by Geneva Lee
“What?” I looked up to see Georgia striding toward us, but she wasn’t alone. My eyes flashed to Edward, worried that he might explode or make a run for it, but all he did was stand there with clenched fists as Clara made her way to us, pushing a pram.
She shot me a nervous smile. If there had been attention on us before, it would be unbearable soon. I looked around, prepared to step between Clara and other shopper’s mobile phone cameras, but the department was curiously empty save for the sales associates. We’d been duped. Georgia told Clara we would be here, and Clara had arranged to crash our shopping date.
“I hope you don’t mind if I join you,” Clara called, maintaining a safe distance by staying behind the pram. Her eyes flickered to Edward before skittering quickly back to me.
“We’re just surprised,” I said quickly. I circled around the baby carriage and gave her a tight hug. Lowering my voice, I whispered, “I don’t know how he’s going to react to this.”
“I know,” she whispered back. “But since neither of you return my calls I didn’t have any other choice.”
Loneliness trembled in her voice. Clara was happy in her marriage to Alexander. The two adored each other with an obsession that dictated their every move. But he was a powerful man, and with that power came responsibilities that meant they couldn’t be together all the time. I thought of how it felt to be cooped up in Thornham for the last few months and sympathy swelled inside me. How much worse had it been for Clara during that time? She couldn’t go anywhere without a security entourage. After her kidnapping, Alexander and her rarely left Buckingham. And the whole time she’s been doing that without a word from her best friends. Edward had every right to maintain his distance after what had happened, but what excuse did I have? I’d even unintentionally claimed her only companion, drawing Georgia to Briarshead to help me and Smith.
“Sorry,” I said earnestly. “I’ve been a cunt.”
“You have a baby,” she said with a laugh at my choice of words. “But I did hear some things that worried me.”
“Later,” I promised her. The truth was that talking to Clara might help me understand more of what was going on in my head. Clara had been through pregnancy. Clara had faced uncertainty and danger. She had children of her own. Suddenly, I couldn’t remember why I had been avoiding her in the first place. It was strange how much clearer everything seemed in London compared to Thornham. Problems didn’t seem as insurmountable here.
We broke apart. Clara looked over my shoulder apprehensively. She waited for a moment for Edward to speak. When he didn’t, I turned, sliding my arm around Clara’s waist, and gave him a barbed look. I understood the gamut of emotions he felt when he saw her. We’d discussed the confusion that came as a result of David’s death and Clara’s disappearance before.
Clara swayed on her feet a little, her free hand wrapped tightly around the handle of the baby carriage. I nudged her forward with my palm. “You two should talk.”
I moved over and took the pram from her, strolling with it towards the display I’d been looking at a moment ago. Leaning down, I lifted Wills, who gurgled with pleasure at the sight of my face.
“Remember me?” I asked him softly.
He grinned more widely. Seeing him, I remembered all the time I had spent at Buckingham leading up to Penny’s birth. Helping with Wills had felt natural. Why had it been so hard with Penny? I knew that my hormones changed and that it was a different kind of responsibility, but putting Wills on my hip while he reached for my necklace, I was left to wonder if maybe I was better with babies than I thought. Why could I only see this here? Why had we decided to move to the country?
I forced myself to return to my perusal of the bedding for Jane’s guest room, stealing glances at Edward and Clara as I did. Georgia joined me and pretended to be interested in shopping.
“How’s it going?” I asked in a low voice.
“No one’s dead yet.” She picked up a pillow sham, turned it over like she never seen it one before, and put it back down.
“You could have warned me,” I told her.
“I wasn’t giving either of you the chance to back out of this. Honestly, the holidays were very hard on Clara. She’s had a lot of nightmares. Alexander makes her feel better, but sometimes a girl needs her best friends.” It was an oddly thoughtful move on Georgia’s part, I realized. I knew she’d grown closer to Clara, but it occurred to me that Georgia might not be as cold as I thought.
I swallowed against the guilt that rose inside me as I heard this. I’d been so consumed with my own concerns that I’d never stopped to wonder if Clara was calling because she needed me.
“I wish we had never left London,” I said, surprising myself.
Georgia snorted, her attention devoted to analyzing throw pillows. “Out with it. If you have an opinion, share it.”
“Smith thought he could run from trouble, but I don’t know why he can’t see—”
“That trouble always finds us?” I finished for her. I sighed, deciding on the plum color. Not everything in life had to match perfectly. Not everything in life could. Thornham proved just that. “I don’t want to stay there anymore.”
“I know,” Georgia said simply. “I’m working on it.”
I wanted to ask her what she meant by that, but we were interrupted by Clara and Edward Both of them had tears in their eyes as they joined us. Edward hesitated a moment before holding out his arms for Wills.
“Do you mind if I hold my nephew?”
I glanced at Clara, realizing her tears were happy ones. It was a good reminder that tears come as often with joy as sadness. “Not at all.”
Georgia was right. We wouldn’t solve anything by hiding from our problems, especially if our problems were going to follow us. We had to face them. I just had to get Smith to see that London was the place to make our stand.
