The Third Heiress (30 page)

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Authors: Brenda Joyce

BOOK: The Third Heiress
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The narrow road twisted and turned as they left Stainesmore, high stone walls and hedgerows enclosing the road, making it almost impossible
to see what was beyond. They were driving inland, and Jill thought it amazing how quickly the landscape changed, becoming green and verdant and dense with thick trees, grass and weeds, and wild blooms again. It was raining now, thickly.
Alex pointed out several cottages and farms, which were not visible from the road, but which small, whitewashed wooden signs with black lettering indicated. They belonged to tenants who had, for the most part, been on the estate for generations.
“How big is the estate?” Jill asked as the Land Rover dipped precariously on the rutted and, at times, unpaved road.
“About one thousand acres. It used to be larger, but a good two-thirds of it was sold off years ago,” Alex said cheerfully.
Jill smiled at him, then saw, through his window, a sight that made her heart slam to a stop. “Oh, God!” she cried, seizing his arm so abruptly that the Land Rover briefly swerved to her side of the road.
“Jill!”
But Jill was staring at what she could see of a tower, a monument of black-gray stone, piercing the rain-filled sky. She began to tremble. “Stop the car. We have to get out.”
This could not be happening.
“What the hell is wrong? You look as if you have just seen a ghost,” Alex said, pulling over as far to the left as he could on the narrow road. There was hardly space to do so, but the road was deserted anyway They had not seen another vehicle in at least twenty minutes.
“Maybe I have seen a ghost,” Jill said, shuddering and filled with unease. “That tower.” She could not tear her gaze away. “I want to get closer. I want to go see it.”
He stared at her, and Jill finally returned his gaze. “I dreamed about that tower last night,” she said hoarsely. Instantly her eyes veered back to the tower.
It was exactly the same as the tower of her dreams.
He continued to stare. “Okay. Care to elaborate?” He flicked on the highest speed of his wipers as it had now begun to pour.
Jill folded her arms protectively around herself, aware of the alarming pace at which her heart raced. “I had this terrible dream,” she said, low. “About Kate. And I saw this tower in my dream.”
“I’m happy to take you there, Jill,” Alex said after a pause. “But need I remind you just how many towers there are in Britain?”
She blinked at him.
“There must be hundreds, maybe thousands—just like this one.”
Was he right? “Let’s get out,” Jill said, reaching for the door.
“Honey, I can’t leave the Rover here on the road—like a sitting duck.”
He shifted into gear and eased forward. Jill was aware of continuing to hug herself. She craned her neck to stare over her shoulder at the tower … it seemed exactly the same as the one in her dream. There was no mistake about it.
A small sign on their left indicated “Coke’s Way.” Alex turned onto the narrow path, leaving the road behind. As they bumped over the rutted path, beneath a canopy of leafy trees, a small stone cottage came into view. It was two stories high, with a tall pitched roof and two stone chimneys. All the windows that Jill could see were boarded up.
The tower was less than a hundred yards behind it, looming up abruptly against a backdrop of wiry, twisted trees, through which glimpses of a steel gray, frothing sea could be seen. It was a ruin, but it was exactly what Jill had seen in her dream. Jill had not a doubt.
“I thought we’d gone inland,” she managed through teeth that chattered. She was feeling odd, almost ill. Her emotions were so jumbled and ragged, even raw, that it was hard to pinpoint what she was feeling. She did know that she was upset, uneasy, dismayed.
“We did, but there’s a small bay here. Are you cold?” Alex asked with evident concern as he halted the Land Rover in front of the cottage.
“It’s no big deal,” Jill murmured, already pushing open her door. Behind her, as she started forward, not toward the cottage but toward the tower, she heard the engine die. She was wearing an anorak and a baseball cap, and she did not pull up her hood. The rain continued to fall. The going was rough underfoot. Stones cropped up through the wild overgrown grass everywhere. Bushes also appeared haphazardly, which she had to slap at or detour around. Alex fell into step beside her.
