The next weekend, Mrs. Morgan took the children to visit an aunt on their late mother’s side who lived in a nearby town. The children, she explained, were fond of the cousins and had not been able to see them recently. She felt they should go since they’d been invited to a birthday celebration. A day went to preparing the carriage and packing for the small holiday.
Left to his own devices and still troubled over Donovan’s continuing macabre pictures, Martin set out from the manor house soon after the housekeeper and the children departed. He’d been to the nearest village a time or two, only about a mile away. As yet, he hadn’t been able to explore much of the countryside around. The rugged hills and steep, narrow valleys were quite different than anything he’d experienced before, a bit da
