Two

Southwest Cornwall
Late May 1914

Well, he was home. Though for the first time in his memory, Peter Holstein wasn’t entirely happy to walk through the doors of Kensey Manor. The box was heavy in his arms as he trudged down the familiar hall to his study, bringing a measure of comfort.

It did little to calm the nerves still frayed from London, though. He only had meant to pass a quiet spring there, as he had done in years past. How had it devolved so quickly into accusations and suspicion? As if he were anyone other than who he’d always been.

But never mind the gossips of London. It was good to be home. No, better than good. It was a blessing.

He pushed open his study door with his shoulder and paused just inside to breathe in the scent of inspiration—old books, ink, and always a lingering hint of the pipe tobacco Father had favored. Mrs. Teague had scrubbed and polished the room, trying to get rid of that last smell, but Peter was rather glad she had failed.

Not that he’d ever tell his housekeeper that.

His desk, old and scarred, was neat as a pin—which likely wouldn’t last till morning—and beckoned him to come nearer. He set down the heavy box upon the waiting surface, but rather than unlatching it, he turned to the window. There was no view in the world quite like this one—looking out at the bald-of-trees bluff that tumbled down into the sea. If he were lucky, a gale would blow in soon. Nothing like nature’s savagery to soothe the beast within.

And the beast within needed a bit of soothing after this last fortnight in London. Otherwise it would take him a week to set it all aside and focus on his work. A week he really didn’t have.

“There you are, Pete. I was a bit worried when I got your wire. Was it as bad as all that?”

Peter turned from the window to see his closest friend striding through the study door with all the ease and confidence Peter had never been able to muster. “G-Gryff. W-Worse.”

Gryffyn Penrose lifted his brows, that worry of which he spoke darkening his eyes. “Must have been. Anything I can do?”

Peter shook his head and shoved his hands into the pockets of his trousers, pulling in a long breath. He let it out again slowly, willing his tongue to cooperate. Reminding himself that he was with Gryff, no one else. “I’ll be, ah . . . fine.” Better. Not exactly eloquent, but not outright stuttering either.

Nothing betrayed his inner turmoil to his old friend like his stuttering.

Gryff sank into his usual chair beside the unlit hearth, his brows not smoothing out. “Well, Jenny was glad to hear you were coming home. You’re to join us for dinner tomorrow, of course.”

Where his friend’s wife would no doubt go on about how thin he’d grown in London and ply him with every sweet he’d ever expressed a fancy toward. He grinned. “Shame.”

Gryff, well aware of his wife’s methods of welcoming Peter, smiled too. “And Elowyn asks if you’ll marry her, now that she’s older.”

A chuckle rumbled its way up Peter’s throat. The young Penrose had had a birthday while he was gone, it was true . . . which put her at five. He’d have to remember to bring her the dolly he’d found for her in London. “Not until she . . . she can read.”

Gryff’s laughter hadn’t yet faded when a quick knock on the door signaled Mrs. Teague’s arrival. She poked her head in, her ample girth following. “The boys have everything unloaded, Mr. Holstein.” He always missed hearing the Cornish say his name when he was in London. The way they dropped the H and made it ’olstein. “And I’ll tell Treeve to bring Cadan with him tomorrow. Will you want your supper in the dining room or in here? Or did Mr. Penrose convince you to go with him tonight?”

Peter cleared his throat and looked to Gryff.

His friend folded his hands over the stomach that had once been flat. Before he married the best cook in Cornwall seven years ago. Now . . . not so much. “We’ve claimed him tomorrow,” Gryff said.

Peter nodded his agreement and patted his jacket pocket. Which hadn’t the letters he’d slid in it that morning. Where had he put them? He must have moved them into his bag, which Benny had already set there, by his desk chair. He headed to it and found the missives, sorting through them until he located the one with Mrs. Teague scrawled across the outside.

She waited with a smile, holding out her hand for the note as he neared. Wasting no time before flipping it open, she nodded as she read. “I suspected as much—though you be well aware, young man, that you’ll not be holing yourself up in here every evening. Do you understand?”

He gave an overly serious nod.

She grinned and reached up to pat his cheek, as if he were still a boy of seven. “It’s good to have you home, Master Peter. Now, back to work I go. I’ll leave you boys to yourselves.”

After the door clicked shut behind her, Peter took up his spot by the window again. The sky was an unfortunate blue, the wind barely gusting. Why did it always rain when he wanted a walk and remain clear and cloudless when he needed a good storm? “I k-keep making en . . . enemies.”

“You?” Gryff’s scoffing laugh soothed one of those rough places inside him. “Don’t be silly, Pete—you haven’t any enemies. You’re the single nicest man in England, which is why I would absolutely hate you if you weren’t like a brother to me. Which, hmm . . . perhaps doesn’t prove my point.”

