Sterling waved a languid hand. “I’m one of the venatori, not the sicarii. I hunt things. I protect people. I go where my prime directs, and I bring her what she wants.”
“I thought the sicarii were a myth?”
She’d heard rumors of course, about the secretive group of assassins who were pledged to protect the order—and to remove threats to it. The bogeyman in the dark. Sorcerers who could wield the Grave Arts—necromancy, the art of killing with a mere thought, communicating beyond the grave….
Sterling laid a finger against his lips. “It’s a little like this mysterious lady and her ring. Hundreds of stories, and only a few know the truth. But I do know this: Don’t talk about the sicarii and you won’t bring them sniffing into your affairs. So if she died of old age then why are we heading into the heart of Bedfordshire?”
“The original reawakened lady of Bletsoe has been gone some twenty years. But now there’s a new one. You should read your missive.”
Sterling tugged it out of his coat pocket and scanned it swiftly.
“Lady Willoughby fell suddenly ill and passed away last week. She was interred at St. Mary’s, and the sexton—a new one presumably—was awakened in the middle of the night by a horrific banging.”
“Lady Willoughby, somewhat distressed by waking in the vault.” Edwina smiled at him. “She claimed she wasn’t alone. She woke with some sort of presence sitting on her chest, and swears there was a knife in the creature’s hand?—”
“Creature?”
“We don’t know. It could be the shock of the situation. It could have been someone in there, trying to steal her jewelry. But by all apparent circumstances, the vault was locked and when the sexton released her there was no one else inside and no apparent means to get inside, beyond the door, which was locked from the outside.”
Sterling tapped the missive against his lips. “Well, now. Now I’m intrigued.” His smile held an eager edge. “Are we taking bets? Demonic possession? Imp? Hellspawn? Necromancer?”
Edwina sighed. “I’m going to go with narcolepsy and an overeager burial.”
“Spoilsport,” he said.
“Practical,” she reminded him. “When something goes bump in the night, nine times out of ten it’s because someone tripped over a garden rake.”
“Yes.” Sterling practically grinned at her. “But it’s that tenth time that gets me excited.”
Chapter
Three
The village of Bletsoe was a tiny hamlet seven miles north of Bedford.
But far from being a sleepy little village, it was bustling with excitement.
“Ah,” said the innkeeper as he showed them their rooms. “You’ve come about Lady Willoughby. You’ll have to forgive me for the lack of appropriate chambers, my lord. They’re a little cozy. There’s a half dozen journalists here, as well as several medical professionals and a priest.”
“That’s quite all right.” Sterling examined the small chambers he’d been allocated. Cozy was one word for it. There was a private antechamber between his room and Edwina’s, and she’d immediately claimed the one with the window seat. She loved to sit in the sun and soak up the heat. “Tell me, how are the Willoughby’s handling their newfound notoriety?”
The innkeeper snorted. “Lord Willoughby’s very protective of his young bride. They were married but a month ago, and he’s besotted with her. He’s got the manor house locked up tighter than a nun’s drawers. Nobody’s getting in. Or out.”
“Such a strange case,” he mused. “This happened to Lord Willoughby’s grandmother too, did it not? I cannot quite fathom the connection between the two ladies.”
The innkeeper shook his head. “There’s talk the family’s cursed.”
“Cursed?” Now that was interesting.
The innkeeper leaned closer. “Two Lady Willoughby’s stricken unto death? And the original Lord Willoughby suffering a heart seizure barely six months after his bride returned from the dead? And now the current one’s done lost his own father but a year past, in a freak accident down by Mill Pond. Sounds like a curse to me.”
“Freak accident?”
“Drowned, my lord. Drowned in a foot of water.”
A heart seizure. A drowning. Two near-deaths.
The pieces didn’t fit.
