Heritage of Lancaster County 03 The Reckoning Read Online Free PDF Page A

with her back to the blazing fire. She had spent the morning playing her guitar and singing freely, allowing her voice to fill the sitting room, one of the several comfortable places to relax in her private suite. She had kept the arrangement of furnishings the same as when Laura was alive: overstuffed chairs and a cherry sofa table placed so as to accentuate the Tibetan area rug, a favorite of her birth mother.
    Flitting from one song to another, Katherine let her mind roam back to Pennsylvania, settling on the letter Mary had written in mid-December. She had read it so many times now, she had it nearly memorized.
    It's all I can do to keep myself from sneaking off down the lane for a visit
    She knew just what her friend must've been feeling as Mary penned those words. They both had missed out on friendship by losing touch with each other.
    Katherine curled her toes inside her house shoes, despising the bishop--that wretched man who might're become her husband if she hadn't had the gumption to walk out on their wedding service. She stopped singing, stopped strumming her guitar. John Beiler had cut her off from her
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    loved ones, her People. A typical shunning was one thing, but declaring that none of them could speak to her or she to them! The memory stung like a hundred angry wasps.
    Getting up, she strolled to the windows, still carrying her guitar as she looked out at the snow-covered lawn and formal gardens. Hundreds of barren trees--beech, fir, and maple--stood at graceful attention over the rolling acres as far as the eye could see.
    A light snow had begun to fall. The enormous flakes seemed to suspend themselves momentarily, high in the air, as if holding their breath before consenting to drift to earth. The overcast sky and the mood of the day reminded her of midwinter days in the Hollox; when snow-encrusted country roads were sliced deep by narrow carriage wheels and trampled over by one trotting horse after another.
    Then and there, she decided to make contact with Mary. She wouldn't put her friend in jeopardy by writing the letter herself. No, she had a better idea. Rosie, her trusted maid, might be the ideal person to take dictation.
    Katherine turned slightly, ready to put her guitar away and call for Rosie Taylor with her plan, when her eyes fell on a bright blue sedan parked off to the side of the circular driveway. Looking more closely, she noticed a single set of footprints, their indentation breaking through to the pavement beneath.
    It was then she heard the muffled sound of the door knocker, followed by Fulton's hurried steps. She knelt to place the guitar in its case, a flicker of a memory surfacing as she did. Tired of his share of run-ins with his father, Dan had insisted on giving the beloved instrument to her years ago. "Will you hide it for me?" he'd asked, smiling down on her that sunshiny day.
    How could she have refused? " 'Course I will." "You'll take good care of it, won't you, Katie girl?" And care for it, she did. Marched right off to the barn
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    and hid it away from eyes that would misunderstand her need--their needto create the prohibited music.
    She might've lingered, taking pleasure in the endearing scene from years gone by, had it not been for the sound of her loyal butler, his voice rising to an ever higher pitch. Goodness' sake, the man sounded ruffled. Who on earth could be at the door?
    She went to the window but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Must be a traveling salesman, she assumed, seeing only the back of a man's overcoat. Fulton will get rid of him.
    How secluded and safe she felt. Sighing, she wondered what it might've been like having servants to wait on you hand and foot your whole life, people responsible for making your existence as sweet as cherry pie. Had Laura kept her infant daughter, she, Katherine, would have experienced such a life. This estate was the home of Laura's parents long before her birth mother had ever conceived and borne her first and only