Margo Maguire (7 page)

T
he following morning, Lilly stood in the attic with her measuring tape in hand, studying the boarded-up window. She didn’t know how many panes had shattered, but she thought it had been most of them, and she was going to have to pry off the boards and measure them to order replacements.

She needed to go into Asbury to pick up supplies today, so she might as well see if there was any window glass on hand at Beecher’s Store so that Davy could get it repaired as soon as possible.

She picked up the hammer and was about to pull off the plank Mr. Temple had attached the night before when she heard a creak behind her. Assuming it was Davy Becker, she turned toward the sound. “You don’t have to—”

But no one was there.

Surely she hadn’t imagined the sound. It had been quite clear.

Picking her way across the cluttered attic space, Lilly looked out the opposite window and saw Davy cutting the lawn. Thoroughly puzzled, she stepped over to the narrow staircase and saw no one there.
It must have been her imagination. Shrugging off the incident, she returned to the task of removing the board across the window and took the measurements she needed.

Lilly’s part-time assistant, Mrs. Bainbridge, stood at the front desk when she returned with her list in hand. Breakfast was long done and the guests had scattered. Charlotte was in the barn, watching Duncan with her kittens, and Davy still worked on the lawn.

Lilly did not know where Mr. Temple was. Not that it was any of her concern. He was probably down in the meadow, watching his bees…
dance.

Mrs. Bainbridge came around the desk and handed Lilly another list. “You’re nearly out of ink, and while you’re in Asbury, you might stop at Mr. Crofton’s and order more Ravenwell stationary.”

Lilly added Mrs. Bainbridge’s list to her own.

“And that comely young American asked for directions into town. You’ll likely meet him on the road.”

“Mr. Temple?”

Mrs. Bainbridge nodded. “The very one.”

Lilly looked down at her clothes. It was the usual attire that she wore for work every day—a serviceable skirt and blouse. Probably too ordinary for town.

She decided that a quick trip to her room for a change of clothes would not be amiss.

Sam crouched beside an old, hollowed-out tree trunk that lay a few yards from the road. A good-size hive had been built in the rotting wood, and he
was able to get a close look at the worker bees as they returned from their forays into the field.

It was difficult to concentrate on his work after the sleepless night he’d spent. His bed was comfortable, the room peaceful, but his memory of Lilly Tearwater’s half-clothed romp in the lake had set his blood on fire.

She certainly hadn’t been hiding anything when she’d stepped into the water.

Giving up on sleep, Sam had climbed out of bed before dawn, dressed and gone down to the garden to search the grounds. He’d wanted to get there before anyone had a chance to muddle the evidence of trickery. But he’d found nothing.

And he hadn’t managed to forget about Miss Tearwater.

He tried field work next. Taking the same path he’d used to follow Lilly Tearwater the night before, he’d gone to the chestnut tree and observed the bees for a while. He’d made a few drawings and estimated the supplies he would need to build a platform in the branches. From there, he would observe and photograph the hive.

In the meantime, he decided to see if there were any additional hives to observe during his stay at Ravenwell. Miss Tearwater had mentioned bees along the roadside, so he’d spent most of the morning tracking down the hives. There were two of them, but only one was in a good position for observation. He had just decided to use the one in the chestnut tree, as well as the one he was sitting beside, when he heard the approach of a wagon coming from town.

He stood and walked to the road, reaching it as
Tom Fletcher pulled abreast. “Good morning to you,” he said.

Sam greeted the man in turn.

“Everything all right at Ravenwell?”

“As far as I know,” Sam replied. “I’ve been gone since daybreak.”

“Give you a ride back?”

“No, thanks. I’m not quite finished here.” Besides, he planned to walk to Asbury and see if he could order the supplies he would need.

“Ah, your bees.”

Sam nodded and gestured toward a large sheep in the back of the wagon. “I thought sheep farmers let their sheep wander to graze.”

Fletcher grinned. “This fellow will, too, once I get him home. I drove down to Coniston yesterday to buy him. He’s a good healthy ram. The ewes have been asking for some new blood.” He chuckled at his own jest.

“Yesterday?”

“Aye. So I’m anxious to be home. Left my aging mother alone for the night.”

“I’m sure she’s all right.” Sam was baffled. If not Fletcher, who had been the one to stage last night’s ghostly performance? It hadn’t been Lilly Tearwater—at least, not last night. Perhaps it was someone else at Ravenwell—the young fellow cutting the lawn?—who was culpable.

“I’ll be off, then,” said Tom. “I’ll probably see you at the inn later.”

