Although overgrown, it was navigable; the path debouched onto a stretch of poorly tended lawn which continued around the corner of one wing. Around that corner, Vane knew, stood the side door, facing a wide sweep of lawn hosting a small army of huge stones, remnants of the abbey upon which the Hall was partly built. The ruins stretched for some distance; the Hall itself had grown about the guesthall of the abbey, otherwise ransacked during the Dissolution.

As he neared the corner, the blocks of weathered sandstone came into view, scattered crazily over a thick green carpet. In the middle distance, a single arch, all that remained of the abbey's nave, rose against the darkening sky. Vane smiled; all was exactly as he remembered. Nothing about Bellamy Hall had changed in twenty years. He rounded the corner-and discovered he was wrong. He halted, then blinked. For a full minute, he stood stock-still, gaze riveted, his mind entirely focused. Then, gaze still transfixed, his mind fully occupied by the vision before him, he strolled forward, his footsteps muffled by the thick lawn. He halted opposite a large bow window two paces from the semicircular flower bed before it.

Directly behind the lady, clothed in fine, wind-driven sprigged muslin, bent over, fossicking in the flowers.

"You could help." Patience Debbington blew aside the curls tangling with her eyelashes and frowned at Myst, her cat, sitting neatly in the weeds, an enigmatic expression on her inscrutable face. "It's got to be here somewhere."

Myst merely blinked her large blue eyes. With a sigh, Patience leaned as far forward as she dared and poked among the weeds and perennials. Bent over at the waist, reaching into the flower bed, gripping its soft edge with the toes of her soft-soled shoes, was hardly the most elegant, let alone stable, position.

Not that she need worry over anyone seeing her-everyone else was dressing for dinner. Which was precisely what she should be doing-would have been doing-if she hadn't noticed that the small silver vase which had adorned her windowsill had vanished. As she'd left the window open, and Myst often used that route to come and go, she'd reasoned that Myst must have toppled the vase in passing and it had rolled out, over the flat sill, and fallen into the flower bed below.