Cover

KAREN HAWKINS

And The Bride Wore Plaid

Chapter 1

I pity people who think to fool their fellow man. Take poor Mary Gillenwather. She stuffed the front of her gown with paper in an effort to appear better endowed. We all knew she’d done it, but no one said a word; you simply cannot work that sort of thing into a genteel conversation. But it wasn’t necessary after all. Last night, at the Pooles’ dinner party, she sneezed and dropped an entire issue of the Morning Post into her soup.

Lady Mountjoy to her friend Miss Clarissa Fullerton, while sipping chocolate at Betty’s Tea House

It was raining. Not a soft, whispering rain, the kind that mists the world into a greener, lusher place, but a harsh, heavy deluge that sopped the earth and saturated the very air with unending grayness. Water pooled, collected, swirled, swelled, and then burst into fields, raged through ditches, and rampaged across roads.

It was in this heavy, unending torrent that the lumbering carriage finally reached its destination late at night. The driver and footmen were exhausted, the horses straining heavily as they pulled the mud-coated ornate wheels through the muck and mire that had once been a road.

Ten minutes later, around the curve of a hill, appeared a looming stone castle that stretched up into the blackness of night. The coachman didn’t even bother to wipe the rain from his face as he halted the carriage at the door. Too wet to do more than tilt his hat brim to empty it of whatever water had collected, he squinted at the dark edifice that loomed in front of them. “Gor,” he said softly, awe overwhelming the tiredness of his voice.

Beside him on the seat was Paul the footman, a relatively new arrival to Mr. Devon St. John’s rather considerable staff. Paul was inclined to agree with John the coachman. “Dark, it is. It fair makes me shiver in me boots. Are ye sure we’ve come to the right place?”

“Mr. St. John said to go to Kilkairn Castle and to Kilkairn Castle we’ve come.” The coachman shook his head disgustedly. “Though to tell ye the truth, I think Mr. St. John has bumped his noggin.”

“Why do ye think that?”

“Just look at the facts. First he leaves his own brother’s weddin’ afore it even begins and then he orders us to bring him here, drivin’ through godforsaken rain fer days on end. And when we do get to this lumbering pile of stone, there’s nary a light on!” He sourly regarded the bleak building in front of them. “Looks deserted and hainted by ghosties, if I ain’t mistaken.”

Paul stood, stealing yet another glance at the dark edifice before them. While he wasn’t a great believer in ghosties, the castle definitely left him with an uneasy, spine-tingling sensation that was as unnerving as the constant pour of rain.