Whispers Beyond the Veil by Jessica Estevao Read Free Book Online

desperately. I was convinced he was holding out for a monetary consideration in exchange for you.” Ifelt myself stiffen at the thought of my father behaving so crassly and then slumped back into the settee as I acknowledged Honoria had rightly noted Father’s priorities. As long as I’d known him, easy money was his true north. One of my greatest fears was that I was cut from the same bolt of cloth.
    â€œAnd he didn’t take you up on your offer?”
    â€œTo my amazement, when I suggested giving him a large sum outright he said you were not to be sold like a spring lamb or a suckling pig.”
    â€œAnd?”
    â€œAnd, I never heard from him again. I sent letters and telegrams. I placed advertisements of inquiry in papers throughout New Brunswick, Quebec, and even Ontario but no one had heard of either of you.” Perhaps Father’s haphazard wanderings and countless name changes were less aimless than they had seemed.
    â€œI wish word had reached us. I would have liked to have come to you before now.” I spoke those words completely without guile. Sitting there with my aunt, knowing someone had wanted to give me a stable life in a normal home felt too good to be true. Life on the road had been backbreaking and dirty. But worst of all was the loneliness. The only other child I had befriended on a show had succumbed to scarlet fever before we had known each other more than a few weeks.
    â€œYou’re finally here and that’s all that matters.” Honoria placed a plump finger under my chin and tilted my face to meet hers. “You look remarkably like her, you know. I was certain Delphinia had finally appeared to me when you made your entrance downstairs.”
    â€œI’m sorry to have disappointed you. And for interrupting your group.”
    â€œYour appearance was in no way a disappointment. Besides, it is the business of the Divination Circle to welcome the unexpected. We must have been as much of a surprise to you as you were to us.”
    â€œI admit I was startled. Is the Divination Circle the group you were with when I burst in on you?”
    â€œYes. A few friends and I have been meeting together twice weekly to strengthen and develop our prognosticating abilities.”
    â€œYou mean séances and such?” I felt a tingling of excitement over the surface of my skin. When I was quite young, a medium joined our show and her performances drew vast crowds. After seeing the money Madame Zeroska raked in every night, Father bemoaned the fact that we had no experience with such things. In fact, it was that very medium who gave me the idea to start reading tarot cards between shows.
    â€œExactly that. In truth, the Divination Circle is the inspiration for the concept of this hotel.” Honoria beamed at me.
    â€œHow so?” The feverish light in Honoria’s eyes suggested the hotel was her passion. If I was going to stay, I hoped it was a passion I could grow to share. Nothing is as intolerable as a zealot with whom you disagree.
    â€œShould I assume you know nothing of the history of the hotel?”
    â€œUntil today I knew nothing more than what you can see in the photograph.” We both looked at it once more.
    â€œI would dearly love to thrash your father over the head with a parasol for keeping you in the dark concerning your heritage,” Honoria said, giving me a start. Did her psychic developments extend to clairvoyance? “The property the Hotel Belden sits uponhas been in the family for generations. In fact, our family has been here since the early seventeen hundreds.”
    â€œBut the hotel doesn’t look anywhere near as old as that.” For someone as rootless as I, the idea of having family in a single spot for almost two hundred years was astonishing.
    â€œIt isn’t. Early on we were farmers and merchants. It wasn’t until the Staples family opened their farmhouse to boarders that the hospitality industry