Margo Maguire (9 page)

She blushed at the impropriety of her thoughts, especially after all that Sam had just said. He’d watched his friend be brutally murdered.

Lilly could not imagine such a dreadful thing, and she would not question him any further. She already knew more than he’d intended to tell her.

His hair was moist from his exertion, shoved away from his forehead by his fingers. There was no trace of the gash he’d suffered the night before, and since he didn’t mention it, Lilly said nothing, either.

She could help him. He was miserable with his grief and his terrible fears. Lilly could use her talents to ease them…

She looked away in dismay. Helping Samuel would be as impossible as healing Charlotte’s deafness. As Maude had said so many times, “Some things are meant to be.”

The consequences of easing the memories of his time in Sudan could be devastating.

“T
ell me about your ghosts, Miss Tearwater.” He climbed up to the high branch, then braced himself against the tree trunk to pull up the lumber. “How many are there altogether?”

“Two.” Thoughts of consequences disappeared as the muscles of his forearms flexed and bunched with his effort.

“Would you toss me that hammer and the bag of nails?”

She did so and he caught them deftly. He lowered himself to straddle the branch. “And these ghosts are male and female?” he asked, almost absently.

“Correct. Sir Emmett and L-Lady Alice.” He was obviously warm. Perspiration had soaked a V in the back of his shirt from his shoulders to his waist.

“How do you know their names? Do they talk?”

Lilly had never been asked this question. She looked away for a moment to think through her reply. If she told him that they did speak, he would want details. If she said they did not, he would ask how she knew who they were.

“Lady Alice has spoken on occasion.”

“Ah.”

When he balanced one board in place and started hammering, Lilly wondered if he believed her. It was difficult to conclude anything from that simple “ah.”

“She…once said that she’d been murdered.” It was a bold-faced lie, but Lilly told it even though it made her uncomfortable. But perhaps this much information would thwart any further questions.

“And the knight? You were able to surmise his fate, too?”

Lilly gave a hesitant nod under his curious gaze.

He hammered the second board in place, then climbed down from the tree. After tying two more boards to the rope, he started to unfasten the buttons of his shirt. Lilly blushed to the roots of her hair at the sight of his muscular chest, with its light coating of coarse hair.

“Now would probably be a good time for you to head back to the inn,” he said, pulling his shirttails out from his belt. “Unless you don’t mind watching me work without a shirt.”

Lilly would not have minded watching him work shirtless, but she knew that such a thing was entirely inappropriate for a lady. So she left him and returned to the inn, where she encountered Ada Simpson in the reception area. Mrs. Bainbridge was not in sight.

Miss Simpson stood at the desk, trying to communicate with Charlotte. By the time Lilly reached them, Miss Simpson’s color was high and she was tapping her foot. Clearly, what little patience the woman possessed was gone.

“Oh, thank goodness you’re here,” Miss Simpson said when she saw Lilly. She held the same small
package she’d brought with her the other night, and Lilly concluded that the woman hadn’t yet managed to meet with Mr. Dawson. “Finally, someone who—”

“Is something the matter?”

“I just can’t get this…this
person
to understand that I am looking for Mr. Dawson.”

Lilly managed to control her anger at the way the woman spoke of Charlotte, and turned to the desk to jot a quick note. Giving it to Charlotte, she asked her to take it to Mr. Dawson’s room and wait for a reply. Then she spoke to the chemist’s sister.

“Miss Simpson. Charlotte is merely deaf. There is nothing wrong with her mind.” Lilly tried to keep the irritation she felt out of her voice, but found it difficult. Many of the people of Asbury treated Charlotte as if she were an imbecile, rather than just deaf.

The woman was oblivious to the rebuke. With her backbone straight as a stick, she walked to one of the windows and stood gazing through the glass while she waited. Lilly considered stripping the spinster of
her
ability to hear, but decided that a bit of petty revenge was not worth the risk.

Unwilling to leave Miss Simpson to her own devices until Mrs. Bainbridge returned, Lilly sorted through the correspondence neatly stacked on the desk. She could keep every room in the inn filled every month of the year, though there was the occasional cancellation. Usually, it was not difficult to fill those rooms on relatively short notice, which was the primary benefit that Sir Emmett and Lady Alice brought to Ravenwell.

When Charlotte returned to the desk with Mr. Dawson behind her, Lilly paid no attention to the
exchange between him and Miss Simpson, but considered the logistics of her day. Several of the guest rooms had been vacated that morning, and new guests would be arriving on the afternoon train. She would have to send Davy Becker down to Asbury to collect them.

