The Witch's Stone by Dawn Brown Page A

authority in comparison. He used her reputation as eccentric and strange and mostly just old to take advantage of her few resources and have her removed from her home and community.”
    Pity welled in Hillary at the thought. After all, she knew first hand what it felt like to be the victim of a witch-hunt. No, she hadn’t been burned or hanged. She’d simply lost everything that mattered to her, leaving her standing alone in the smoldering ruin of her life.
    Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re here aren’t you? Free?
    She’d only spent two days in a jail cell before her lawyer arranged her bail, but it was long enough. Long enough to bargain her life away in tearful prayers if she could just get out of that mess.
    “But he failed.” Caid’s voice brought her back to the present. “I wonder if my father knew she was selling things from the house. He would have been angry. As far as he’s concerned, this place is his.”
    “He had no idea you could inherit instead of him?”
    “Not until the solicitor insisted I be here when he read the will.” Caid’s straight brows drew together in a frown. “I hadnae seen her in more than twenty years. I doubt the possibility even entered his mind. She must have hated him.”
    Hillary thought of what Joan had said about Agnes complaining of the way Caid’s parents treated him. Maybe Agnes had had a soft spot for him. “She read your books. Or at least she had copies of them.”
    A semi-smile touched his lips. “Did you finish reading my book?”
    “Almost. I hesitate to tell you this for fear of feeding what is clearly a monstrous ego, but I pocketed Agnes’s copy of your second book.”
    He leaned forward, grinning. “My number one fan.”
    “You forget I know you personally. I could never be your number one fan.”
    He laughed, unperturbed by the insult.
    “Besides,” she added, “I think that title goes to Joan.”
    “No’ since I kissed you. She was well pissed at me that night.”
    Hillary’s cheeks burned with the memory of his lips on hers, the heat that had surged through her body, and the way she had eagerly responded. She turned her attention to the stone floor. Caid cleared his throat and when she looked up again, he stared down at the table, tracing a thin crack in the wood with his fingertip.
    When he lifted his gaze to hers, all humor was gone. “When you found Agnes, did it look like an accident? Did it look like she’d fallen down the stairs?”
    “I…um…I,” she stuttered, trying to push back the picture of the bloated, twisted body in her head. And the smell. The rancid odor of rotting flesh that had stayed with her even days later. “I couldn’t tell. I’ve never seen someone dead from a fall down the stairs.”
    “But when you first saw her is that what you thought? That she must have fallen down the stairs?”
    She searched for the right words, trying to skip over her less-than-stalwart reaction. “I didn’t really look at her for long.” Ah, the hell with it. “The truth is I opened the door, saw her--smelled her--and then I went right back outside and threw up.”
    “Sorry, I didnae mean to push.”
    “It doesn’t matter, just not my finest hour. Why do you want to know?”
    “I started thinking about what you said about my father trying to have her put in a home and I wondered just how far he would have gone to get her out. Especially if he knew she was selling things from the house.”
    “You don’t really believe he would have killed her?”
    “No,” he said with a sigh. “No. He’s far too civilized for that. I just…” He trailed off and shrugged.
    “Bristol said everything about her death was consistent with a fall down the stairs. The time of death even lined up with a storm that had made the power go out for a few hours.”
    He nodded, but his eyes narrowed the longer they stayed fixed on her. “Ye’re no’ telling me something.”
    Had she given something away in her expression?
    “Out with it,”