Echoes in Stone by Kat Sheridan

blame her for leaving. We were none of us very decent.”
    Dash planted his feet apart, in the same stance he so often took on the deck of a ship in choppy seas. He needed to get through this next rough patch of his story. No unnecessary sentimentalism or emotion.
    “Lily and I had rows of our own that week, on the rare occasions I saw her. With poor Katie out of the way, she and Bobby had been having a fine old time. Lily was never the retiring sort, but she was wilder that last week than I’d ever seen her. Out of control. Glittering with pent-up energy. She was cutting. Cruel. To the staff, to me, even to Holly.”
    He drew his lips between his teeth, biting hard to keep the bitter words from flying out between them. How to describe those last days without causing Jessa more pain? How could he tell her about Lily’s uncontrolled rages, the thrown vases, the screaming invective? How could he tell her he’d finally resorted to locking Lily in her room when he’d found her—
    No. Jessa might be Lily’s stepsister, a gold-digger out to steal his money—or worse, take Holly from him—but she didn’t need to know all the sordid details of that week.
    “I was in my study, nursing a brandy and my bruised ego. I heard the carriage in the drive. I was in time to see Lily climb up on the box next to Bobby, much as you rode next to me today. It was the larger, closed carriage, but Lily rode next to her lover. I recognized her red dress in the light of the lanterns hung from the carriage. Those damn lanterns.”
    He clenched his fists, shuddering. “I ran to saddle my horse and gave chase. But I was too late.”
    In his mind ‘s eye, he still saw it, there in the woods before him. Still heard the screams of the terrified horses trapped in their traces. Still smelled the acrid smoke from oil-filled lanterns that had splashed the trees, setting them ablaze. Worse, his nostrils still quivered with the stench of the burning flesh.
    “I’m the local magistrate,” he said, “but in this case, I refused to investigate. We called in authorities from the next district. It was determined they either took that last turn too fast or perhaps a deer or other animal jumped out of the woods, startling the horses. The carriage overturned. Bobby and Lily must have been trapped beneath the carriage. They died instantly.”
    The choice to lie had come came easily. God forgive him, but she didn’t need to share his nightmares. If he lived to be a hundred, he’d still hear the screams he’d been helpless to stop. The bile rose in his throat, but he fought it back. Sweat beaded on his forehead. “It was January, but we’d had no snow. The ground was dry. The lanterns must have exploded on impact, setting the dead leaves around the carriage on fire.”
    The worst of it was said. Dash stood rigid, still gripped in that nightmare vision. “By the time I got here, there was nothing I could do. The carriage was an inferno. I was able to get near enough to cut the one of the horses free. I searched the woods around the carriage for Lily and Bobby, as near as I could get, but the fire…” He blew a great breath through his nose, as if that would somehow clear the memory of smoke that still seemed to linger. “It was like some great, devouring beast.”
    Dash waved his hand at the blackened stubs of branches above them. “You can see how high the flames were.” He clenched his jaw, but there was only a little more to tell before he could put this hideous tale behind him. “They found Bobby under the carriage, near where the box would be.” Dash hesitated, wondering how much more Jessa could stand.
    “Tell me, Captain. Tell me the rest of it. It can be no worse than what I’ve imagined.”
    “Lily was entrapped almost completely under the carriage. I’m sorry Jessa. She was identified only by the pair of tiny diamond earrings she was never without.”
    Jessa gave a small cry, sobbing harder, but didn’t faint or even fall to her