Someone to Love (21 page)

On his way downstairs, he stopped by Daisy and Erin and told them to move his things into the master bedroom.

This time, their laughter made him smile.

L
ovely,” Nigh said, her feet propped on the big round ottoman before the fire. At tea she’d told him every word about seeing Danny Longstreet in her rearview mirror, the telling of which had taken all of about ten minutes. He’d told her all about what he’d done in Tolben Hall, which took another ten minutes. After that, they’d talked about—

She wasn’t sure what they’d talked about, but they’d never run out of things to say. After tea, they’d walked in the rain, both of them in tall rubber boots, and looked at the boundaries of his property.

At the southwest corner, he looked down at a small house. “That looks familiar.” It was Nigh’s house.

She shook her head. “Didn’t the estate agent show you what you were buying?”

“I’m sure he told me everything, it’s just that I don’t remember what he said.”

“Yet you bought the house anyway. Imagine that.”

“Mmmm,” he said. “Imagine that.” He changed the subject. “So I own your house. How often are you there?”

“Seldom. You rent it to me very cheaply, so I mostly use it for storage. I have a bedroom in an apartment in London with two roommates, but it doesn’t matter since I’m gone most of the time.”

“I saw.”

She looked at him in question.

“On the Internet. I looked you up.” When she said nothing, he said, “So what are you planning to do with your life?”

“I don’t know. Ask me a year from now.”

“Is that how long you plan to take off?”

“I haven’t had any time off since I started and it’s almost ten years now. I have to figure out what I want to do. What about you?”

“Same here. My degree is in history, but all I’ve done is buy and sell things for my family’s business. All done under my uncle’s supervision.”

“That sounds modest. You must have had some ideas of your own.”

“A few,” he said. “Now and then. But I’m like you and have no idea what I want to do.”

“You could live here,” she said, smiling.

“In Priory House?”

“Right. I forget that you bought a terrifically expensive house that you detest. And why did you do that?”

He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “On impulse.”

She knew she should just let it go, but she couldn’t. She wasn’t going to bring up Stacy; he had to do that, but she wanted to let him know that she would listen. “You bought a house that you don’t like on impulse. On a whim.”

“Yes,” he said, still not looking at her.

“You must have had a powerful reason for doing that.”

“Very powerful,” he said, then hesitated before he spoke again. “What if you had been falsely accused of something horrible? What would you do to clear your name?”

“Anything that I could,” she said.

“Then you understand why I bought this house.”

“Actually, I don’t, but have you made any progress in clearing your name?”

He shook his head. “None whatever. All I’ve done is get entangled with a bunch of ghosts, a smart-aleck female, and a bunch of employees who think I’m a great source of entertainment.”

Nigh smiled at his joke. “I’m not going to push on this, but if you want help in clearing your name, I’m willing. You would, of course, have to tell me what happened to dirty it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, and thank you,” he said, smiling at her. “You ready to go back? Mrs. Browne is making roast lamb for us tonight. And we’re having it in the dining room.”

Now, hours later, they were both full of food and drink and warm from the fire.

Jace was sitting in the chair next to her. “I enjoy your company,” he said softly.

“And I yours,” she answered.

He was quiet for a while and Nigh did her best to not let him know that her heart was pounding hard. It seemed that each man had
that moment,
the moment when he seemed to make up his mind about a woman. Some men had shown the decision by inviting her to meet his parents, some with a ring. Nigh knew that all that was much too early for her and Jace Montgomery, but what she was hoping for was that he’d tell her what was ruling his life.

“I want to tell you something,” he said after a while. “No, I don’t
want
to tell you, but I need help. I find that I can’t do what I set out to by myself.”

She didn’t say anything, just sat there quietly, willing him to go on, to tell her all of it.

He did. He told her about Stacy, but she could see that it wasn’t easy for him to speak of the woman he had loved, and when he told of her death, she felt his anguish. After an hour and a half, he wound down and turned to look at the fire.

