Someone to Love (16 page)

He broke off as he bent and put his mouth on hers for a long, sweet kiss, a gentle kiss, but one of such longing that chills went down Nigh’s spine.

Abruptly, Jace broke away and stepped back from her. “I didn’t mean to do that.”

“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s fine to kiss someone. I’m fine with—”

“No,” Jace said. “I meant that I didn’t mean to do that.”

Nigh was confused. “You said that.”

He ran his hand over his face. “Look, you and I both know that we’re attracted to each other. From the moment I first saw you my palms have been sweating. I should have been furious with you for what you wrote about me. I could have sued you, but what did I do but sit down and have a cup of tea with you? And since then I haven’t spent more than ten waking minutes away from you—and don’t want to. It isn’t a question of whether or not I want to kiss you, snog you, or shag you, as you English say, but I’m telling you that
I didn’t mean to do that.”

He had given her so much information that all Nigh could do was blink at him. From his attitude toward her she’d begun to think that he actually was gay, but…

“So who kissed me?” she asked, swallowing. “Sweaty palms,” he said. “And how do you know the difference?”

Jace started to say something, but instead he pulled her into his arms and kissed her with the passion he’d been feeling since he met her. His hands ran over her back, up her neck, through her hair, then back down again, while his mouth overtook hers, his tongue touching hers, invading her mouth.

He released her as abruptly as he’d taken her, and when he broke away, for a moment, they both stood there panting, staring at each other with heaving chests.

“Did you mean that one?” Nigh managed to say.

“Oh yeah.” He took a step toward her, but then stopped. The next moment he was at the door to her bedroom. “Look, Nigh, I have things—”

“Don’t say it again,” she said. “You have issues in your life. Me too. Right now I want to take a bath. I’ll meet you downstairs in an hour. We’ll have dinner with no liquor, or none for me anyway.”

Jace nodded but said nothing, then left the room.

Alone in the room, Nigh thought that she should be angry at him. She should tell him what she thought of him and his on again/off again, hot and cold attitude toward her, but she didn’t feel that way. Instead, she started waltzing about the room humming the words to “I Could Have Danced All Night.”

She spent nearly a half hour soaking in the tub, smiling the whole time, then she spent a long, leisurely half hour applying makeup and dressing in a black silk cocktail dress, black hose, and high black heels.

When she went downstairs, she also had a letter ready to fax to Ralph, who owned the newspaper that had caused so many problems. She asked him to print a retraction saying that there would be no Ghost Center, that everything had been a mistake. There would be no jobs. Priory House was a private residence and would remain so.

She showed it to Jace, and he practically ran to find Mrs. Fenney and a fax machine. Ten minutes later, he returned, took Nigh’s arm, and said, “It’s done.”

They laughed together in relief.

J
ace and Nigh drove into the village and went straight to the restaurant. By silent mutual agreement, they didn’t talk about the Longstreets or the Stuarts, but only about themselves. Jace wanted to hear more about what Nigh had done in her life and where she’d been. She wanted to know about him. She quickly saw that he’d talk and answer questions as long as it didn’t involve recent history. She could get him to tell anything about himself until about six years ago. After that, he grew silent.

True to her word, Nigh drank only half a glass of wine. After dinner, they went back to the hotel and separated to go to their own rooms. There was no kissing, no hand-holding, no awkwardness. But when Nigh closed the door to her room, she leaned against it for a while, her eyes closed. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes you met a man you could talk to, laugh with, tease, and…well, maybe you could love.

She went to bed smiling.

The next morning, she met Jace for breakfast at 8:00 a.m. and wasn’t surprised to see him chowing down on a “fry-up.”

“Not many people want these anymore,” Mrs. Fenney said, sliding fried tomatoes onto Jace’s heaping plate. “I think it’s a shame. My husband had a fry-up every morning for forty years and it never hurt him.”

Nigh leaned across the table and whispered, “But he’s not here now, is he? That stuff is going to kill you.”

“Can’t help it,” Jace said. “Mrs. Browne spoiled me.” He bit into a blood sausage.

After breakfast, they walked into the town. “I like this village,” she said. “I like it better than Margate.”

“I got the idea you loved Margate.”

“They know too much about me there.”

“Like where your birthmarks are?”

“Like when my parents died and what I’ve seen and done and who I know. I think it would be nice to move somewhere else and start over. Clean, fresh.”

“What about your job?”

“Maybe I’ll write murder mysteries and sell them to Americans and make millions.”

Smiling, Jace said, “There’s the church, and I think that’s the vicar going in. Come on, let’s catch him.”

“You go on. The day’s too pretty to be inside. I think I’ll stay out here.”

“I’ll meet you…”

She waved her hand. “Go. You’re not going to lose me. I’ll be around.”

