Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
“Yes,” I whispered.
His relief was so great, I wondered why I protested it.
I wondered that more when he kissed my nose as a reward for giving him what he wanted.
He then said, “I called the hospital. They were processing Lou’s release. They transferred me to her room, and she told me she and her parents are going to have breakfast then make their way here. She thinks they’ll be here around ten thirty, eleven. If you want to be ready to see her and not go down in your fetching nightclothes, you best be rousing.”
I looked to the clock.
It was just after nine.
I looked back to Ian.
“You think my pajamas are fetching?”
I was in a racerback tank, bralette under it to keep the girls under control, and a pair of loose shorts with a deep edge of lace, all this in a blush pink.
It wasn’t exciting. It was comfortable.
“It’s damned sexy when a sexy woman knows she doesn’t have to try to be just that.”
Interesting.
He reached to pull the bell cord. “Again, they know to bring up breakfast for you if I ring. I’ll leave you to get ready.”
He gave me another kiss, this one on my lips, a quick one, but still sweet.
He was up and moving toward the door when I called, “Ian?”
He stopped and turned back, raising his brows.
“I took a meander up on the gallery when I was talking to Lou’s mum.”
“Yes?” he asked.
“What’s the story about Joan, the other tenth Countess Alcott?”
His expression shifted, I didn’t like the shift, and I liked it less when he said, “Not for now, darling, okay?”
“Now I need to know,” I told him.
“It might be best we lay off ghost stories for a while.”
Terrific.
“I’m now in here with you,” I reminded him, throwing a hand out to indicate his room. “Safe. Right?”
He sighed and crossed his arms over his ridiculously attractive cardigan and even more attractive broad chest.
“She was David’s first wife. And she was a beast.”
Oh boy.
And…David had another wife?
How on earth did I miss that in my research?
Though, I supposed with a thousand years of history in that house and Dorothy Clifton hogging the limelight, I’d miss things.
“A beast?” I queried.
“Hideous to staff. Authoritarian. Stuck-up. In other words, a total bitch.”
“Did he divorce her?”
Ian hesitated, but caught my expression and said, “No.”
“So what happened to her?”
“She was found hanging in the buttery.”
I blinked. Slowly.
Then I asked, “She killed herself?”
“That was what it was ruled. A suicide.”
I stared hard at him. “I sense there’s more to this story.”
Another sigh from Ian and, “It was known by everyone she was not the kind of person to suffer suicidal ideation. She was the queen of her castle and loved that role, flaunted it, lorded over the house, the village, even her social set, because of her beauty, wealth, her position in society and this house. She also wasn’t the kind of person to ever be caught belowstairs. That was beneath her in more ways than locationally. If she were to do what it was ruled she did, she wouldn’t have chosen the buttery to do it in.”
“So someone killed her?”
He shook his head, but said, “That’s the gossip. The staff hated her. Everyone in the village hated her. Her supposed friends were not friends because they hated her too. And by then, David had fallen in love with Virginia.”
And then I remembered.
1922.
The end of Joan’s tenure was the same year as the beginning of Virginia’s.
David hadn’t even waited a year to replace his first wife.
“Are there more happy stories about Earls and Countesses Alcott?” I asked, maybe a little desperately.
“My grandfather worshipped my grandmother. I’ve heard stories, and it was much the same with my great-grandfather and great-grandmother. Then there’s the story of Earl Walter Alcott, who was rumored to have a part-time hobby as a pirate and was the one who significantly augmented the wealth of Duncroft, likely from his efforts at illegally acquiring booty, and his lady wife Anne, who he loved so deeply, he ordered his body be buried in her coffin when he passed a year after she did.”
If that didn’t scream gothic romance, nothing did.
“Well…shoo.”
Ian smiled.
Then he asked, “Are you going to get ready for Lou?”
“Yes.”
He lifted his chin at me, a gesture I’d never seen him make. It wasn’t a jerk or brusque movement. It was tender, affectionate, intimate, and I liked it a whole lot.
“See you when you’re ready,” he murmured.
“Okay, honey,” I replied.
He left.
I got out of bed to see if the girls had unpacked my toothbrush.
But in my head, all I could think was David Alcott might have had a habit of killing the no-longer-needed women in his life.
And he didn’t mind taking care of that particular business in his own home.
Twenty-Four
THE PINK TOPAZ ROOM
I was in search of my sister.
Lou and her folks had come and gone.