go. There’s one in the kitchen I can use.”
She hurried away, leaving him to wonder what in the world he had just gotten himself into.
Five
What in all that was holy had she gotten herself into?
Abby hurried into the kitchen for the notebook and pen she had been using earlier to make a list with Winnie.
She did not want to spend a moment longer than necessary in the company of Ethan Lancaster. Not when she was fighting this extremely inconvenient attraction to him. She ought simply to have told him she did not need his help and left it at that. She could have explored on her own later tonight after Christopher was in bed or in the morning. She wouldn’t have had the full historical context about the house, but she could always get that later from Winnie.
Maybe this was a good thing. Maybe spending a few moments with the man, getting to know him a little better, might help her relax so that she could feel more comfortable with him going forward.
He seemed kind, underneath his somewhat brusque exterior. She had seen the genuine concern in his expression when he had discussed his grandmother’s plans to open her house to strangers. On some level, she empathized with him. When her great-aunt had been dying and Abby had been her caregiver, she had been just as protective.
Winnie wasn’t dying, though. While the other woman had injuries that might slow her down physically right now, Abby had spent the entire day with her and had come to know a sharp, energetic woman who definitely knew what she wanted.
And right now she wanted Abby to take a tour of the house in the company of Ethan Lancaster, like it or not.
With a deep breath for courage, she returned to the great room.
“Okay. I’m ready,” she said. It was a complete lie, but neither of the Lancasters needed to know that.
“We shouldn’t be long,” she said to Winnie. “I have my cell phone with me. Just call or text if Christopher wakes up or if you need something.”
“Got it. Have fun.”
She managed not to roll her eyes at that as Ethan led the way up the big, sweeping staircase. “What did you want to see first?”
She followed a few steps behind him. “I have no idea where to start. What would you suggest? I suppose I need to see everything.”
The look he aimed at her over his shoulder was almost sympathetic. “You have no idea what’s up here, do you?”
That sounded ominous, but maybe she listened to too many true-crime podcasts.
“You make it sound like your grandmother is hiding Frankenstein’s monster in a back bedroom.”
“She very well could be, for all I know. I’m not certain anyone but Winnie has seen all the rooms up here. I am fairly certain she couldn’t tell you everything that’s up here or where to find it.”
That sounded both fascinating and terrifying. “Why don’t you start by telling me what you know about the history of the house?”
“That is not a small order.” He flipped on a light switch, illuminating a long hallway with rooms on either side. Christmas music wafted up the stairs from something Winnie must have turned on in the great room.
“All right. Start by telling me when it was built.”
“Okay. See that portrait there of the dastardly looking guy with the big beard? That’s my third great-grandfather—Winnie’s husband’s great-grandfather, William Lancaster. He was a silver miner in his youth who staked a claim on a small plot of land and ended up extraordinarily lucky when he discovered one of the richest veins of silver in the area. He was a crafty young man who didn’t tell anybody about his discovery. I don’t know how he managed to keep it quiet, but over the course of a year he somehow managed to acquire the stakes of everyone else in the area until he owned the entire mountainside. He then turned his claim into one of the most lucrative silver mines in the entire West, the Lucinda.”
He tapped another picture of an elegant-looking but unsmiling woman. “William founded the town of Silver Bells, brought his childhood sweetheart out from Boston, not coincidentally also named Lucinda, and built the house for her.”
“How romantic,” she said, though the woman didn’t look particularly appreciative of the gesture.
“I don’t know if I would go that far. She hated it here in Colorado, especially the winters. She hated the mine, she hated the weather, she hated the people. Lucinda was