The wedding took place two weeks before Christmas. St. George’s Church was decked out in poinsettias, white roses, and evergreen boughs and lit romantically with beeswax candles. Although many of the pews were unoccupied, those of us who were there made up for the sparse attendance by beaming at the happy couple with extra warmth. It may have taken them thirty-seven years to walk down the aisle, but they got there in the end, and the long journey made the arrival all the sweeter. Charlotte and Leo were the most radiant bride and groom I’d ever seen.
At the reception Leo used every ounce of Aussie charm he’d acquired during his long exile Down Under to persuade me to try a jammy biscuit. It turned out to be so scrumptious that I rewarded him with a sticky smooch on his weathered cheek, then ran down to the kitchen to get the recipe from Henrietta.
It took Leo less than six months to restore Aldercot Hall to its former glory, and though Charlotte wouldn’t allow him to waste money on the many outlandish luxuries he wished to heap upon her, she did allow him to refurbish the gardens, reopen the stables, and re-lay the bridle paths connecting Aldercot land to the Anscombe estate. Will and Rob ride there, under Kit’s supervision, every chance they get. They haven’t spotted any vampires lately, but they’re definitely on the lookout for a herd of elephants.
The house and grounds are still tended to by professional cleaning and landscaping crews, but Leo and Charlotte now use companies based in Upper Deeping instead of London, and they patronize local shops as well. Finch’s residents stopped thinking of Aldercot as the dark side of the moon when the Sutherlands extended the hand of friendship—as well as their considerable purchasing power—from one valley to the other.
Leo hired three live-in maids in order to make his most ingenious scheme work. Aldercot’s corridors have become a lot noisier since students started attending Henrietta’s cooking classes, Mr. Bellamy’s buttling courses, and Jacqueline’s seminars on nature photography. Charlotte jokingly refers to her once-silent home as Aldercot College, but the music she plays is as lively as the young people who dash up and down the hall’s well-lit and well-heated marble staircase.
Rory Tanner passed away in February, surrounded by his beloved birds and beasts, but he lived long enough to give Leo a few querulous tips on forest management. His cottage serves as the headquarters for a local conservation group, and Henrietta makes sure they keep the bowls, baths, and feeders properly filled.
Kit has done a lot of quiet thinking since Charlotte told him the truth about both of his fathers—the one who gave him life and the one who raised him—and he’s slowly adjusting to his new reality. He speaks of Sir Miles more freely now, without a trace of bitterness, but with sincere and heartfelt pity for a man driven by mental illness to abuse his own wife.
It’s helped Kit to have his newly discovered aunt and uncle living just over the hill. He’s learned a great deal about Christopher DuCaral from Charlotte and Leo, and so have I. I’ll leave it to the experts to decide if insanity can be passed down from father to son, but there’s no denying that Kit takes after the good, greathearted man Amy Sutherland loved.
When Kit becomes too introspective, Nell’s there to rescue him. Their understanding is so flawless that they seldom need to speak. A look, a touch is all she needs to bring him out of the shadows. I have no doubt that her love will heal every wound he’s ever suffered, but I wish she’d hurry up. My heart’s set on a June wedding, and I can hardly wait to see what their children will look like.
Nell was beautiful before Kit kissed her, but she’s gone so far beyond beautiful since then that I don’t know how to describe her. To compare her to Botticelli’s Venus now would be like comparing the Grand Canyon to a crack in the sidewalk. Her love for Kit surrounds her like a nimbus, and the coolness that once protected her has been replaced by a warmth that springs straight from her heart. No one can pass her without smiling, because she doesn’t hoard her happiness, she radiates it for all the world to see.
Nell’s happiness came at a price, however. A few days after the long-awaited kiss took place—in full view of everyone at the stables—Emma had to advertise for an entirely new crew of stable hands. Thankfully, it’s worked out for the best. The new boys work ten times harder than the old ones, because they are under no illusions about Nell’s availability.
I wish I could be proud of the fact that the new stable hands spend more time watching me than they spend ogling Nell, but the only reason they watch me is that they’ve never seen anyone ride as badly as I do. Old Toby is as patient as Kit, however, and with their help, and lots of practice, I may one day be able to ride from one end of the ring to the other without hearing snorts of laughter in the distance.
Little Matilda Lawrence’s nightmares have stopped, as have Clive Pickle’s excursions into his brother’s bedroom, and I’ve had an easier time dealing with Miss Archer since she came back from spring break with a blond perm and a tan. The twins liked her old look better, but on parent-teacher days I’d rather face a surfer chick than the bride of Dracula. I’ve developed a strong aversion to anything that reminds me of Rendor.
On the night before Bill came home from London, I sat down in the study for a chat with Aunt Dimity. I expected to dazzle her and Reginald with a dozen revelations, but most of them fizzled pathetically.
Aunt Dimity had, of course, figured out what was troubling Kit long before I had.
I’m sorry to disappoint you, Lori, but after everything you’d told me, I couldn’t help but conclude that Kit thought he was, or would soon be, mad. He declared himself unfit for marriage, described himself as deeply flawed, agreed that mental illness runs in families, and reacted badly when you mentioned the years he’d spent living on the streets. I didn’t know that he’d discovered a history of instability in the Anscombe family, but I knew what had happened to Sir Miles. It didn’t take much effort to fit the pieces of the puzzle together.