He smiled at her, then hurried off to the church. She followed him at a slower pace, looking about her as she walked. What she’d said to Jace about starting over, clean and fresh, had just come out of her mouth, but she liked the idea. It wasn’t as though she’d grown up having a burning ambition to be a journalist. It was something that had just happened to her. On the other hand, she’d been told she was good at it, so maybe she had wanted to do it. The question was, could her being a journalist make a difference in the world?

The church was enclosed by an iron fence, old and rusty in spots, but intact and kept in good repair. To the left was the cemetery, and Nigh knew she should go there and look for Danny Longstreet’s grave, but she didn’t want to see any tomb-stones. Right now, she didn’t want to think of death.

To the right of the church was a lovely border of flowers and a pretty wooden bench. She sat down on it and looked at the stonework of the church. For a moment she closed her eyes and almost went to sleep. A sound startled her.

A young man wearing riding clothes was walking past her, obviously trying to be quiet, but he’d stepped on a twig. “I was trying to be quiet,” he said, “but I didn’t make it.” He looked at her in speculation. “Do I know you?”

“No,” she said, looking at him. He looked a bit like Jerry Longstreet, only more handsome, more refined, not so…oh dear, her class system was intact. This young man looked to be of a higher class than Jerry. “Your name isn’t by chance Longstreet, is it?”

His eyes widened. “You’re either a soothsayer or a distant cousin. I do hope it’s the latter and not the former.”

She smiled. “Neither. I’m a research assistant to a man who bought a house in the village of Margate. It’s—”

“Priory House,” he said.

“Yes. Do you know of it?”

“Only where it concerns my relatives. In the 1870s a man named Hugh Longstreet wanted to buy it.”

“So much so that he tried to force a marriage between his son and the daughter of the owner of Priory House,” she said, testing him to see how much he knew.

“What I was told was that ‘force’ isn’t the right word. I heard it was a love match.”

Nigh sat up straighter on the bench. “That’s what I heard too, but what was your source?” She couldn’t very well tell him her source was a couple of ghosts.

He smiled at her in a way that made her smile back. “That would be revealing family secrets, wouldn’t it?”

Nigh looked toward the front of the church, but there was no sign of Jace. “Are you busy right now? I’d love to ask you a few questions.”

“You sound like a reporter,” he said as he sat down beside her.

“Guilty.” She turned to face him, her back to the front of the church. “I’d love to hear everything you know about Danny Longstreet and his father and Priory House, and anything else you can tell me. Oh, by the way, my name is Nigh Smythe.”

“And ‘Nigh’ is short for…?”

“Nightingale,” she said, and as always felt a bit embarrassed by the name.

“Like Ann Nightingale Stuart?” he asked softly. “Are you related to her?”

“My mother said we were, but I don’t know how we could be. My mother came from Yorkshire.”

“But that’s very possible. Didn’t you know that Ann’s father sold Priory House after Ann…died, and he moved north and remarried? I think it may have been Yorkshire where he went, but I’m not sure of it. I think he had more children as his second wife was quite young.”

Nigh blinked at him for a moment. She’d never been much interested in genealogy and so hadn’t asked her mother much about her grandparents. They were dead by the time Nigh was three, so she didn’t remember seeing them. It was interesting to find out that it could be true that she was related to the Stuarts.

“I think it would be too much of a coincidence that a descendant of Arthur Stuart’s second marriage would end up in tiny Margate,” she said.

“Unless she went there on purpose,” he said. “Was your mother interested in family history? Maybe she went to Margate to do some family research.”

“That’s highly likely,” Nigh said and felt a wave of guilt wash over her. Her mother had been very interested in family history, but her daughter hadn’t been. In fact, Nigh remembered groaning and being a pest when her mother got out her “box of the old ones,” as Nigh and her father called it.

She turned her attention back to the man. A reporter learned to focus on the person he was interviewing rather than himself. “I’m staying at Tolben Hall.”

“Beautiful, isn’t it? Hugh bought it after Ann’s death, but he didn’t live long enough to enjoy it.”

“Why did Hugh Longstreet want Priory House so much?”

“It was his life’s dream. Actually, it’s what fueled his life. His wanting Priory House was what drove him into becoming a millionaire.” He paused and smiled at her. “I think I’m boring you.”

“Not at all,” she said honestly.

“Is that your young man?”

Turning, she saw Jace standing at the corner of the church, talking to the vicar. She raised her hand to him and he nodded, then she turned back to her new friend. “Why was the house Hugh’s lifelong dream?”

“His mother had been a housekeeper there. It was said that…no, I’ll bore you.”

“I promise you won’t.”

