The Kingdom (16 page)

We walked along in silence for a moment, and I became overly aware of the forest sounds. The scurry of tiny feet through the underbrush. The rustle of leaves in the treetops. I glanced up, almost expecting to see hundreds of birds staring down at us, but the branches were empty.

“When did Maris come into the picture?” I asked.

“A few years ago. She was in town visiting a cousin and someone introduced her to Hugh.”

“Was he still with Luna?”

“They were together off and on for years. But by that time, Maris had a certain attraction that Luna could no longer offer. Namely, youth. Her money was a bonus.”

“That sounds—”

“Cold? Mercenary? I told you we Ashers are a self-serving lot,” he said grimly. “Grandfather was the one who pushed for the union. Hugh had turned forty without producing an heir, and God forbid the Asher bloodline die out.”

“And yet there’s been no baby.”

“Ironic, isn’t it?”

“What about Edward?”

“He and my mother had no children. I can’t speak to his past before they married. Although I think he and Bryn were together for a time. That was long before she had Sidra, though.”

“Bryn and Edward…Luna and Hugh. What about Catrice?”

“Odd woman out, I guess.” He shrugged. “There’s been no Asher offspring for a whole generation, so you can imagine Grandfather’s impatience.”

“Blood and land,” I murmured.

“Aw.” He slanted a glance down at me. “So he shared his philosophy with you.”

“Yes, and it all sounds so archaic. So seventeenth century.”

“It is archaic,” Thane agreed. “And I’ve always thought it resembled the Fisher King myth. Grandfather’s visions of the family and himself are nothing if not grandiose. In his eyes, land and family are inexorably entwined.”

“Restore the bloodline, restore the kingdom.”

“Something like that.”

“Who’s the Grail knight in his story?”

“Well,” Thane said softly. “They do call you the restorer.”

I tripped over a root and would have gone down if Thane’s hand hadn’t shot out to steady me. “I restore old cemeteries the hard way,” I said and held out my palms. “See? I have lots and lots of calluses. There’s nothing mystical or mythical about what I do.”

His eyes glinted. “I was teasing.”

“Oh.” I tried to take it as such, but something niggled at the back of my mind. That same feeling of destiny that had plagued me in the clearing. That unsettling notion that I had been brought here for a reason.

They do call you the restorer.

“Anyway,” Thane was saying. “I suppose Grandfather still has hope of an heir, but I’m not so sure the marriage will last that long.”

A divorce would probably make Luna happy.

I thought of that overheard rendezvous, the intimate murmuring and animalistic moans of pleasure… .

I drew a sharp breath. That day at the library, I couldn’t leave those sounds behind fast enough, but now I found the voyeuristic memory titillating. And that in itself was disturbing.

As we neared the summit, I felt something in the air, an odd vibration that thrummed through my veins and teased like a feather along my nerve endings. The breeze lifted my hair and stroked my face like a lover’s caress. I closed my eyes on a shudder. Then slowly I turned my gaze upon the man beside me. For a moment, his face seemed to morph into…

Thane scowled down at me. “Are you okay?”

“Do you feel something in the air?” I asked, pulling my jacket tightly around me.

The frown deepened. “Rain, maybe. I noticed storm clouds moving in earlier.”

That could explain the vibration, couldn’t it? The electrical shock that had pulsed through my body when I looked up and saw Devlin’s face?

Thane’s gaze lingered. “Are you sure you’re all right? Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Why don’t you wait here for me? I’m sure I’ll be able to find the grave on my own.”

“No, I’m fine. Something strange just happened.”

“What?”

How could I explain what I’d experienced when I didn’t understand it myself? Maybe it was all the talk of bloodlines and fertility, but the vibration seemed to stir something deep inside me, almost akin to a sexual excitement. “It was…” I paused and started again. “For a moment, when I looked at you…I saw someone else…”

He studied me curiously. “Who?”

I glanced away, unable to hold his gaze. “No one. It doesn’t matter.”

“Lack of sleep,” he pronounced. “Fatigue can play strange tricks on the mind.”

I willed my heartbeat to slow. “I guess you’re right. Kind of like a waking dream. Anyway, I’m okay now.”

He cocked his head. “Listen.”

“What is it?”

“You can hear the falls from here.”

We were silent, heads turned toward the summit. Over the distant rush of water, another sound came to me. A whisper that undulated like a gentle wave through the trees.

Amelia…Amelia…

Nineteen

W
e crested the hill and started down the rugged incline toward the laurel bald, the sun at our backs. We were not that far from Thorngate and the highway, but it felt as if we’d been transported a million miles into nowhere. I saw a lizard sunning on a rock, and high overhead, a lone hawk floated serenely on an air current. But no other living creature stirred as we made our way down the slope.

I was favoring my ankle now, though it didn’t really hurt. But an uncomfortable stiffness in the joint made me wary of a misstep, and I didn’t mind when Thane offered a hand over some of the more treacherous terrain. The vibration had stopped, and I’d regained my equilibrium. I could view him now as a pleasant, attractive man whose company I had come to enjoy. Nothing more.

As we reached the bald, I realized it was a very good thing we’d brought Angus along. In my mind’s eye, I’d pinpointed the exact spot where I had entered the thicket, but now that we were here, the breaks in the wall of scrubby growth looked exactly the same. Without Angus to once again guide me through that maze, I would have been hopelessly lost. Papa was right. The sameness of the landscape played tricks on the eyes and on the senses. I wasn’t able to pick out a familiar landmark until we scrambled down the overhang that sheltered the grave.

Angus had bounded ahead, and now he sat facing the mound, tail thumping excitedly as he waited for us to catch up.

“This is the place?” Thane asked.