13
Smith
If Belle thought that Penny wouldn’t miss her, she was wrong. Nora and I had been taking turns for the last few hours passing the baby back and forth, but Penny remained inconsolable. She wanted her mother, and no one else would do. Still, I was grateful the young nanny was here to help me. Especially after circling the nursery for the last hour until Penny tired herself out.
I walked into the kitchen triumphantly, carrying a sleeping baby to find Mrs. Winters digging into the pantry.
“Is everything okay?” I asked in a low voice, not wanting to wake Penny up.
Mrs. Winters turned, a startled hand flying to her cheek, her eyes in a daze. She shook her head as if to clear it. “Quite.”
The housekeeper had been acting strangely since Nora’s allergic reaction. She blamed herself, which for the old battle ax meant projecting that guilt on everyone around her. I took a step forward and examined the array of items on the counter.
“Clearing out the cupboards?”
Her face pinched into a look that would have withered fruit on the spot. It merely amused me. “If you must know, I’m getting rid of allergens.”
“I think nuts are the only thing you need to worry about,” I said.
That was a mistake. She whipped around, planting her hands on her ample hips and leveled the full-force of her glare at me. “How do we know that? What if the baby has an allergy? What if—”
“No one blames you,” I interrupted her. In all of the confusion on New Year’s, I’m not sure anyone had told her that. I’d been concerned about Belle. Belle had been concerned about Nora. Georgia…
Well, it was hard to say who Georgia was concerned about at any given time.
Mrs. Winters returned to her work, but her shoulders trembled a little. A moment later, she turned with the box in her hands and a puzzled look on her face. “Why was that back here?” She placed it on the counter and then turned to another cupboard. She pulled out a tea tin. Prying off the lid, she sniffed and her puzzled gaze returned to the box.
“What is it?”
“I think it’s some of that lactation tea
Mrs. Price was told to drink.”
“What’s she been drinking?” I couldn’t bear a repeat of what happened the morning Belle’s milk supply had failed her. I wasn’t sure she would recover from that a second time.
“That’s just it. She hasn’t been drinking the tea. She doesn’t like the taste of it. It was easier to get her to drink the other. That means this—” she rattled the tin “—is nearly full.”
“I only brought home one box,” I said slowly.
“This must be the one she brought home the first time, but then...” She stared at it for a moment longer, shrugged her shoulders, and moved it to the cupboard where she kept the tea.
There was only one explanation for how that box got into the house. Belle had brought it home. If that was the case, how had she wound up with the wrong one? I might cross it off as an innocent mistake if the tea she’d been drinking hadn’t caused the exact problem she was hoping to avoid. I wished she was here now, so she could see it. But she was in London, and I didn’t want to disturb her. Georgia had been checking in with me, sending me quick text messages to let me know the shopping trip was going well, but, more than ever, I found myself wishing I was there with Belle. Before I could fully process what this meant, my mobile began to ring.
“Excuse me.” I carried Penny out of the kitchen, shifting her to my shoulder to answer it. “Hello?”
“Hello, Mr. Price,” the booming voice of our estate agent, Dennis, greeted me. “I confess I hadn’t expected to hear from you so soon? You’re not sick of Thornham, already?” He laughed at his own joke.
I grimaced. If he knew what was going on here, he wouldn’t think it a laughing matter. “Actually, I had a question. I was recently told the estate wasn’t for sale when we viewed it. Is that true?”
There was a pause and I could almost see him shifting from his laid back position, feet up on his desk and mobile at his ear, to sit upright. “Well, no. It wasn’t. That’s not odd, though,” he added swiftly. “These old family homes rarely get placed on the market. Most buyers and sellers handle things privately.”
“But the family was gone,” I pointed out, shifting on my feet as Penny stirred in my arms. “Why wouldn’t it have been put on the market?”
“I...don’t know,” he admitted. “I can look into the matter more if there is a concern, but I assure your purchase was completely legal.”
I imagined this conversation had sent a cold sweat forming on his brow. He thought he was simply calling a prior client. He hadn’t expected an interrogation. Maybe if he had, he would have been more helpful.
“That won’t be necessary,” I reassured him. “I only wanted to check.”
“Of course.” There was a rush of air like he’d exhaled in relief. “Is there anything else I can help you with? I know we discussed the possibility of placing your London home—”
“Not at the moment. Actually,” I paused and reconsidered. “How did you hear about Thornham if it wasn’t for sale?”
“We get tips all the time. Probably a local let us know. Some village busybody who was tired of seeing the place fall to ruin.”
“That makes sense,” I said tightly. I thanked him for his time and hung up. I hadn’t learned much—nothing concrete, at least—but he had confirmed what Georgia had told me.
The estate hadn’t been for sale. Months ago, I might have accepted his explanation for how we wound up learning about it. Now?
None of this added up. Everything Georgia had uncovered thus far had been confirmed by police reports and county records. The family had disappeared, only to have us unearth their remains decades later. And according to Rowan, the rumors of the village were true. Miranda Thorne was alive. Was it possible that there was no ghostly specter of our past causing this problem, instead had we wandered into someone else’s tragedy and accidentally filled the vacancies the Thorne family’s deaths had left behind?
