Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 129951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 650(@200wpm)___ 520(@250wpm)___ 433(@300wpm)
It was the forgotten box of stuff Prue told me about ages ago that she found in the attics. The stuff she thought might be useful since it was from the time period I was writing about.
I spied a cloth-covered diary with tattered edges in the box, and my natural curiosity had me reaching to pull it out.
There was a gold 1946 stamped in the corner.
Goosebumps suddenly covered my skin as I moved to flip through it.
But as I did, newspaper clippings dropped to the floor.
I bent and retrieved the folded pieces, straightened, unfolded one, and those goosebumps became full body tingles.
The headline said, Viscount Still Missing, Police Scratching Heads, and there was a picture of Lord Arthur Hughes-Davies with his pomaded hair and Clark Gable pencil mustache above his supercilious smile.
Completely awake now, I wandered blindly back to my desk and sat down.
There were seven clippings in all, the totality of them about the missing viscount.
“Holy shit, shit, shit,” I whispered, dropping the clippings to the desk and frantically flipping to the date in that diary that corresponded to the one where Marie recorded the dire news.
There was nothing in the journal for that date except a heavily written, large X.
My heart thumping, I went to the front of the book.
Inside the cover, in cursive so perfect the writer could teach it, it said, The Diary of Aileen Flannery.
I knew from the butler’s ledgers Aileen was lady’s maid to Unity…
And Harmony.
I dashed back to the dire date and read the passage before it.
Dear Diary,
Another house party starts tomorrow. Everyone belowstairs jokes that the duchess is making up for the lost time of the war. It seems like we have dinner parties every night and house parties every weekend.
I don’t find it funny. Dresses to iron, shoes to brush, stockings to wash, it’s all a bother.
And my Lady Harmony is in no mood.
Especially since that odious (as Lady Harmony refers to him, but her opinion is just) Arthur Hughes-Davies telephoned to say he was coming.
He wasn’t even invited!
Lady Harmony detests him. Even Lady Unity doesn’t like him, and she’s boy crazy.
I fear the duchess has her sights set on him to marry Lady Harmony. Which, frankly, is a slap in the face, disallowing my lady that lovely American man, and expecting her to bear the ring of that bellend (but in the end, Lady Harmony will get the last laugh).
The duchess will be sorely disappointed, considering Lord Bishop dislikes him almost as intensely as my lady does, and the duke can barely countenance him.
Why they had a room prepared for that man is the mystery, when only the duchess seems to care for him.
But a lot of what these people do is a mystery to me.
She didn’t sign the entry, or any of them.
Among many things that passage shared with me was an explanation of why The Downs had footmen far longer than other great houses did. If the duchess did that amount of entertaining, they’d need them.
I skipped past the ominous X to the next entry, which was dated several days later.
And this one wasn’t any less ominous.
Dear Diary,
Tenterhoooks, tenterhooks, tenterhooks.
I am sworn to secrecy.
And for my lady, who has lost everything, I will never breathe a word.
That was it for that entry, and the next wouldn’t be for over two weeks.
I read it, and it was studiously, even painfully, about the frustration of mending a tear in one of Lady Unity’s dresses in a way that wouldn’t show, and a flirtation escalating between the milkman and the cook.
I put the diary down and picked up a clipping that had another picture of the viscount. In this one, he was wearing a tuxedo with a white double-breasted dinner jacket that had serious shoulder pads. He was holding a coupé glass of champagne.
Mr. Smooth.
But it was all wrapping.
He wasn’t at all handsome and he had a receding hairline.
“By damn, whatever happened to you, it happened here. You crashed a party, told no one you were coming, and because of whatever happened to you, no one shared word one that you were at The Downs.”
What was it that Tempie said?
Outside of learning to hold our liquor, aristocrats are dab hands at holding our secrets.
“Fucking hell,” I whispered right as the lights went out in the studio.
Abruptly being plunged into the dark, I let out a little scream of surprise, then I felt like an idiot.
It had been raining all day. Not a surprise the electricity might go out.
On that thought, another one hit me.
“But no lightning,” I said out loud.
That was when the cats started hissing into the dark.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
And it was then I saw the blue, green and purple shades revolving through the space, coloring Snowball’s fur.
My gaze shot to the house, and I saw those lights shining brighter from there.