Tuesday Tales: From the Word Grape

Well, it’s the end of September. How time does fly! This week, the Tuesday Tales authors are writing to the word GRAPE. I continue with The Bonds of Time, my romantacy.

The strangest thing about the note was the fact that she’d received it at all. The only people who knew she’d arrived in England were Aunt Meg, Hezekiah, Sir Nathan Vickers, a distant cousin who’d been living and working for Uncle William at Keltoi Manor for the last year or so, and her uncle’s solicitor, Nigel Smythe. He’d been the one to tell her that as her mother’s sole heir, she was also her uncle’s, and as such, the family title was hers. He’d then gone on to say that he and her lawyer would work out all the details, ending with the fact that he was sorry for her loss. None of them would’ve sent the message, so who had?

Sam stuffed the note back inside the pocket of her coat, removed it, and set it on the grape colored velour seat beside her. She chortled. Purple used to be reserved for royalty and now it covered the seats of rail cars.

She chuckled. “How the mighty have fallen.” Her voice echoed in the empty compartment.

Turning in her seat, she focused on the landscape, wishing she could forget what had brought her here alone. England in the fall was quite unlike Canada where she had spent the last fifteen years. Her mother and father should have been with her en route to Keltoi Manor, the place where she’d been born but didn’t recall. Sam brushed away the tears burning her eyes. Though her parents had been dead for almost two months now, the wound was raw, and she choked up whenever she thought of them. She had traveled with them, joining in their passion for history, until their decision to leave her in Canada after her fourteenth birthday. While she’d visited them on summer vacation, it hadn’t been the same and she’d missed them deeply.

It had been hard on all of them, but her parents had insisted on a proper, school-based, formal education. She’d excelled in school, and then had earned her M A in Archeology. She’d had hoped to work on her Ph.D., and she might yet, since England had some of the best universities in the world. Aunt Meg, a close friend of her father’s family in Ireland, had looked after her all these years, and had stood by her when one catastrophe had struck after the other.

Don’t forget to check out the other Tuesday Tales.