He hadn’t added much to what Nigh had already read and figured out, but she didn’t tell him that. He mostly told her facts, not of his pain, but she saw it in his eyes.

“Do you have the photo with the note on it?” she asked.

“Upstairs in Ann’s room,” he said and she followed him up the stairs.

The room had become familiar to her over the years, since the entrance to the secret staircase was there, and the new decoration of it had become known to her in the last week. Had it only been a week since she’d met Jace?

She watched as he went to the Victorian wardrobe he’d bought in London, opened it, and took out a box from the bottom. She couldn’t resist saying, “Quit hiding the things under the floorboard in the closet, have you?”

She enjoyed the shocked expression on his face, then he smiled and his eyes twinkled. “You do listen, don’t you?”

“A must in my job.”

She sat down on the bed beside him and they went through what little evidence he had. She held the photo of Stacy and said how pretty she was, even though it made her feel jealous to say the words—which was stupid, but emotions rarely had logic.

“Ours again. Together forever. See you there on 11 May 2002,” she read aloud.

“She died the next day,” Jace said.

He stood up and went to the cold fireplace. “I need to know what happened,” he said. “Can you understand that? Until I know what happened, until I’ve cleared my name—if it can be cleared, that is—I can’t do anything else with my life.”

She looked at him with understanding. “You don’t want to talk to Ann because she’s a ghost but because she was here that night.”

“Yes,” Jace said. “You thought I wanted a séance, didn’t you?”

“It makes sense.”

He ran his hand over his face. “None of this makes sense. Why are Ann and Danny showing themselves to us? Danny to you, Ann to me. Or she did until I made her angry.” He looked at the ceiling. “I was just trying to do something nice,” he said. “I didn’t mean to offend you or make you feel worse than you already do. If there’s anything I can do to make you feel better, you know, like help you get to the white light, let me know.”

When he looked back at Nigh, her face was pale. “What?”

“I wouldn’t tempt fate, if I were you,” she said. “You take ghosts in stride, but I don’t. Haven’t you heard that they’re always looking for bodies to take over?”

“A month ago, I would have said that they could have my body.”

“You loved her so much that you can’t ever get over her?” she asked.

“Yes,” Jace said. “And no. I’ve grieved for Stacy until I can’t grieve anymore. But my grief has become selfish. I need to know about myself. Her mother and sister said I drove Stacy to suicide. They said that I was such a tyrant that I wouldn’t let her out of the wedding. But that makes no sense. If she felt free enough to tell me just days before our wedding that she didn’t want to have children, then she could have told me that she didn’t want to get married.”

“I can see you as a lot of things but not as a tyrant,” Nigh said. “I think there was a lot more going on and you knew, know, nothing about it.” She looked at the photo of Priory House again, read what was written on it. “Someone somewhere knows about this.”

“Mrs. Browne,” Jace said flatly.

“I’m sure of it, but she’s a mean-spirited old woman and she’d put splinters under her own fingernails before she told what she knows. If Stacy clandestinely met a man here, Mrs. Browne would think it was right and proper that she paid the ultimate penalty for doing so.”

Jace winced, then sat on the bed beside Nigh. “This afternoon I had an idea. Maybe Danny Longstreet has appeared to you because his descendant is involved in this.”

Nigh looked at him questioningly. “Jerry? You think maybe Stacy was meeting Jerry Longstreet here in Priory House?”

“I can tell that you don’t think so.”

“No, I don’t. For one thing, look at her. She looks like one of those disgustingly healthy California girls that you Americans sing about. Jerry isn’t as tall as me and he’s always had a belly on him. He’s cute in an obscure way, but not to outsiders.”

“You
like him,” Jace said.

“I grew up in Margate, went to school here. The pickings were slim. Now that I’ve been out in the world, Jerry Longstreet is a joke. I think your Stacy would think he was too. Besides, where would she have met him?”

