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South, and now Aaron was gone, and Margaret and Mary, too.
    The house, the home, the remaining land, they were all she had.
    She had hoped that Mary had entrusted her husband with the jewel, but that hadn’t seemed to be the case when Martise first corresponded with him. Writing to Bruce Creeghan had brought her a reply, a solicitous, polite note, telling her she was welcome to Mary’s personal effects. An almost casual note.
    Mary’s effects: Simple things, combs and brushes, clothing, small gold chains, her letter box, her portmanteaus …
    Not a single mention of the emerald. Either he didn’t know about it or he intended to keep it from her.
    There came a tap on her door, and she leapt up to undo the bolt and admit Holly.
    “I let you sleep as late as possible, milady,” the maid told her cheerfully. “Traveling being so rough upon the bones and all. But the master intends to show you to your dear sister’s grave, and he’s been up and about for hours, so I’m assuming he’ll be ready for you the moment the midday meal is over. I’ve brought you tea and biscuits, but just a bite, for Cook will have something fine in store in the main hall in an hour or so.”
    “Tea is lovely, thank you,” Martise assured her, accepting the tray. Holly was so fresh-faced and pretty, so honest and down-to-earth that Martise felt some of the mystery and gloom of the night dissipating in her presence. She needn’t have been so unnerved. It was only the storm over the castle that caused her unease last night. “Holly, I would dearly love a delicious hot bath. Would that be possible?”
    It was possible. Holly left her with her tea and biscuits and went off for the wooden hip bath and kettles to heat above her own fire. She returned with a huge man carrying the tub and several kitchen lads toting water.
    The giant bearing the tub was introduced to her as Robert McCloud, the groom drawn in from the stables for assistance. He was well over six feet tall, burly and so muscle-hewn he seemed to have no neck. He nodded curtly to her as he set the tub down, but then seemed to study her with a boldness she found insulting—or frightening. A scar ran the length of his left cheek, his eyes were a startling light blue, and his smile indicated he appreciated all that he saw in her.
    Martise ignored him, turning her attention to the lads Holly introduced. “This here, milady, our blond boy, is Trey McNamara, and the darker lad is our Jemie, Jemie MacPeters.” Holly’s glance to her, over Jemie’s head, indicated that something wasn’t quite right with Jemie MacPeters. But the blond boy smiled shyly and endearingly, and Martise found herself smiling gently in return, liking him the best of the three males she had just met.
    Holly shooed them out of the bedroom, and Martise assured her that she was fine on her own. “Well, if I can be of assistance, milady—I served your dear sister, I did. And I know of course that you were living in the south of the States, and that you were quite accustomed to the service of slaves—”
    “Holly, I am quite accustomed to bathing and dressing myself,” Martise said softly, gritting her teeth. She hadn’t been accustomed to much help with anything over the last four years, although there had, indeed, been slaves at Eagle’s Walk. Dana had been with her for years and years, but her great kind heart failed when the war had gone on and on. Old Buff stayed there now, keeping up with all he could. And there was Henry from the fields, and his wife …
    And the hundreds and hundreds who had fled to the North, and out of them, the many who had come back disillusioned, needing just to feed their hungry families when the North offered them no jobs, when the very people who had “freed” them refused to touch them, thinking that their color could come off on them like a disease.
    Not that she defended slavery. She had known fine Southern gentlemen who were not averse to beating their people cruelly. She