The comment brought laughter to Peter’s throat and soothed him a bit more. He leaned into the white-painted window frame and turned to watch his friend. “It’s not m-me. Not really. Just . . . they all . . . they c-call me that German. As if . . . as if I . . .” Giving up, he shook his head.

Gryff looked genuinely baffled—an odd state for such a quick-witted man. “Where do they—whoever they are—get their information? You are as English as the king himself.”

Peter snorted. “Their point. They’ve actually . . . they’ve ac-cused me of . . . of . . .” It was unthinkable. Unsayable. “Espionage.”

“Nonsense.” Gryff rested his chin on his palm, elbow on the arm of the chair. “Well, listen, old boy, don’t let them bother you. Your grandfather may have hailed from Germany, but that shouldn’t matter. You’ve spent all your life in England, aside from a few holidays.”

But it did matter, apparently. “But they’ve . . . been talking . . . a-b-bout Mother.”

At that, Gryff rose to his feet. “What sort of talk? A more saintly woman has never set foot in—ah.” For a moment, he clenched his teeth together, making the muscle in his jaw tic. But he was never one to be silent long—it was perhaps why they made a good pair. “Yes, they would be using the fact that your father went back to Germany to find his bride to prove—what, exactly? That he wasn’t fully loyal to England? That you aren’t?”

Jerking his head in a nod, Peter drew in a long breath through his nose. “And what . . . what am I to say? I don’t . . . that is, I . . . I don’t know why he did, Gryff. But Mother, she . . . she loved England.”

“Well, of course she did.” Gryff stomped to the hearth and scowled at the mantel. Their photograph rested there, Mother and Father’s. Somehow looking as peaceful and loving in the serious, unsmiling pose as they had been in life. Gryff’s face relaxed as he studied it, no doubt as he remembered how they had always welcomed him as another son. “And everyone always loved your mother. It will surely pass, Pete. There may be a bit of a panic right now with Germany threatening war, but it will calm down. Then everyone will remember who you really are.”

A stupid assertion that didn’t even deserve a response. Gryff would be hearing in his own head as clearly as Peter did in his that loving remonstrance Mother had always made: No one will know your heart if you refuse to speak, Peter. I know it is difficult for you. But you must try. For your own good, you must try.

As usual, she had been right. He turned from the window and those mocking blue skies, back to his desk. He could never speak up in his own defense, and now—if war came, if he were accused of this crime . . . he could lose everything. Be arrested. And though in peaceful times such a ridiculous accusation couldn’t stick, who knew what a judge might decide in the panic of war?

And he couldn’t have people digging into his secrets. Even if they weren’t treasonous. Crouching down, he began to unload the bag from which he’d taken the letters. He’d done his best to make himself understood in spite of the stammering. He’d learned to excel at writing where he failed in speech, but that apparently wasn’t enough.

Well, it had been enough to earn him friends, to be sure. Ironic, really, that those very friendships were what now made him trouble. He slid out the books he’d been reading on the train and put them on the desk.

Gryff picked up one and flipped it open. “Surely the king or Prince Edward can hush the rumors—what is the point, after all, of having friends in those highest of places if they cannot offer you a bit of protection now and then?”

“I don’t want to . . . to put them in that . . . position.” Peter made a face but directed it at the last notebook he withdrew rather than at his friend. “And no one would . . . would care about me if I . . . if I hadn’t such friends.”

Snapping the book closed, Gryff set it down. “Perfectly unfair. And unjust. If you want me to file a suit against someone, just name the culprit. Surely we can trump up some charges of malice or slander or maligning or . . .”

“Brilliant, counselor.” Peter stood again and put his notebooks to the right, beside the box still front and center. “That will . . . that will surely solve everything.”

“You never let me have any fun at all, old boy. Nothing but paperwork and real estate—though perhaps that could help. Mr. Arnold could be right about that, you know, if you let it be known.” Gryff rapped a knuckle on the book. “Or the king could knight you. Perhaps that would hush a few of your detractors.”

Peter reached for the copy of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt and set it on the shelf behind his desk. “Why would he? I’ve done . . . done nothing.”

Gryff folded his arms over his chest, leaned against the desk, and arrowed a look into him. “You’ve done as much as Conan Doyle.”

He shot the look right back at his friend and turned to the box, though he wasn’t quite sure if it was dread or appreciation that coursed through him as he unlatched it. “I can . . . can hardly claim that.”

“Not can’t—won’t.”

“Semantics.”

“Precision—something I know well you appreciate, so don’t try to argue with me. And pray tell, what is your plan for dealing with it, if not appealing to the Crown for aid? Do you intend to hide yourself away here in Cornwall until your detractors forget you exist or Germany ceases threatening Europe?”

