Rupert and Margaret Sinclair were standing as the pair entered.
“Your Grace. It is an honor!” Rupert declared emphatically. “I had hoped that we would be graced with your society at some point. We were rather unceremoniously asked to leave your house after the wedding ceremony.”
“Most unusual,” Margaret chimed in primly.
“It was a most unusual ceremony. And one into which I had been forced. I was not in the mood to entertain those who had done the forcing,” Lionel remarked, tempering his words with a polite smile.
Nevertheless, Rupert swallowed and Margaret’s fixed smile slipped for a moment. Cecilia hung on to Lionel’s arm looking from aunt to uncle for all the world as though this were a pleasant family visit by a devoted niece.
“To what do we owe the pleasure of your company today, Your Grace?” Rupert finally said. “Please sit and tell us.”
He belatedly offered the use of a chaise longe which Lionel and Cecilia graciously took.
“Tea has been sent for,” Margaret put in, resuming her own seat. “We would have been prepared had we known to expect you. You did not send us a card in advance, Your Grace.”
There was a note of reproach in her voice that made Lionel’s blood boil. These two had no right to be reproachful of him or of Cecilia. Not even to pretend at it. He knew little of them socially. They had been present on invitations to balls he had hosted at Thornhill but he had never conversed with them beyond a few perfunctory greetings.
“We did not as our visit was somewhat spontaneous,” Lionel replied cryptically, “precipitated by a conversation between myself and my wife on the subject of Penrose.”
The name fell into the room like a lead weight. It was greeted by silence and stillness from the Sinclairs. Finally, Margaret’s eyes darted to her husband and his to hers before ingratiating smiles enveloped them both.
“Penrose?” Rupert inquired.
“Cecilia was rather under the impression that she had been left nothing by Arthur in his will. Nothing of his fortune or estates. And not Penrose,” Lionel stated matter-of-factly.
“That is so,” Rupert replied, “it was left to me as his father’s brother—”
“Except that it was not,” Lionel interjected smoothly, “I bore witness to Arthur’s will and know for a fact that the house was left to Cecilia.”
Another lead weight dropped with a thud into the room.
“You must be mistaken, Your Grace,” Margaret laughed awkwardly.
“Indeed. The will was very clear,” Rupert insisted.
“Nevertheless, it is not the will that I witnessed. At least it could not be if Cecilia was not the sole beneficiary,” Lionel continued.
The companionable smile that he had been holding onto was slipping, revealing a steely gaze beneath.
“I can only speak to the contents of the will that we saw…” Rupert trailed off.
“May I see it?” Cecilia chimed in.
There was a pause.
“Alas, my child. The will is no longer in existence. There was a fire, you see, not long after your brother’s tragic death. It was atPenrose, and the will along with all of his correspondence was consumed,” Margaret said.
Cecilia’s eyes flashed horror in that moment.
CHAPTER 18
Cecilia looked at the charred remains of Penrose in dismay. She now understood why there had been no trace of the house visible through the looking glass. Fire had torn through the place, gutting it, and the vegetation had returned to the fire-scoured soil with a vengeance. They’d had to fight their way through tight secondary growth, a dense thicket that had sprung up around the ruin.
Now she and Lionel stood before it.
A wall faced them with empty eye-sockets of windows. The entrance was outlined by its stone lintel but the doors were long gone. Through the empty windows, Cecilia could see the blackened beams of the roof and the skeleton of charred floorboards. They jutted in odd directions, like the bones of some long-dead leviathan. She picked her way carefully through nettle and bramble to reach closer to the door.
“Careful!” Lionel cautioned. “The structure may be unstable.”