“Jill,” he said as they trudged toward the stone ruin, “undoubtedly you’ve seen towers like this before. What you are suggesting is almost impossible.”
Jill didn’t bother to argue with him. She was positive that she had dreamed of this tower before she had ever seen it. She had to call KC the moment she got back to the house.
Jill’s trembling increased when they finally paused in front of the structure, which was four or five stories high. The tower had no roof, she realized, and from the very low stone formations around it, she realized it had once been part of a larger building.
“There was a keep here, one I believe dating back to Norman times,” Alex said. “I’d like to glamorize the situation and tell you it got bombed during World War Two, but it just fell apart over the years. As a kid, I played here with my cousins. Nothing’s changed.”
Jill was aware that he kept glancing at her the entire time they crossed the field behind the cottage. Now she looked at him. “Are we still on Collinsworth property?”
“Yeah. This manor belongs to the estate.”
Jill nodded, swallowing, her mouth dry. She did not feel surprised by that bit of information. She walked over a pile of stones and around the side of the tower. All four walls were intact. The windows were arrow slits. But the space where there had once been a door was a gaping hole.
Jill walked inside. Instantly the too sweet smell of the earthen floor assailed her. The air changed. It was oddly airless inside, and it was also very damp and very cold. Breathless, her pulse pounding uncomfortably, Jill touched a hard slab of stone. It was rough and unhewn beneath her palm.
She stared at it. The feeling of déjà vu was acute. She had dreamed of this moment last night, but in her dream, there had been terror and desperation … and there had been Kate.
“What are you doing?”
Alex’s voice sounded far away. Jill could see Kate again, her face strained and white, her dark eyes black and huge, and then she could hear her …
So much at stake …
Jill inhaled, closing her eyes, feeling dizzy. She wanted to throw up.
Instantly Alex gripped her arm from behind, supporting her. She leaned gratefully against him. “Are you sick?”
She could not answer. When the dizziness had passed, Kate’s face remained vividly etched on her mind, and now it was apparent that her eyes were begging Jill for help. She could almost hear her again, Help me, Help me, please … But Jill thought she was now imagining her voice—and maybe she was imagining everything.
The stone walls of the keep suddenly seemed to move. They leaned inward, looming over her, as if closing in upon her.
Jill shook her head to clear her vision. She was hallucinating because the dream had upset her so terribly and she was severely exhausted.
Jill pulled free of Alex’s grasp, not even aware of his presence, and she squatted, touching the wet earthen floor. The earth was coarse and grainy and it filled her palms. She had felt this same wet, pebbly earth before—last night. Abruptly Jill stood. She was afraid to look down and open her hands, terribly afraid, but she did.
There was no blood.
She stared at her dirty hands, waiting for blood to cover them.
Instead, she saw Kate, panting, panic-stricken, covered with dirt and
blood, her long hair wild and snarled, falling around her shoulders and down her back. And then she had screamed …
“I can’t breathe,” Jill suddenly cried, and before Alex could react, she had rushed past him, out into the clean air and the pounding rain.
She stood outside, her face uplifted to the rain, holding her hands out, letting the rain wash them clean, shivering uncontrollably.
What was happening? It had only been a wacky dream!
But her heart was telling her otherwise. Something terrible had happened to Kate. And maybe it had happened right here.
Jill realized that tears had fallen down her cheeks, mingling with the rain.
And suddenly KC’s haunting words came to mind.
And Kate became you …
It was a flash of insight, like a premonition. Kate hadn’t just disappeared, a terrible tragedy had befallen her—and the same terrible tragedy was waiting to happen to Jill.
“Jill?” His hand closed firmly on her upper arm.
Jill flinched at his touch. She faced him without seeing him. In front of her was Kate, dirty, bloody, haggard, desperate. It was Kate gripping her arm. It was Kate who was so afraid, Kate who was in jeopardy …
“Jill.” His tone was like the lash of a whip.