“Sure.”

Fletcher drove off and Sam shrugged. His absence the previous night was just another part of the puzzle. Someone had been responsible for putting on the
show. Sam just hadn’t figured out who yet, or how. But he’d eliminated the primary suspect. Maybe he shouldn’t have discounted Miss Charlotte as a possibility. Just because she was deaf didn’t mean she couldn’t understand the principles of the game, or that she wasn’t capable of carrying it out.

Or perhaps it
was
Lilly. And maybe she’d gotten rid of whatever mechanism she’d used when she’d walked to the lake last night.

Sam forced his thoughts from his intriguing landlady and returned to the place where he’d left his knapsack. He swung his pack onto his back and started down the road to Asbury. By the time he’d walked about a mile, he heard the sound of a horse and wagon coming up behind him. He stepped off the road and saw that it was Lilly Tearwater at the reins.

Miss Tearwater was the key to understanding what was going on at Ravenwell. And to get her to talk, Sam was going to have to get into her good graces.

Her interest in foreign cultures would likely start her talking to him again. It had been impossible for him to miss her curiosity about Egypt and Greece, and there was plenty that he could tell her. Things that no book would ever describe.

Even without Tom’s forewarning, Lilly would have recognized Samuel Temple at a distance. His tall frame, those broad shoulders and narrow hips, that long, athletic stride…no other man in the district looked like him.

She was still flummoxed by his insinuation that Tom was responsible for the haunting of Ravenwell. Lilly supposed that as a man of science, Mr. Temple
would naturally have a skeptical attitude. Still, she did not appreciate the implication that she, or anyone else at Ravenwell, was a fraud. She was an honest woman at heart, even though she might be an oddity. She did not care to consider what he would think if he knew the truth about Ravenwell’s ghosts.

He turned as she drew closer, and took off his hat in a friendly greeting.

She pulled alongside him. “You’re on the Asbury road, Mr. Temple.”

He nodded. “Lucky for me, since that’s where I’m headed.”

His bright blue eyes gazed into hers. Lilly shifted in her seat, refusing to be captivated by his good looks or anything he might say. “Nice day for a walk,” she said, dismissing him as she released the brake on the wagon.

In one quick move, he vaulted onto the seat beside her. “But even better for a ride.”

Irritably, Lilly snapped the reins and continued on toward Asbury. Mr. Temple kept his distance, but she could smell the outdoors on him, and the soap he’d used. His scent filtered through her senses, settling somewhere in the back of her mind.

What did he think of her? He did not seem to mind riding with her, although he’d situated himself far enough away that they would not inadvertently touch.

Lilly wondered what he would say if he learned of her talents—that she was an aberration of nature, surely. Possibly that she was an instrument of evil.

She bit her lip. “Is there something in particular in Asbury that you want to see?”

“I assume there’s a decent mercantile…”

“Of course.”

“And I need to get some lumber.”

She looked over at him. “You’re planning on building something?”

He nodded. “In the meadow. There’s an old chestnut tree with an excellent hive. I’ve got to build a platform high enough and big enough to support me and my photography equipment.”

“I have wood. Didn’t you see it in the barn?”

“Those boards are too small. I’ll need bigger planks.”

“Did you study bees while you were in Sudan?”

He nodded.

“What was it like?” she asked. “The people?”

He stretched his legs to the side and settled in for the ride, quickly steering the discussion away from Sudan. Instead, he began to speak of one of his childhood adventures on a Greek island.

“My brother Cullen and I decided to stow away on a local fishing boat. I was about ten years old.”

“Good heavens! Don’t those boats go far out to sea? For days or weeks at a time?”

He nodded, grinning as she imagined the young boy would have done, coming up with such a plan. “That was the point. We sneaked out of the house in the middle of the night and ran down to the docks. We climbed onto the first ship we found, which turned out to be captained by a Frenchman, a friend of my father.”

“Did he discover you?”

“Not right away,” Mr. Temple said. “They put out to sea before dawn, but it wasn’t until noon that they found us.”

“What happened?”

“Well, sometime while we lay hidden together under a bolt of sailcloth, Cullen got the idea that we were pirates—that we could commandeer the ship and sail to Tahiti or some such place. We found some wooden stakes to use as weapons…”

“No!” An amused laugh escaped her.

“But Monsieur Etienne spiked our plans.”

“What did he do?”

“He scared the tar out of us.”

Lilly looked ahead and saw Asbury nestled at the base of the hills. She slowed the horse, loath to arrive in town before he’d finished his story. He hadn’t embellished it at all, but Lilly could easily picture the two handsome young boys huddled together on the fishing boat. Or wielding their make-believe swords.

