Page 30 of The Forgotten Boy

But the grieving sister? The woman obsessed with rumors of a ghost boy? The daughter whose father was threatening to take her away from Havencross?

Diana stepped lightly through Clarissa’s bedroom, not touching anything, just scanning it all to turn over later in her mind. She didn’t see anything obviously suspicious or out of place. Volumes of classical literature, academic studies on private schools, bound school records by year, novels in French and German. Diana felt stupider by the minute.

There were two photographs framed in old silver on the bedside table, where they would be the first things Clarissa would see in the morning and the last things at night. One was an old-fashioned family portrait: Diana recognized a much-younger Sir Wilfred Somersby, with his wife surrounded by two little girls and a fat baby on her lap, and two older children standing on his other side—Clarissa looked twelve or thirteen, the boy next to her around the same age as the first-year students.

The same boy was the sole figure in the second photo. He had dark hair and the round face of the young, and despite the stiff clothing and pose, he looked ready to burst into laughter.

The lost Thomas. He reminded Diana of her own little brother. Unlike Clarissa, she might know where to physically find Harry today, but he’d lost the irrepressible joy of youth somewhere in France.

Joshua came up beside her. “You ready to go back?”

The thought of returning to that enclosed space was too much. “There’s no point. We’ve mapped out the possibilities of that passage. Servants’ quarters, staff linen closet, and headmistress’s bedroom. The linen closet is boarded shut, and I highly doubt boys are sneaking in and out through here under Clarissa’s nose.”

“Are you all right, Diana?”

He was way too perceptive. As unhurriedly as she could, Diana moved across Clarissa’s bedroom to the outer door. “I think we should leave the private wing before anyone finds us. If you want to go back through the passage, I’ll meet you in the attic and we can put everything back the way it was.”

“Diana—”

“Then we can cross off that passage and move on. Do you think Clarissa has the original house plans? Maybe she’ll let us look at them.”

Joshua stopped her by simply stepping in front of the door. “If you don’t want to talk about it, Diana, that’s all right. God knows there are stories I don’t tell. But I don’t want to keep throwing you into spaces that you don’t … that aren’t …”

His obvious care in trying to select the right words, and the two little creases between his eyebrows as he thought, forced a tiny crack in Diana’s well-guarded defenses. “You’re right, I don’t love tunnels and darkness. Maybe someday I’ll tell you all about it. And in the future I’ll confine my exploring to maps—you can do all the legwork.” Diana tried to match one of his grins, probably looking more demented than sexy. “Seeing as how we worked so hard to save that leg in the first place.”

Where did he learn to look at a woman like that? Never mind, she thought hastily. I don’t really want to know.

For a dizzying moment, she thought he’d kiss her. His eyelashes lowered as though he were looking at her mouth, and they both moved ever so slightly inward. But then his mouth quirked into one of his myriad smiles.

“Clarissa likes us both,” he said, “but I don’t think that will help if we’re caught here.”

Right. Clarissa. School. Tunnel. Ghost.

Diana shook away all the disparate thoughts in her head and followed Joshua out the door. He definitely had a better grasp of the house’s physical layout because he led her out of the private wing and back into the school spaces without a single wrong turn.

And none too soon, because the boys were trooping through the great hall as the two of them came down the main staircase. Behind the mass of boys came Beth Willis, walking with her young Austin, and Clarissa Somersby bringing up the rear at her most imperial. She wore a divided skirt of dark plum tweed, the matching jacket impeccably tailored to her frame. Next to her, the perfect country gentleman in gray flannel with cap in hand: Luther Weston looked as though he’d been speaking to her for some time.

Why did Diana feel that Clarissa—as her eyes caught her nurse and assistant headmaster standing on the stairs—could review everything she’d been doing? It was probably a trick she’d learned in one of those school leadership books in her bedroom.

But it was Luther Weston’s stare that truly unnerved her. Besides his evident dislike of Joshua, he seemed to have developed an irrational animosity toward Diana as well. She wouldn’t put it past Weston to play tricks on her in the night. Or at least to use those tricks against her. Already he’d said Diana was too “imaginative”—not a quality one wanted in a school nurse. She would just have to keep any future ruses between herself and Joshua for now. As much as she wanted to believe that she’d scratched her own neck in her sleep, Diana would rather die than allow Weston to imply the same thing in public.

CHAPTER TWENTY

DIANA

NOVEMBER 1918

Joshua tried to convince Diana that she could just go to tea in her trousers and a sweater.

She laughed. “I have manners.”

“We’ll be walking across fields to get to the farmhouse,” he reminded her.

“I can walk in a skirt.”

She proved it with a wide-gored skirt in a heathered green tweed and her long-line wool coat in navy blue over a lace-trimmed blouse. One of the older boys playing cricket on the grounds whistled and Joshua shouted, “Decorum, please. We do not treat women like dogs.”

“So you don’t think I look nice?” she teased.

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