Quincy gave a startled laugh and looked to Peter, who raised a golden eyebrow. “Don’t look to me for help. I’m just as curious as they are.”
Quincy schooled his features into an innocent expression. “But wouldn’t you rather—”
“No!”
He didn’t know who had spoken, for their voices all rose up in outrage, blending together in an impatient cacophony. Chuckling, he held his hands up in defense. “Very well. Quiet down and I’ll tell you.”
At once they fell silent, like obedient schoolchildren. He grinned, his anticipation rising. “Would it surprise you,” he asked his captive audience, “to learn that the property in question is…on Synne?”
There was a moment of stunned silence. And then Lady Tesh, the aggravation in her voice plain to hear, said, “Don’t fun with us, my boy.”
“I swear I’m not. The property my father left for me is on Synne.”
“Goodness, what are the chances?” Lenora exclaimed.
“What property?”
Clara’s voice held a strange undertone of tension to it. When he looked at her, however, her expression was only mildly curious.
He frowned. Something was off in her eyes. Before he could question her on it, however, Lady Tesh spoke up. “Well, my boy, answer your fiancée. What property?”
Excitement threaded through him once more. “Brace yourselves, for you are looking at the owner of Swallowhill.”
Chapter 12
Swallowhill.
Clara felt the blood leave her face. No, it couldn’t be. Surely she’d misheard.
Deep in her heart, however, she knew she hadn’t. Quincy owned Swallowhill.
A memory surfaced, of sharply peaked gables, stone walls reaching for the sky, a dark gray slate roof. All surrounded by a garden that had provided her relief from seemingly unending pain.
But her history with the place went back so much further than that, starting when she was still small, joining her mother on her visits to the young woman who had lived there. Clara couldn’t recall much about her, except that she’d been kind, and beautiful, and very, very sad. And in those gardens, most especially in the greenhouse that graced the far end of the property, the two women distracted a rambunctious Clara by letting her run wild and teaching her to find joy in nature.
Those had been happy days. But then the woman had died, and her mother soon after. Clara had forgotten about the house until she’d come across it again during the darkest time of her life. In the overgrown confines of that abandoned place she had found the piece of herself she’d lost with her mother’s death, could almost feel her mother’s presence in walking the paths and sitting under the soaring glass dome. And for a time, she’d been able to forget her heartbreak. There was no cramped, isolated cottage that hid her away from the rest of the world while everyone believed her to be visiting her old nurse, no memories of promises broken.
No tiny grave without a headstone, looking out over an unforgiving sea.
She hugged her arms to her middle, as if she could hold herself together by will alone. Desperate to distract herself, she forced her attention back to the others.
“Goodness, that’s a pretty property,” Aunt Olivia said. “And how fortuitous that you should find yourself the owner. Why, it’s as if your marriage to Clara had been destined.”
The snort that exploded from Peter quickly transformed into a coughing fit at one stern look from his wife. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Choked on my tea.”
“I had a feeling you’d know of it,” Quincy drawled. “Your mind is as sharp as anyone I know.”
“It’s sharper,” she rejoined with a haughtily raised brow.
Margery stirred her tea, frowning. “I know of Swallowhill but have never visited. It’s been abandoned since I was a girl, if I recall.”
“I can’t remember anyone living in it,” Phoebe mused. “At least, not as long as I’ve been alive. Do you recall the history, Aunt Olivia?”
“Certainly,” their great-aunt pronounced, as if highly offended anyone had doubted it of her. “There was nothing there but farmland for centuries until a Lord Harris bought the property and had the house built to please his bride. But the man was rubbish with money. Not a decade had passed before he was forced to sell it off. It was quite a scandal at the time, of course, and garnered much attention. Not that I ever engage in gossip,” she finished in lofty tones.
This time Peter’s snort was much more pronounced, and not at all excused as other than what it was. Lady Tesh glared daggers at him, of which he seemed unaware. All save for the slight quirk of his lips.
“I recall Lord Harris’s name on the deed,” Quincy mused. “And it’s sat empty all this time.”