“Etienne D’Aubigne apprehended us as if we were actual pirates. He shackled and blindfolded us.”

Lilly’s heart jumped into her throat. Those poor little boys!

“Then he threatened to toss us overboard.”

She turned to him, mouth gaping, appalled.

“He didn’t,” Samuel said with a grin.

She snapped her mouth shut.

“But Cullen and I did hard time for a month after that escapade. My father had us sifting sand at his dig site for thirty days.” He pointed to the church spire at the far east end of town. “What’s the name of that church?”

“Saint Jerome’s. Reverend Graham is the vicar.”

“Has it been there long?”

“What do you mean?”

“The church. When was it built?”

Lilly shrugged. “It’s ancient. I’m not sure when it was constructed, but it’s older than Ravenwell.”

“Good. Then it will have records of your Sir Emmett and Lady Alice.”

Every one of Lilly’s senses came to full alert. “No…their bodies were taken away for burial. Their funerals did not take place in Asbury.”

“The magistrate, then? Surely someone investigated? A reeve? Who would have been the authority then?”

She shrugged. “If there were any records, they were destroyed when most of the town burned in 1749.”

He muttered something that Lilly could not make out.

“Here we are,” she said. “The Asbury Mercantile. Will you want a ride back?”

“If I do, I’ll look for you.”

It would have been good form to hit the ground first, then help her down, but Miss Tearwater didn’t give him a chance. Which was fortunate. He wouldn’t have been able to lift her out of the wagon, anyway.

It had been sheer hell to sit so close to her and be unable to touch her. Especially now that he knew what was concealed under her skirts.

Sam dismounted and followed her into the stuffy mercantile. When Miss Tearwater spoke to the shopkeeper, her voice, low and appealing, cascaded through him. Desire hit him like a punch. A year ago, he wouldn’t have stood gaping at her like a lustful adolescent. He’d have stopped the wagon be
fore they reached town, and pulled her onto his lap. Then he’d have tasted those full, sweet lips of hers.

Thoroughly disgusted with himself, he stormed out of the shop. He wanted Lilly Tearwater with a fiery need that he would never be able to satisfy, not if his aversion to touch persisted.

He walked only a few steps before a truly frightening thought struck him. What if he was never,
ever
again able to make love to a woman?

That hadn’t really bothered him until he’d come to Ravenwell. Just thinking about Lilly Tearwater and her soft, smooth skin made him ache for her touch.

But that would never happen. He’d never made a habit of seducing respectable women, and now he wasn’t capable of seducing
any
woman.

I
t was a long walk back to Ravenwell.

Sam didn’t mind it—he liked being able to exercise after his long confinement in the pit. He had a new appreciation for his freedom, and he needed to become accustomed again to using his muscles.

It had been nearly a year since he’d been freed. His body still became sore with overuse, and he was dealing with the prospect of spending the rest of his life without the pleasure of another’s touch.

Kicking a small rock out of his way, Sam muttered a quiet curse. He took another look at the hive he’d chosen near the Asbury Road, then walked on to the inn, where tea was being served. He wondered if he could get Miss Tearwater to join him at his table, and perhaps talk frankly about the ghosts—not the rehearsed patter that she told everyone else. He’d recounted his adventure with Cullen on the Isle of Aegina. Perhaps she would be amenable to trading stories.

Surely the inn hadn’t only recently become haunted. If Miss Tearwater had lived here since childhood, she must have some early memories of
the ghosts. He wondered what she would say if he asked her.

Sam walked through the garden gate and encountered Miss Charlotte, who gestured excitedly, clearly indicating that he should follow her to the barn. She was not distressed, so Sam was certain there was nothing wrong with Duncan or the kittens. He glanced toward the inn, where he assumed Lilly would be circulating among her guests, then followed Charlotte, curious.

It was quite late in the afternoon, so the light in the barn was poor, but a lamp illuminated the far corner where the cat and her litter were nesting. There were odd, scraping sounds coming from the loft above, although it was clear that Charlotte was unaware of them. Sam had gotten no more than halfway to the far corner when a small wooden crate fell out of the loft with a crash, then Lilly Tearwater slipped halfway down a ladder.

She let out a small squeal and struggled to get a grip on the ladder to keep herself from falling, but landed in a heap on the floor. Sam stopped abruptly.

She appeared uninjured. Her hair tumbled wildly around her shoulders, while her skirts fluttered in disarray around her knees. One long tear split her dark stocking, from her calf to a hidden place beneath her skirts.

