Devil and Honoria were the last to leave—they were driving back to London and their children, then retreating to Somersham for the next several weeks. Caro and Michael had, of course, been summoned to the family Summer Celebration and, of course, would go.
As the St. Iveses’ carriage rumbled out through the gateposts, Caro heaved a patently happy, deeply contented sigh. Equally content to hear it, Michael looked down at her, at the glorious sun-shot frizz of her golden brown hair. She glanced up; her silver eyes met his.
Then she smiled and looked across at the grass verge. “It was just there that this all started—do you remember?”
She walked the few steps to the spot on the verge a few yards from the memorial stone. His hand about hers, Michael went with her.
Glancing up, she grinned. “You called me witless.”
Staring at the grass, he squeezed her hand. “You frightened me. I knew, even then, that I couldn’t afford to lose you.”
Deliberately, he shifted his gaze to the stone. Waited…but all he heard was the birds settling in the trees, the soft whisper of the breeze. All he felt was Caro’s warmth as she leaned against him.
No screaming horses. No cold and deadening fear.
The memory hadn’t gone, but the effects had dimmed, been overlaid.
By something much more powerful.
He looked at Caro, caught her silver gaze, smiled. Lifting her hand, he kissed it, then turned away. Hand in hand, they walked to the house.
He glanced up at the windows, looked up to the attics below the roofline, and felt a sense of completion well. A sense of sureness, of anticipation—of simple happiness.
His lost family was his past; Caro was his present and his future.
He’d found his ideal bride—together, the future was theirs.
ANNOUNCEMENT OF
The Bastion Club #3
RELEASED IN OCTOBER 2004
1
April, 1816
Restormel Abbey, Lostwithiel, Cornwall
Crack!
A log shattered in the grate; sparks sizzled and flew. Flames leapt, sending fingers of light playing over the leather spines lining the library walls.
Charles St. Austell, Earl of Lostwithiel, lifted his head from the padded depths of his armchair and checked that no embers had reached the shaggy pelts of his wolfhounds, Cassius and Brutus. Slumped in hairy mounds at his booted feet, neither hound twitched; neither was smoldering. Lips curving, Charles let his head loll back on the well-worn leather; raising the glass in his right hand, he sipped, and returned to his cogitations.
On life and its vicissitudes, and its sometimes unexpected evolution.
Outside, the wind whistled, faint and high pitched, about the high stone walls; the night tonight was relatively calm, alive but not turbulent, not always the case along Cornwall’s rugged southern coast. Within the abbey, all was slumberingly still; it was after midnight—other than he, no human remained awake.
It seemed a good time to take stock.
Closing his eyes, he tried to clear his mind.
And heard footsteps.
Bootsteps. They marched nearer, and nearer, from the rear of the house. His senses were acute; by the time the footsteps reached the back of the front hall, not far from the library door, he knew beyond question that whoever was strolling through his house after midnight, it wasn’t any of his servants; no servant walked with that relaxed, assured tread.
The wolfhounds, as aware as he, remained slumped, stationary but alert, their eyes fixed on the library door. He knew that look. If the person came in, the hounds would rise and greet them, but otherwise they were content to let that person pass.