The Countess by Catherine Coulter

Andy. The Blue Room is a lovely bed chamber with a comfortable adjoining sitting

room that you will find charming. It is filled with light, and from the wide

windows you have a beautiful prospect toward the east lawn and the home wood.

This talk of ghosts is just that?talk. It whiles away the hours on a cold winter’s

night. Now, my dear Andy, go with Amelia. Miss Crislock is just down the hall

from you, in The Dimwimple Room.”

“Ah, yes,” John said from where he was standing next to the fireplace. “She was

an heiress of the last century who saved the Devbridge fortunes during a

scoundrel’s tenure as earl. I don’t believe she’s still hanging about, is she,

Uncle?”

“Alice Dimwimple was a very happy old bird, I was told by my father, who knew

her when he was a very young boy. She choked to death at a very advanced age on

an excellent glass of brandy, and doubtless ascended to heaven to claim her just

rewards.”

“Unlike many of the males of the family,” Thomas said, “who left so many

bastards that pregnant females were always presenting themselves here at

Devbridge Manor.”

John said, “I understand that my great-uncle?the last of the major scoundrels?had

his steward handle the poor females. The steward was a very religious man. The

records show that he adopted three of the pregnant women and raised his lordship’s

bastards as his own.”

“Grandfather never told me any stories like that,” I said, and my husband patted

my hand to ease my obvious disappointment. “That is quite amazing. I should like

to hear more.”

“Not tonight.” Lawrence walked to me, lightly kissed my cheek, and said next to

my ear, “The Blue Room will suit you very well. I will see you in the morning,

my dear. Now, I must speak more closely with John. I believe it necessary to

clarify some issues with him.”

Issues that included John remaining my husband’s heir, since there wouldn’t be

any children born of our union?

Excellent, I thought, get it out of the way now. I wanted no unpleasantness

about that sort of thing with my step-nephew, ever again.

“Goodness,” I said, looking over at that dark face, “you are my step-nephew.”

“Indeed, dear Auntie,” he said, and gave me a deep, mocking bow. There was that

look in his dark eyes again, that flash of violence, then it was gone.

I turned back to my husband. “Is there an equally charming history for The Blue

Room? An heiress who came into the family whose name was perhaps Miss Blue?”

He laughed, a full, deep, rich laugh. I loved that laugh of his. It was

comforting and warm. I certainly preferred it to any show of disapproval.

“Go along with you, my dear. I shall try to come up with something to amuse you

on the morrow.”

“Good night, sir, Thomas, John.”

I walked with Amelia back into the central entrance hall. It was a huge area,

the floor was stone, so old that it was uneven from all the thousands of feet

that had tread upon it.

Amelia paused a moment, waving a graceful hand. “This is the Old Hall, surviving

from the first structure built by Old Hugo in the 1580s.”

It was magnificent, the tall wooden-beamed, smoke-blackened ceiling barely

visible in the dim light cast by the wall flambeaux. The suits of armor, at

least a dozen of them, none of them missing any armor parts, appeared to span

the centuries, looked vaguely menacing in that dull shadowy light.

The staircase, all shining oak, wide enough to accommodate at least six people

side by side, curved down into the center of the Old Hall. It could not have

been older than two centuries, perhaps two and a half centuries at the most.

One wall was dominated by a gigantic fireplace that resembled a great blackened

cavern in the half-light. The old stone floor was bare and echoed as Amelia’s

shoes click-clacked on her way to the staircase. There was no carpeting on the

stairs, just the stretch of highly polished oak.

More wall flambeaux lit our way up the winding stairs. It was nice not to have

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