turnips and the beets.
She could barely make out the tops of turnips, and the carrots, beets and onions she’d squashed in her pursuit of the stranger in white. She’d confess. Of course she would, but Stephen wasn’t going to like it one little bit.
Her own folly in racing outside for an impulsive search without preparation didn’t escape her. She was usually far more sensible. She’d go back inside for practical clothes and sneakers, but then she might wake up Toni or Annabelle. Even worse, she might disturb Clive or Stephen. Her fiancé had told her night was often the time when he did the creative thinking that produced some of his most spectacular roses.
It was best to push forward, high heels and all.
Lily made her way out of the winter garden, careful not to trample any more vegetables. Then she trained her light along the stone wall that rose eight feet high and circled the back of the property. The manor, the over-sized garage and Stephen’s workshop, where he occasionally puttered on a woodworking project or one of his cars, created nooks and crannies that could hide a teenager in deep trouble from an exploration nobody knew she’d made.
The beam of her flashlight caught a pair of eyes, watching. Closer inspection revealed a cat crouched underneath the live oak tree, his attention riveted on various night creatures scurrying about in the dark, rabbits searching for tender leaves in the vegetable garden and rats attracted by the compost pile Stephen kept beyond the grove near his greenhouses.
Lily wasn’t an explorer. She didn’t like the dark, and she particularly didn’t like being on the vast Allistair estate on a cold and threatening winter night with nothing but an old sweater and a flashlight.
Then she remembered Stephen’s guards. It would take her a while to get used to the idea that she had round-the-clock protection.
Don’t forget the strange woman. How on earth had she gotten through Stephen’s security?
“Be brave.” The sound of her own voice carried her forward as she trained her flashlight into every nook and cranny she could find.
Her search carried her into the grove, through the curtains of Spanish moss swaying like ghosts in the night wind. The evening dampness seeped through her clothes and shoes.
Suddenly she stilled. Was that another scream?
Wings stirred the air over her head, and she stifled her own scream. It was only an owl, screeching his mournful message in the dark.
Still, fear prickled the back of Lily’s neck. Premonition led her past the trees, grown suddenly huge and mysterious in the night, to the greenhouses, their glass sides glowing in the sliver of moon that unexpectedly peeked through the dark clouds. Beyond them, the compost pile Stephen called liquid gold seemed monstrously large.
Lily covered her mouth and nose at the smell. She didn’t remember it being this bad when she’d seen in on her first tour of the estate.
Had it only been a few short months ago? It seemed a lifetime.
Nearby was the shed where Stephen kept mulch, peat moss, root stimulator, a wide variety of rose fertilizer and chemicals used to combat aphids, black spot blight, and various other rose diseases and predators. Lily waved her flashlight around the interior. She had no idea what she was searching for. Anything that might give her a clue to Cee Cee’s whereabouts.
Something brushed against her back and she screamed.
“Lily?” It was Stephen, grabbing both shoulders then pulling her close. “What on earth are you doing out here?”
Relief flooded through her. “I couldn’t stop thinking about Cee Cee. I know your men looked but I had to search again.”
“In the dark, all by yourself? Oh, darling, I wish you’d called me first.”
“I should have. I’m rattled, that’s all. Stephen, I saw a woman in the garden out back.”
He stiffened. “What did she look like?” As Lily described her, he relaxed. “That sounds like Graden’s mother. She lives with him in the caretaker’s cottage.”
“That explains how she got in. But, Stephen, I’ve never seen her before.”
“She’s reclusive…and weird. Nobody sees her unless they spot her in the garden.”
“That’s not all. I heard screams coming from the locked east wing.”
“It was probably a loose shutter blowing in the wind.”
“It didn’t sound like that.”
“Old houses make all kinds of sounds, Lily. When I was a kid I used to imagine witches and monsters screeching about in the dark. The sound would always turn out to be something ordinary, like creaking floorboards or rusty door hinges, or one of the staff