Maeve tightened her hand then pulled away, blinking rapidly, yet smiling warmly. She cleared her throat and spoke to Lorelei. “Will you bury her in Kimpton?”
“Yes. Spixworth is too far away. Should Harlowe be found, and wish to relocate her, we’ll deal with that issue at that time. The carpenters are building the box now. I suspect we’ll be leaving by day’s end,” Lorelei said. “Let’s adjourn to the morning room.” She glanced over at Corinne. “We can talk more freely there.”
Ginny followed her and Maeve out of the parlor and down the hall. After they’d made themselves comfortable, Lorelei called for tea. “Ginny, her daughters, and Lord Brockway will be accompanying us to the country.” Lorelei contemplated Maeve with a thoughtful air. “Perhaps you would like to as well. I hear your mother is on the hunt for another husband for you.”
Maeve rolled her eyes. “’Tis never ending.”
“Mothers. They are quite the nuisance,” Ginny agreed heartily. “When Irene and Celia come of age, please thump me on the head to remind me of this very conversation.”
Laughter rippled the air, then Maeve said, “I met the baroness at Lady Martindale’s tea yesterday. I found her… formidable.”
“Ha. I think the word is dogged. My parents had the unmitigated gall to install themselves in my house when we were in Colchester. I demanded they leave at once, but they completely disregarded my demands and still remain a nuisance. I shall probably have to remove myself to the dowager house and let the new earl to the paving stones.”
Maeve picked up her cup, eyeing Ginny with a sly look. “Will you remarry?”
Ginny forced a shudder, even as Brock’s image floated before her, and with it the tiniest sliver of hope. “And lose every shred of independence I’ve gained at my late husband’s demise? What a question,” she said, avoiding a direct answer.
Brock stopped, his ear tuned to the feminine laughter spilling from the Kimptons’ morning room. It felt odd and out of place, but welcome, filling the air with hope despite the previous night’s chain of events. Until Ginny’s words coiled around him like a hungry python suffocating its next meal to swallow whole, his light mood snuffed out with the pinch of a candle’s flame. He reminded himself of Ginny’s past and her plans for Irene’s and Celia’s futures. He’d known going in that it would not be easy convincing her he was nothing like Maudsley. That she needed him. That he loved her. She was a difficult woman, but a loyal one. She would be worth the wait, however long that proved to take, he reminded himself.
“The carpenters have completed the coffin, my lord.” Oswald’s words snapped Brock to his surroundings.
Kimpton ran a hand through his hair. “Fine, Oswald. Have the carriages prepared. I’ll send a note to the undertakers. We’ll strike out after them at their ready.”
“I’ll escort Lady Maudsley home to pack,” Brock said.
“Yes, my thanks. Lorelei will appreciate their support.”
Twenty-Five
L
oren hung back in the copse of trees with his eyes on the caravan ahead. He’d been stunned earlier to see Lady Maudsley’s carriage pull into her drive and her and Brockway step out. The sight had jarred a driving pain at the back of his head, throbbing until Loren had been forced to return home and take to his bed. He’d sent Farcle in his stead to keep watch for other movement.
“I followed them back to Kimpton Manor,” Farcle had told him. “They were loading up a box.”
Loren’s patience had been nonexistent, seething behind the cold damp cloth resting over his eyes. The voices were growing louder by day. He couldn’t seem to turn them off. “What kind of box? And what do I care?”
“Apparently someone died.”
Explaining the reason Brockway and Kimpton now rode horseback alongside the outriders behind a black hearse towed by six horses. The rain had abated even if the sun was shrouded by clouds.
Loren recognized the chanted words intermingled with the leaves rustling in the slight breeze.Heblinked several times as various light patterns sizzled across this vision, and he realized this was a new manifestation. A sense of lunacy erupted in a slightly hysterical short burst of inappropriate laughter.
Twenty-Six
A
n ominous foreboding touched Brock, a bizarre tingling sensation that started from his toes and spread throughout his body. He surveyed the outriders, then the carriages, moving finally to Kimpton. Perhaps the lack of sun was getting to him. “Do you hear that?”
Kimpton waved the riders to stay their course, pulling up his horse beside Brock, who had stopped. “It’s just the wind—” He cocked his head to one side. “Strange, it almost sounds like—”
“Romanian,” Brock interrupted him. “It’s a mantra of some sort.”
Prin puterea binecuvântata a Sfintei Sara la Kali
Din aceasta zi încoace, ?i dincolo de vârste,
Pe luna celui de-al 7-lea fiu
