Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 129951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
“No one will know?” I whispered to the journal. “Know what?”
I reread the passage, noting it had to have great meaning, because Marie didn’t even mention food, something she almost always did.
I then tried to recall Harmony’s letters, which I’d read at least four times.
Charlie was begging her to come to America. He offered her the money for the passage. And she planned to go. She was nipping away her allowance. She teased she was doing it to buy her trousseau. From her responses to him, it was obvious he did not tease that he didn’t give a crap about her trousseau, he only wanted her.
And then…
“Shit,” I mumbled, pushing aside papers to get to the big stack of letters tied in faded yellow ribbon.
I was going through dates to try to match a letter somewhat near Marie’s entry when something out the windows caught my eye.
Christian, who I hadn’t seen since that first day, wearing a slicker and jeans, mist in his thick blond hair, was walking through the garden in front of the studio.
His eyes were pinned to something.
I turned my head to look out the side window.
Chastity was on her knees in the mist with a bucket of mulch, a trowel, her frizzed hair, frizzier in the weather, pulled back in a huge poof of a ponytail.
I looked back to Christian who had stopped walking, but he hadn’t taken his gaze from Chastity.
“Okay,” I whispered like he was right there, and I was giving him a peptalk, “I want you to go for it, but I’m terrified you’re gonna go for it, so just do it, but you gotta take this real slow and be real gentle.”
Like he heard me, Christian started walking again.
I held my breath when he stopped next to Chastity.
I kept holding it when she twisted her neck to look up at him.
I continued holding it when I watched her entire body lock.
I knew he was saying something to her.
Inexplicably (maybe), in the middle of him saying it, she popped to her feet and ran—not jogged, not dashed—ran toward the house.
And she disappeared.
I let my breath out in a whoosh.
I could only see his profile as he stared after her, but I still could read his shock and concern.
“I sense you went gentle, but…shit, man, that was rough,” I muttered.
I watched him drop his head and lift a hand to rub the back of his neck. He stopped doing that, stared for a good long time at the space where Chastity disappeared, and then he walked out of my vision.
“Crap,” I mumbled.
I looked to my phone and saw my alarm was going to go off in quarter of an hour to tell me to get back to the house and get sorted for dinner.
I turned off the alarm, grabbed the studio phone and called the house.
“Yes, Miss Vivienne?” Patsy answered.
“Hey, I’m going back in. Do I need to do anything to the fire, or will it just die out?”
“I’ll send Scotty out to check it, but it should just die out.”
“Thanks, Patsy.”
“No worries, dear.”
I hung up the phone, nabbed my cell, and dashed through the mist to the house.
But I didn’t go to my room.
I took a chance and went to Battle’s study.
The door was closed.
I knocked.
“Yes?” he called.
I opened the door and poked my head through. “It’s me.”
He had his sexy glasses on, and when he saw me, he added a sexier smile on his mouth.
“This is a surprise,” he said.
“Am I interrupting you?”
He took his sexy glasses off (alas), dropped them on his desk and invited, “Of course not.”
I walked in, closing the door behind me.
“Is everything all right?” he queried.
Now was a good time to get into the whole What’s with All the Heavy Flirting, Your Grace? thing.
But first things first.
I sat in one of the wingchairs in front of his desk. “Do you know much about Talyn history?”
“A fair bit.”
“Harmony?”
He shook his head. “I’m afraid the only notes made on the females of our line were those who made particularly advantageous matches.”
“So you don’t know if something happened to her…after the war?”
His brows moved down. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. Anything.”
“Why do you ask?”
“I’ve just scratched the surface on my reading, but Marie recorded a very odd entry into her diary. Something about Harmony. Something about the ‘deeds that were done in this house.’”
“Jesus,” he murmured.
Oh yeah.
That was ominous.
“And I was about to get into Harmony’s letters to my grandfather, but from memory, his injury happened at the Battle of the Bulge. So it was close to the end of the war. There was about a year and a half of correspondence between them after he left here, where they were planning on Harmony going to America and them getting married. Her responses seem to infer he was saving for her trip over, along with buying an engagement ring and money to purchase a house. She was helping by putting aside part of her allowance along with attempting to get her father to see reason and approve the match. And then, quite suddenly, she begs off.”