“Did you know that Christopher DuCaral was Kit’s father?” I asked.
I had my suspicions. Amy had spent a lot of time at Aldercot Hall, and she’d named the baby Christopher instead of Miles. I’m afraid it comes as no surprise to me to learn that her child was Christopher’s son.
“I suppose you already knew about Charlotte and Leo, too,” I said.
Everyone knew about Charlotte and Leo. It was the worst-kept secret in the county. I did not, however, know what had really happened on the night of their ill-starred elopement. When Lizzie Black told me that Leo had killed Maurice, I realized that something strange was afoot, because although Leo had vanished—as would a man guilty of murder—Maurice was very much alive. I’ve waited for nearly forty years to hear the truth, and I’m immensely grateful to you and Kit for unearthing it at last.
“I’m glad it worked out in the end for Leo and Charlotte,” I said. “It kept my ridiculous vampire hunt from being entirely pointless.”
Your vampire hunt may have been a bit ridiculous, Lori, but it certainly wasn’t pointless. It worked exactly as Bill and I hoped it would.
I reread the last line several times before asking Aunt Dimity to explain herself, which she did, in excruciating detail.
Bill didn’t believe you for one moment when you told him that you wouldn’t worry about Rendor. He knew that as soon as he left for London, you’d go looking for the figure Will and Rob had seen, and he decided to put your vampire hunt to good use.
“He set me up?” I said in disbelief.
He wasn’t alone. He enlisted my help, as well as Kit’s and Emma’s. I did what I could to encourage you—I told you what I know about vampires, I sent you to see Lizzie Black, and every time you started to come to your senses, I inserted a note of doubt that would reawaken your concerns. Emma took over Kit’s duties at the stables so that Kit could accompany you. Bill was afraid that you might drive a stake through an innocent bird-watcher, and he counted on Kit to rein you in.
I glanced at Reginald, who seemed to be avoiding my eyes, and realized instantly that he, too, had been part of the cabal.
“You all set me up?” I said incredulously.
We had to do something to get through to you. You were taking the twins’ temperatures, peering down their throats, and palpating their glands so often that if they weren’t fundamentally levelheaded, they would have become hypochondriacs. You were calling the school nurse every morning to inquire about student illnesses and combing the news daily for reports on disasters and plagues. You were so drained by fear and worry that you never left the cottage. You neglected your neighbors, your volunteer activities, and your friends, because you had no energy to spare for them. We had to find a way to snap you out of your malaise.
“And you chose a vampire hunt?” I said, outraged.
No, Lori. You chose a vampire hunt. I simply went along with your choice in order to get you out of the cottage and focused on something other than nits and measles. I had no idea your search would lead you to a real mystery, one of far greater importance than the one you’d manufactured. If it hadn’t been for your vampire hunt, Charlotte and Leo might never have been reunited.
“But…you set me up!” I exclaimed indignantly.
Yes, I did. Consider it the bucket of cold water you needed to release you from your hysteria.
I wanted to sulk and be snippy, but I let those impulses go. My darling husband, my two dearest friends, and my most trusted confidante had set me up, but they’d done so in order to help me, and their underhanded, conniving, and thoroughly loving plan had worked. I hadn’t palpated the twins’ glands once since I’d started looking for Rendor, and I was sure that the school nurse had marked her calendar with big smiley-faces to celebrate each day that had gone by without a frantic call from me.
“You know, Dimity,” I said, “the vicar told me that I hadn’t been myself since the twins started school, but I wouldn’t have heard him if you and Bill and Emma and Kit hadn’t lured me out of the cottage. So I guess I won’t be angry with you. In a month or two, I might even thank you.”
Be sure to thank Bill when he comes home. He loves you very much, Lori.
“I don’t know why,” I said. “He must think I’m the world’s biggest goofball.”
He thinks that there hasn’t been a dull moment in his life since you came into it. And I can safely say that the same holds true for me.
I hoped Charlotte would never learn that she’d been mistaken for a vampire, but the twins gave the game away the next time they saw her daubed with zinc oxide. Instead of being offended, she was so amused that she and Leo gave the boys a bat box for Christmas, along with memberships in the Bat Conservation Trust and two adorable plush bats with shiny black eyes.
The bat box hangs on a tree down in the meadow, and though I’ll never let a bat sleep on my pillow, I’ve learned to appreciate the helpful little creatures. Sometimes we have to look deeply into a thing to see its beauty. Charlotte looked into the bright blue eyes of a dissolute, swaggering punk and saw the better man he could become. Nell looked into violet eyes shadowed with grief and despair and saw the saint Kit had always been.
When my husband looks deeply into my eyes, he sees a goofball, but according to him she’s a passionate, caring goofball whose ridiculous vampire hunt brought four loving souls together and restored a sense of balance to her own.
I’ll never buy a copy of Rendor, the Destroyer of Souls, but I just might write a thank-you note to the author—after I finish thanking Bill, who knows, better than anyone, how to heal mine.