Free Docketful of Poesy by Diana Killian Page B

books Saturday night when my mother stopped by my
bedroom.
    “Hi,” I said, zipping up my suitcase. “I’m just about
finished.”
    She sat down on the foot of the bed and picked up my
copy of Feldman’s British Women Poets of the Romantic
Era , idly flipping through it.
    This was the room I had grown up in: walls of the
palest pink, the ornate black iron bed I had slept in since high
school, violet-sprigged drapes and fluffy white duvet. I had grown
up loved and sheltered in this house. My parents had provided every
comfort, advantage, and protection they could afford.
    I looked at my mother’s bent head in the gentle
lamplight. There were glints of silver in the red I’d never noticed
before. Seeing them gave me an odd feeling.
    “I remember when you went away to college,” she said
suddenly, looking up and meeting my eyes.
    I sat down on the bed next to her. “I remember too.
You came to my room the night before I left and told me that if it
wasn’t what I wanted—if I wasn’t happy—I could always come
home.”
    “Yes.” She smiled wryly, set aside the Feldman, and
picked up the silk-bound copy of L.E.L.: A Mystery of the
Thirties. She smoothed the cover with an absent hand. “But
there was really no question that you were making a wise choice and
that you would be happy. And you have been very happy—and very
successful.”
    “You and Dad gave us the confidence to…make the right
choices.”
    She nodded. “Are you sure you’re making the right
choice now?”
    Was I? There were never any guarantees when it came
to the future, and of course I had qualms about leaving my family,
friends—homeland. But I had no doubt that this was what I wanted to
do. Didn’t that count?
    “Yes,” I said. “I am.” And I reached to hug her. She
hugged me back—hard.
    When she released me, there were tears in her
eyes.
    “I’m glad,” she said. Her gaze held mine as she
handed me the copy of Laetitia Landon’s biography. “But if you
decide this isn’t what you want—that Peter is not the man you think
he is—don’t be afraid to admit you’ve made a mistake.”
     

Chapter Seven
     
    L ulled by the summer breeze,
among the drowsy trees...
    Ann Radcliffe’s “To the River Dove” drifted into my
thoughts as I watched the swans in the river below glide silently
beneath the arch of the stone bridge where I waited for Peter on
Monday morning.
    The Nora Roberts of her day, the author of The
Mysteries of Udolpho and The Romance of the Forest is
chiefly important—and best known—for her influence on the Gothic
romance. Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey was a parody of
Radcliffe’s work. But she was also a travel writer and a poet.
    Unfortunately for my purposes, Radcliffe had lived
and worked in almost total seclusion. She was well educated,
conservative, married, and apparently quite happy to avoid the
limelight. At the height of her fame and popularity, she inherited
a fortune from her father and abandoned writing—much to the lurid
speculation of her public, who preferred to believe the writer’s
tales of Gothic horror had unhinged her own mind.
    Oh stream beloved by those with fancy who repose…
    Nothing had changed, I thought with something like
relief, watching the lazy blue water glittering in the shifting
afternoon sunlight. Innisdale still looked like the illustration in
a children’s story—or perhaps a very expensive coffee table book.
The white cottages with their dark slate roofs, flowerboxes blazing
with flowers, elegantly untidy gardens lining the narrow streets.
Gentle chimes tolled the eleventh hour from the church down the
lane.
    It seemed a million miles from Los
Angeles—geographically and spiritually—but I knew from personal
experience that murder lurked in the most unlikely places—and
hearts.
    Before leaving Los Angeles I’d called LAPD to see
whether there was any new information on Walter Christie’s
death—and to make sure there was no problem with my leaving