Someone to Love (13 page)

“Me too.” Nigh drained the last of her glass of wine, then pushed back her chair. “It’s late, so I’d better go.” When she stood up, she had to catch the edge of the table to steady herself.

“Yes, indeed, I’m going to put you in a car and let you drive,” Jace said. “Come on, you can sleep in any of half a dozen beds in this oversized, unheated house. Which bedroom do you want?”

“Ann’s room, of course.” She put her hand to her head. She was dizzy and…well, she wouldn’t mind if this beautiful man touched her.

“No, Ann’s room is mine.”

“You’re in love with her, aren’t you?” Nigh said, still holding onto the table.

“Yeah, that I am,” Jace said, his tone sarcastic but amused. “I pine for a woman who died well over a hundred years ago.”

“A hundred and twenty-eight, to be precise.” Nigh took a step and almost fell. “I do believe I’m drunk.”

“Very drunk,” Jace said, then moved to put his arm around her shoulders.

“Ooooh, nice,” she said, looking up at him and batting her lashes. “You’re not bad to look at, Mr. Montgomery.”

“You’re not either,” he said, but didn’t look at her as he led her toward the staircase.

“If I like you and you like me, then why don’t we…”

“I hope you don’t remember this in the morning. Put your foot up on the stair. That’s a good girl. Now the other foot. That’s good. Next one.”

“So who
are
you in love with?” Nigh asked. “I mean, someone who is alive, that is.”

“I am in love with no one who is alive,” Jace said softly.

“But everyone needs someone to love,” she said, leaning back on his arm as he guided her up the stairs.

“Yes, they do.”

“Then why don’t you have anyone?”

“I don’t see you with a ring on your finger. So who’s the someone for you?”

Nigh gave a great sigh. “Men can’t take my career. They’re jealous. I’m better at the job than they are. Fearless. That’s what they call me to my face. But I hear them. They think I’m crazy. And eaten with ambition. But you know what?” she asked drunkenly.

“What?”

“They only say that out of sour grapes. I won’t go to bed with them. I hold myself in very high esteem.”

“Do you?” Jace asked, smiling. “We’re almost at the top now.”

She stopped on the staircase and looked at him. “It’s true. High esteem, that’s what I have. And I also have a low threshold for jerks.”

“I’m glad to hear it. If you’ll just—” He was trying to get her to take two more steps, but when she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, he swept her into his arms and carried her to the landing, then down the hall to the master bedroom, where he set her on a chair while he turned down the bed.

“If I were Ann I’d want someone to love,” Nigh said. “I wouldn’t haunt a house to get my rotten old body inside the fence of the graveyard. You know what I think?”

“What?” he asked as he pulled down the coverlet.

“I think that it doesn’t matter where men put a body or what they do to it while it’s on earth. I think it’s up to God to sort it all out. Besides, who decides what property is holy or not? Some man, just a mere man, says it’s holy here, but over there under that tree it’s not holy. Does that make sense?”

“None at all.”

Jace stood in front of her. “Can you get up by yourself or do you need my help?”

“Help,” she said. “Lots of help.”

Smiling, Jace bent down to put his arms around her to help her stand up.

For a moment, Nigh leaned against him—and Jace held her close to him. It was only a second, but it was there and she felt it.

“You do like me, don’t you?” she whispered against his chest.

Brusquely, he pushed her to arm’s length. “Yeah, I like you. I must be a masochist after what you wrote about me, but I like you.”

“Not my fault,” she said as she climbed into bed. “Lewis and Ray did it to get me back. I beat Lewis up when I was six.”

“Did you?” Jace said, chuckling as he pulled the covers over her. “Lewis and Ray told me terrible things about you. I believed them. I wrote that for Ralph’s paper. He didn’t want to print it, but I said the village needed to be saved.”

Jace sat down on the bed beside her. “Ralph’s paper? You don’t work there?”

“No.” Her eyes were closing. “Did when I was a kid, but not now. Now I fly.”

“You’re flying right now,” he said as he watched her close her eyes and go to sleep.

He turned out the light and left the room, shutting the door behind him. For a moment he leaned against the door and closed his eyes. He did like her. Liked her very much. She was the first woman he’d met since Stacy had…left who he’d liked.

“What are you doing, Montgomery?” he said out loud. He knew that tonight he’d tested her. But tested her for what? he asked himself.

