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I didn’t inquire further about that.
“Not Jane?” I asked.
“No,” she murmured. “I’ve never met ‘The Countess.’”
Yes.
“The Countess,” capitalized and in quotes because this was how she was known in the media.
Jane Alcott was quite the mysterious character. Ethereally gorgeous, if the rare photo of her was anything to go by, and highly reclusive. Even when she was younger. Therefore, obviously, with beauty, a title and money, she was an object of fascination, which could explain why she was reclusive.
It was not the same with Richard. Or Daniel.
And definitely not Ian.
They weren’t reclusive, and as for the two sons, they didn’t shy away from the media at all.
I couldn’t say Ian sought it like Daniel seemed to, but it sure sought Ian.
“Have you heard about the house?” I went on, hoping to shake her out of her mood.
“Everyone’s heard about the house,” she answered.
“What have you heard?”
“It’s haunted.” I knew she’d turned my way when she asked, “Have you heard that?”
“Yes,” I said. “People tend to die there.”
“It’s been around for hundreds of years,” she reminded me. “There was a fortress there during William the Conqueror’s time, so a dwelling has been there for over a millennium. It’s bound to have had a death or two.”
A death or two?
“When Portia told us things were serious with Daniel and asked us to this week at Duncroft, I looked it up,” I informed her. “Some pretender to the throne was tortured and killed in the castle that sat there in the thirteenth century. The torture was medieval, Lou, literally and brutally. Then they threw him in a pit and starved him to death. Apparently, the new house is built over that pit, and his bones are still there.”
“Why a week?”
From the subject I was talking about, I was confused by her question. “Pardon?”
“Why not invite us for a weekend? Or if she wanted more time for us to get to know Daniel and his family, a long weekend? Or, really, starting off with us all going to dinner in London? That would be easier for everybody. Why are we here from Friday to the next Sunday? That’s a long time, it’s a lot to ask, it’s a lot of pressure for everyone, and it’s strange.”
“It’s Portia.”
I heard Lou sigh.
Yes. The time suck. The drama.
All Portia.
“Then there was that earl’s daughter in the fifteenth century who wasn’t thrilled with the man her father chose for her to marry,” I continued with my theme to take us from Portia’s larks, which I found annoying and Lou had a lot more patience for, but they had to wear thin for her too. “So, on the eve of her wedding, she poisoned her fiancé, and not to leave them out, also poisoned her father, her mother and her husband-to-be’s father and mother. Not exactly the Red Wedding, but the story goes that the poison she chose made them expel everything from blood and bile to unmentionables from both ends until they died. I’d call that worse than the Red Wedding…by a lot.”
“It’s pretty gross,” Lou agreed.
“There was also that countess and her lover. I forget his name.”
“Cuthbert.”
I nearly smiled. Of course she knew about the fortress, the castle and Cuthbert. She’d looked it up too.
