Midnight Secrets Read Free Page B

heard, mind ya. But that would be a place anyone could disappear from. Iffen the sea had taken her seems like she’d have washed ashore like most things.”
    The shop bell clanged and two women dressed in simple worn muslins entered. “Wouldn’t you say so, Berta?” The clerk addressed one of the women.
    “What’s that, Camile?”
    “That teacher they say drowned up at the castle. I betcha she wandered into the maze, I do.”
    “Don’t know if it were the maze or the sea, and I don’t care to know.” She nodded to the other woman who’d entered with her. “Betsy, here, says that ol’ hag housekeeper who’s always running off the help is now trying to hire a downstairs maid. Imagine that. As if anyone would want to work for her. I’d have to be starvin’ to take on that job. All that work and nothin’ for it. Yer practically invisible when it comes to gettin’ anythin’ extra by working downstairs, too. No cast off gowns or tips from gentry with that thankless job. Why it’s worse than a scullery maid, I tell ya.”
    “Wouldn’t get no tips, no how. No one dares to visit the Killdarens. Now the Wellworths are where ya need to be getting a position. My cousin said he made handfuls of shillings a day during the last hunting party, he did.” The other woman continued on with more about the hunting party, but I wasn’t listening. One word had stuck in my mind and an entire plan revolved itself around it.
    Maid.

Chapter Two
     
    My heart raced as if I were off to commit a crime. The path leading from the village cut along the edge of the wild sand dunes where dark shadows from the maritime forest lurked and shifted with the inland breeze. A chill stole through the warmth of the late afternoon sun, promising there would be a cold bite to the coming night. I pulled the edges of a worn cloak closer to my breasts. Minutes after leaving the mercantile store, I’d bought it and a ragged potato sack from an elderly woman selling herbs at the end of the street. After mussing my neat chignon, I now looked like a woman desperately needing work.  
    The walk between Dartmoor’s End and Killdaren’s castle took longer than I thought it would and only added to my frustrations. The area was so isolated that my skin crawled.
    How could Constable Poole ever believe a woman would go swimming alone on this empty stretch of sand and sea? But he didn’t believe that, did he? He believed Mary had taken her own life.  
      She would never have done that. I knew it as surely as I knew myself. So why had Mary’s shoes and basket been found on this stretch of beach? What had happened?
    The castle loomed ahead as I crested the rise of a dune. Even with the sun shining upon it, the stone walls were dark and begged me to ask what sinister secrets lay hidden in the shadows.
    Like some mythological creature the Killdaren’s home was half manor-like and half castle-like in appearance. From the moment I’d arrived in Dartmoor’s End days ago and had seen the castle from afar, it had captivated me, as did the stories about the castle’s rarely seen owner, Sean Killdaren and his brother, Alexander, the Viscount of Blackmoor—a man who resided farther down the coast in Dragon’s Cove.
    The brothers had nearly killed each other the same night Lady Helen Kennedy had been murdered and they hadn’t spoken to each other since. There had also been mutterings about a Dragon’s Curse plaguing the family, but none of the villagers wanted to say what that meant.
    The Killdarens’ wealth and position had kept the twin sons of the family from a hangman’s noose once. As I made my way down the hill, following the craggy path to their land, I wondered if one of them had murdered again.
    Once I reached the estate, an understanding of the vastness of the Killdarens’ fortune dawned. I passed an elaborate, two-story stable, large enough to be a manor house itself. Then I skirted the edge of the a massive formal garden, where dozens of