“It’s just a silly story, a bit like Dickens. When Hugh was a young man, it was said that he found out that his mother was much more than just a housekeeper to the owner of Priory House. It was possible, even probable, that the owner was his father. It was also said that on the day he found out, Hugh stole half the Stuart family silver and ran away to America. I was told that Hugh dedicated his entire life to one thing, and that was to owning Priory House.”

“But Arthur wouldn’t sell it to him,” Nigh said.

“Correct. Arthur had been a little boy when Hugh lived there and Hugh had…shall we say, been unkind to him.”

“Tortured him mercilessly, did he?”

“Without letup,” he said, smiling. “So Arthur wanted to get him back. Besides, Arthur was an angry, bitter man. His father had told him to marry for money, but Arthur had married for love, to a penniless daughter of a vicar. She died less than a year later.”

“Giving birth to Ann,” Nigh said.

“Yes. Arthur could hardly stand the sight of his daughter.”

“He kept her so imprisoned when she was a child that the villagers thought she was deformed,” Nigh said.

“Exactly.”

“Then Hugh Longstreet and his handsome son came along and they made a deal.”

“Yes. It was a deal that took months to negotiate. Arthur was going to continue to live at Priory House after the sale, but Hugh didn’t care who lived there. He just wanted to own that house that should have been his by birth because he was Arthur’s older brother.”

“What about Ann and Danny?”

“Ah,” the man said, smiling brighter. “There are sometimes true wonders in this world. On the surface, there were no more mismatched people in the world than Ann Stuart and Danny Longstreet. She was all refinement and quiet graces, while he was—”

“Wild and devil-may-care. A descendant of his lives in Margate and I know him well.”

“Does he?” the young man said with interest. “He must be descended from…”

“Danny’s illegitimate child.”

“Ah, yes, that,” he said, ducking his head for a moment. “Danny was rich and handsome, and women old and young adored him.”

Nigh laughed. “Sounds like Jerry, but maybe Danny was a bit brighter.”

“He wasn’t stupid, if that’s what you mean,” he snapped.

“Sorry,” Nigh said. “I meant no offense.”

“I am the one to apologize. Danny’s mother was from an impoverished but upper-crust Boston family, and his father was half aristocracy with a working-class mother. Danny had a lot of different blood in his veins, and Ann brought out the best in him. While their fathers spent months haggling over who owned what furniture, Danny and Ann were free to be together. Their knowledge of the world overlapped on no points, so there was no competition between them. She taught him poetry and flowers, and he taught her…” For a moment, he closed his eyes as he thought.

“Raw, rough sex,” Nigh said, laughing.

The man turned to her with a face full of anger. “Don’t say that! Danny respected Ann. He never touched her except for a few chaste kisses.”

Nigh sat up straighter, moving away from the young man a bit. She was glad it was daylight and that she was in public and that Jace was nearby. She glanced over her shoulder. He was no longer with the vicar but standing by the corner of the church, leaning against the wall and watching her. She thought of motioning for him to come over, but she feared that the young man would quit telling her about Ann and Danny. But she was glad Jace was close.

She turned back to the man. “I apologize. I guess I’m confusing our low morals with their high morals.”

“I’m sorry. Again, I’m the one to apologize. I’ve had a long time to think about all this and the injustice of it still angers me.”

“I agree. I, we, don’t think Ann killed herself.”

“Of course she didn’t. She was in love with Danny and he with her. They were longing to get married.”

“Then who killed her?”

“My guess is it was the girl in the village.”

“Ah. The mother of Danny’s child.”

The young man grimaced. “Too much gin, too much song, too much of loving a woman he couldn’t touch. An accident. The result was unfortunate.”

“And you think she killed Ann.”

“Yes, I do. There was no proof, but her cousin Catherine said that a piece of candy was found on the floor of Ann’s room. The woman in the village worked in a candy factory.”

“How awful,” Nigh said. “Poor Ann. She was believed to be a suicide and buried outside the churchyard.”

“Yes,” he said, his mouth in a tight line. “Absolutely no one could believe that a lady like Ann could love an American lout like Danny Longstreet. No one questioned that she’d killed herself rather than marry him.”

“Poor Danny. Do you know what happened to him?”

“Stayed drunk for a week, then left Margate with his father and never returned.”

“But he supported his child,” Nigh said. “And he let it carry his name.” Turning, she glanced at Jace, still standing against the wall, still watching her with unblinking intensity. She couldn’t read his expression. Was he, in some odd way, jealous that she was talking to another man? Why didn’t he come over to be introduced?

Nigh looked back at the young man. “I didn’t get your first name.”

Abruptly, he stood up. “Your young man is getting impatient, and I must be off. Did you know that you look a bit like Ann?”

“How do you know that? I thought all likenesses of her were destroyed by her father.”