Margo Maguire Read Free

train when it pulled into the station. At the orphanage, Lilly had taken it upon herself to take care of little Charlotte, who was three years younger. The two had become inseparable, and had even developed a language of their own, using gestures and hand signals.
    Lilly’s ties to Charlotte had been so strong that she’d refused to leave Saint Anne’s Orphanage with Maude Barnaby unless her friend was allowed to come, too.
    Reluctantly, Maude had agreed, and to Lilly’s knowledge, she had never regretted it. Charlotte had been a sweet-tempered child and a good worker. Aslong as she was given careful directions, she could accomplish any task.
    Many were the times when Lilly had wanted to turn her strange talent to Charlotte’s deafness, and mend whatever was wrong with her ears. But Maude had strictly forbidden it. Besides interfering with God’s creation, there were always consequences to Lilly’s interventions. And to alter Charlotte so drastically…well, Maude would have none of it, and her admonishments still kept Lilly from acting.
    A loud crash startled her from her thoughts, and she hurried toward the guest room at the far end of the hall. She discovered Charlotte standing amid shards of broken crockery. The carpet and wood floor were soaked with water.
    Charlotte shook her head and made a shrugging motion, indicating that she didn’t know how the pitcher had fallen.
    Lilly did not have time for this latest disaster, but she could never be harsh with her friend. Whatever had happened had been inadvertent.
    “Is the bath done?” Lilly asked. She spoke aloud and gestured toward the room at the end of the hall.
    Charlotte shook her head.
    Lilly gave Charlotte a signal to go. She didn’t want her to watch as she restored the guest room to order in half a second’s time. “Finish up in there,” she said, “and I’ll take care of this mess.”
     
    A sudden, sharp wind whipped Sam Temple’s hat from his head, and a deafening crack of thunder split the air. He could see no sign of a storm in the vicinity, or even in the distance.
    Tom Fletcher stopped the buggy and jumpeddown to retrieve the hat, even as the wind continued its fierce attack. “Sorry,” the man shouted over the gale, eyeing the sky. “I don’t know where that could have come from, although there’ve been a few strange happenings ever since the ghosts started visiting at Ravenwell.”
    Sam managed to refrain from making a derisive sound, and waited for Tom to climb back into the buggy and continue on their way. He wished he’d ridden his own horse to Cumbria. In the months since his release from the Mahdiyah prison, he was not a man to sit idly, waiting for departure times.
    He had always thought himself a patient man, a tolerant man. But those months in filthy confinement had changed him. The hours of pain, of slipping outside his body in order to survive the tortures inflicted upon him and his colleagues… Sam was no longer the same young scientist who’d set off to study African honeybees near the banks of the Nile River.
    Sam needed that job in London. He needed the calm and staid position that would provide him a livelihood without putting him at risk. He would find a quiet little flat near the university and spend his days in the controlled conditions of a laboratory, and never venture away from civilization again.
    But in order to be assured of the post at the Royal College, he had to prove his newly postulated theory about a peculiar bee behavior. Sam’s academic credentials were good, and he’d studied with the best— Professor Robert Kelton. But the data he’d gathered in Sudan might not be enough. One final summer in the country should do it, then he could publish his studies and present the paper to the board of the Royal College at year’s end.
    The hundred pounds he would win from Jack would tide him over until then.
    “Not much farther to go,” Tom said, appearing unnerved by the strange wind that was still blowing