Candace Camp Read Online Free PDF Page B

her cabin to avoid the company of the ubiquitous Colton-Smythes, she had had to face the fact that, despite the children and her friends and the people who worked for her, she was lonely. There was an emptiness in her life, she thought, one she had never even realized was there. And while she might have become aware of it since her husband’s death, she knew it had been there long before that.
    Eleanor caught the direction of her thoughts and gave herself a mental shake. She was not going to dwell on such things. There were still things to be done for Edmund. She must take his ashes to his estate in the country and see that they were interred in his family’s mausoleum. And she must meet with his mother and sister, and explain in more detail the provisions of Sir Edmund’s will.
    She could imagine how Honoria Scarbrough had reacted to the news that Eleanor would be the guardian of her daughter’s estate until she reached the age of twenty-one. It would be a difficult visit, followed by six more years of difficulty in dealing with the woman. It was not a duty she looked forward to, but she would do it. It was the last thing that Edmund had asked of her, and she would follow it through.
    With a sigh, Eleanor turned and left the music room, going upstairs to her bedroom. The footmen were in the process of bringing in her trunks, and two maids were bustling around, putting her things away. She moved out of their way, going to the window and looking out at the street scene below.
    Dusk had fallen. Down the way, she could see the lamplighter lighting the street lamp. The street was deserted except for him as he made his way toward her. He illuminated the light directly across from her house, and as it sprang into being, a form was revealed standing beside the tree across from her door. It was a man, motionless, staring straight up at her window.
    With a startled gasp, Eleanor stepped back, away from his sight, her heart pounding. Quickly, she recovered her composure and stepped back up to the window. The dark form was gone.
    She glanced up and down the street, staring intently into the darkness, but she could see no sign of him. Had he been watching her house? Or was it only happenstance that she had looked out just as he had glanced up? Eleanor would have liked to believe the latter, but there had been something about the way he was standing, a stillness in his body, an intensity in his face, that hinted that he had been there some time. And he had left as soon as she saw him. That in itself indicated that he had not been there for a legitimate purpose.
    Eleanor frowned. She was not usually the sort to worry. But she could not help but remember the odd incident a week or so before she had left Naples, when the house seemed to have been entered—things shoved out of place, a lock broken on one of the windows. Nothing had been taken, which in itself seemed strange. She had dismissed it, but now she could not help but wonder. Why would anyone be watching her house?
    A little shiver ran down her spine. There was no reason to be afraid, she told herself. And yet, she realized, she was.

    E LEANOR SPENT THE NEXT DAY settling in. She told Bartwell to make sure that the locks on all windows and doors were engaged, and that the house was secured at night. Then, having taken precautions in her customary way, she put the thought of the man watching her house out of her mind. Instead, she concentrated on the myriad details concerning her business that had sprung up in the days she had been out of reach on board the ship, as well as the small but necessary items that were involved in getting the household running again. She penned a note to her friend Juliana to let her know that she was once more in town.
    Juliana had been her closest friend for over ten years, from the time they had met at school. Eleanor’s widowed father, with whom she had been very close throughout her childhood, had remarried when she was fourteen, and Eleanor’s