Sam’s breath caught in his throat when Lilly lifted her skirts to check on the damage. She twisted her body slightly and groaned.

When she looked up and saw him, she pulled her hem down, drew up her knees and held them close to her chest. At the same time, she touched one hand
to her head and realized that her hair had come unpinned.

She probably thought she looked awful, but Sam had rarely seen such a fetching sight. Lilly Tearwater was beautiful.

And Sam had no idea if he’d have been able to prevent her from falling if he’d reached her in time. Would he have reached out to her? Would instinct have prevailed over his aversion to touch?

“Mr. Temple! I—I didn’t see you!”

“Are you all right?”

She started to move one hand to her hip, but reconsidered. “Yes. Fine. Perhaps my pride is a bit bruised, but I’m sure that’s all.”

Charlotte helped Lilly to her feet. Mortified to have made such a spectacle of herself, Lilly felt the heat of a blush darkening her cheeks. She started to brush dust and straw from her skirt, then realized she was only calling further attention to her mishap. She looked up to face Mr. Temple.

His hands were clenched into fists at his sides, and his face was as pale as her own was flushed.

“Truly, I’m all right, Mr. Temple,” she said, to allay his obvious distress over her accident. “Was, er, was there something that you needed out here?”

He looked away for a moment, and when he turned back to her, he seemed more at ease. “Your sister intercepted me in the garden. I think she wanted to show me the kittens.”

“Ah, yes. She told me earlier that we should invite you in to see the babies, since you’d had such a hand in the birth.”

Mr. Temple came no closer, but his eyes slid down
Lilly’s body, creating a coil of tension that made it difficult for her to breathe. Perhaps if he touched her, her heart would start beating again.

“Your skirt is torn.”

Momentarily dazed, Lilly glanced down. “So it is,” she said, hardly recognizing her own voice.

Charlotte clapped her hands.

Lilly swallowed. “She wants you to come and see Duncan’s kittens.”

Mr. Temple said nothing, but followed Charlotte to the far corner, where Duncan had made her nest. Lilly picked up the crate she’d dropped and assessed its condition while she settled her nerves. The wooden box was only slightly damaged. Lilly could repair it easily with a hammer and a couple of nails.

What she could not easily do was understand Mr. Temple’s reaction to her fall. It had been a minor mishap, certainly nothing to seriously trouble them. But Mr. Temple had reacted as if…well, as if she’d nearly lost life or limb.

Lilly carried the crate to an old worktable, took a hammer from the shelf above it and thought about Mr. Temple’s puzzling reaction to her fall.

He was a tall, strongly built man, with hands that had obviously done a good deal of manual labor. His arms were thick with muscle, his back broad. He walked and spoke with masculine confidence, having traveled the world since his early youth. Obviously, Mr. Temple was not a man to fear anything…

Except the possibility that she’d injured herself.

That was a notion that intrigued Lilly, even as it made her bones melt. He seemed to care what happened to her.

She closed her eyes and imagined how it would
feel to caress his powerful shoulders, to touch her lips to his sun-kissed skin. She flushed hotly at her risqué thoughts as the barn door flew open and a savage, unnatural wind blasted through.

Good Lord! It wasn’t just a passing thought.
Lilly had made it real!

Charlotte ran past to shut the door against the wind as Lilly turned to look at Mr. Temple. He appeared shocked, his eyes hot and fixed on hers. Lilly swallowed hard. That look… It took her breath away.

She whirled away from his gaze. What would he think? That the improper caresses he’d felt had been his imagination? Lilly could only hope that that would be the case, and that he would fail to notice the strange gust of wind.

“Miss Tearwater.”

His voice, directly behind her, startled her. Brazenly pretending she hadn’t heard him, Lilly started to hammer a nail into the plank that had broken off the crate.

He moved to her side. “Miss Tearwater.”

“What?”

She would surely die if Mr. Temple had any inkling that she had actually thought about touching him in such an intimate fashion.

“I have the strangest…” He shook his head and looked toward the door. “This weather—it’s not at all what I expected in midsummer. Do you often have bursts of gale winds?”

The same wind and a few odd thunderbolts had occurred on the evening of Mr. Temple’s arrival, but that had been the result of the cleanup Lilly had done. Certainly it hadn’t had anything to do with…

Lilly bit her lip. When she’d first seen Mr. Temple, she’d experienced an overpowering desire to run her hands across his strong shoulders. She’d wanted to slip her fingers up his nape and into his hair.

And then the gaslights had gone out.

