Secret Reflection Read Online Free PDF

down. ‘When the plane took off from LAX I vowed I’d leave behind my old life and all the crutches I’d been relying on. I can’t afford to fall at the first hurdle.’
    Nancy smiled with understanding. ‘Warm milk, then?’
    Kelly shook her head. ‘Nothing – I’ll be fine. I’m so tired I’ll probably be out cold within an instant of my head hitting the pillow. Now go to bed – you’re keeping me from my beauty sleep.’ She gave her friends a gentle shove. ‘Go.’
    Ducking back for a hug, Nancy whispered, ‘We’ll talk in the morning when I get back from the village. Sleep as long as you like – I’ll call Richard first thing and get him to delay your tour until the afternoon.’
    ‘That’d be great, thanks.’
    Kelly watched Nancy disappear down the darkened hallway. Light showered momentarily from beyond the landing, before a squeak and a thud told her that she was again alone.
    After closing her own door, she made a broad circle around the mirror, feeling quite ridiculous as she gazed cautiously into the glass. Aside from a slight sense of vertigo nothing appeared unusual or out of place.
    She let out a relieved sigh. It was bad enough that her whole world had disintegrated with Frank’s infidelity, she didn’t need to add insanity to her list of problems.
    ‘There’s no such things as ghosts,’ she murmured out loud, as if stating it made it more real.
    With a final, apprehensive glance at the mirror, she marched into the dressing room to change into her nightgown.
    John regretted his haste. Common sense would have told him not to try and gain her attention in the midst of a violent thunderstorm. Have I learned nothing in 140 years?
    Slowly, slowly .
    His only excuse, he supposed, was the fact that it had been twenty years since he last had the opportunity to find peace, and all that watching and waiting tended to make him eager.
    He remembered a boy – 1921 the year, if he recalled correctly – who remained quite terrified for over a week, leaving John little time to search. And eighteen days was not long to achieve his aim, especially when the house’s occupants kept rearranging things. Coupled with the fact the John could only see into a few rooms now … success had become less and less likely. And there was always the danger that the very thing he sought had been disposed of along with the antique furnishings that Ditchley had sold at auction a few months ago. If that were the case, all was indeed lost.
    Regrets. They seemed to fill his existence. And yet there was still hope; that slip of a woman in the room before him was his hope, and again he couldn’t help but feel the tiny spark of anticipation that this time … this time he wouldn’t fail; this time he would find peace in the oblivion of eternity.
    A deep sigh shuddered through him.
    Come morning he would try again.
    The fresh air smelled almost intoxicating. Kelly hung over the casement and gazed out across the landscape. A painting in a gallery couldn’t have been as picturesque. From her second floor vantage, the view stretched out like a patchwork carpet of varying shades of green and yellow – and not a high-rise in sight. Blue, the clearest blue she had ever seen, extended from the edge of the horizon in every direction. The storm, long gone, had swept through and washed the world clean.
    Her room sat above and slightly to the left of the circular gravel drive. And where yesterday she’d seen the hedges and rose gardens as edging to paths and walkways, from above she could now make out the pattern they made, like an intricate decoration on the border of a playing card or one of those medieval books inscribed by monks in the dark ages, the hedge formed loops and arcs that intersected like a maze.
    She wondered whether there might be a true maze somewhere on the property. A question to put to Lord Stanthorpe later .
    Above her, birds chirruped. She leaned further out the window in an attempt to see, but the brightness