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“Oh … yes. It was.”
“It?”
“The allure,” Ariana reiterated.
“The allure.”
“Yes … isn’t that what we were discussing?”
“Were we?” Theresa’s gaze was steady.
Ariana had the sinking feeling that the night’s magic had little to do with this conversation. “I suppose we were not,” she murmured.
“Tell me about him.”
Instantly, Ariana’s heart began to pound. “I should despise him … I do despise him.”
“You were attracted to him?”
Ariana’s hands curled into tight fists of denial. “I can’t be.”
“Yet you are.”
“He was so gentle, Theresa, so caring.” Small curls of warmth unfurled inside Ariana’s chest. “He made his way through the maze until he found me and then carried me all the way back to the manor.” She swallowed. “I could sense his anger, yet somehow I knew it wasn’t directed at me. Or at least it wasn’t, until he learned I was a Caldwell.”
“I imagine that information didn’t please him,” Theresa agreed. “Nor you. But why are you confused?”
“He killed Vanessa!” Ariana exclaimed, tears filling her eyes. “Or at the very least he was responsible for her suicide!”
“It did appear that way.”
“Then how can you ask why I’m confused?”
“Your instincts are at war with your principles.”
“My instincts are wrong.”
“Perhaps. Then again, perhaps not. Your emotions are intruding, preventing you from drawing an objective conclusion,” Theresa reasoned.
“I cannot be objective about the man who murdered my sister!” Ariana said brokenly, accosted by the vivid memory of Vanessa’s blood-stained gown the da
y it washed up on the Sussex shore, her body submerged forever in its watery grave.
“No, I would think not,” Theresa agreed. She removed the compress from Ariana’s ankle and checked the swelling carefully. Satisfied that the ankle was healing properly, she tucked it beneath the quilt. “Appearance is a fascinating thing,” she commented. “It changes depending upon one’s perspective and is often not as one believes it to be.”
“I never want to see him again.”
Theresa rose, smiling, and eased Ariana against the pillows, smoothing the quilt about her shoulders. “We’ve talked enough. I want you to rest, my lady.”
Ariana complied, feeling abruptly and unbearably weary. “My head aches,” she whispered, closing her eyes.
“Far more than your injury,” Theresa agreed, drawing the curtains closed. “Yet sleep will come, for your heart is at peace.”
Ariana didn’t hear Theresa’s last words, for she was already drifting into slumber.
Tenderly, Theresa stroked her lovely, troubled mistress’s hair. “Your mind will know peace as well, my lady. But it has quite a distance to travel before that can occur.”
Gazing at Ariana’s serene features, Theresa saw far beyond, with an inborn ability believers called “intuition,” skeptics termed “witchery.” As it sometimes happened, an image appeared clear and unmistakable, a strong, revealing glimpse of what was to be. Rarely, however, was her vision as absolute as this. The last time had been six years before.