He well remembered that he’d invited her to dinner. At the time he’d done it, he’d wanted to kick himself, but she was the first person he’d met who actually talked to him. Seeing the happy marriage of Emma and George Carew, and seeing the way Gladys and Mick couldn’t keep their hands off each other, had made him feel his loneliness of being in a foreign country by himself.

Then he met this beautiful young woman with a smart-aleck mouth and an irreverent sense of humor, and in spite of the fact that she’d just done a rotten thing to him, he wanted to sit in her tiny kitchen all day. It was certainly better than being with Mrs. Browne and her incessant complaining.

Before he could stop himself, he found a reason for her to come to his house and he’d asked her to dinner—without asking her to dinner. He hadn’t even given her a time to arrive!

By six, after a day spent reading more about the history of Margate, he’d been so restless that he needed hard physical labor to quiet him, so he’d tackled what Hatch called the “stone round,” the gazebo.

When Nigh showed up wearing an incredibly sexy dress and high heels that made her wiggle when she walked, he’d been determined to keep working. He thought that if he stopped and had dinner with her, if he saw her lovely face across a candle-lit table, he’d end up in bed with her. But he wasn’t ready to do that now.

Besides, he thought with a smile, after three years of celibacy, if he went to bed with a woman…. He didn’t like to think what could happen.

Now he went to the chintz bedroom, Ann’s room, as Nigh called it. He smiled at the memory of the jealousy in her tone. She made him feel good. He looked in the closet, moved his shoes about, then pried up a floorboard. He’d hidden the photo of Stacy under the board. Holding it, he held it under the light and looked at the face he’d loved so much.

Was he doing the right thing? he wondered. Maybe he should do what everyone had told him to: “Get on with your life.” He always said that he had no life to get on with, but in the last hours he’d seen that there were possibilities. He’d seen…He hesitated. It was the first time in three years that he’d thought that there could be life after Stacy.

He put the picture back in the hole, then carefully slipped the old piece of wood back over it, then put his shoes back in place.

He undressed, then, on impulse, he took a quick, cold shower, put on a clean pair of sweatpants, and got into bed and turned out the light.

Moonlight was streaming in through the windows over the seat. He looked about the old room, saw the narrow bit of paneling that he now knew held a secret door. The catch was ingenious and well hidden. He would never have found it unless he were imprisoned in the room.

The thought of that made him think about Ann and even the lady highwayman—if she had ever existed. Had they been imprisoned in this room?

“Were you willing to do anything to get out of here?” he asked aloud to Ann. “Is that why you were willing to marry a kid like Danny Longstreet? Half your IQ, probably belched at the table. Was it escape or was it novelty? Or was it just the excitement?” He was quiet for a moment, but he heard nothing. Not that he expected to. He knew Ann was angry that he’d tried to re-create her room. He looked about and saw the little glass bottles on the dressing table, saw the portrait of her cousin Catherine over the mantelpiece. She was smiling slightly, but Jace still felt he saw sadness in her eyes.

“You know, don’t you, that the excitement would have worn off. I know men like Danny Longstreet, everybody does. It’s the novelty that he likes. He would have been good to you until he got used to you, then he would have gone back to his other women.”

Jace was quiet, listening, hoping he’d hear something, but the house was silent. Feeling like a fool, he turned onto his side and closed his eyes. He wasn’t drunk, but he’d had enough wine to make him sleepy. Nigh was just a room away and he liked that. Smiling, he drifted into that state of half-asleep, half-awake.

“Loved me,” he heard. “Danny loved me.”

“I don’t blame him,” Jace whispered.

Just as he fell asleep, he heard a voice say, “Told me so.”

J
ace and Nigh were sitting at the kitchen table eating the huge breakfast that Mrs. Browne had begrudgingly prepared for them. Jace had gone downstairs first and done his best to prepare his housekeeper for the shocking fact that a woman had spent the night in the house with him. Only not “with” him, but…Jace had rolled his eyes in exasperation at himself for his intimidation by the woman.

But Mrs. Browne was not to be placated. When Nigh walked into the kitchen, Mrs. Browne humphed until he thought the plaster might crack. She fried a second plate of bacon and eggs, then she’d left the kitchen, as though she couldn’t bear to be in the same room with a woman like Nigh.

“Would she be that way with any woman who spent the night here?” Jace asked. “Or is it just you?”

“Mostly me. She doesn’t approve of my job. Thinks it’s ‘uppity’ and not a job for a proper woman.”

