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Ash was the one who had asked Kami up to Aurimere. If he wanted to show her around and spend a little time alone with her, she thought that was only fair. He’d had a bad day. And if in the process he spilled any dark family secrets, she was ready to hear them. She was investigating, after all. Reporters did what they had to do to get their story. But it didn’t hurt her ego that Ash seemed to actually like her. So she ignored Jared’s sulking, tucked her hand in the crook of Ash’s arm, and let him show off the manor.
Aurimere was all long corridors and huge rooms. Ash escorted her into one room that was drenched in light because one wall was a vast casement window. The small rectangular panes stretched from stone floor to the white ceiling, each of them yellow and filtering in the sunlight dyed twice with gold, translucent rather than transparent.
The ceiling was painted white, but its surface was raised, covered with shapes and symbols. Kami made out stars, flowers, satyrs, and a woman’s face, repeated over and over until the ceiling finished with the elaborate cornices at each end. It gave her an uneasy feeling. She glanced at Ash, who smiled down at her.
“I know,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”
Kami blinked and took comfort from the fact that not every boy could read her mind. “Settling in easily, then?” she asked as Ash led her up a short flight of steps to another room. This one had to be the fanciest parlor in the world. It had sofas with scarlet canopies.
“I’ve been waiting my whole life to get here,” Ash said. “Ever since I was small, it’s all I can remember my mother and father talking about. Once Mother found Aunt Rosalind, we were going home to Sorry-in-the-Vale. We never stayed anywhere long, and I never wanted to. We were always coming home.” He gave her his charming smile. “Just taking the long way around.”
“Your family’s lived here a long time,” Kami said encouragingly. “You must know a lot of stories.” Or incriminating secrets or whatever.
“You’ve lived in Sorry-in-the-Vale all your life,” Ash said, politely encouraging in his turn. “You must know a lot too.”
“What, me? No, hardly any. You should tell some,” Kami said. “I think your dad knew my mother back in the day. Claire Glass?”
Ash shook his head. “He’s never mentioned her.”
They passed through a little hall, the ceiling curving over their heads. The light fixture hanging from the center of the ceiling was a sphere cupped by ringed hands.
Kami tried to think of leading questions, and caught sight of the Lynburn family crest over the door. It was a foursquare shape. The outline of Aurimere House on a hill was in the top left, the wood on the top right. On the bottom left was a square of pale blue, and on the bottom right was a woman’s profile. Cutting through the pictures was a sword hilt with a hand wrapped around it. Below the crest in gold letters were the words HAUD IGNEUS, HAUD UNDA.
“Gosh,” said Kami, in the innocent tones of one who knew no Latin, none at all. “What is that?”
“It’s the family motto,” Ash said.
“Don’t tell me, let me guess,” Kami said, since Ash showed no signs of telling her. “Your motto is ‘Blonds really do have more fun.’ ”
Another Lynburn motto possibility, if her mother was to be believed, was “Hot Blond Death.”
“I think brunettes are cute, personally,” said Ash. “Something like, neither fire nor water. It’s meant to convey—I think—‘We neither drown nor burn.’ Of course, that might mean we were all born to hang.”
Kami glanced up at him. His face was oddly serious. “I doubt you were,” said Kami and squeezed Ash’s arm.
“Well, thank you, ma’am,” Ash remarked, exaggerating his Southern drawl. Kami laughed, delighted, even though Ash went back to being serious the next instant. “The way my parents have always talked about this place, and about what it meant to be our family …” He hesitated.
“Yes?” Kami prompted, and gave him a “Give me a clue, you big, strong, handsome man” glance under her eyelashes.
“It’s a lot of responsibility” was all Ash said. “I want to do it right.”
Kami sighed. “I’m sure you will.”
As they explored further, Kami saw rooms that showed how long Aurimere had stood empty. In the sitting room where Ash stopped and sat in a window seat, Kami noticed the peach curtains were a little tattered. There were no sofas or chairs, and the built-in bookshelves were empty, but there was a fire guard before the large carved mantelpiece and a wooden statue of a lady in draped medieval dress with a stain in the center of her forehead like a bullet hole.
“You have now seen almost all of the house that has fancy things, like actual furniture, in it,” Ash said. “I spend most of my weekends with my parents at antique fairs. Wild, I know.”
Kami smiled down at him. He smiled back up at her. His hair glowed in the sunlight, and the garden was a riot of color below.
Ash smiled back and began to rise, face turned up to hers, when two things happened: Kami felt the sharp spike of Jared’s unhappiness, and she saw someone walking through the garden.
Kami turned her face away. “Who’s that?”
“My dad,” said Ash.
“Oh, I want to meet him,” Kami said instantly. “Not in a loopy ‘I want to meet your parents, I want your babies’ way. For the interview! Let’s go.”
Ash took this gracefully, giving her a rueful grin and taking her hand when she offered it. He let her pull him from the window seat and back down the stone steps.
