“He’ll be over in a few minutes.”
She led him inside, and Jack kicked the door closed, cupped her face between his palms, and kissed her. He tasted like coffee and smelled like perspiration mixed with a hint of Irish Spring soap. She didn’t mind. Jack was a real man and smelled like one.
He went on and on kissing her, his breathing growing deeper until he grabbed her shoulders and pushed her back. “I like that you called me for help,” he said. “I won’t ever let that pompous creep take advantage of you again.”
Jack’s expression was so grim that she needed to lighten the mood. “My knight in shining armor?”
He laughed a bit and flashed her a wink. “It’s how every man secretly thinks of himself. Alice, you don’t need anyone to saveyou. You’ve taken some hits lately but survived it all without losing an ounce of dignity. You are pure class and can outshine all the Tuckers and those tired old professors on campus. Alice, you’re the kind of woman Jane Austen only dreamed about writing.”
A rush of happiness bloomed inside. It was the nicest compliment she’d ever had, and it was delivered by a man dirty from the golf course, who lacked all appreciation for fine literature or cultured manners, but she adored him all the same.
Even though he just tracked mud across her hardwood floors. She handed him a damp towel to clean his hands while she took care of the floor.
“I was mucking with the fountain,” he grumbled while taking his work boots off. “I’ve had problems with it since the beginning and am sick of wading in to fix that pump.”
Alice listened to his woes while swiping a bit of dirt that got smeared on her gauzy floral skirt, but it was easy enough to get off. She’d just finished the job when Sebastian knocked.
Jack bounded in front of her in his stocking feet to answer the door. “Hey there, Sam,” he greeted.
Sebastian ignored the use of his real name and only had eyes for Alice as he stepped inside, holding a slim cardboard tube beneath his arm. His gaze flicked down her wrap dress with butterfly sleeves and a floaty skirt.
“I love a vintage chintz pattern,” he said, his voice warm with appreciation as he nodded to the pastel tones of her dress. “There’s nothing quite so feminine as a cottagecore wrap dress. I hope they stay in style forever.”
“What did Margo give you?” Jack demanded.
Sebastian ignored him and proudly extended the skinny tube toward Alice, as if presenting her with the sword freshly pulled from the stone. “For you, my dear. I don’t know what to make of it, but Margo swears you’ll like it.”
Alice grabbed the tube and wiggled a large roll of paper from its interior. It was a photograph, big enough to cover her entire dining table.
“It’s a life-sized photograph of a tombstone from Yorkshire,” Sebastian said, grabbing a candlestick to anchor a corner of the curling photograph. Jack placed additional candlesticks on the other three corners. “Margo hired a commercial photographer to go out to the cemetery and make a life-sized image of the Denby family tombstone. She thinks it might prove something.”
This was the first Alice had heard of the name Denby. “Why does she think this would have anything to do with Reid’s Roost?”
Sebastian retrieved a slip of paper from his pocket. “Margo cross-referenced the names Reid and Helga from archival records of the 1660s and was able to come up with this tombstone, the only documentation of the two names in such close proximity. She thinks this might relate to your settler.”
The photograph showed a ledger tombstone, the sort of large flat stone used for family plots with room for plenty of inscriptions. Scaley white lichen marred the surface. Centuries of wind and rain eroded much of the slate, and the inscriptions were blurry but still legible:
Beneath this stone lays the body of Lord William Reid Denby, who departed this life on 18 Dec 1668, aged 82.
Also his wife Mary Elizabeth Denby, died 12 Feb 1648.
Also his son William George, aged 2 years.
Also his son William James, aged 4 months.
Also his son William Reid Denby, who departed this earth in 1659 in his 36th year, beloved husband of Helga.
Alice folded her arms and stared hard at the stone. This was no smoking gun; it was merely a record of a family with too many dead children and a single reference to someone named Helga.
“The etchings are in different styles of fonts,” Alice said. “That’s surely because people’s names were added over the decades by new engravers.”
She started to pace and kept thinking aloud. “There’s no record of Helga’s death here, and the letter I found written in 1672 indicated that she sailed for Virginia because she still hoped for a child. Somebody named R. Santos built the Roost a decade earlier and carried quite a torch for Helga. He possibly scratched her name in the window and made an infinity symbol.”
Jack pointed to the last line on the tombstone. “The guy she was married to in England died in 1659, but why did she wait thirteen years to sail to America? What was holding her back?”
It was impossible to guess the motives for people who died hundreds of years ago. Could it have been a forbidden love affair? Lack of money to make the journey? Reid Santos seemed rich enough to build a fine house with expensive diamond-paned windows. He was able to get a license to operate the ferry in Jamestown, so he would have been one of the wealthiest men in the village. Money should have been no obstacle.
Alice turned to Sebastian. “Was Margo able to find any evidence of someone named Reid Santos? When I looked in February, I couldn’t find anything, but I was searching in the wrong decade.”
