Read The Girl in Blue for Free Online Page B

the plain stones that no longer showed a trace of what might have been carved into their surfaces for a posterity that had been overcome by wind and rain.
    Instead, she walked and scanned the names of the headstones and raised marble crypts that seemed more likely. She found a section in the far south corner sheltered from the foggy breeze by a steeply pitched hill that seemed to hold many Chadwicks. It gave her a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach to see her own name repeated again and again on stone after stone.
    The fog had thickened and the afternoon sun hung low when Trinity finally found her.
    So far that day, she’d heard no laughter. She’d only seen a hint of blue in the hallway and that had probably been nothing but her imagination. Her whole body went numb then icy when she walked across the grave.
    Clara Chadwick.
    The Girl in Blue.
    Her arm throbbed although the dressings she’d used that morning were light and her skin was healing, pink and new.
    Someone had trimmed the weeds back not too long ago. Trinity knelt to dust dried grass and dead daisies from the base of the head stone.
    Why didn’t she rest? And why was it Trinity she followed and menaced and threatened with matches after years of silent haunting?
    “Do you often borrow things without asking?” a familiar voice interrupted the silence.
    Trinity rose to turn and face him. Had he followed her? Or had he seen her interest in the photograph and remembered it in spite of the mind-numbing kiss?
    “You weren’t home. I didn’t think you’d mind,” she said. The photograph was still in her pocket. She tried to tell herself that the flush on her cheeks was nothing but wind burn and not embarrassment because Samuel Creed had caught her ghost hunting.
    “Mrs. Jesham mentioned you’d been doing some research. I recognized the photograph when she described it. Why the sudden interest in Scarlet Falls’history?” he asked.
    He wore the black scarf Violet Jesham had been knitting wound around his neck.
    Trinity refused to tell him she’d seen Clara Chadwick before. She wouldn’t tell him about her fears concerning the fire in Boston, not when his interest in history seemed macabre, sparked by that dark day by the lake when he had died.
    Creed must have donated a sizeable amount of money to the Historical Society for their renovations.
    Of course, the scarf looked perfect against his angular face and the slight dark stubble on his jaw. His double breasted wool pea coat was open. She could see a glimpse of white oxford beneath, filled out far too nicely by his muscled chest.
    Any story she might have made up died on her lips when he reached to pull dried grass from the fringe of her scarf. She immediately remembered his hand wound into the same fabric to pull her to his lips.
    Here, in the late afternoon light, he looked…different. The fog had dampened his coat and his hair and even his skin was moistened by October mist. Out of the house, he seemed almost vulnerable, though with his broad shoulders and tall physique she couldn’t imagine why she thought it. Against his damp hair and dark eyes, his skin was pale. The onyx chip in his left earlobe glittered darkly. Any shadows she perceived couldn’t be blamed on a dimly lit room. And there were shadows. His face was stark and tight. His jaw clenched, but it seemed more a battle against constant tension and less about her. Until his lips softened as if fingering her scarf made him remember and desire. Then his tension seemed very much about her after all.
    “Idle curiosity, then?” he asked. “Dead children. Graveyards. Dust and bones and crooked headstones…all for an afternoon lark?”
    He didn’t believe it. He knew better even if he didn’t know it all.
    She stood there with a man who seemed fascinated with the dead and gone, but she was very much alive. Her hands were meant to heal and save whenever they could. He had been to a watery grave and seemed to bring it back with him