Only a dream, Jill chanted silently, but she was still sick to her stomach. She became aware of Alex shaking her. She inhaled deeply. Thank God he could not see that she had started to cry. She finally looked at him and recoiled, because he was staring at her with such purposeful scrutiny. She did not want to share this with him, not yet, and maybe not ever.
She pulled free of his grip, still breathing deeply. Her trembling had finally lessened, she could breathe again, and looking at the walls of the tower, they appeared rock solid and absolutely motionless.
“Hey. What happened in there?”
She hadn’t heard him come up behind her, and his voice was incredibly gentle and kind. Jill’s heart turned over with a deep, deep need, and she realized she was exhausted and very, very vulnerable right now. She faced him slowly. What would he do, she wondered, if she walked up to him and leaned against him, laying her head on his shoulder? “I can’t talk about it just yet.”
“Okay.” He hesitated, his penetrating gaze on hers. “Let’s get out of the rain.”
Jill nodded and followed him back toward the car.
“You know, I’ve read about people having bizarre and very strong reactions to places they’ve never been to before—like you’ve just had.”
Jill stumbled. “What?” Her unease grew.
“You turned so white in there I thought you were going to faint.” He was regarding her closely as they came abreast of the side of the cottage. “You seemed to be in a trance. Where were you, Jill?”
She shook her head. But she had been in a trance—or some kind of altered state.
“I was talking to you. You didn’t even hear me.” He stared. “You were far away. God only knows where.”
Jill thought about her answer. “The tower made me feel ill,” she confessed. “And it also frightened me. I told you, I dreamed about it last night.” She hesitated. “I did hear you.” She slowly lifted her gaze to his. Their gazes locked. “But your voice sounded far away.”
A long moment seemed to pass. “Maybe we should let our hunt for Kate go for a bit. You’ve been through a lot recently. You’ll make yourself sick—”
“No!” Her cry was sharp and loud. Even though she was afraid now, of what might happen next, of what she might find, she could not abandon her search for the truth now. Something terrible had happened to Kate. Jill felt honor-bound to expose what that something was. She realized, with a start, that she wanted justice. Kate deserved no less.
“All right. If you won’t quit, you’ve still got my support. Want to go? It’s a bit early for lunch, but we can drive around some more.”
Jill didn’t move. They were out of the rain now, standing on the porch behind the cottage. She looked around, at the house. He had called Coke’s Way a manor. “Who used to live here, Alex?” she asked slowly.
“No one’s lived here since I first came to Yorkshire when I was seven or eight. I don’t know if anyone’s been here since the last war.”
“Didn’t you call this a manor a few minutes ago?”
“It was a manor house, but you’d have to ask Thomas or Lauren the details. Or maybe they’d know more in the village.” He studied her. “What are you getting at?”
Jill was staring at the boarded-up windows on the back side of the house where they stood. Her gaze drifted upward. The windows were not all boarded up on the second floor.
“Now what’s going on in that creative mind of yours?” he pressed.
She turned and realized he was smiling. “Kate stayed in a manor not far from Robin Hood Bay. Didn’t we just pass a sign for Robin Hood Bay a few minutes ago?”
He was silent. “We did. It’s less than three miles from here, directly to the east. There are two other old manors around here,” he added. Then he sighed. “You want to go inside.” It was not a question.
Jill nodded but she did not smile. Kate and Edward had been lovers. She did not have proof, only an old lady’s faint recollections based on hearsay, but she believed it with all of her heart. Where better for Edward to stash his pregnant mistress than in some secluded cottage on his own property?
They walked around to the front of the cottage. While Alex went to the Land Rover to get tools to pry off the two boards nailed in an X across the door, Jill tried to peer into a window. She could make out nothing but furniture covered in cloths and shadows. She walked around the side of the house.

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