The thought had crossed Peter’s mind, though he’d no intention of confessing that to the man who liked nothing more than donning his white wig and black robe and arguing before the courts. “I intend to . . . to find answers.”

Gryff blinked at him. “Answers to what?”

“To the qu—questions they are raising. If I can . . . if I can prove to those loud f-few that I . . . that my family is loyal, then . . .”

“And how will you do that?”

Peter sighed and turned toward the door. The one he was rarely brave enough to open, though the room behind it bore a name he loved above most others—library.

Gryffyn snorted again. “Then I bid you good luck. I interviewed no fewer than four chaps for the job while you were away, and they all ran for the hills when they got a look at the place. If you want to tackle the cave, you’re on your own.”

Feeling a bit like the stalwart adventurer Locryn James, whose fictional escapades had captured countless hearts, he flung open the door. And then just stood there staring at the mess. “Even Locryn would . . . would tremble.”

Gryff laughed and came to his side but made no move to enter either. “Your family may be loyal, but it must be said, Pete. You are all a bunch of hoarders.”

Only of books. And magazines. And newspapers and journals and diaries and missives and . . . He scrubbed a hand over his face. “It is enough to . . . to make a man go grey. But then I would . . . would look like you.”

“I beg your pardon.” Gryff passed a hand over the hair more silver than brown, though he was only thirty. “You should be so lucky as to gain such a dignified look at such a tender age.”

Peter grinned, though it faded fast. “They never should have . . . have forbidden Mrs. Teague from . . . cleaning in there.”

“Ah, but zere is a mezod to zee madness!” Gryff held out a hand, doing a fair, if exaggerated, imitation of Peter’s grandfather.

“If only Opa had . . . shared it.”

“Hmm. My friend, here is my wisdom.” He clapped a hand to Peter’s shoulder and leaned close, saying in a mock whisper, “You really need to find that help, even if it’s someone untrained in history or libraries.”

And well he knew it. He pasted on a smile as exaggerated as Gryff’s German accent. “Gryffyn, old friend, old . . . chum.”

“I don’t like you that much.” Laughing, Gryff retreated to the desk and took the liberty of lifting the lid from the box.

Peter followed and then stood for a moment staring at the machine within. Usually seeing the typewriter made his fingers itch to strike the familiar keys. Just now, he had half a mind to toss it over the cliffs and into the sea—the blighted thing had been resisting him at every turn since the trouble started in London.

Ah well, there was nothing for it. He lifted the heavy base, letting Gryff slide the bottom of its box out of the way. Then Peter set it in its place before his chair.

His friend peeked at the stack of pages bound with brown paper and rubber bands that Peter had unloaded from his bag. And frowned. “Is this it?”

Peter squeezed his eyes shut, but reopening them didn’t make the stack grow. “Yes.”

“And you have only until August?”

“Yes.”

Gryff winced. “Perhaps I should leave you so you can get to work.”

“It won’t help.” Perhaps a walk along the cliffs would, though, even if God hadn’t sent him a storm today.

There was always tomorrow. And maybe he needed sunshine just now—the Lord, after all, had far more wisdom than Peter could ever boast. He motioned with his head toward the window. “Join me?”

“For a bit, then I should get home.”

They headed out of the study, down the hall, and to the nearest exit, which took them into the gardens. Mr. Teague’s pride and joy, they were a riot of color just now, long-stemmed flowers bowing in the breeze and sending their sweet perfume into the air. Peter had to pause, as he always did, to take in the splendor for a moment. Rather than the careful, cultivated look of neighboring houses, Teague had gone for a wild arrangement, a profusion of mixed blooms mingling in beds crowding the paths.

Peter had dreamed it was a jungle when he was a boy, what with the tropical flowers Teague had imported. He’d spent many hours on the benches situated here and there, a book in his hand and adventure in his heart.

Were he a different man, one who could command a presence and charm people wherever he went, perhaps he would have struck off to see more of the world than this imitation jungle. Perhaps he would have made his own way, cut his own path with machete and pistol.

As it was, even the jungle of London sent him running for cover.

“You’re brooding. You know how I detest it when you brood.” Gryff strode ahead through the garden, his aim the path that would take them, after a five-minute walk, to the cliffs.

“I’m not . . . brooding. Just wonder . . . wondering what else is out there.” Hands in his pockets, Peter kept pace with his friend, letting his eyes soak up every familiar hedge and then the equally familiar scrub that adorned the cliff tops. His ears strained for that first sound of wave crashing on rock.

Birdsong serenaded them, and the wind whispered a harmony to it. They were the only sounds for that quick walk, along with the scuff of their feet over the granite stones placed here and there along the path. In the other direction, between the house and the main road, was the wood, of which Peter was equally fond—but not in a mood like this. Nothing could soothe him like the wind whipping salt air into his face and a gull crying out a greeting. Peter dragged in a long breath, the release of which was always Gryff’s cue.

