The Beautiful Daughters by Nicole Baart Page B

didn’t bother to look back and see if Harper was following. “When the house was built over a hundred years ago, Lord Galloway—”
    â€œHe was a lord?” Harper interrupted from somewhere behind.
    â€œWho knows? The stuff of legends, remember? Anyway, he had a little daughter—”
    â€œNamed Piper,” Harper cut in again.
    Adri nodded. “Apparently he and his wife were so wrapped up in the construction of the mansion, they didn’t pay any attention to the girl. She wandered off one day and was never found. Lord Galloway had wanted to call the estate Galloway Hall, but when Piper was lost, people kept calling it ‘Piper’s Hall.’ I suppose the name just evolved.”
    â€œWhat happened to her?” Harper asked almost reverently.
    â€œI’m guessing she fell into an old well. It happens. Or maybe she made it to the river and drowned.”
    Harper was silent for a moment. “Sounds fictitious to me,” she eventually said.
    â€œIsn’t that the point? I told you, it’s a legend.”
    â€œPiperhall,” Harper mused. “I like it. It’s musical somehow.”
    Adri held her tongue.
    There was a trail through the underbrush, a mostly overgrown footpath that had suffered neglect in the month that Adri had been away at college. Weaving through the trees, she felt a worming sense of disquiet at the realization that her feet had kept the dirt path clear in the years before she left. What did that say about her? About her interest in the Galloways? In Piperhall? Because now that she was leading Harper to the bridge, to the secret place where she gazed at the tower of their impenetrable mansion, she understood that her interest in the Galloways bordered on addiction. Adri stifled the unsettling thought.
    They were a good mile or more from the farmhouse when Adri caught sight of her destination and stopped. The old train bridge was barely visible, poking through the trees as if stealing a peek at the two girls as they stood side by side, polar opposites in almost every way. It was really only half a bridge, because the other half had crumbled into the river long ago. There was a thin tendril of stone that connected one side to the other, but it was uncrossable. At least, Adri considered it so. An almost paralyzing fear of heights prevented her from ever finding out if the narrow walkway would support her weight. But she had managed to scale the footings at the base of the bridge on her side of the river, and had claimed a spot near the top as her own. Sitting with her back against the ancient rampart was an adrenaline rush parallel to none. And it was the perfect spot to sit and daydream about the mansion at the top of the hill—and the family inside it.
    â€œDamn,” Harper said, the word leaking out in one long, slow exhalation. “You are completely obsessed, aren’t you?”
    Adri pushed a hard breath through her lips. “Whatever. It’s a great spot.”
    â€œA great spot for spying. I see what you’re doing here. You can’t pull one over on me. Great mansion, family fortune, handsome prince . . . You’re angling for a shot at a dream.”
    â€œThat’s absurd. You’re being completely ridiculous.”
    But, of course, Harper wasn’t being ridiculous at all. She was slicing through it all to the very heart of the matter. Because a dream was exactly what Adri wanted. It was all that she’d wanted all her life.
    Adri shouldn’t have been surprised when, just over a week later, Harper poked her head around Adri’s open dorm room door and gave her an elated, silent scream. She had her hand linked around none other than David Galloway’s arm.
    And just like that there were five of them.
    Harper was sketchy on the details of how she befriended David, or more accurately, how she hijacked him long enough to make him fall just a little bit in love with her like all