Murder on the Bride's Side (33 page)

I stared at the heavy cream paper for a long moment. Then I slowly got up and knelt before the fireplace. Lady Catherine eyed me with distaste for invading her space and angrily
twitched her tail. I ignored her. With once last glance at the letter, I threw it into the fire. The flames licked at the paper faster and faster until it lifted and curled, its edges blazing red before fading to a dull white. Within seconds, it was gone.

The doorbell chimed, startling me out of my reverie. From the other room, Aunt Winnie called out, “Could you get that, Elizabeth? I’m in the middle of something.”

“Sure thing,” I called out, pulling myself into an upright position. I crossed to the foyer and swung open the door.

It was Peter.

“What are you doing here?” I blurted out in surprise.

“I got a letter,” he said simply. He stood stiffly on the doorstop, his hands jammed into the pockets of his jeans.

“A letter?” I repeated stupidly, staring up into his face. He moved slightly and the familiar scent of his aftershave floated over me. I briefly closed my eyes to savor the smell.

“From Harry,” he clarified.

“Harry!” My eyes flew open. “What did he say?” Had he confessed to Peter as well?

“Well, to paraphrase, he said you could be a silly ass at times, but that you were worth it.”

I paused a moment to take that in. “He really said that?”

“Yep.”

“You needed Harry to tell you that?”

Peter looked down, a small smile on his lips. “No, that much I knew. It was the part about you two just being friends that I didn’t know.”

“I don’t understand.”

Peter sighed and said in a rush, “I thought the reason you
were breaking up with me was because of Harry. I thought you were using the whole mess with Chloe as an excuse.”

“Why on earth would you think that?”

“It was pretty obvious that Harry liked you—hell, he announced at the rehearsal dinner that he wanted to run off with you. Then at the wedding you danced with him an awful lot.”

“Only because you were off with Chloe!”

“Well, I didn’t know that at the time. And then after breaking up with me, you disappeared with Harry for a couple of hours. It wasn’t too much of a leap to wonder if you weren’t interested in him, especially given how calm you were about everything. You really didn’t seem to care.”

I let that sink in a minute, somewhat dumbfounded by the sad fact that the one time I managed to control my emotions, it completely backfired on me.

“But then I got Harry’s letter,” Peter continued. “And, well, it made me think that maybe I should try again.”

Same old Harry, I thought with a smile, still trying to fix things—even from beyond the grave. Suddenly, I noticed that Aunt Winnie hadn’t appeared to see who’d rung the doorbell. I might be an ass, I thought as I reached out and happily pulled Peter to me, but I wasn’t so big an ass to fight the machinations of both the living
and
the dead.