The Marquis’s Misstep by Kathy L. Wheeler

Twenty-Five

L

oren hung back in the copse of trees with his eyes on the caravan ahead. He’d been stunned earlier to see Lady Maudsley’s carriage pull into her drive and her and Brockway step out. The sight had jarred a driving pain at the back of his head, throbbing until Loren had been forced to return home and take to his bed. He’d sent Farcle in his stead to keep watch for other movement.

“I followed them back to Kimpton Manor,” Farcle had told him. “They were loading up a box.”

Loren’s patience had been nonexistent, seething behind the cold damp cloth resting over his eyes. The voices were growing louder by day. He couldn’t seem to turn them off. “What kind of box? And what do I care?”

“Apparently someone died.”

Explaining the reason Brockway and Kimpton now rode horseback alongside the outriders behind a black hearse towed by six horses. The rain had abated even if the sun was shrouded by clouds.

Loren recognized the chanted words intermingled with the leaves rustling in the slight breeze. He blinked several times as various light patterns sizzled across this vision, and he realized this was a new manifestation. A sense of lunacy erupted in a slightly hysterical short burst of inappropriate laughter.