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shoulders. “My God!”
    Singh regarded him in a more fatherly way than had Sir John, looking him up and down and appearing to be greatly pleased at the tall, handsome man he saw before him. But then his face clouded.
    “I’m so very sorry, Lawrence. We’re all shocked. This has been a terrible, terrible event.”
    “Thank you, I—” as Lawrence fished for words Sir John gave the globe an irritable spin and stalked past him. His footsteps echoed with force and anger throughout the hall. Lawrence and Singh watched his stiff retreating back.
    Singh met his eyes and then busied himself with taking Lawrence’s traveling cloak and hat. “It’s good that you’re here.”
    “Is it?”
    Singh hung the cloak and paused for a breath before turning to face him. “Yes,” he said, “it is.”
    “Ben’s fiancée . . . Miss Conliffe?”
    “She’s here,” said Singh. “Sleeping upstairs. Poor lass is in a very bad way.”
    “She must be devastated,” Lawrence said, his eyes drifting toward the staircase.
    “Her father arrives tomorrow. For the funeral.”
    “That’s tomorrow as well?”
    “Yes.”
    “This has all happened so fast.” Lawrence shook his head. “Where . . . where’s Ben?”
    “Being cared for,” said Singh.
    “I want to see him.”
    Singh shook his head. “It would be better if you did not—”
    “Tell me,” said Lawrence.

C HAPTER S IX
     
Blackmoor Village
     
    N one of the horses Lawrence had ridden as a boy were still at the estate but there were several healthy animals stabled behind the house. Lawrence saddled a sturdy black gelding and as he rode away from the Hall he wished the horse could sprout wings like Pegasus and fly far and away, not back to London—no, he wanted to go home to America. Home was there, not here. This place had not been home for a long time, and he suspected it never would be again.
    There were too many ghosts.
    Ben.
God almighty, Ben!
    He had lived so long without Ben in his life that he should have been better prepared for such a catastrophe, but with every second the knife of grief drove deeper into his heart. Benjamin. He could
not
be dead.
    Not now. Not when Lawrence was here, at home. It was so unfair, Lawrence wanted to scream at God.
    He walked his horse as far as the stone arch and finally stopped and sagged against the wall, all of the power gone from his muscles. He clutched the reins with one hand and balled the other into a fist.
    “Ben . . . ,” he whispered and beat the side of his fist on the ancient stones. “God damn it, Ben. . . . God damn you!”
    Tears boiled in his eyes and ran down his cheeks.Lawrence pounded on the stones over and over again as sobs wracked his big frame. The horse nickered nervously and the ravens chattered in the trees like noisy mourners.
    “Ben,” Lawrence said again, and this time his voice was choked and raw, “I’m sorry. . . .”

     
    T HE VILLAGE OF Blackmoor was small and rustic. Nothing seemed to have changed in the last thirty years, and probably not in the hundred before that. The thatched houses still sat at odd angles to the road as if the inhabitants didn’t want to be reminded that their neighbors were a short stone’s throw away. Gardens were well tended and embowered by low stone walls overgrown with creeping vine, and smoke drifted prosaically from each chimney. As the gelding followed the road into town Lawrence caught the eye of several villagers, some of whom tapped their companions to notice the stranger passing among them.
    Lawrence tried hoisting a genial smile onto his face, but the scaffolding of grief wouldn’t support it and each grin collapsed into a brooding scowl. It was all the same to the villagers, who gave him only calculating stares and suspicion.
    He rode into the town square, which was anchored on one side by the gray pile of the Presbyterian church whose stained glass windows depicted scenes of righteous fury and harsh celestial judgment. Never a cheery