Page 41 of The Sea Siren of Broadwater Bottom
Caro cast Edward a wink as she linked arms with Cassandra and drew her away. The only positive about the fact that Elissa was still staring at the ground was that she missed his sister’s rather unsubtle gesture.
“Miss Elissa?” he said, offering his arm.
She looked up at him then, her face a mixture of longing and despair, before dropping her gaze as she accepted his arm.
He wanted to ask what the hell Araminta Grenwood had said to her, but he could hardly do so when the group was so tightly packed.
So instead, he asked her if she had been enjoying her books from the library. This led to a halting conversation about Aristophanes, followed by a slightly less halting one about Horace. Then they rounded the corner and the Greek folly came into view. Elissa exclaimed over it before remembering herself and looking down.
She may have tamped down her reaction, but Edward knew he had her. He commenced with a full tour of the folly, showing her every detail. He described which temples the architect had used as his inspiration and confessed his disappointment that a grand tour had proved impossible due to the war with France. This led to a discussion of which Greek and Roman sites they each wanted to visit, of which there was a high degree of overlap, as they both wanted to visit them all. And by the time Edward showed her the little bench inside the folly and described how beautiful it looked by the light of the full moon, Elissa had given up staring at her feet. She was beaming at him again, and Edward could breathe for the first time in three days.
They spent so much time examining the folly that they fell behind the rest of the group, not so far away as to be improper, but well out of hearing range. It would be the ideal time to ask Elissa what Miss Grenwood had said to upset her, but Edward found himself hesitating. He didn’t want to say anything that might bring their conversation screeching to a halt. It was more of a relief than he cared to admit to have Elissa speaking to him again, to see her wrinkle her nose when he teased her, to hear her quoting at length from the Eclogues of Nemesianus, to have her, just… being herself, in his presence.
They reached the top of the rise, and their destination came into view: Cranfield Castle, a glorious old ruin lying just over the boundary of the Astley estate on Lord Redditch’s lands.
Elissa’s reaction was every bit as rapturous as Edward had hoped it would be. “Oh, how glorious! Is that a—a—”
“A castle,” Edward supplied, unable to suppress his grin.
“Yes, of course, but is it a—” She waved her hands, struggling to find the words. “Some people willbuilda brand-new structure tolooklike a ruin. Is it that, or is it—”
“It’s a real castle,” Edward hastened to reassure her. “It dates from the fourteenth century.”
“A real castle!” She pressed a hand to her heart. “It is so perfectly picturesque, I couldn’t be sure.”
“Yes. When I was a child, it was my favorite place to play.”
She seized his forearm in a surprisingly strong grip. “Do you mean to tell me that you played knights and dragons and unicorns in an actual castle?”
He barked out a laugh. “I cannot say I playedunicorns.”
She poked him in the arm, but she was smiling.
“As the older brother, I made Harrington be the unicorn,” he explained solemnly. She laughed out loud, and it was as if the past three miserable days had never happened. “Come,” he said, offering his arm, “I’ll show you all of its secrets.”
They made it up the hill in record time. In spite of his longer legs, Edward had to work to keep pace with Elissa in her excitement. They reached the base of the castle and began circling around, Edward showing her a mason’s mark here, the remains of the rusted chain that had once hoisted the portcullis there. Elissa squealed aloud when he pointed out some scorch marks beneath a murder hole, the remnants of boiling oil employed during the War of the Roses.
Halfway around they reached the picnic area that had been laid out by Lord Redditch, with blankets spread in the shade of a grove of trees. As eager as Elissa was to continue exploring the castle, the day was warm and they had been walking for almost an hour, so they sat and accepted glasses of lemonade.
Lord Redditch joined them. “How are you enjoying the castle, Miss St. Cyr?”
“It is wonderful, my lord. Thank you so much for inviting us to see it.”
“It is my pleasure.” He nodded toward Edward. “Has Fauconbridge told you about the ghost yet?”
Elissa leaned forward. “There’s even a ghost?”
Edward smiled. “I was saving that tale for you, sir. No one else can do it justice.”
The earl began the story, glad to have found someone who hadn’t already heard it a hundred times. Elissa made the perfect audience, gasping in all the right places and staring in rapt delight at the battlements where the ghost of the fifth Marquess of Redditch was said to appear when the moon was on the wane.
“It was the back right tower,” Lord Redditch said, pointing, “where the assassin crept up behind him with the axe. Fauconbridge will show you when you go up.”
Elissa’s eyes flew to Lord Redditch’s. “Are the battlements intact?”
Lord Redditch nodded. “The east walk fell two hundred years ago, and what’s left is crumbling in a few places. But most of it is sturdy enough.”
Elissa was already wandering, entranced, toward the gatehouse.
