Free Breaking the Rules by Sandra Heath

away again, but looked back to see someone creeping up behind her! He couldn’t make out the man’s face, but sensed danger. He tried to shout a warning, but his voice would not obey him. The person behind her was going to grab her shoulder ... !
    Conan awoke with a cry as his own shoulder was shaken urgently. He stared up to see Theo grinning down at him by the light of a candle.
    “Are you all right, Conan? I fancy you were having a nightmare.”
    “A-a nightmare?”
    “Yes, judging by the racket you were making. I could hear you from my room.”
    Conan hauled himself up in the bed. The fragrance of the woods was still with him, and he knew now what the flowers were—bluebells. He noticed a large white moth was fluttering around Theo’s candle, its wings beating audibly.
    ‘‘Better now?” Theo inquired, brushing the moth away.
    “Yes, I think so.” Conan turned the bedclothes back and got up. He felt very unsettled, rattled almost.
    Theo went to the door. ‘“Well, I’m getting some more beauty sleep. I want to be as fresh as a daisy for the journey.”
    “Journey? Oh, yes. Gloucestershire.” Conan ran his fingers through his hair.
    Theo gave him a curious look, then left. Conan pulled on his mustard paisley dressing gown, then lit a thin Spanish cigar from the dying embers of the fire and went to pull the curtains back. Mayfair was still quiet, except for a street call from a milkmaid with two brimming pails on her yoke. The first rays of morning were fingering the eastern sky, and an early carriage drove past. Was it going home or sallying forth?
    Conan couldn’t shake off the dream, and turned to a small mahogany table beside the window where he had left the lilac ribbon, neatly rolled. Picking it up, he put it to his nose. The scent was no longer of primroses, but of bluebells. His fingers closed slowly over the fine silk, and he looked out of the window again. Something very odd was happening, and he couldn’t imagine what it was, except that he had no desire to avoid it. The unknown lady meant too much to him. No, she meant everything to him.
    Fate beckoned, and he was willing to follow.
     

Chapter 9
     
    It was midmorning at Elcester Manor, and Ursula and her father were taking a very late breakfast in the sunlit dining room. They had been to Mrs. Arrowsmith’s very early churching, throughout which the twins had screamed themselves blue in the face. Nothing daunted, the proud papa had shouted a sermon that should have concerned the joys of parenthood, but instead was all about the profanity of stealing from the church. If the missing chalice was mentioned once, it was mentioned a thousand times, and on each occasion a quivering finger swung toward the glaringly empty spot on the altar where the treasured item used to stand. Ursula and her father had exchanged more than one wry glance at the spectacle of such holy indignation about such a decidedly pagan cup.
    It was the custom for the whole village to turn out for a churching, so the congregation was larger than usual. Among the missing faces were those of Taynton and a number of his men from the Green Man, and of course, the usual absent faces, like Daniel Pedlar. There were a number of married couples who never attended church. Ursula found herself recalling Daniel Pedlar’s words, and wondered if they had married by the yew. Somehow she felt they had.
    Rufus Almore always stayed away, but today he’d broken the habit of a lifetime. He did not look at all well, and kept glancing nervously around as if he feared something. He was pale and had lost weight, so that he now more resembled a beanpole than ever. His red hair was combed neatly back from his foxy face, and he clutched his prayer book in white-knuckled hands. Ursula and her father resolved to speak to him afterward, to find out what had happened in the woods, but he dashed from the church before they had even left their pew, and when they knocked at his cottage door on their way