Gryff never missed his cue. “What will you do, then? If rumors get worse, and if you can’t find anything in that dreadful room to prove the Holsteins above reproach? What will you do if war comes and your loyalties are called into question? What if even selling off the last of it doesn’t help?”

Peter’s nostrils flared. What could he do, really? Hopefully here, in the village where he’d grown up, where everyone knew him—more or less, though perhaps less, given his habitual silence—he’d still be welcome. Still be trusted. People would speak up for him.

But, just as likely, that snarling Mr. Jasper would trump up charges. If war were declared, he could be arrested, just because of his last name. Because of his father falling in love with a German woman. He could lose everything. Everything. And even if it didn’t come to that, he would never shake the suspicion. Not in this climate. “The k-king is . . . he is considering . . . changing his name.”

Not that His Majesty was ready to make such a monumental decision soon—a monarch didn’t just toss aside a family name because of shifting politics.

But the politics were dire enough that King George was considering it. Seriously considering it and already had hired a historian to revisit all the research that Queen Victoria had sought out on their family history. Already he was trying to determine what name the house of Saxe-Coburg should take, if take a new one they did.

“Peter. You can’t be thinking of doing the same. You can’t. It would break your father’s heart, and your grandfather’s.”

He swallowed, though his throat felt tight and his mouth dry. “I can’t be sure it . . . that it would even help. But perhaps . . . it may make a statement. If I were to so visibly d-distance myself f-from my German roots.”

Gryff stepped between him and the view of the rolling sea, his face a mask of concern again. “Listen to yourself. This is obviously as distressing to you as it would be to them, so why are you even considering it? How can you possibly think it would be worth it?”

Because Cornwall was the only home he’d ever known, and if he were all but forced out of Kensey Manor as he had been out of his little townhouse in London . . . well, what sacrifice wouldn’t be worth keeping his home? This place he loved? “A rose by any other n-name, right?”

Gryff’s face didn’t soften any. “A lesson everyone else needs to learn about the name Holstein—not one you need to learn about changing it.”

But it wasn’t possible to change the world—only himself. Though perhaps by changing himself he could cause a greater change too. That had always been his hope, his prayer. That the Lord could somehow use both his shortcomings and his gifts to make others better. Stronger. More faithful. “It is only . . . only a notion.”

“Well, dismiss it and focus your energies on digging through that cave of paper you so optimistically call a library. Surely there is ample proof in there that your family has always been the most loyal of English subjects—your father and grandfather were both always writing things and filing them away. Find it, present it to whomever in Parliament or the Home Office is giving you trouble, and let that be that.”

The journals, those were what he needed. Surely if anything could prove his family’s innocence, it was those missing journals. “You would con—consign me to that mess alone? And here I . . . I thought you were my friend.”

At least he smiled, finally. “Call me a coward if you must, but I’m not setting foot in there. And if you have any pity on future generations, you’ll stop adding to the mess with those boxes of correspondence.”

He’d move them up to the attic eventually. When he got around to it. Besides, future generations looked none too promising. No woman he’d ever met had any interest in a stammering fool. Especially one with a last name like Holstein.

Maybe he did understand why his father had gone back to Germany for his bride.

Gryff’s smile had faded into a squint. He nodded toward the house. “Are you expecting company?”

“Hmm?” Peter spun around, squinting into the sun as well, until he caught the gleam of its light upon an automobile bouncing up his drive. “No.”

They both started back without the need to discuss it, their pace quicker than it had been on the way up. It could be no one from the village, not in an unfamiliar car. Perhaps a tourist who had taken a wrong turn?

They hurried over the rocks, through the scrub. The rumble of the engine breaking the quiet of the day nearly made Peter wince. The machines were here to stay, it seemed, but he rather missed the days before their advent upon the countryside. Things would never be the same.

Once in the side garden, the contraption came into clear view . . . and brought Peter up short. There were two young women in its open cab. The driver had a somewhat round face with a flattish nose, middling brown hair, and stared at the front of Kensey.

The passenger’s hair was a few shades darker, with a bit of curl, her face narrower, her sharp nose topped by a pair of spectacles. Pretty, both of them, with that kind of beauty that it took a few moments to notice. They rather put him in mind of the sisters Locryn James had met in This Mad Caper, in Spain. They had been on their way to a convent, determined to take their vows.

A resemblance Gryff didn’t seem to pick up on. “Well now, that’s interesting. Ladies. Here. Perhaps there is hope yet for those future generations.” Chuckling, Gryff elbowed him in the side. “Come on, old boy. Let’s go and say hello.”

He would rather brave the library.