Nora came bouncing down the stairs and saw me struggling to send a text.
“Let me have her.” She picked up the baby. “I honestly can do this myself.”
I’d been arguing with her about that all day. Now I was grateful for the reprieve.
“Would you mind if I looked into a few things?” I asked her, relieved there was someone to rely on here.
“I’m always here for you, Smith.” She turned on her heel and carried Penny carefully upstairs toward the nursery.
I’d gotten to the second line of my text to Georgia when it occurred to me that Nora had never called me by my first name before. I suppose it made sense, given that she was here full-time Belle insisted on being called by her first name. Still, it didn’t sit well with me. Then again nothing seemed quite right in Briarshead these days. I thought we’d left London behind for a simpler life, but now I had to face facts. Nothing was ever simple where we were concerned.
14
Belle
It was official. Edward was a natural with babies. I’d seen him enough with Penny to know that he felt fairly comfortable around them, but watching him with Wills, who was a few months older, proved to me that not only was he an excellent uncle, someday he would be an amazing father. If he ever found love again.
“He adores you,” I said as Edward and Wills played pat-a-cake on the ground. Harrods had kindly cleared The Penthouse, their private shopping space, for us to have afternoon tea. They probably wanted to avoid the spectacle that trying to dine with half the royal family would cause as much as we did. This seemed to relieve Georgia, who’d busied herself on her phone for the better part of the afternoon once we’d been locked away somewhere safe. Clara lounged comfortably next to me on a gray suede couch and sighed happily as we watched her brother-in-law play with her son.
“Maybe you’ll start coming around more,” she said hopefully.
Edward’s answering smile was tight. “I’m planning on going back to the country with Belle.”
“You can’t possibly want to go back to Briarshead,” I said.
An eyebrow quirked over the rim of his glasses. “Ready to get rid of me?”
“Never,” I promised. It wasn’t that I wanted my best friend to leave Thornham. It was that I wanted to stay in London. “But you’re going to be bored. I have to get into my new offices tomorrow and deal with some Bless orders for the new season.”
“I can manage myself. It turns out there’s some fun things to do in the country.” This time his grin was more genuine.
“That reminds me,” I said, snapping my fingers. “When did you come home on New Year’s Eve?”
“No one is supposed to come home on New Year’s Eve,” he told me seriously. “I was out past midnight.”
“Careful,” Clara interjected, “or you’ll turn into a pumpkin.”
“The prince isn’t the one who turns into a pumpkin,” he said dryly.
“He’s the one chasing after the girl he met at the party,” I confirmed, siding with him. “Sounds more like you and Alexander.”
Silence fell immediately, and I realized what I’d done wrong. We’d managed to keep his name out of conversation thus far, allowing Edward and Clara space to work towards rebuilding their relationship. Reminding Edward of his brother wasn’t going to help with that.
“So, what is there to do in Briarshead?” Clara said quickly, steering the conversation back to less dangerous waters.
“Not what,” I told her, “but who.”
“Oh really?” She clapped her hands excitedly. “I want to hear about it.”
“There’s nothing to tell.” Edward turned the page of a board book for Wills. “I made a friend.”
“Who he stayed out with well past midnight,” I added with emphasis.
“Would this be a single, male friend?” Clara asked.
“This would be a single, hot, French chef male friend,” I said. Even to me that sounded promising.
“We were just having fun,” Edward said flatly, refusing to meet our eyes. Clara and I looked at each other. Apparently we were a way of
f from matchmaking with him.
“Did you find everything you need?” Clara asked, changing the subject again. Apparently, we were going to stick to the safest conversation of all: shopping.
“I think so.” I listed out the items I’d already purchased in my head. “Honestly, I just want them to feel a little more comfortable. Not that Georgia minds, but I want Jane to feel at home the next time she visits.”
“You’ve had a lot of visitors considering you have a newborn.”
“Yeah, we needed some help with Penny,” I admitted sheepishly.
Edward had carried Wills to the window to show him the cars moving along the street below, so I took my opportunity to speak to Clara privately. “Did you ever have postpartum depression?”
Clara’s face softened instantly, and she reached out her hand, placing it on mine. “A little. It hasn’t been too bad for me.”
“Oh.” I suddenly felt as though I didn’t want to ruin the day by allowing a rain cloud to form over our heads.
“But it’s very common,” she said in a soothing voice. “And it is nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I wish that were the case,” I muttered.
“Have you talked to a doctor?”
I nodded. “I even started taking something, but it only got worse, and the sleeping pills he prescribed made me sleepwalk.
“I bet that was embarrassing,” Clara said with a sympathetic giggle. Georgia must not have filled her in on my exploits.
I forced myself to smile. With everything Clara had been through in the last year, she didn’t need to hear about the incident on the pond. The last thing I wanted was to add to her worries. “I stopped taking it, but, of course, now I can’t sleep.”