“I…we…” She couldn’t choke out the words. Her magic had never just
slipped out.
Before now, Lilly had always been in complete control of it.

Samuel’s eyes narrowed and Lilly turned away from their scrutiny. She attempted to speak naturally, without tripping over her words. “We…sometimes have odd weather in midsummer. This is England, Mr. Temple. It might rain at any time.”

“I wasn’t talking about rain.”

With forced nonchalance, Lilly shrugged and finished hammering the nail into the crate. When it was intact again, she carried it to Duncan’s corner, where Charlotte again knelt, avidly watching the kittens.

Lilly put the crate on the floor and signaled to Charlotte that she could place Duncan and the kittens in it now. Then Lilly would be free to go back to the inn, to the privacy of her rooms, where she could think through this odd turn of events.

“Mama Duncan probably won’t allow it,” Mr. Temple said, breaking into her thoughts.

Lilly stole a glance at him. He stood, tall and forbidding, with his hands on his hips, watching her.

“She’s already got her nest. She won’t be ready to move her litter for a while.”

“But I told Charlotte she could move Duncan into our apartment.”

“Not yet.”

Lilly felt his eyes on her back, brooding and questioning. But there were no explanations to be made.
Mr. Temple would have no choice but to attribute all those strange sensations to his imagination. Obviously, no one had actually touched him.

Although Lilly wished she could.

It was a thoroughly improper thought, but ever since she’d dealt with his bee sting, that desire had hovered there, just under the surface—the yearning to feel the heat of his skin, the dark rasp of his whiskers, the soft texture of his hair.

Lilly told Charlotte they would have to wait until Duncan was ready to move her kittens. Charlotte turned to Mr. Temple and, in her own way, asked how long. Mr. Temple held up seven fingers, as if he’d been communicating with her all his life. “One week,” he said.

Charlotte’s shoulders slumped at his answer, while Lilly stood gaping at their exchange.

“What?” Somehow, Sam managed to stay calm, even though conflicting emotions warred within him.

“It’s just that…well, only Tom and I… No one takes the time to figure out how to talk with Charlotte.”

“It’s not that complicated,” he said, distracted.

Could it have been his desire, plain and simple, that had caused him to feel Lilly Tearwater’s hands all over his body? Surely that had not been the case the first time it had happened, because he hadn’t even met her then.

But what about now? Was his mind somehow tricking him into feeling this woman’s touch, since the physical reality could never take place?

Sam wanted to touch her, too. He wanted to take her down to the beach where he’d seen her lift her
skirts to wade in the water, wanted to lay her down on the sand.

Arousal flooded through all his senses. Sam didn’t know what was worse—the physical need or the impossibility of ever satisfying it again. Of never knowing true heart-stopping intimacy with a woman.

With no small discomfort, he walked out of the barn and down the path to the chestnut tree. The cure for what ailed him was simple—he would occupy his mind with work until all thoughts of Lilly Tearwater had faded.

When he reached the tree, he climbed to a branch above the hive, then lowered himself to the bough where he would build his platform. He tried to concentrate on the activity of the hive, but couldn’t erase Lilly and the fascinating sensations from his thoughts.

What was it about this place? It couldn’t be haunted, yet he’d found no evidence of trickery. Lilly had not physically touched him, but every nerve in his body tingled with the sensation of her soft hands caressing him.

Sam entertained the possibility that he was losing his mind. Certainly his body was not the same since Sudan. Why should his sanity have been spared?

He dropped to the ground and followed the narrow path to the beach. He still wanted Lilly Tearwater with a disturbing ferocity. He wanted her under him, clutching him, moaning his name when he pleasured her.

He walked across the sand to a private cove, then kicked off his shoes. He tore off his shirt, then dropped his suspenders and trousers, anxious to douse his sensual fixation in the lake. When he was
naked, he ran into the water, making a shallow dive, then swam until the muscles in his arms screamed for respite. But even then he kept on stroking, until exhaustion extinguished the fire that drove him.

Sam didn’t know how long it took before his lust finally died, but his muscles felt loose as jelly when he stepped out of the water. Standing in the brilliant orange light of the sunset, he used his shirt to dry himself, then pulled on his trousers.

There had to be a way to find some peace.

The most likely course would be to give up on his ridiculous wager with Jack. He should return to London and write up his Sudan research as he remembered it, then present it to the Royal College. Once he had his own flat and the post at the college, he could settle into a routine.

Sam was so immersed in his thoughts, he did not hear the startled gasp behind him. But the words that followed were uttered in little more than a whisper. “Dear heavens, what happened to your back?”