Echoes in the Mist (Kingsleys in Love 1)

“You know the details as well as I.”

“I don’t mean what occurred six years ago. I’m referring to what happened last week.”

“As am I.”

“So you too believe Baxter is involved?”

“I believe the answers lie within your reach, and that, at last, you have the courage to face them.”

Ariana didn’t reply, she merely searched Theresa’s lined face with a steady gaze. “I’ll visit Winsham in the morning,” she said at last.

“Would you like me to accompany you?”

Earnestly, Ariana clasped Theresa’s hands. “That would give me great comfort, dear friend. But this time, I must go alone.”

“Ah, but you won’t be alone. You go armed with your instincts, which, as I’ve said in the past, have never failed you. You also go with my teachings … and my love.”

Ariana reached up and hugged her lifelong friend and mentor. “With riches such as those, I can’t help but succeed.”

Dustin sipped the last of his brandy, staring idly out his bedroom window to the moonlit grounds of Broddington. The combination of his worry over Trenton and the strain of keeping up an optimistic facade for Ariana was beginning to take its toll. The sitting room was nearly complete, thus removing his last plausible excuse for remaining at Broddington.

And still there was no sign of Trent.

Draining his glass, Dustin opened Vanessa’s journal for the umpteenth time. Ariana was right: Something about the abrupt change in Vanessa’s tone seemed unnatural, contrived; altering from her typically self-centered, demanding tenor to that of a desperate, frightened, and deranged woman.

Like Trenton, Dustin remembered Vanessa only too well, and mad was the one thing she was not. In fact, every one of her actions was as carefully and meticulously arranged as her hair and wardrobe. So what had prompted the transformation? Was it genuine or intentionally devised?

And how did it factor into the bizarre events of the past few days?

Rubbing his eyes wearily, Dustin’s thoughts returned to Trenton and the impact all this was having on him. What was his current state of mind? Why the hell was he staying away for so long? The bloody fool: Didn’t he realize that by cutting himself off from Ariana he was eliminating his only salvation?

The answer to that was no. Trenton was too muddled to recognize his own needs. Evidently, someone would have to do that for him. Someone like his brother.

Trenton didn’t know where he was. Nor did he care.

He’d spent most of the past five days in a drunken stupor, alternately drinking and passing out, coming to only to lose himself in his liquor again. He hadn’t left Spraystone, nor did he intend to. He also hadn’t seen anyone.

Except Vanessa.

Damn the spiteful bitch: Even in death she taunted him. He’d read the suggestive note he’d found in the barn three times before his fuzzy mind absorbed it, and then he wished he hadn’t.

Where had the letter come from? When had Vanessa written it?

The one night he’d tried to sleep, he’d been awakened by her voice. Staggering to the window, he’d been confronted with the heinous nightmare that plagued him relentlessly, refused to be extinguished: Vanessa, calling to him, begging him to come to her, pleading with him not to hurt her.

Maybe he had hurt her … even killed her.

Perhaps the vision before him was no impostor, but Vanessa herself, returned from the grave to torment him for murdering her.

Reality ceased to exist, melding with conjecture into a dim, muted memory, dulled further by the effects of his brandy. Vanessa was dead … Vanessa was back … he must have killed her… why else would her ghost be haunting him?

Obviously, he was utterly, entirely insane. And madmen were capable of anything, even murder.

He’d come close to brutalizing his own wife.

Ariana. The only beautiful, precious sanity left in his frenzied world. She loved him, believed in him, trusted him. And what had he done? He’d hurt her, nearly choked her … actually confused her with a dead woman.

Dear Lord, he’d lost his mind.