“She’s-in one way or another-the key to this family, then. And to the house.”

“Aye, that’s true enough. Miss Rachel, now, she was Miss Rosamund’s first husband’s mece. Captain Marlowe, that was, Olivia’s father. Miss Rachel has been in and out of the house all her life. Mr. Hargrove, Miss Susannah’s husband, first came here when he was going on twelve, I’d say. Miss Rosamund had a string of race horses, most of them Irish bred, and more than a few bought from the Hargrove stables. Fine animals, they were, won dozens of prizes. As a lad I won more than a bob or two betting on them myself.”

“Who inherited the house when Rosamund died?”

“The house belonged to old Adrian Trevelyan, like I said. Miss Olivia’s grandfather. He left it to her, not her mother- no reflection on Miss Rosamund, you understand, but he wasn’t best pleased with her choice of third husband, and there’re some who say he left the house to Miss Olivia to keep it out of FitzHugh hands. Not to speak of the fact that Miss Olivia was a cripple and it was more likely that she’d have need of a home, unmarried and not apt to be. I doubt anyone in the family-and certainly no one in the village- knew she was to become a famous poet.”

“Poet? Olivia Marlowe?”

“Aye. O. A. Manning, she was known as. I’ve never read any of her poems. Well, not much in my line, poetry. But the wife has, and she tells me it was very pretty.”

Pretty, thought Rutledge, was an understatement for O. A. Manning’s work. Haunting, lyrical, with undercurrents of dark humor at times, and subtle contrasts that caught people and emotions with such precision that lines stayed with you long afterward, like personal memories. She’d written about the war too, and he’d read some of those poems in the trenches, marveling that anyone could have captured so clearly what men felt out there in the bloody shambles of France. Could have found the courage to put it into words. He hadn’t known then that O. A. Manning was a woman.