Where Love Dwells Read Free Page B

“And yes, I can tell he isn’t that good of alawyer, because he couldn’t answer my question. Or he didn’t want to answer it, which means I still don’t know how we’re related legally. Mother Garrett had no problem telling me what to call her, but I still don’t know what to call you. Would you prefer Grandmother or Aunt?”
    â€œWidow Garrett will do quite nicely for now,” Emma insisted, more concerned about how she was going to get washed up than she was about how Wryn might address her. Once she set the pot of water onto the cookstove and set it to heat, she stared long and hard at the water, as if she could will it to heat faster.
    With Mark and his family staying here at Hill House now, she could hardly clean up right here in the kitchen. Tracking mud through the rest of the house to get to her room upstairs made no sense. She would only make more unnecessary work for herself, since she could not very well leave it until tomorrow night, when Liesel and Ditty would be coming back.
    Instead, once the water had heated, she decided she should carry the pot with her, slip out the back door, cross the yard, and enter her office by using the door that opened on the side porch, which was the same door guests usually used when they arrived to register. Once she was inside her office, she would have the privacy she needed to get out of these muddy clothes and wash up just enough to use the private staircase that connected directly to her bedroom upstairs so she could change.
    With her problem solved, at least in her own mind, and anxious to get started so she would be presentable by the time Mark and his family were awake, she returned her attention to Wryn. “As soon as this water is warm enough, I’m going to freshen up and change. In the meantime, I’d like you to go back upstairs. Once Mark and Catherine and the boys are up, you can let them know I’ve returned and that I’ll be waiting for them in one of the frontparlors. I assume that Mother Garrett made sure you had a room of your own close to them,” she said, confident that her mother-in-law had put Mark and Catherine and the twins in the suite of rooms they had prepared for them on the west side of the house. Hopefully, she had put Wryn into one of the rooms directly across the hall from them.
    Wryn shrugged, put the lid back on the tin of crullers, hoisted the tin to one hip, and set a pout to her lips. “I liked one of the rooms in the opposite hall, but I wasn’t allowed to have that one.” She let out a long sigh. “She made me take that bland, boring room. You must know the one. It’s completely beige and without any spirit at all.”
    â€œI know it well,” Emma replied. She was not surprised that Mother Garrett had refused to be intimidated by this wisp of a young woman, forcing Wryn to take the room directly across the hall from Mark and his family. Emma would sorely have loved being home to watch their encounter, though.
    When the young woman abruptly left the room, Emma was tempted to call after her to remind her to store the tin of crullers back in the sideboard in the dining room where it belonged, but decided to let the issue drop. For now. She was too excited about reuniting with Mark and his wife and seeing her two grandsons for the first time to worry about an ordinary tin of crullers.
    At the same time, Emma was curious to learn why Wryn had come along with them. To put it gently, this girl had a feisty, but abrasive, temperament. Mark and Catherine, however, were both gentle and soft-spoken by nature, and Emma could scarcely imagine them traveling together, let alone living together here at Hill House.
    Nevertheless, just thinking about Wryn matching wits withMother Garrett for the next several weeks made her smile, especially since she knew who would survive as the winner in the end.
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    One muddy cape. Two mud-crusted boots. A sodden bonnet. One nearly