This Other Eden (94 page)

Again
she reached out her hand and touched the wood cautiously, as though she were
afraid of breaking something. A lantern threw Thomas' shadow, now very black,
across the inner courtyard; he walked heavily, with uneven steps, hindered by
his fatigue.

He
stood directly behind her. "Milady," he said quietly. "Shall I
remove it? It should be removed. I offered once before if you remember."

She
remembered. But then as now she said, "
No
." But she did not
say it fiercely as before, said it gently, as though merely objecting to the
removal of an old friend. "No, milord," she said with a smile, facing
him. "Leave it. Between the two of us, we may have need of it again."

Beyond
the lantern in the darkness, the footmen continued to unload the trunks. It was
late. Come morning, there was so much to attend to; her sons for one, and Eden
Castle, and perhaps the spring visitation from Lord Nelson and Emma Hamilton,
and the London season, and beyond that the Empire, and the powerful new
century. She intended to have a hand in all of it.

She
saw Thomas shivering with cold and fatigue. "Come, milord," she
urged. "We will look in on our sons before we retire."

And
so saying, and reassured that he was behind her, that now he would always be
behind her, she led the way up the stairs to the Great Hall, as confident as
though she had been designed by nature for such an ascent.

CRITICAL
ACCLAIM FOR MARILYN HARRIS' PREVIOUS NOVELS

HATTER
FOX

"...a
steel trap of a book. Advance a few pages and you'll be stuck fast until
Marilyn Harris sees fit to let you go. ...If the reading public give her a
chance she could act as a latter-day Charles Dickens, forcing us to empathize
with the downtrodden—in this case all our children who are in trouble."
—Christian Science Monitor

"...a
powerful novel with a controlled intensity of emotion."

—Cleveland
Plain Dealer

BLEDDING
SORROW

"British
ghosts, as essential to ancestral piles as mullioned windows, have never
groaned to better advantage than in this richly satisfying curse-and-murder
thriller." —Kirkus Reviews

THE
CONJURERS

"...a
well-wrought, hair-raising story that will keep you pinned to the page to the
very last act."

—San
Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle

"...Mrs.
Harris is a writer who makes others who have chosen the occult as their theme
seem like mere scenarists."—Fort Worth Star-Telegram