AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The Bernini was ooed over, the Ansdell was ahed, and thousands of feet shuffled over the spot where Dorothy Clifton lost her life.
Under which the bones of Alice and Wolf were entwined for eternity, the foundation of a sweeping legacy.
Yes, I read the words of the countesses who came before me.
Every last one.
More than once.
And some of it wasn’t easy, for more than obvious reasons. Alice’s entries were reminiscent of Beowulf, others were akin to trying to decipher Shakespeare.
But I got the gist.
Joan might have given the line her coloring, but it was Wolf who gave Ian (and others) his hotness.
Shoowie.
I scribbled my own lines at the end of the last journal.
And there were a lot of them.
I couldn’t help it and didn’t try. I didn’t want future countesses to miss anything.
And I wanted our love story to be known.
So it would be.
Tour visitors, students, dogs and cats, kids, staff, and Daniel and Jenny and their brood, Lou and her man, Portia and hers, also their children, my mom, visits from friends and further family, brought the house back to life.
And there was no denying, the house loved it.
It was what it was built for, naturally.
Say what you will, but I believe the house spoke, at least to me, and I believe it took care of us all, and not just providing a roof over our heads.
Then again, that might just be fanciful.
But eventually, those sad days would come, and they did.
We lost Richard, then Lady Jane.
However, it wasn’t simply our mourning that made it so Ian and I didn’t move.
We never left the Hawthorn Suite.
Tradition be damned.
And last, on the second floor, in the gallery, a new portrait was hung.
Very tall and proudly large, it showed me seated, wearing an edgy red gown that Portia selected for me. Ian was standing next to me, wearing a handsome, perfectly-fitting charcoal suit.
The collar of his shirt was open.
I had a two-year-old Walt in my lap. Ian had our four-year-old Gus on his hip, seated at his side was a chocolate lab, and standing next to him with her hand on Charlie’s head, was Alice. Curled at my feet, was a ragdoll cat, at Ian’s, a Himalayan, and seated panting at one outer edge was our English bulldog (Walt’s) and lounging at the other one was Gus’s springer spaniel.
We were placed directly across from the portrait of Adelaide and Augustus.
The perfect spot.