“Here you are, Miss Tearwater,” said Mrs. Bainbridge. She carried a stack of mail in one hand and an open letter in another. She came ’round the reception desk and eyed Miss Simpson and Mr. Dawson, who spoke quietly together near the door. “Now, there’s a question.”

Lilly smiled. “I’m afraid the answer might be too embarrassing to consider.”

Mrs. Bainbridge laughed. “I would not be so sure,” she said. “I’ve seen Mr. Dawson making calf eyes at you, m’dear.”

“Don’t be silly. He’s…” But Lilly saw that he was hardly paying attention to Miss Simpson, who had threaded her arm through his as she spoke animatedly. “I—I’m sure you’re mistaken.”

Lilly shook her head and took the letters, retreating to the small office beyond the desk. She sat at her worktable and set out a large ledger, with her calendar beside it. She had a system for dealing with correspondence related to room reservations, as well as a method for scheduling the ghostly apparitions.

The ghosts could not appear too often or Lilly would constantly be cleaning up or repairing some minor disaster around the inn. Or trying to explain a strange disturbance in the weather.

She studied the list of current guests and saw that two of them did not have check marks beside their names, which indicated that they had not yet wit
nessed the ghosts. These two would leave the inn on Saturday, which gave Lilly only two nights to provide what they had come to Ravenwell to see.

With several new visitors arriving today, Lilly decided to wait one more night. That would allow anticipation to build among the new arrivals.

She took an hour to deal with all her correspondence, then checked on the maids who were working on the vacated guest rooms. The urge to shirk her duty had never been stronger.

Circling ’round to the back of the inn, she came upon Mr. Dawson and Miss Simpson sitting at one of the tables on the terrace, sipping tea. They seemed an unlikely pair, but Mr. Dawson was much more suited to a woman of Miss Simpson’s age than her own. Anyway, Lilly had seen plenty of unusual couples during her years at Ravenwell.

Her favorites were the newlyweds. Though she couldn’t understand anyone wanting to remain in tiresome England for their wedding trip, Lilly took pains to make their stay at Ravenwell special. Beautiful flowers, private morning tea service in the bedroom, romantic suppers on the terrace, rose petals on the bed linens every evening in summer…

She sighed. A simple room in Rome was what Lilly dreamed of as an ideal honeymoon. She would want to look out of her window and see the Piazza del Campidoglio—or some other equally spectacular sight. She wanted to hear something other than English spoken around her, to eat unfamiliar dishes and smell the foreign scents in the markets.

Lilly’s thoughts wandered to Samuel Temple. She wondered about all the places he’d been, what other marvelous sights he’d seen. He was a puzzling
man—so strong and virile at one moment, then human and vulnerable the next.

Lilly hurried across the lawn later that afternoon, wearing an apron and carrying a stack of clean, folded tablecloths from the laundry. She checked her mental list of things that still had to be done before tea as an open buggy pulled into the front drive. Asbury’s mayor alighted and called to her. “Miss Tearwater!”

Lilly could not imagine what would prompt a visit from Mr. Hinkley, and would have preferred a moment to repair her hair and put away her apron before facing the mayor. But Mr. Hinkley gave her no opportunity.

Fortunately, the man seemed to understand honest work and would not think the worst of her.

“Good to see you, my dear,” he said. Hinkley was a prosperous banker in Asbury. He was a portly man, no taller than Lilly. His wealth was evident in his attire, in the gold tooth that gleamed in the sunlight when he smiled at her, and in the large ruby ring that adorned the little finger of his right hand. “If I might have a word, Miss Tearwater?”

She nodded. “Of course. Shall we go inside?”

Lilly wondered what he wanted of her. Hinkley’s bank held Ravenwell’s mortgage and Maude’s other outstanding loans, but Lilly had never been behind in the payments—at least, not since Sir Emmett and Lady Alice had appeared.

Lilly led the man into the sun parlor and sat down across from him. “I have a few ideas for your business that I would like to discuss with you,” he stated.

“Oh?”

“Yes. Ways to improve upon your existing operation here.” Restrained enthusiasm was reflected in the banker’s eyes, in his posture.

Lilly had no interest in changing anything at Ravenwell, but she leaned forward as if she hung on every word he spoke.

“Of course, you are aware that the inn brings a great deal of business—wonderful prosperity—to Asbury,” he said. “Several new shops have opened in the past two years, and there are plans for even more. Attendance at church is unsurpassed. The more business you bring to Ravenwell, the better we like it in Asbury.”

