Heart of Fire - Kat Martin

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to come out of mourning. She didn’t want anyone connecting her to Laurel’s death, and wearing those dreadful black garments just might put the notion in someone’s head.

      Corrie didn’t think her sister would mind. She believed Laurel would rather the truth be discovered than that her younger sister mope about in dismal black, doing nothing to clear her name.

      Agnes cast Corrie an inquiring look. “You are determined to discover the truth, but what if that truth turns out to be something you do not wish to learn?”

      There was certainly a chance facts would surface that Corrie would rather not know. She would have to trust that Laurel was an innocent seduced into the affair, as Corrie believed she was.

      “I’ll deal with that circumstance should it arise.”

      “And the danger?” Agnes pressed. “If the earl is truly a murderer, what will stop him from also killing you?”

      Corrie waved her aunt’s worry away, though the thought had crossed her mind. “I told you, Tremaine will not know who I am. Besides, if he did murder his wife, he did it for money. And if he murdered Laurel and Joshua, he did it to keep his freedom, or perhaps to protect his family from scandal. As I am merely a destitute relative there for a visit, he would have no reason to murder me.”

      “And I will be there with her,” Allison added softly, referring to the role she had agree to play: Corrie’s maid.

      “That’s right. Allison will act as my liaison with you should any problem arise.”

      Fortunately, during the time Allison had been at Selkirk with Laurel, she had been pretending to be a widow with a newborn child. She had been dressed in mourning clothes and had never gone into the village, which meant she was safe from recognition at Castle Tremaine.

      Agnes released a deep sigh. “I hope you two know what you are doing.”

      So did Corrie. At least she knew the Earl of Tremaine was in residence at Castle Tremaine, and had been for several weeks. Agnes had told her the man had been at the castle at the time of Laurel’s death, and for several months before that. Lately he seemed to be spending even more time in the country.

      Perhaps he had found a new victim on whom to ply his seductive skills.

      Ignoring her companions, Corrie turned to look out the window and caught sight of the inn up ahead, the Hen and Raven. A tremor of nervous anticipation flitted through her. She was still gowned in black, her face hidden beneath a veil of black tulle, and would be until she left the inn on the morrow.

      Then she would be dressed in the clothes of a gently reared young woman fallen on hard times, clothes Allison had collected from the local rag merchant: several slightly worn traveling suits, well-worn muslin day dresses, and a number of unimpressive but serviceable dinner gowns with barely frayed cuffs and soiled hems.

      Though the gowns were not at all the sort she was used to wearing, in a way Corrie didn’t mind.

      Anything would be better than the dismal black that reminded her how she had failed her sister.

      Four

      Ignoring the creak of leather as he shifted in his saddle, Grayson Forsythe, sixth Earl of Tremaine, surveyed his estate, the lands surrounding Castle Tremaine.

      All the way to the low stone wall on his left, past the dense copse of trees in the distance, to the river running along the perimeter on the right, fields of gently rolling hills, verdant with the new grass of spring, beckoned as if whispering his name. Beneath him, his big black stallion, Raja, pranced and sidestepped, eager to continue the ride they had begun early that morning. Almost as eager as Gray.

      For the past ten days, the only peace he could find came from riding the hills, escaping the confines of the house, escaping his family…and the memories. Every year, as the dreaded day drew near, the past began to haunt him like a specter.

      May 19, the day his pretty young wife, Jillian, had died.

      Gray nudged the stallion down off the hill, into a ground-eating gallop. Wind tugged at the thick black hair he wore unfashionably long and tied back in a queue, and fluttered his full-sleeved, white lawn shirt.

      Out here, he could examine the memories and wash them clean, know they would eventually fade, as they did every year. Back at the castle, which stood next to the river where she had died, it was nearly impossible to do.

      Gray rode for the next hour, reached the far edge of his property, turned the stallion and began to walk the horse at a cooling pace back toward the house.

      In time, the memories would leave him. Day-to-day problems with his tenants and his fields, Tremaine account ledgers, and the businesses he had inherited along with the title, would engage him once more, and the past would return to its place in the corner of his mind. But May 19 was almost a week away.

      Gray steeled himself and urged Raja toward the ancient castle on the hill next to the river.

      Corrie stared through the window of the shabby carriage she had hired at the Hen and Raven. Up ahead, at the end of a long gravel drive, Castle Tremaine perched on the top of a hill like the fortress it had once been. Inside the thick stone walls she would find Grayson Forsythe, the man who might well have murdered her sister.

      “Are you certain about this, Coralee?” Allison leaned toward her, her hands clasped nervously in her lap. “Aunt Agnes could be right, you know. We might be putting ourselves into dreadful danger.”

      “It’s Letty or Mrs. Moss. You must remember, Allison, to call me that. And they have no reason to harm us. They are going to think I am a destitute relative. And if something happens that gives us the least reason to believe we might be in danger, we shall leave in very short order.”

      Allison smoothed her simple printed cotton skirt, even worse for wear than Corrie’s pale blue gown trimmed with ecru lace. Though the lacy overskirt had been carefully mended, it was clearly past time for the garment to be replaced. Corrie adjusted the matching blue-and-ecru lace bonnet, ignoring a soiled spot that barely showed on the lower edge of the brim.

      Like the rest of the clothes in her trunks, the well-worn dresses had been altered to fit. She looked just as one would expect—like a distant country cousin in need of a wealthy relative’s aid.

      With a lurch that nearly unseated them, the carriage rolled to a halt in front of the huge stone structure that was Castle Tremaine. Though the moat had been filled and planted with daffodils, the ancient building modified over the hundreds of years since its construction, the castle was impressive, with huge carved doors and two-story wings added onto each side of the high round keep that had once been the center of life there.

      The Forsythe family had a respectable fortune—increased by the timely demise of Grayson Forsythe’s wife.

      The coachman helped Coralee and Allison from the rented carriage, tossed down their trunks, then climbed back up onto the driver’s seat. “Ye want I should stay till yer settled, missus?”

      Corrie shook her head. “We’ll be fine. I am his lordship’s cousin, you see, here for a visit.” And she wanted the carriage to leave so there would be no way the earl could toss them out on their shabbily dressed derrieres.

      She collected herself, gave the coachman a moment to set the carriage into motion, then heard the fading jangle of the harness as the conveyance disappeared down the long gravel drive. Ignoring the rubbery feeling in her knees, she climbed the steps to the majestic carved wooden door.

      A few sharp raps and a butler, dressed immaculately in black tailcoat, black trousers and snowy white shirt, pulled open the heavy portal.

      “May I help you?”

      Corrie pasted on a smile. “I am here to see Lord Tremaine. You may tell him Mrs. Moss—Letty Moss, his cousin Cyrus’s wife—is arrived to see him.”

      She wasn’t sure the earl would even recognize the name, was hoping

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