Chapter 16 Hidden in Plain Sight #3
It was dense, heavy, and possessed the solid, unyielding heft of solid mountain slate.
Furthermore, as I turned it in my hands under the light of the banker's lamp, my fingertips detected something strange about the paper wrapper.
The faded brown buckram dust jacket wasn't glued to the boards.
It had been meticulously folded, tucked, and hand-creased over the cover like a protective book jacket a schoolchild might wrap around a textbook—except the paper was brittle with age, darkened by decades of woodsmoke from the nearby hearth.
"Look at the corners," Luke said, leaning down beside me, his shoulder pressed warmly against mine as he pointed his small penlight at the bottom edge. "The wrapper is slightly too big for the boards. The inner cover doesn't fit the jacket."
With infinite care, holding my breath so hard my lungs burned, I used the edge of a clean fingernail to ease the brittle paper flap out from the inside front cover.
The aged brown wrapper slid back like a shroud.
Beneath the cheap Victorian dust jacket lay an exquisite binding of deep, dark honey-colored calfskin.
The leather was thick, supple, and weathered to a luminous, buttery sheen that only a century and a half of careful handling could produce.
Running along the outer perimeter of the boards was a blind-tooled geometric border of tiny, stamped dogwood blossoms and interlocking circles—the unmistakable, signature craftsmanship of the Moravian guild masters of Salem.
Down the spine, five raised bands of hand-twisted hemp cords stood out proudly, their hand-whipped linen stitching still flawless and unbroken.
"Dear Lord in heaven," Birdie whispered, her hand flying to her throat. "That's not Mrs. Beeton."
"No," I whispered, my voice trembling with sheer awe. "It’s not."
I turned the heavy front board. It fell open with a soft, leathery sigh that released an intoxicating aroma into the quiet library: rich wood tannins, dried clover, ancient beeswax, and the sharp, alkaline tang of true 1840s cotton rag paper.
There, on the heavy, hand-pressed frontispiece, written in flowing, copperplate script using deep iron gall ink that had aged to the color of dark walnut stain, was the inscription:
*Record of Covenant and Mutual Trust.* *Established this Fourth Day of October, In the Year of Our Lord 1845.
* *Between the Settlers of Blackwood Valley and the Moravian Congregation at Wachovia.
* *Wherein It Is Decreed: The Mountains and the Timber Thereof Shall Belong Forever to the Common Trust of the Inhabitants, and No Single Heir of Vance Shall Ever Possess the Right of Sale, Severance, or Private Demolition. *
Beneath the proclamation were three columns of signatures, each marked with names that still adorned the road signs, creeks, and gap trails of Black Walnut Cove: *Hensley, McCurry, Sterling, Vance, Callahan.*
Birdie let out a ragged gasp. "The timber ridge. The whole four thousand acres. It doesn't belong to Gregory Vance. It never belonged to Eleanor’s family to sell to that commercial resort syndicate."
"It belongs to the valley," Luke said quietly, staring down at the signature of *Jedediah Sterling, 1845*, his jaw tightening with an emotion so raw and powerful it made his voice crack.
"Eleanor didn't keep this secret to be spiteful.
She kept it safe. If Croft or Gregory had found this before the auction, it would have gone straight into the fireplace. "
"And if she had put it in a safe," I said, looking up at the two of them, the entire puzzle snapping together in my mind with terrifying clarity, "Gregory would have hired a locksmith.
If she had hidden it in the desk, Croft would have pried out the drawers.
But who on earth," I smiled faintly, looking down at the discarded dust jacket, "would ever bother to steal an 1861 English guide on how to instruct a scullery maid on boiling mutton? "
"Nobody," Birdie said with a triumphant, wicked laugh. "Not a single arrogant, self-important man who ever crossed this threshold."
Buster, sensing the shift in the room, gave a happy, tail-wagging huff and rested his heavy golden chin directly across my knee, right beside the open pages of the Moravian ledger.
"You," I told him, scratching both of his floppy ears until his eyes rolled back in sheer bliss, "are getting a prime rib steak tomorrow night. The biggest one the butcher has."
Buster gave a satisfied grunt of agreement.
Luke gently closed the heavy calfskin cover, his fingers brushing mine as he helped me support the immense weight of the volume. When he looked at me, his hazel eyes were shining in the lamplight, fierce and full of admiration.
"We have the proof, Maggie," Luke said softly. "The valley is safe. But tomorrow morning, Gregory Vance is going to walk into this house expecting to sell this land for eight million dollars. When he realizes he’s walking away with nothing—and that Julian Croft died trying to cover up a fraud that failed anyway—he’s going to be cornered. "
"Let him be cornered," I said, wrapping the brown dust jacket carefully back around the sacred leather binding and holding the heavy book against my chest like a shield.
"Because tomorrow at nine o'clock, Callahan & Company is going to hold the most surprising estate sale this county has ever seen. "