Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
I wanted to know more about what he did, but I told him, “The village. Lunch at the tearoom.” I grinned. “Provisions.”
He grinned back.
“And we went to the ruins.”
“Ah. Lovely,” he murmured.
“It was. Now, your turn.”
“I met Kathleen, my investigator, in town. She’s come and gone. I worked out upstairs. And now I’m here.”
I’d seen the rather large, very equipped workout room that had been installed on the first floor in the northwest wing, which was more bedrooms, mostly children’s rooms, and that workout room, so I asked after it. “Do you work out on the first floor?”
“Yes.”
“Did you put that room in?”
“Yes.”
Another grin from me, which Ian returned.
“Did Kathleen find anything?”
“She lifted a great many fingerprints. Took some pictures. She can compare what she lifted in staff rooms to what was found in storage rooms. It might come to nothing. This has all been very clever, carefully planned out, it would be an uncharacteristic mistake for whoever is doing it not to wear gloves.”
For certain.
“Did she take the samples of alcohol?”
He nodded.
Good.
“What did you think about the ruins?” he asked.
“Amazing. Beautiful location. A castle there would have been stunning. It’s too bad it’s mostly fallen down.”
“It went into disrepair after Alice married Wolf, which is understandable. She was the last of that line, and she came here.”
She came…
Here.
“Pardon?” I asked.
“Alice was the only child and daughter to Eustace, the last lord of the castle that is now the ruins. Eustace had an ongoing feud with Torsten, who was the liege lord of the fortress he built here. And as they did in those times, they settled their feud by marrying their children to each other, Alice to Wolf.”
“His name was Wolf?”
“Mm-hmm,” he said. “It was a common name back then, but apropos. He was reputedly a fierce warrior and a favorite of King Stephen, often called upon to fight England’s wars, not only the civil ones of that time, but also with David of Scotland. The earldom didn’t exist back then, but essentially the beginning of it was Torsten, however mostly Wolf. For his efforts, Stephen awarded him with great lands and wealth. It was the beginning of the endowment of Duncroft. Loyalty, bravery and smart allegiances in the ensuing centuries increased our wealth and lands, earned us an earldom, and here we are.”
I couldn’t stop staring at him.
So he asked, “What?
“I told you I dreamed of a man and woman from medieval times, and you haven’t mentioned them yet. All of my dreams have been permutations of stuff we’ve discussed. But not them,” I said shakily.
And not Rose, or David’s wife, Joan, now that I was thinking about it.
However, I could have run into both those names in researching, and I just didn’t pay attention to them, even though I thought that was thin.
That said, I’d never heard word of Alice and Wolf.
“Darling,” he soothed, “there are perhaps a dozen paintings and tapestries depicting Alice and Wolf all over this house. There’s one where she’s standing, wearing an ivory gown, reaching up to him wearing armor while he’s astride his horse in the Wine Room. They’re in the tapestry hanging in the Turquoise Room. Though small, they’re in the top, left corner with a castle behind them. She’s again in an ivory dress, he’s in armor, and they’re surveying all they owned, which is the rest of the twelve-foot tapestry depicting the moors.”
I was almost certain I hadn’t noticed them in that tapestry, but maybe I had.
I’d naturally seen the picture in the Wine Room. However, I didn’t put it together because I didn’t know it was a picture of Alcott ancestors. I just thought it was simply a picture someone liked along the way.
It certainly was pretty, and I’d had a good look at it.
“It’s what you’ve seen, what you’ve heard, how your brain is sifting through it,” Ian stated firmly. “It’s nothing else. Enough is happening, don’t frighten your own self.”
“Yes,” I agreed. Then I queried, “What’s their story?”
He gave a slight shrug, but said, “Apparently, she hated him on sight. He thought her a shrew. But they married anyway and had five children, only three of whom survived. Though, this was in the twelfth century, so there isn’t much left of them now to know what their lives together were like. But back then, it wasn’t unusual in arranged marriages for the spouses to live relatively separate of each other, but still find the means to procreate.”
I thought of the picture in Wine.
Admittedly, I also thought of my dream and how the woman seemed so happy he was home.
So I asked, “They didn’t get along?”
“Again. I don’t know. In what I’ve read, it’s more about Wolf’s talents on the battlefield, his single-minded brutality there, the fear he engendered because of it, his unwavering loyalty to the king and the rewards he collected from that, than about his marriage. He also had a reputation for being a brute off the battlefield. His courtly manners were famously seriously lacking, but Stephen didn’t mind, as long as he kept winning conflicts.”