of a small ballroom, with two fireplaces, smoky mirrors in gilt frames lining the walls, and a wide, rectangular expanse of hardwood floor.
Laurel was about to follow Audra through the archway when she felt a chill run through her entire body.
“Here,” she said aloud, and Brendan turned back to look at her. Laurel pulled her hand from his and touched the doorjamb and thought she felt the faintest shock, like static electricity. “They cut the house here.”
“Yes, I believe you’re right,” Audra acknowledged, with an appraising glance at Laurel.
They all moved down the steps into the great room. Aside from a few end tables with marble tops, the only furniture in the room was a battered, dusty grand piano.
“This is the older house,” Audra said, unnecessarily; the feeling of the room was completely different, much older and more complicated. The ceiling was high, with a raised ornamental design in the dome, and the crown molding had plaster medallions at intervals all the way around the room. Two bay windows with dusty panes flanked a set of equally filmy French doors, which led out onto what must have been absolutely stunning gardens, several acres of them, now so overgrown with wisteria and yellow jasmine and honeysuckle Laurel thought instantly of Sleeping Beauty’s castle.
The bare floors shone even through their layer of dust and Laurel noted they were heart of pine (heart pine) but far older than the floors in her own house: she could see the wide planks had been fastened by hand-carved wood dowels instead of nails.
Then she froze, staring at a spot halfway across the floor.
Brendan opened his mouth to speak to Audra, but Laurel dug her nails into his palm and pointed.
In the solid layer of dust on the floor, there were footprints. Smallish and soft-soled, like footsteps on the beach, headed away from them, toward the archway to the next room.
But they began in the middle of the floor, and left off well before the doorway, just five or six of them, and then nothing but undisturbed dust.
The three of them stared at the footprints.
Audra broke the silence, sounding exasperated. “No matter what you do, people get in.”
Which was absurd, of course, unless someone had been airlifted into the room—the trail of footprints had no logical beginning or end.
“But—,” Laurel said.
Now Brendan dug his fingers into her wrist, while he tsked sympathetically to Audra. “It’s a shame, isn’t it. No respect for property.”
He took Audra’s arm with his other hand and smoothly steered both women well away from the footprints, so as to leave the oddly isolated tracks undisturbed, all the while keeping up a bright and distracting dialogue. “But I have to say, we’re loving it, aren’t we, honey? I can tell this is going to cost me a fortune.”
At the doorway on the other side of the ballroom, they stepped down yet again—Was this house built on a hill? Laurel wondered—into a dark-paneled room that had clearly been the dining room. There was a long walnut table and some terribly dusty chairs. A massive grandfather clock stood in one corner, its pendulum still and silent, and the inner wall boasted another large fireplace with an elaborately carved mantel and white marble hearth. Four sets of French doors with arched tops led out to a wraparound brick patio. Veranda, Laurel corrected herself silently. Where the rocks fell. The room was large, and there was nothing about it that should not have been graceful and lovely, but something about it made Laurel almost claustro-phobically desperate to get out.
“For a while it was rented out for weddings,” Audra said vaguely. “The gardens, you know.” She gestured toward the arched doors. She seemed as uncomfortable in the room as Laurel was.
“How big is it?” Laurel asked. Her voice sounded tight in the echo of the room.
“Nine thousand square feet,” Audra answered promptly. “Twenty-seven rooms in all.” Brendan whistled, and Laurel felt an odd sense of awe.
Audra led them into the next room: a huge, modern kitchen—not a domestic kitchen, but an industrial one, of almost restaurant size. It was in startling contrast to the formal rooms they had just been in. Though the kitchen was merely functional, with none of the beauty or design of the previous rooms, Laurel found she was able to breathe again once they were out of the dining room.
“The kitchen was put in to accommodate the wedding parties and special events.”
Brendan looked around, nodding. “Who owns it now?”
“The county Historical Society. There were plans