Strangers at Dawn by Elizabeth Thornton Page A

went to stand by the open window. His room overlooked the side of the abbey and beyond that, the gardens that sloped down to the riverAvon. What in Hades was a woman like Sara Carstairs doing in a place like Bath?
    When he’d started out from Reading and realized she was traveling west, he’d guessed that she’d make the turn at Thatcham to take the road to Stoneleigh. He’d been so sure in his own mind that he’d sent an express to Peter Fallon telling him to drop everything and meet him in Stoneleigh. And that’s where Peter was right now. But when they reached Thatcham, her coach did not make the turn to Stoneleigh but continued to drive west.
    She was going to be married, she said.
    He might have believed her if she had ordered him out of her room before things went too far.
    William, she’d whispered when he’d climbed through her open window, and she’d sounded deathly afraid. But later she’d told him that William was ancient history because he was dead.
    I thought I was in love with him once. There was a local girl. She was with child. William’s child. He deserted her.
    Was William alive or dead? That was the question that had obsessed Max on the long drive from Reading. If William was alive, then they’d all misjudged Sara, himself most of all. And if William was dead, it was entirely possible that at her trial, Sara Carstairs had had them all believing exactly what she wanted them to believe.
    Her eyes were dark, but they weren’t brown, as they’d seemed to him in the dimly lit interior of the Black Swan. They were gray, and as dark and fathomless as the waters of the cold North Sea.
    What secrets was she keeping from him?
    He“would be going contrary to everything he stood for as a newspaperman if he didn’t go after the story.
    His mouth curved in a smile that revealed recklessness as well as humor. He couldn’t lie to himself. There was more to his pursuit of Sara than getting his story. He had a vested interest in discovering the truth. He had to know whethershe was the woman he’d met in the Black Swan or the Sara Carstairs who had been painted as a heartless murderess at her trial.
    He turned from the window and began to pull off his clothes. He had things to do, plans to make. Sara and Bath could wait for a little while longer. He was going back to where it all started.

Seven

    T HE MANOR HOUSE, SIR IVOR’S ANCIENT FAMILY seat, was nestled in a lush valley about five miles out of Stoneleigh, on the road to Winchester. With its honey-colored stone walls and mullioned bay windows, it was a picturesque English gem. But that was only a facade. The manor, as Max remembered, had been built on a medieval fortress and was a warren of rooms and long passages that went nowhere.
    Max was waiting in an anteroom while Sir Ivor’s butler carried his card to his master. He’d hoped to have a few words with Lady Neville also, but the butler had told him that her ladyship was not receiving visitors. Max remembered the woman as a pathetic case of arrested development, a giddy schoolgirl entrapped in an aging shell. His mother, who was much more charitable than he, said it was a wonder poor Lady Neville had not ended up in an insane asylum, considering who her husband was.
    His mother did not like Sir Ivor Neville. Though they could hardly be called neighbors, they were among the leading families in Hampshire, and inevitably their paths crossed. He wondered about Sara’s family. In their own way, they would have been considered among the leading familiesin and around Stoneleigh. They were Sir Ivor’s nearest neighbors, their house, Longfield, only a mile or two along the road. But Max doubted that Sir Ivor had made friends with Samuel Carstairs. He was too full of his own importance to make a friend of a man who made his money in trade. It must have stuck in his craw when his son and heir married Anne Carstairs.
    The butler returned at that moment and indicated that Sir Ivor would see him now. When Max