Inheritance (The Lost Bride Trilogy, #1)

by Nora Roberts

“Erosion happens gradually.” Winter rubbed Sonya’s shoulders. “A rock’s strong, but it doesn’t notice how the water’s wearing it away.”

“Thanks. Oliver—” “Trey,” he told her. “My grandfather’s Ace, my dad’s Deuce. I’m Trey.”

“He chose death rather than me. He chose death to stay with her. Be damned to them, and now to you. Walk with them, Catherine Poole. Forever a bride.”

About you and your Collin, and the crazy bitch who stabbed you. Hester Dobbs. Killed him, too, when you think about it, since he hanged himself, apparently because he couldn’t live without you.”

It seemed Hester Dobbs escaped from her cell shortly before she was to be hanged for Astrid Poole’s murder, only to leap to her death from the seawall at the manor after Collin Poole’s suicide.

“Hester Dobbs’s curse, according to local legend.” Owen stirred the sauce. “A bride every generation dies—on her wedding day, or within the year. At the manor. I’m not sure about the ring thing.”