Lady Violet Goes for a Gallop by Grace Burrowes

Author:Grace Burrowes [Burrowes, Grace]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781952443985
Publisher: Grace Burrowes

Sebastian offered Ann his arm, and she accepted his escort, which I took for a symptom of her upset. We followed the path away from the house and stable yard and came upon another, larger clearing. The rhododendrons rose to at least fifteen feet here, and across a patch of grass much in need of a few hungry sheep sat a tidy half-timbered cottage.

The structure was too commodious to be a pensioner’s home, having two floors and an abundance of mullioned windows. Roses vining all about the front porch completed a fairy-tale picture of the snug woodland abode drifting quietly into the mists of enchantment. A steward might be given such a house, or a very lucky gamekeeper or head gardener, though the place was in want of maintenance.

I could not see this part of the property from my windows, enclosed as it was in trees. Perhaps this was the dower house, out of sight but close enough that servants could come and go easily from the main house.

In any case, nobody appeared to occupy the dwelling. No flowers adorned the window boxes or porch steps, the grass desperately needed scything, and on this lovely day, nobody had tied back a single curtain. The cottage had a timeless quality, as if a touch of magic would keep the roses eternally blooming and the birds forever singing in the surrounding wood.

“I asked the grooms to saddle your horses,” Ann said, “because I want to show you what I found back at Belle Terre.”

“Freeman is at The Gauges,” I replied. “He will doubtless be informed of your arrival. Should he see what you are about to show us?”

Ann paced off a few yards through the long grass. “I don’t know. My instincts say no, but my instincts have been notably in error on occasion.”

Such as when those instincts had prodded her to abandon her French husband all those years ago? “What have you found?”

“Proof of an assignation, at least.” She closed the distance between us, the skirts of her habit dragging through the overgrown grass. “Belle Terre is as self-sufficient as Hugh could make it. We don’t have our own blacksmith, and we buy some of our candles, but in many regards, it’s an old-fashioned estate.”

My family seat, Derwent Hall, was the same sort of property, where the old ways were still the best ways, to hear most of the staff tell it.

“And the significance of this self-sufficiency?”

“We have a cheese cave,” Ann said. “It’s big. Hugh showed it to us when we first arrived, because it’s the sort of place Fiona might discover on her own. Hugh has had the smaller passages bricked up, though. Fiona can’t get lost there.”

I wanted to take Ann’s hands and shout at her to get to the important part, but she was a mother. To her, Fiona’s safety would always be the important part.

“Go on,” I said as Sebastian appeared to study the cottage.

“I went to the cave this morning—it’s not that far from the house.

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