Page 72 of The Seven Rings
“Am I the first woman to live here alone? Plenty of other mistresses, so to speak, over the last couple hundred years, but now it’s just me.”
“And it’s just you after a long stretch of none.”
“That’s right, that’s right. She scared Patricia off, then had the place to herself for a generation before Clover and Charlie moved in.”
Foo Fighters expressed Clover’s thoughts with “Home.”
“It was and is yours,” Sonya said. “But Dobbs, then Patricia Poole, changed that. And the manor was empty again until Collin came of age and made it his.”
Trey set the box on the floor of what they called the Quiet Place, and looked at the old grandfather clock, its hands, as always, held on three o’clock.
“Then Johanna made the seventh bride, and Collin lived alone.” He turned to Sonya. “And now you.”
“The brides were obstacles, enemies, like you said. I’m more… competition. You remove an obstacle, you just have to beat the competition.”
Thinking it through, she walked with Trey, leading the pets, to the kitchen. Opened the back door for the quick stampede outside.
“She’s stuck in the past, right? In 1806, when she jumped to her death off the seawall. She exists after that, but her mind-set, her… culture? That’s stuck in a place where women didn’t own property, weren’t in charge. I think…”
“I’d like to know what you think.” Trey handed her a Coke.
“She wanted the first Collin Poole because he would own the manor. He’d inherit it.”
“She made sure of that by killing his father.”
“She tried bespelling Collin first, getting him to sleep with her, using that as her way to Poole Manor. But it didn’t work, there was Astrid. So she removed the first obstacle, Arthur Poole.”
Watching her, Trey nodded. “Why wait until after the wedding to kill Astrid, remove that obstacle?”
“I…” Sonya glanced up. “Let’s walk outside, out front, sit on the seawall.”
“Sure.”
When they closed the front door behind them, Trey took Sonya’s hand. “You don’t want her listening.”
“I’m not sure she can or does hear everything, but. And I like to keep an eye on her windows off and on. Anyway, I think she either needed or wanted the wedding ring. Cleo would say there’s power in symbols, and she’s not wrong. She took the ring, wears the ring.”
“Because in her warped mind, it makes her a bride, and mistress of the manor.”
“You’ve thought of this, too.”
“Played around with it some.”
He nudged her down to sit on the stone wall. The breeze whipped at her hair, and the strong summer light seemed to deepen the green of her eyes.
Poole-green eyes, he thought.
“Keep going.”
“Still, it didn’t work. They caught her, would have hanged her, but she got away long enough to come back here, stand on this wall, and with her own death seal the curse for generations to follow. More, she stayed, in her mind, mistress. Then in grief, Collin kills himself, his twin Connor inherits, marries Arabelle.”
“But she didn’t kill Arabelle.”
“Same generation, plus, Arabelle would provide her with the next bride. She’s got all the time in the world, right? Being dead. So there’s Catherine. Another generation, another bride, another ring.”
Sonya looked up at the windows. “Rinse, repeat. They all became obstacles in her mind, or steps to power. Brides—like Astrid. Pooles by blood or marriage. But me? I’m at best competition, at worst an interloper. An unmarried woman, living here alone. Well, with a friend—a female friend. As long as I stay that way, I’m a nuisance, but safe. Relatively.”
She looked back at him. “Does that sound right to you?”
