A Lady by Midnight (Spindle Cove #3)(70)

“The ball is for me?”

Lark vibrated with excitement. “Yes, of course.”

Harry cut in. “What Evan said about showing our appreciation . . . that was true, too. But we want to bring you out, Kate. Give the debut you never had.”

“But I’m twenty-three. That’s much too old for a debut.”

Evan said, “A debut, a come-out . . . they’re just words that mean ‘introduction to Society.’ That’s precisely what’s in order here. We need to tell all England about you, Kate. But it only seems right to begin here. In Spindle Cove. All your friends will be so happy for you.”

“I suggest a dramatic announcement at midnight,” Harry said. “Make them all tingle with anticipation.”

Kate tingled with some other feeling. She thought it might be dread.

She couldn’t understand why this idea made her uneasy. Being announced as a long-lost lady, at a ball held in her honor—it ought to sound like a dream. A moment of fairy-tale triumph for a girl who’d grown up feeling outcast and alone. Her friends would be thrilled for her, to be sure. Except for perhaps Mrs. Highwood, who would likely go apoplectic with envy.

Still, she couldn’t imagine the moment without feeling a flutter of anxiety. If she was going to stand before all her friends and neighbors and be announced as Lady Katherine Gramercy . . .

Kate wished she could be certain she believed it herself. Remembered it, in some undeniable fashion. Any small detail would do. With each passing day, she felt more certain that the memories were there, closer to the surface than ever before. She just needed to find the courage to unlock them.

As they turned into another section of the garden, Badger lunged at a wandering peafowl, scampering across a bed of herbs. Kate broke away from the group. She leaned down to touch a teacup-sized pink rose blossom, sliding her finger along the velvety petal. The delicate texture held her transfixed, and a melody rose in her, instinctive as breath.

See the garden of blossoms so fair . . .

There was something in that song. Something important. She wouldn’t have remembered it all her life otherwise.

She ground her slipper heel into the manicured white gravel. “Will you excuse me? Please go ahead back to the village. I—I’ve forgotten something. And Badger needs to have his run for the day.”

Without even waiting for an answer, she turned and began walking in the other direction. The puppy followed at her heel.

She had no particular destination. But she had forgotten something.

She would walk and walk, and keep walking until she recalled it. Until she finally reached the end of that long dark corridor.

And when she arrived there—this time, she would open that door.

“Don’t be long, Kate!” Lark called after her. “The sky looks like rain.”

Thorne could not have picked a worse day for overland travel. He hadn’t made it very far south before the sky darkened with ominous clouds. A few hours later he met with the rain.

It hadn’t let up since.

These damned Sussex roads took no more than a sprinkle of rain to go from “passable packed dirt” to “muddy pig wallow.” His progress was slow, and wet. This all would have been easier if he could have skipped returning to Spindle Cove at all and proceeded straight to America after gaining his discharge papers. But he needed to collect his personal belongings and arrange for transfer of the militia command.

And he needed to see Katie. Just one more time, even if from a distance. Conversation wouldn’t be necessary. He just wanted to lay eyes on her and assure himself she was happy and safe and loved.

She deserved to be loved, by people who’d read enough books to understand what the hell “love” meant.

At last he turned off the main road and took the spur toward Spindle Cove. At that point the moors and meadows were more passable than the rutted roads, so he turned his horse off the lane and continued overland.

Through a cloud of swirling fog, the ancient specter of Rycliff Castle appeared on the distant bluffs, seeming to shift and change with every gust of wind. Beyond that the sea was obscured by a wall of gray mist. All the usual sounds of country life—sheep bleating, birds singing—were muted by the steady rain. The entire scene was unearthly. Beneath the many sodden layers of his coat, waistcoat, cravat, and shirt, his skin crawled.

Watch sharp.

At the meadow’s lowest point—just before the rocky bluffs began to rise on the other side—Thorne slowed his horse to a walk. He scouted carefully for the appropriate crossing place. Centuries ago there’d been a deep moat carved here. An extra layer of protection for the castle above.

Over hundreds of years the moat had mostly filled in—but there were still pockets here and there where the meadow dropped out from beneath a man’s feet, and boulders waited to catch him a few yards below.

A strange sound came to him, piercing through the thick felt blanket of rain noise. He recognized it at once.

“Badger?”

Thorne left his horse. The gelding was on familiar ground now; he’d spent a year grazing these meadows every day.

Whistling in this downpour would be futile. He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted for the dog. “Badger! Here, boy.”

The pup’s barking came from one of the deep hollows in the meadow. What was he doing down there?

“This had better not be another snake,” Thorne muttered, advancing to investigate.