The Bracelet (28 page)

“Who is it?” Celia asked.

“Wasn’t nobody there. They left this on the doorstep. It’s addressed to you.”

Celia set Maxwell on his feet and took the envelope from Mrs. Maguire. It was spattered with rain, and the inked address had started to run. She tore it open and silently scanned the single line. “An oak is often split by a wedge from its own branch.”

“What is it?” Ivy helped herself to another slice of bread. “An invitation of some sort?”

“It’s nothing important.” Celia tucked the letter into her pocket. “You are so right, Mrs. Maguire. I have dawdled long enough. I must get dressed. Come along, Maxwell.”

Celia and the dog hurried up the stairs. She dressed quickly and sat down to reread the note, the puppy curled contentedly in her lap. She thought of the other cryptic messages that had arrived at the house since last month, words both chilling and strangely familiar.

“Foul deeds will rise . . .”

“Foul whisperings are abroad. Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles.”

And now,
“An oak is often split by a wedge from its own branch.”

The words hinted at betrayal. Leo Channing had once suggested that Papa and Ivy were not to be trusted, but that was ridiculous. Papa would never do anything foul, and Ivy was practically her sister, even if they were no more compatible than oil and water.

The diary. If Celia found the diary, maybe she would solve the mystery and discharge her obligation to Mr. Channing without causing her family harm. And maybe she would find some clue as to who had sent the bracelet and why.

But the two might not even be connected. Maybe Leo Channing was right, and the bracelet was from some shy admirer who had no inkling of the message hidden in the jewels. But instinct told Celia the bracelet meant more. And she still couldn’t shake the sense that someone was watching her. Waiting.

Wishing her harm.

Find the diary and you’ll find the name.
Celia gently pushed Maxwell off her lap and stood. She hurried along the upper gallery to the end of the hall where a narrow door led to the attic.

The door opened easily, and she stepped into the musty space. Light from a cobwebbed window high on the wall cast shadows over the jumbled contents of the room. Her heart sped up as she moved farther into the small space and realized there was no other means of exit. She propped the door open with an empty valise and waited for her eyes to adjust to the gloom.

The rain beat onto the roof with a sound like cannon fire. The air was thick with dust. Celia stifled a sneeze and sorted through a stack of books that smelled of mold. On a broken chair sat a box of faded newspaper clippings and three old ledgers from the Butler plantations on St. Simons. An old camphine lamp. A leather trunk with a rusted lock looked promising, but it was empty. In the corner, an oil portrait of Aunt Eugenia wearing a blue silk gown rested in a broken gilt frame next to a stack of watercolor pictures. Celia recognized her own garden in the paintings—the wrought-iron bench that sat beneath the magnolias, the pride-of-India trees, the riot of pink roses climbing a painted wooden trellis.

She lifted the painting of the roses toward the fall of gray light coming through the rain-smeared window and saw the initials in the corner. FBB. Her mother’s work, then. She couldn’t remember seeing her mother at an easel, but a faded memory surfaced as she studied the picture. A spring morning in the garden with her mother, the bees gathering in the jessamine, the air heavy with the smells of wet earth and the river. Her mother’s enchanting laughter and the sense that the garden was their own private world, a magical place filled with beauty and wonder.

Setting aside the painting, Celia moved farther into the attic. Here was another trunk, the key still in the lock. It opened easily to reveal more of her mother’s things—a small black velvet box containing a single garnet earbob, a packet of letters bound with a faded pink ribbon, a slim book of poetry inscribed by the author, a well-worn copy of
The Book of Common Prayer
. Celia ran her fingers over each item, imagining them in her mother’s hands.

The light in the attic faded as the storm intensified. She put everything back into the trunk and poked around in the corners of the room. But there was no sign of a rosewood writing box, no
sign of a diary. Perhaps Uncle Magnus had taken them when he left. Perhaps Ivy had them after all and had simply forgotten about them after all these years.

She was retracing her steps, stepping carefully around a couple of hatboxes and a wreath made of silk ribbons, when the attic door slammed shut. She jumped, then shuddered. She distinctly remembered propping open the door. She made her way to the door. The knob wouldn’t turn. She was drawn back in time to that day in the garden shed. Panic swept over her like a rogue wave, stealing her breath.

Now she pounded the door with both fists, but the sound of the storm drowned the sound of her voice. “Let me out! Mrs. Maguire! Help!”

Celia sank to the floor. They couldn’t hear her. She tried to think. What time was it now? Surely it was near noon, and Mrs. Maguire would miss her when she didn’t show up for lunch. Or else Ivy would eventually notice her absence. At the very worst, they would look for her this evening when Papa came home and Celia was absent from supper. All she had to do was remain calm. Breathe.

Minutes passed. An hour. The storm subsided. She pounded on the door again and fought the rising fear that all the air was being sucked from the room. The walls seem to press in around her. Rationally it made sense to simply sit and wait for rescue, but fear compelled her to look for another way out.

She ran her palms along the wooden walls, and eventually her hands closed around a metal doorknob. A tiny door, perhaps only three feet high, swung open. She bent and stepped forward into a void, her foot twisting painfully as it landed on the narrow stair. She started down, keeping one hand on the wall for balance. Reaching the bottom step, she looked around for the door that would take her into the main house and safety. But there was no
door, just a narrow passageway that seemed to lead away from the house and toward the garden.

