Page 13 of The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year
“Won’t your girlfriends worry if they don’t hear from you?” she couldn’t resist saying.
“Oh, they’re trained better than that.” He flashed a mischievous grin, practically daring her to start a fight, so Maggie turned back to the window and the winding road.
They’d passed through a quaint little village as they left the airfield, but they hadn’t seen another town for almost an hour. They were surrounded by rolling hills and sweeping vistas, grazing sheep and long stone walls that seemed to stretch forever, but an odd sense of foreboding was starting to grow inside of Maggie.
“Excuse me, uh...” She leaned closer to the driver.
“James, ma’am.”
“James. Hello. Um... where are we? Is that a silly question?” It was probably a silly question.
But James merely laughed. “Not silly at all, ma’am. Let’s just say we’re closer to Scotland than London and if the wind at the airport felt straight off the North Sea that’s because it was.”
“I see.” She didn’t really see, though, and the countryside was growing rougher.
When they reached a rushing river and a deep ravine, the only way to cross was an arching stone bridge that looked like something straight out of a fairy tale—the kind that was incredibly darkbefore Walt Disney got ahold of it. And Maggie wanted to ask a thousand questions. LikeDid his employers have guests often?andDidthose guests ever disappear without a trace?
“Uh... James? How far is it?”
“Oh, we’re here, ma’am.”Here?Where?Maggie saw a lake shimmering in the distance, but there wasn’t a town or a house in sight. “The estate is over twenty thousand acres. And it abuts a national park.”
“Oh. That’s”—convenient if you need to dispose of a body— “lovely.”
“It certainly is,” James said as the car crested a hill and, suddenly, Maggie wasn’t in a Rolls beside her nemesis. She was in a movie. Or a time machine. Or someone else’s life. Because there, in the valley below, stood the grandest home that Maggie had ever seen.
It must have been some kind of castle. Or manor house. Or abbey? Maggie didn’t have a clue. She just knew that it was three stories tall with probably hundreds of rooms and belonged in the kind of movie where hot guys with accents wear cravats.
It was a palace from another era—made of stone and glass and centuries. Kings and queens had probably slept there. Wars had no doubt been fought there. Emily’s parents’ seaside estate would have looked like a McMansion in comparison and for one brief moment, Maggie forgot to be afraid.
“Welcome to Mistletoe Manor,” James said when the car slowed and stopped in the driveway.
“Ten bucks says there’s an old guy here who wants to hunt us for sport,” Ethan whispered once James was out of the car.
“I hope not.” She looked across the back seat at Ethan. It was the first time they’d felt together in something—like they were in on a secret. “I’m pretty sure there’s an Eleanor Ashley novel that starts that way.”
They both climbed out and Maggie braced against the cold.
“Oh yeah,” Ethan said over the top of the car. “I’ve heard of her.”
Surely it was the wind? Sleep deprivation? The world’s worst case of jet lag? Because there was no way that he meant...
“You’veheard...” Maggie tried to keep her voice down. “You’ve...Have you never read Eleanor Ashley?”
He shrugged—an actual shrug! “Is she any good?”
“Is she any good?Is she...” Maggie wanted to crawl over the car and strangle him. “Eleanor Ashley has written ninety-nine novels of perfection. She’s the world’s greatest living author andthe greatest crime writer of all time, and so help me if you mention Sir Arthur Conan Whatshisface I’m going to disembowel you with an emery board. Eleanor Ashley came from nothing. She was born in a house with no plumbing and only went to school through the sixth grade because her family needed her to work. She wrote her first novel on scraps of paper she pulled out of the trash at the office building where she was a cleaning lady.
“Eleanor Ashleyinventedthe modern crime novel. She revolutionized the genre and... Killhaven—you know the publisher that just paid you seven figures for your next book? It wouldn’texistwithout Eleanor Ashley. So yeah. She’s good. She’s amazing. She’s...” Maggie trailed off, confused and annoyed, as Ethan’s gaze drifted over her shoulder. His lips quirked. His eyes twinkled. “She’s...”
And then there was a new voice flying on the wind. “She’s standing right behind you.”
Chapter Nine
At first, Maggie thought she was dreaming—or possibly dead—because she couldn’t believe she was in England. With Ethan Wyatt. Standing in front of a mansion. That belonged to—
There was a gentle push at her back and suddenly Maggie was stumbling away from the car and closer to the woman with white hair and sharp blue eyes. Eleanor’s left hand rested on her hip and her right sat atop the silver handle of a cane. She looked like a painting come to life, the story of an avenging angel who fell to Earth a thousand years ago, then decided to stick around.
Maggie had read every book—every article—every word ever written by (or about) Eleanor Ashley, but all she could think as she stood there wasNowonderthey call her the Duchess of Death.
