was time to try a bit of justified outrage.