“Ah. Your job. And just what is it you do?”

Nigh started to tell him, then stopped. “Spelunking.”

Jace chuckled. “You’d better eat all of that. We might not get much for lunch.”

Nigh ate a piece of fried bread dipped in runny, yellow egg yolk, then asked, “We?”

“Unless you have something else you have to do. If you’re going to be my research assistant…” He shifted in his seat. “By the way, what salary do you want?”

“None. Finding out things about this house is reward enough for me.” The moment the words were out of her mouth, Nigh knew she’d said the wrong thing. What did he think, that she was doing this because she’d fallen in love with him? But she said nothing; she wanted to see what he’d say.

Jace started to say something but stopped. He was frowning as he looked down at his plate. “Nigh,” he began slowly. “About…” He hesitated. “About ‘us.’ I can’t…I mean, I don’t want you to think—”

She cut him off. “You don’t want me to think that
you
are the prize? Really, Mr. Montgomery, you should get your ego in check. I know I was drunk last night and I’m sure I made a pass at you, but then I make passes at lampposts when I’m drunk—which explains why I’m usually very frugal about drinking. I apologize for whatever I did.”

“You didn’t do anything,” he said quietly. “Actually, it was me who did—or didn’t do—anything. I just wanted to say that there are things in my life that…” He broke off and said nothing else.

“I’m glad we have that settled,” Nigh said, but couldn’t keep the anger out of her voice. “I understand that you are off limits. I’ll stay away from the booze from now on. Now, how about we look into our mutual interest, which is the history of this house?”

“Sure, okay,” Jace said. He felt bad about what she was thinking, bad about not telling her the truth. If he had any sense at all, he’d…what? Go home to the United States and forget all of this?

He looked at the top of her head. “I’m not sure, but I think Ann may have spoken to me last night.”

“What did she say? ‘Get in an alcohol treatment program’?”

“No, but she did suggest that I send you,” he said solemnly.

Nigh tore off a piece of bread and tossed it at his head. He ducked and it missed him.

“Now I know how Lewis felt.”

“Lewis?” Nigh said, aghast. “Please tell me that I didn’t talk about Lewis last night.”

“You beat him up when you were six.”

Nigh groaned. “Never again allow me to drink. Please.” She took a breath. “What did Ann really say?”

“I was mostly asleep, but I think she said she loved Danny Longstreet.”

“Better than all her other suitors? Poor Ann was shut up in this house all her life. When she was a child, the villagers used to wonder about her and thought maybe she was deformed.”

“Actually, she’s quite pretty. When I saw her—”

“When you were hiding in the wardrobe?”

“Right. When I was hiding in the wardrobe, she was lamenting that she wasn’t as pretty as her cousin Catherine. But standards of beauty change. Today Catherine would be ordering diet pills off infomercials and Ann would be a model.”

“Hardly a model. She wasn’t tall enough. She—” Nigh broke off because a brown pottery bowl fell off a shelf on the dresser and loudly crashed to the floor.

Nigh looked at Jace and he looked back at her. “On second thought,” Nigh said carefully, “I think Ann was every bit as beautiful as any model we have today.”

Jace gave Nigh a look to let her know she should be careful of what she said. Together, they began to clean up the broken crockery.

“So Ann loved Danny Longstreet,” Nigh said as she swept broken shards into the pan Jace held steady. “Actually loved him.”

When Jace didn’t answer, she looked at him and saw the glazed expression on his face. “What is it?”

“I have it wrong. Ann didn’t say that she loved Danny, she said that Danny loved her. And he told her so.”

Nigh looked around the room nervously. “Excuse me for saying this, but I don’t think so.”

Jace dumped the shards in the trash bin, then sat back down at the table. “You’re basing your opinion on the Longstreet you know today. Maybe Danny was different.”

“I’m basing my opinion on the fact that the parish register says that a village girl gave birth to Danny Longstreet’s child a few months after Ann’s death. He impregnated her while he was engaged to Ann. Is that true love?”

Jace looked at her with interest. “You have done some research, haven’t you? So tell me what happened to Danny.”

“He died from a fall from a horse four years after Ann’s death. Never married.”

“Any more kids?”

“Just the one that I know about. The girl wasn’t married to Danny, but she gave the baby the name of Longstreet. Gerald in the village is descended from that child.”