“What do you propose, Mr. Hinkley?”

The banker leaned forward and placed his hands upon his knees. “Expansion.”

He said it as though it were a revelation, an unprecedented vision of the future.

But Lilly had already thought of it. When the inn had started to make money, she had considered adding another wing, making enough rooms to host a hundred guests, maybe more.

But then sanity had returned. Ravenwell was well-suited to her needs. She and Charlotte lived very comfortably here, without having to hire more workers than she could manage.

“The Royal Cumbria Bank of Asbury is prepared to offer you the capital necessary to build—”

“Mr. Hinkley, I don’t think—”

“Before you answer—” he held up one hand, palm out, to stop her “—I want you to consider one more thing—a coach line that would run from Asbury to Ravenwell. It would cover the journey here
from the railroad station, freeing you from the task of having to send young Becker into town to collect your guests. Think of it. Hundreds of new visitors to our district every week.”

Lilly drew her lower lip between her teeth and studied Mr. Hinkley before responding. “Your ideas…” she finally said. “Well, thank you for coming to discuss them. I’ll consider everything you suggested, Mr. Hinkley.” She rose from her chair. “Thank you so much for coming.”

“Don’t wait too long to think it over. We’re well into the building season and it will take time to draw up plans.”

“You’re very right. Well—”

“Plans for what?” Samuel Temple asked.

“Mr. Temple, isn’t it?” Hinkley turned toward Samuel and extended his hand. “We met yesterday in Asbury.”

Samuel looked at it as if it were a poisonous snake, poised to strike. His face paled and Lilly saw his throat move as he swallowed thickly. Without thinking, she dropped her linens at her feet.

“Oh, how clumsy!” She bent down to retrieve her tablecloths, but Samuel and Mr. Hinkley also moved to help.

Somehow, Mr. Temple ended up with all the table linens piled in his arms. “I guess I’ll just take these…where?”

“Heavens, no! I’ll just…” She turned to the mayor. “I’ll consider your proposal very carefully, Mr. Hinkley. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

She reached to gather the linens from Samuel, but he moved aside. “I’ve got them. Just tell me where they go.”

“Miss Tearwater,” Hinkley said. “Bear in mind that the Royal Cumbria Bank will back you, whatever improvements you decide upon.”

“Thank you again, Mr. Hinkley.”

She turned in the direction of the inn’s dining room and Samuel followed, causing a prickle of awareness to cascade down her spine. Did he realize that she’d intervened intentionally to keep him from being compelled to shake the mayor’s hand? Now that it was done, Lilly felt embarrassed by her presumptuousness. She should have left him to deal with Mr. Hinkley just as he’d done with Mr. Payton the day before. Except that she’d seen his distress then, and wanted to prevent a repetition of it.

They entered the dining room and Samuel lay the linens on a long mahogany sideboard. “Thank you. I appreciate your assistance,” she murmured.

He made no move to leave, but leaned against the sideboard, pinning a questioning gaze on her, but Lilly spoke first.

“Did you finish building your platform?”

He shook his head. “Not yet.”

She was close enough to smell sunshine on him, and the pine needles that were stuck to his trousers. Lilly felt self-conscious under his perusal and slid an unruly bit of hair behind her ear. A heated awareness flashed in his eyes and her heart fluttered. If she moved one step closer, he would be near enough to touch, to kiss…

Lilly had never felt such a compelling attraction before. She’d never desired a man’s touch, or his kiss, the way she yearned for Samuel’s.

Even if he felt the same, Lilly would never al
low such liberties. She’d been raised as a proper young lady.

“A favor, Miss Tearwater?” His voice sounded deeper, hoarser than before.

She swallowed and licked her lips. “Of course.”

Their eyes met. Samuel leaned toward her, his lips slightly parted. Lilly felt his breath on her skin, saw the sheen of perspiration appear on his brow. A harsh breath escaped him. “I missed lunch. You wouldn’t mind having a word with the kitchen staff for me?”

It wasn’t what Sam had intended to say, but his request was entirely more appropriate. And possible.

She blinked those long, dark lashes, masking the expression in her eyes for an instant. “Why, y-yes, Mr. Temple. I can have the kitch— No, Mr. Clive will have started preparations for tea.” She hesitated for a moment, then turned toward the door. “Come with me.”

He walked beside her to the reception area, where the friendly, gray-haired Mrs. Bainbridge stood behind the reception desk, poring over maps and talking with a young couple who were about to go walking among the fells.