Surely this passageway eventually led to the outside. Celia felt her way along the narrow space and tried not to remember that here there was even less air to breathe. All she had to do was keep putting one foot in front of the other.

At last a shaft of light fell across her darkened path, and she rushed toward it. She pushed through another door, the planks grayed and thick with cobwebs. Realization dawned as she looked around. She was in the carriage house.

After the death of the laundress, Papa had sent their carriages to the livery and locked the doors to this place. There was nothing here now except odds and ends—a wooden table with a splintered leg, a stack of rusted tin buckets, a coil of rotted rope. The windows—one of them broken—were too high up to allow her to climb out, but at least there was light. And she could breathe.

The wind rattled the loose glass in the broken window pane. She couldn’t explain it exactly, but she felt a strong presence here, an ineffable sadness mixed with a fierce anger that seemed to shimmer like a live thing in the pearlescent light.

A sudden movement in the rafters caught her eye and she looked up. A sparrow had flown in through the broken window and was desperately seeking a way out. She watched the bird circling in confusion until it rested on a rafter near the center of the building.

Her breath caught.

Hanging from the rafter were the remains of a noose, the ends of the rope frayed and gray, moving ever so slightly in the stale, damp air.

18

O
UTSIDE
: M
AXWELL
’
S FRANTIC BARKING
. C
ELIA RUSHED TO
the wide front doors of the carriage house and pounded them with her fists. “Maxwell! Come! Here, boy!”

The puppy scratched at the doors. She knelt on the floor and pressed her face to crack between the doors. “Maxwell, here I am!”

“Maxwell.” Ivy’s voice. “Get back here.”

But the puppy kept up his barking and scratching. Soon footsteps sounded on the path.

“Ivy!” Celia yelled. “Open the door and let me out of here!”

“Miss Celia?” Mrs. Maguire’s voice came through the door. “What in the name of all that is holy are you doin’ in there?”

“Never mind. Just let me out, please.”

“I can’t remove all these boards, and besides, I don’t have the key. You’ll have to go back the way you came.”

Back through the long, dark passageway, up the steep hidden staircase, across the gloomy attic to the door. She shivered. “Then go inside and open the attic door.”

“What were you doing in the attic?”

“Mrs. Maguire, please take Maxwell inside before he gets a chill and do as I ask.”

“Come on, Maxie,” Ivy said, her voice muffled. “Don’t worry, Cousin. I’ve got him.”

Footsteps receded. Celia left the carriage house, retracing her steps as quickly as she dared. By the time she returned to the attic, Mrs. Maguire had reached the second floor and stood at the opened door, the keys in her hands.

“My faith, girl! You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” the housekeeper said.

“I was frightened. I’ve always been afraid of being locked in, ever since the time Ivy—”

“Then you ought not have been poking around in there.”

“I propped the door open.”

“With this?” Mrs Maguire picked up the valise and tossed it into the attic with more force than necessary. “No wonder. ’Tisn’t heavy enough to keep the door from blowing shut when there’s a draft downstairs.”

“But—”

“Are you all right, Celia?” Ivy appeared at the top of the stairs, a damp but joyful Maxwell at her heels.

“I’m all right now.” Celia lifted Maxwell. The weight of the warm puppy calmed her frazzled nerves. She briefly buried her face in his damp hair. “I could use some tea, though.”

“I’ll see to it.” Mrs. Maguire closed the door once more, locked it carefully, and started for the kitchen. “I’ll bring it to the parlor when it’s ready.”

Ivy looped her arm through Celia’s. “You gave us quite a turn, disappearing like that.”

“It wasn’t my idea,” Celia said as they started down the staircase to the parlor. “Ivy, did you know there’s a passageway between here and the carriage house?”

“I . . . no. Is that why you were in the carriage house? How strange.”

Celia nodded. “I found it accidentally when I was looking for another way out of the attic.”

They reached the foyer and entered the parlor. The curtains were drawn against the late November chill. The fire in the grate had burned to coals that gleamed like rubies. Celia plopped down on the settee, settled Maxwell at her feet, and resumed her train of thought. “I can’t imagine a use for such a passageway. It’s narrow and dark, and certainly it’s—”

“I’ll bet even Uncle David doesn’t know about it.” Ivy fluffed her skirts and folded her hands in her lap. “But I wouldn’t advise you to ask. It might upset him. You know how he is. He’d want to investigate every nook and cranny, and that elf-size door is hardly—”

“Here we are.” Mrs. Maguire bustled in with the tea tray. She busied herself pouring, then pointed to the small plate of benne seed cookies. “I made those for Mr. Mackay, but he hasn’t shown himself here much lately, so you might as well have ’em.”

Celia picked up her teacup. “Sutton’s been busy since the new ship arrived from Charleston. Did I tell you he’s decided to name her for me?”

“I’m not surprised,” Mrs. Maguire said. “The boy is besotted with you. It wouldn’t surprise me if he named his carriage, his house, and everything else he owns after you.”

The front door opened and Papa came in, his hat and cloak dripping rain. Maxwell lifted his head, considered whether or not to bestir himself, and went back to sleep. Celia rose and went into the foyer to greet her father, her heart warming at the sight of his gentle smile.

“You’re home early, Papa.”

He handed her his hat, and she set it on the hall tree. “A section of the track washed out north of here and delayed the train from Marietta. It’s too wet to load cotton anyway, so I sent the men home for the day.” He glanced toward the parlor. “Is there tea?”