“Yes. The grave is up there, underneath the overhang. See the foxglove? They didn’t grow there wild. Someone planted them. But if you were just passing by, you’d never notice.”

Thane glanced around. “Hell of a place to bring a body. Must have been torture getting it through all that mountain laurel. Unless…” He trailed off, but I knew where his mind was headed.

“Unless the body was still mobile? I know. I’ve thought of that. But the mounding of the dirt is deliberate and there’s a headstone. Anyone trying to cover up a crime would never be so brazen. And, anyway, I don’t think the grave is hidden. I think it’s protected.”

As we stood there talking, Angus got up and ambled over to the grave to paw at some leaves. Then with an odd whimper, he came over to nuzzle my hand. A moment later, he returned to the grave and repeated the ritual.

“What’s he doing?” Thane asked.

“I have no idea. There’s something about this place that excites him. He’s the one that led me here. He kept barking and barking until I followed him through the woods, and when I found him, he was just sitting there with his gaze fixed on the grave.”

“He must smell something,” Thane said.

“I don’t think so. The grave is too old for that.”

“Dogs have a more developed sense of smell than we do. He’s probably picking up on a scent that’s undetectable to us. Maybe one that’s lingered here for years.”

I thought suddenly of that overheard conversation between my mother and aunt. Was it possible this was the grave they’d been referring to? Had Angus somehow picked up the scent of my mother here and on me?

It seemed too far-fetched. That conversation had taken place years ago. Even if this was the same grave, Mama’s scent would have long since been washed away. And if I couldn’t imagine her in Asher Falls, I certainly couldn’t picture her climbing down a rugged hillside and trudging through a laurel bald.

But Angus’s behavior was intriguing. Obviously, he knew something about this place that I didn’t.

A nosegay of wildflowers had been placed near the headstone, and I knelt quickly to inspect them. “These weren’t here yesterday.”

“They look fresh,” Thane said. “Someone must have been here early this morning.”

“I told you at dinner, this grave has been taken care of for years. See the way the grass and weeds have been scraped away? In the Southern folk cemetery, that’s a sign of respect, leaving the bare earth exposed that way. It’s mostly an archaic tradition and rarely see in this area, but at one time, people spent hours and hours hoeing every scrap of grass from gravesites. It takes a lot of work and patience to keep it so clean.”

“Why the seashells?” he asked. “The ocean is miles from here.”

“It’s another custom, sometimes symbolic of a watery passage. You’ll see whole graves covered in cockle shells, especially here in the South.”

“And the roses on the headstone…you said a full bloom and a bud symbolize a dual burial.”

“That’s one interpretation and used to be indicative of a mother who died in childbirth and was buried with her stillborn baby. But gravestone art can be subjective. The same symbol can mean different things in different areas and different time periods.” I studied the grave for a moment, trying to sort out the messages. “There are a lot of clues here, but I think they speak as much to the caretaker as to the deceased. Whoever visits this grave puts a lot of value in tradition. This site has been cared for with love and respect.”

I placed my hand flat on the headstone and felt again that strange jolt, that overwhelming feeling of suffocation. My head swam as my ears started to buzz, and I jerked back with a gasp. If my mother had somehow stumbled upon this site, I understood why it had troubled her. The place seemed charged with some dark emotion.

Thane glanced up. “You okay?”

“I just need to get a little air.”

I stood and moved away from the grave, uneasily scanning our surroundings. It was so quiet here, and the sun streaming down through the skeletal limbs of the laurel and rhododendron seemed unusually bright. I was only a few feet away from the grave, but the glare in my eyes was so brilliant and the shade beneath the overhang so deep that Thane had all but disappeared. I might have been alone. Forsaken in that desolate landscape.

A terrible heaviness pressed down like a stone upon my chest. The suffocation I felt now was loneliness, so intense I could scarcely draw a breath.

An image came to me suddenly. A ghost in a dark dress, wavering reedlike on the pier as she gazed up the stepping-stones…willing me to see her… .

A shadow fell across my face, and I glanced up into the sun. For a moment, I could have sworn I saw a silhouette poised at the edge of the overhang staring down at me. But when I lifted a hand to shade my eyes, it was gone. Dissolved like Freya’s ghost back into the mist.

Freya’s ghost.

An incessant dread had been tap, tap, tapping at my subconscious for a while now. The fear that I was being haunted by Freya Pattershaw. Was it only a matter of time before my energy began to wane? Before I grew pale and gaunt and hollow-eyed? Before I became like Devlin?

My knees went weak. Not a good sign. I found a place near the overhang where I could lean back against a warm rock while I tried to recover my strength.

By the time Thane emerged from the shade, I was feeling almost normal. “Do you think this could be Freya’s grave?”

He glanced at me in surprise. “Freya Pattershaw? Why would you think that?”

I shoved my hands into my pockets. “You said no one likes to talk about her death. Maybe she was buried out here so that people could forget about her.”

“Freya was buried in Thorngate,” Thane said.

My gaze shot to his. “Which one?”

“The new one. She died after the old one was flooded.”

I leaned back against the rock and closed my eyes for a moment. “You know this for a fact?”

“For a fact, no. But when I was a kid, I used to see Tilly in the cemetery. I always assumed she was visiting her daughter’s grave.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Am I missing something here? What does it matter where Freya Pattershaw was buried?”

“You want to know who’s buried here, don’t you? Unless someone comes forward with concrete information, it’ll be a process of elimination.”

He frowned. “You weren’t kidding, then, when you said identification could take a long time.”

“No. But it would go a lot faster if we could just find out who left those flowers.”

“I’ll ask around,” he said. “In the meantime, we’re close to the waterfall. If you still want to see it, I’ll take you up there.”

The sun was warm and pleasant on my face, but I found myself shivering at the prospect. What if the falls really was a gateway to the realm of the dead?