Page 27 of Winterset

“I won’t go out investigating,” Kyria protested. “I am a mother now. I’m not going to endanger my child or her future. Or the twins or Miss Farrington, for that matter. And with both you and Rafe here, I can’t think there will be any danger to us in this house.”

“I should hope not.” Reed glanced over at Rafe, who smiled wryly, and Reed knew that he was thinking the same thing Reed was: the more one tried to push Kyria into doing something, the more determined she became not to be moved.

“It would be quite bad of you to toss us out,” Kyria went on teasingly. “It seems the least you could do is to let us stay here awhile longer, since you don’t mean to let us buy Winterset, do you?”

Reed looked faintly surprised, then thoughtful. “No, I think you are right. I don’t want to sell this house. I’m sorry. I thought I would, but now that I’m here—I really can’t give it up. I suppose I had better send a note to Mr. Norton tomorrow telling him I’ve changed my mind.” He paused, then looked at his sister seriously. “But you will promise me, won’t you, Kyria, you’ll leave and take the children if there appears to be any real danger?”

“Of course I will,” Kyria agreed. “If there is real danger.” After a moment she added, “But right now, I think we had better concentrate on finding out what we can about what’s going on.”

“Whose body it was, whether or not she was murdered, and how, if at all, it’s linked to Anna,” Reed said.

“We might do well to find out about those old murders, too,” Rafe pointed out. “I have a little trouble believing that somebody now, as well as two people back then, were all killed by wild animals. I have even more trouble believing that there’s some ancient man-beast popping up every fifty years or so to kill somebody.”

“So where will you start?” Kyria asked, looking at Reed, the expression on her face challenging.

He sighed. “With Anna, of course. I’ll ride over there tomorrow and see what I can find out about this servant.”

They finished off their brandies, and Kyria and Rafe left the study, starting up the stairs toward their bedroom. Rafe’s arm was looped around his wife’s shoulders, and he held her close against his side.

He leaned down and nuzzled her hair, saying in a low voice, “Why do I get the feeling that you were trying to maneuver Reed into going to see Miss Holcomb tomorrow?”

Kyria smiled and turned to kiss his cheek. “Perhaps because I was.”

“And your reason for throwing the poor man together with the woman who broke his heart three years ago is…?”

“My brother is a wonderful man, but he has a maddening habit of listening only to his head and not to his heart. She told him she wouldn’t marry him, and he accepted it because that was the logical thing to do. But his heart obviously has a different opinion. I don’t know whether Miss Holcomb is in trouble or not, but I do know that he dreamed of her, and that when he thought she was in trouble, his first instinct was to fly to her rescue. That is his heart speaking, and he should follow it.”

“And what if she turns him away again? What if she still does not want him?”

Kyria cast him a sideways glance. “I looked around the room this evening and saw that neither my brother nor Miss Holcomb were there. A few minutes later, she came sliding back into the room from the terrace, her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling, a certain expression on her face, as if she’d just barely saved herself from falling off a cliff. I don’t know why Miss Holcomb turned him down three years ago. But I think I can definitely say that it is not the case that she does not want him.”

She smiled her cat-in-the-cream smile at Rafe. “Maybe they just need to be thrown together until finally they figure out that they belong together.” Her smiled curved up even more as she said, “After all, that’s what happened with us.”

Then, with a giggle, she pulled away from him and ran lightly up the rest of the stairs. Rafe, grinning, went after her, taking the stairs two at a time.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Anna met Dr. Felton with a subdued smile, extending her hand to him. “It was very kind of you to come here today, Dr. Felton.”

She gestured him toward the couch, and she and her brother sat down on the pair of blue velvet chairs that faced the sofa. It was the afternoon following the party, and she had been waiting anxiously all day for news about what had happened the night before. When the butler had announced Dr. Felton, she had been filled with a combination of relief that she would at last find out and dread that the body must indeed have been Estelle’s, for why else would the doctor have come straightaway to tell them?

“I wanted to tell you myself,” Felton said.

“It was Estelle?” Kit asked. “You identified the body?”

“Yes,” the doctor answered. “I was fairly certain as soon as I saw the body, but her father identified her, too.”

“I feel terrible,” Anna murmured. “We should have done something more. Looked farther afield for her.”

“I am sure you did all you could,” Felton said comfortingly.

“We thought she had run off with a man,” Anna explained. “And all that time, she was dead!”

“We had no reason to think otherwise,” Kit told her. “You mustn’t blame yourself. By the time we became aware that she was missing, she was probably already dead. Why else would she not have come home? Even if we had searched in the right place and found her, we could not have helped her.”

Anna turned toward Dr. Felton. “Is that true? I keep thinking, what if she had fallen or something, and she was lying there all this time….”

“No, you must not worry yourself about it. Sir Christopher is right. There was nothing you could have done for her. She had been dead for several days—doubtless she was already dead when you were searching for her. It was no accident. She was murdered.”