Page 38 of Black Widow

Worthing ran his hands nervously around the brim of the hat he was holding. “Adolfo, her butler, had a message for me. She extended an invitation to visit her in Devon, at her family home.” He grimaced. “According to the man, she had one for you as well if you happened to call, one suggesting you go to a much warmer and…sulfurouslocation.”

Damn. “I should have guessed she would run. I’ll have my traveling coach broughtaround.”

Not wasting any time, he called out to his butler to pack a bag before hurrying to his study to pen a note toClarke.

Worthing followed. When Gideon turned back to him, he was shaking his head. “A change of clothes perhaps, but we cannot waste time waiting for your coach. We must depart withhaste.”

Alarmed, Gideon rescinded his order for the carriage and asked for his chestnut stallion to be brought round instead. “Why? Do you suspect Sir Clarence is inpursuit?”

“No, you don’t understand. Amelia no longer has ahome.”

Chapter 15

I’min the wrongplace.

“This cannot be right,” she whispered, unable to tear her eyes from the ruin at the edge of the cliff in front of her. Behind, the grey ocean stretched out into the horizon, nearly the same color as the skyabove.

The neglected Palladian her father had so lovingly restored had been destroyed. The entire left wing had collapsed, and there was a gaping hole in the roof. Soot-blackened debris littered the ground next to the crumblingstructure.

“I’m sorry we’re not further along, Madame. Your husband sent some funds a while back to start rebuilding. Do y’see over there,” Gibson, the caretaker, pointing to some scaffolding on the right. “Made a good start, but then the funds stopped coming and so did theworkers.”

“When Martin died,” shemumbled.

How could he have kept such a secret from her? This had been the home she had shared with her parents—the place where she had known the only true happiness of herlife.

There was no pain, only a numbness that spread through her body as if she’d been submerged in an icybath.

“What was thedate?’

“Of the fire, miss? I reckon it was in mid-April of ninety-nine.”

That was just over a month after she and Martin had departed to thecontinent.

“I sent word to the address you left me, the estate of the Italian relation of Mr. Montgomery’s,” Gibsonadded.

But the caretaker had directed the missive to her husband, as any employee would once a woman waswed.

True, she should have seen the letter regardless. Martin wasn’t the type to maintain a steady correspondence or deal with solicitors. Such details had been herpurview.

But Martin had collected the mail.He must have seen the note and hidden it to spare herfeelings.

Gibson hadn’t done anything wrong, but he was starting to looknervous.

“I would like to be alone if you don’t mind,” she saidquietly.

“Of course, miss. I’ll help your coachman settle the horses. The barn is right as rain. It wasn’t touched in the blaze. There’s plenty of room in the cottage since your father expandedit.”

Once Gibson had gone, she moved closer to the ruin, walking over the barren ground where her mother’s rose garden had stood. Edging around the house, she found the stone wall that marked the border of the ancient abbey. It had been so well known the property was still called the Abbey, even before the Palladian had been built over theruins.

She entered the shell of the house without thought. One moment, she was standing in front of the door and the next she was inside, surrounded by the fragments of a once-happychildhood.

It was all a wastelandnow.

Picking her way through the charred rooms, she was surprised to see most of the side staircase intact. Her bedroom had been at thetop.

Amelia examined the stairs. There was a fleeting question whether they would still bear her weight, but she couldn’t hold it in her mind. It didn’t matter anyway. She climbed up, lightly leaping over the gap formed by two missingsteps.

The damage was much worse upstairs. The hall was under a gaping hole in the roof. Off to the left, the blackened door to her childhood bedroom stood open. The fire had been cruel there. The better part of two walls was missing, exposing a sheer drop of the cliff’s edge and the cold ocean beyondit.

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