The Countess by Catherine Coulter

Author:Catherine Coulter
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Man-Woman Relationships, Nobility - England, Gothic Fiction, Triangles (Interpersonal Relations), General, Romance, Countesses, Gothic, Historical, Fiction, Nobility, Love Stories
ISBN: 9780451198501
Publisher: SIGNET
Published: 1999-10-01T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

There were three branches of candles lit against the darkness. A healthy fire burned in the fireplace. The room was warm. I stood there, holding George too tightly, feeling as if my blood had frozen in my veins. I stared at the shadowed corners, unable to see clearly, knowing that there could be things in those shadows, hiding from me.

George wuffed and strained to get away from me. He didn't see anything amiss.

Still, I just stood there, looking now toward the windows. Belinda had pulled the draperies closed. I'd told her to leave them open. She had forgotten, or perhaps she was trying to break me of what she considered a very unhealthy habit.

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I locked the door, turned the knob one way, then the other, did everything I could think of to pry it open, but it held. Yes, it was well locked. I walked to the windows and jerked back the draperies. I opened the windows. Cold dry air washed over me. I breathed in deeply.

There was nothing and no one here. It was very possible, if I had indeed locked my door last night, that the person had come through my open windows. I shut and locked them. I looked down at the empty bar holes on the casement and wondered if Caroline was still here, if the violence of her death was somehow holding her here. Poor, poor girl. I couldn't imagine such an illness, but I knew it existed.

One of grandfather's oldest friends had even forgotten his own wife and his children. The day he no longer recognized Grandfather, I saw my grandfather cry.

He would die alone, my grandfather had said, alone, because there was no one he knew and loved to be there with him.

I took off my clothes and pulled my nightgown over my head. I tied the pale blue satin ribbons into pretty bows. I suppose it had been my mother who taught me that. So long ago. I couldn't call up her face anymore. I picked up George, and together we settled ourselves under the mountain of warm covers. I didn't wake up once.

The next morning I rode Small Bess into Devbridge-on-Aston, a small village clustered around a central square that held an old church, a vast graveyard whose oldest stone was dated 1311, and a meandering stream. I looked closely at all the now-white ducks swimming in the stream, at the clumps of skinny oak and Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

lime trees. Stone houses lined up on either side of a very old inn called The Queen's Arms. There was an almshouse, a blacksmith, his hammer ringing loud in the morning air, and a good half dozen other small shops that carried everything from tobacco to leather to barrels. Many villagers were out and about, and I smiled and met a good thirty of them. Everyone was friendly, which I certainly appreciated. It had been a long time since there had been a mistress at Devbridge Manor.

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