“If she gave the baby the name of Longstreet, Danny would have had to agree, wouldn’t he? He didn’t marry her, but he must have admitted that the child was his,” Jace said.

“And maybe supported it as long as he was alive. Danny’s father was quite rich.”

Jace thought for a moment. “So what happened to Ann’s letters? Victorians threw nothing away. Maybe they’re in the library and we could—”

“Burned,” Nigh said. “After her death, her father burned everything that had belonged to Ann.”

“All
the letters? Maybe he missed something. Maybe in the attic we could find something.”

“Arthur Stuart not only burned all of his daughter’s letters, he burned all of her possessions. He was in a rage after his daughter killed herself on her wedding day. He had all her furniture, her clothes, everything hauled downstairs, taken out back, and burned. He wouldn’t even give it away to charity. The local vicar kept a journal and I’ve read it. The whole village went to see the bonfire. Arthur Stuart said his daughter was roasting in hell and that’s where all her belongings should be too.”

“Nice man,” Jace said. “No wonder Ann was willing to marry someone with half her IQ just to get away from him.”

“And no wonder she loved him. Maybe he would be unfaithful, but he had a generous enough spirit to allow his illegitimate child to have his name. In the 1870s that was an uncommon thing to do.”

“Wonder why he didn’t marry the mother of his child?” Jace asked.

“Didn’t you say he was in love with Ann?”

“I know you’re being sarcastic,” Jace said, “but it is possible to be in love with one person and go to bed with someone else.”

“Speaking from experience?” Nigh asked, teasing.

Jace looked at her hard. “No,” he said in a way that made her stop smiling and look away.

There was an awkward silence between them. The food that was left on their plates was cold and unappetizing.

She stood up. “I think I’ll go up and…” Nigh began, thinking she’d brush her teeth and put on some clothes that fit better than Jace’s huge workout suit, but then she remembered that she had nothing with her. “I guess I should go home. Maybe we can meet later and—”

Mrs. Browne came bustling into the kitchen and from the happy look on her face, she had terrible news. “The whole village is looking for you,” she said to Nigh, her voice full of joy.

“Me? Why do they want me?”

“To apply for jobs, of course. There are two young people come up from London. They’re psychics. Read your mind. Tell you what you’re thinkin’ and what’s gonna happen to you. They said more people from London are comin’ today but they had to get their machines ready.”

Nigh sat back down. “Machines?”

“Oh, yes. Ghost machines. They have it on the telly. They have little machines and cameras, all sorts of things. They want to take pictures of the lady on her horse. They want to record the hoofbeats on the stairs.”

“And they all want to see me?” Nigh said, her mind full of horrible images.

“It’s all over town that you’re the one to see.”

Slowly, Nigh turned to look at Jace, who was standing by the door with a smug look on his face. “You did this.”

“No,” he said, breaking into a grin. “You did it to yourself. You made up the Ghost Center. I merely told them to talk to you instead of me.”

“There’s about twenty cars parked in front of that little house of yours,” Mrs. Browne said. “Can’t nobody from the village drive past. Clive is givin’ out tickets. He said that if this keeps up we’ll have enough money to repair the library roof. Mrs. Wheeler has been up all night makin’ up a brochure about the ghosts at Priory House, and Mrs. Parsons is printin’ it out. They’re gonna sell ’em for five pounds each.”

“Five pounds?” Nigh said, astonished.

“It’s the twenty-first century and there’s inflation, you know. Well, now, you two gotta get outta here. I got bakin’ to do for the tea shop. With all the visitors in the village, they’re eatin’ everything.”

Feeling as though she’d been hit with a bat, Nigh started toward the kitchen door, then turned back. “Mrs. Browne?”

“Yes, what is it?” she asked impatiently.

“If the people are here about ghosts in Priory House, why aren’t they here at this house? Why aren’t they pounding at the gates?”

“We told ’em the truth, that an American lives here.”

Nigh didn’t understand what she meant. She looked at Jace, but he shrugged. She looked back at Mrs. Browne.

“Guns,” Mrs. Browne said, as though both Jace and Nigh were idiots. “American law says that everybody in that country has to have a gun.”

“It’s true,” Jace said seriously. “It’s in our constitution that we have the right to bear arms. The law was specifically written so we could shoot English people.”

Mrs. Browne put her hands on her hips. “Well, I never!” she said.

Jace and Nigh ran from the room and were upstairs in the master bedroom before they allowed themselves to burst into laughter.