Page 7 of The Seven Rings
“I’m going to let Yoda and Pye out for a few minutes before I go back to bed. We’ll all be up soon.”
Of course all four pets raced out when Cleo opened the door. She stood there a moment. “Looks like a lovely day to painten plein air. She’ll be fine,” she added, still looking out at the lawn, the garden, the woods beyond. “She’s committed to this, and when Sonya’s committed, it takes a hell of a lot to shake her off.”
She turned back. “It’s why she stuck with Brandon even with all her doubts about marrying him. Finding him rolling around naked with her cousin in her own bed?” Cleo snapped her fingers. “Done. She might have forgiven him if he’d been contrite, but she’d never have gone back to him.
“I’m only using that asshole as an illustration so maybe you’ll worry a little less. She not only won’t give up, but when you push Sonya into a corner? She’ll come out swinging. Last night? A mistake.”
Cleo pointed up to indicate the Gold Room and Hester Dobbs. “Her very big mistake.”
“Why is that, especially?” Owen paused as he loaded the dishwasher.
“What she did before, to the seven brides? She has to pay for that. She needs to be stopped. But that happened before. Even though Sonya went through the mirror and saw it all happen, it already happened. Last night? Last night Dobbs hurt those we’ve all come to care about. That was immediate, that was now.”
“She just needed to shake off the sad and find the mad again.”
Cleo smiled at Trey. “You know her. I’m just saying this as someone who’s known and loved her longer, she won’t break. And she won’t stop.”
“There are times that’s just what worries me.”
“She needs this house and everything in it—with one exception—as much as this house and everything in it need her. We have the light on our side, and I have to trust that.”
“Just do me a favor? Stick close today.”
“I can do that. Now, y’all let Yoda and Pye back in before you get on, will you? I’m going to go get the rest of my beauty sleep.”
As she walked out, Cleo trailed a finger over Owen’s cheek.
Watching her go, Owen shook his head. “That woman’s got me, inside and out and back again. And she’s right, Trey. Everything she said was right.”
“I know it. I’ll deal with it. You, too.”
“Yeah, me, too. Text me when you’re ready to get the food. I’ll meet you.”
When Sonya came out of a long, hot shower, she found Yoda in the bedroom. A pair of cropped leggings and a roomy T-shirt lay on the neatly made bed.
Gripping the towel around her, Sonya breathed back tears.
“Thanks, Molly. Those are just right for today.”
The young Irish housekeeper from so long ago continued to serve. More out of love than duty, Sonya not only felt but truly believed.
As Jack, the boy who’d died in the manor before his tenth birthday, came out to play with Yoda when no one was watching. And Jerome tended to yard work, Eleanor to the plants in the solarium.
Their spirits, and others she couldn’t name, continued here, as much a part of Lost Bride Manor as the wood and the glass.
She had a duty to them, and to the seven brides. To Astrid, Catherine, Marianne, Agatha, Lisbeth, Clover, Johanna. For them, even more than for herself and Cleo, she would damn well hold the manor.
It would stay Poole Manor, as it had always been.
For them, she thought as she dressed, she’d stay, she’d work, she’d fight, and she would, somehow, take back the seven stolen rings and break the curse.
If it meant waking at three a.m.—the hour when Hester Dobbs had hurled herself from the cliff wall to seal the curse—then she’d wake at three a.m. If it meant walking through the mirror again and again to witness some horror, then she’d walk through the glass.
And somehow, she’d find the way to take those rings off the fingers of a dead witch.
Though she’d yet to dry it, Sonya pulled her brown hair back in a tail. If she had a call for a virtual meeting, well, she had her emergency makeup in her desk.
As she started out, Yoda jumped up to follow her through her sitting room and down the long hallway. She saw that Cleo’s bedroom door stood open a crack. To let Pyewacket come and go as she pleased.
