Autumn Read Online Free PDF Page B

Klara had been located and that their inquiries about the grey eyed man would have yielded some answers. Unfortunately instead of enjoying answers, they now had more questions than they’d had prior to setting out upon their journey.
                  Eli knew they were both tired of traveling, just as he knew they were both discouraged and worried. He wondered if it had all begun with the finding of Lady X or if something had been going on prior to that, some hidden intrigue only now coming to light. The thought jarred Eli. It rang within him as a very real possibility and despite how much the intuition disquieted him, he could not seem to let it go.
                  “Do you think Lady X was the first?” he questioned.
                  Arabel glanced over at Eli, as if remembering suddenly that she was not alone.
                  “I hadn’t thought of that,” she responded slowly. “I’m not sure. Why do you ask?”
                  “It’s been bothering me for some time now,” Eli admitted. “Perhaps the story of Lady X leaving her husband for her lover is all a lie. After all, who is her husband? Why has he not stepped forward to claim the body?”
                  “A good question,” Arabel replied, wondering what the update from Chief Constable Bartlin would be.
                  “And where’s her damn lover, then?” 
                  Murphy Estates came into view and Whipsie let out a delighted whinny.
                  “Someone’s glad to be home,” Eli declared as they cantered toward the stable.
                  The stable master spotted them immediately and came over to take the reins. Arabel dismounted thankfully and gave Whipsie a quick lump of sugar and a few strokes of appreciation before the stable master led the horses away for their rubdowns.
                  Eli turned to Arabel once they were alone. “I can help you tomorrow evening if you like,” he offered.
                  Arabel smiled. “Come for supper. My grandmother will be at her club tomorrow night so you can keep me company.”
                  Eli smiled back. He put his hand on Arabel’s arm, tentatively. The colours jumped to life in front of Arabel’s eyes – the blue, the green, the red infused with pink. Arabel felt suffused with energy, and warm, as if blushing.
                  “See you then,” Eli said lightly, affording her one of his slow honeyed grins before turning away to enter the stable and resume work.
                  For a moment Arabel simply stood there, watching, as the colours slowly faded and Eli’s lanky frame shrank from view. When the colors had completely disappeared, she turned and made her way up the tree-lined drive to the main house to see Shelaine before venturing home. Arabel hoped she would get lucky with a quick visit with her friend and then, perhaps more importantly, be able to sneak back into the house undetected by her grandmother.
                  Arabel was lucky. Incredibly lucky. Grandmother Amelia Bodean was in a prayer circle and not to be disturbed.  Arabel knew ‘prayer circle’ was generally code for ‘inebriated’ so she was able to make it to her room without interrogation. She had yet to understand how a prayer circle was formed with just one participant but it was folly to question her grandmother and Arabel was not foolish.
                  Morna, their housemaid, was a plucky, motherly woman given to gossip and exaggeration but today even she didn’t need to embellish upon the horror of the last day’s findings.
                  “They say she was…forced, if you know what I mean,” she was saying now to Arabel as brushed out her long hair with a fancy silver paddle brush. “Poor thing. Glad she wasn’t innocent!”
                  Arabel