Jace stood up again. “Now that is the question,” he said. “I’ve wracked my brain until it’s depleted. Stacy told me her life story. She went to England with her mother, and when she was in college, she took a couple trips to Europe, but she was always chaperoned. She complained that she never got to see anything or meet anyone.”

“I think you can fall in love with a person in a very short time,” Nigh said quietly, looking at Jace.

He didn’t turn away from her, but met her eyes. “So do I.” He held her eyes for a moment, then looked away. “But I can’t think about my future until I clear up my past.”

Nigh couldn’t help sighing as she looked back at Stacy’s photo, then put everything back in the box. “I think you should keep all of this hidden. I don’t think you should let anyone in this house see any of this.”

“You think she was murdered, don’t you?”

Nigh stood up and looked down at the box for a moment, then up at him. “I think that any woman who would leave you…” She didn’t finish the sentence. It was too maudlin, too sentimental—and it revealed too much about her.

“It’s late and I’m tired,” she said. “I brought my hiking boots, so why don’t we take a walk tomorrow, somewhere away from this house and Margate? Let’s go over what you know and see what we can figure out,” she said, then before he could respond, she said “good night” and left the room.

She hurried across the corridor to the blue bedroom, the “lady’s bedroom.” She smiled to see that it was full of fresh flowers and that her clothes had been unpacked and put away. The first time she’d visited Priory House with Jace, the maids and Mrs. Browne had been an insolent lot, but he seemed to have done something that was working.

She filled the bathtub and soaked for a while before putting on a flannel nightgown and going to bed. The sheets smelled of sunlight. She felt good because Jace had told her what was eating at him, told her his most private secret. Now all they had to do was solve the mystery.

She fell asleep smiling.

L
et’s go,” she heard Jace say.

Sleepily, Nigh rolled over in the bed and looked toward the uncurtained windows. It was still dark. “Go away,” she said.

Jace sat down on the side of the bed. “I’ve been up for two hours and Mrs. Browne has already started frying things. Get up, get your boots on, and let’s go. There’s a trailhead twenty miles from here and we’re starting there.”

“Trailhead?” she muttered. “Is that an American word?”

“Up!” he said, then, when she didn’t move, he stretched out beside her, the thick coverlet separating their bodies. “You smell good,” he said, putting his face into her neck.

Nigh smiled and moved so her backside was closer to him. “I love morning sport.”

“Me too. And it looks like Ann and Danny do too.” He nuzzled her neck under her warm hair. “I guess that’s why they’re here.”

“What?” Nigh said, turning over to look at the room.

There was no one but them in the room. Jace got off the bed and smiled at her. “No ghosts, just us. Get up and get dressed. Let’s go! We’re burning daylight.”

“What a disgusting turn of phrase,” she muttered as she sat up. “I was thinking of a leisurely walk near here, not some mountain trek.”

“I need the exercise,” Jace said. “I need a lot of exercise. In fact, I need to run up a mountain.”

She couldn’t help giving a giggle as his meaning was clear. “Where’s my early morning tea? Every good hotel serves early morning tea.”

“Sure,” he said. “Tea from Hotel Priory House coming up. In the dining room, that is. See you downstairs, and if you take more than fifteen minutes I’ll go without you.”

At that, Nigh flopped back on the bed. “A reprieve!”

With a serious look, Jace went to the bed, scooped her up, covers and all, and stood her up outside the bathroom. “Fifteen minutes,” he said, then left the room.

Yawning, but smiling, Nigh pulled on layers of clothes that she could peel off as the day got warmer. On the bottom was an old T-shirt that had been washed a hundred times and was so tight that it left little to the imagination. Over it went a long-sleeved cotton shirt, then a sweatshirt. She pulled on jeans, then put on her heavy socks and boots. She thought about makeup but she had an idea she’d be sweating it off, so she didn’t bother.

Ten minutes from the time Jace had left the bedroom, she was in the dining room and eating part of one of Mrs. Browne’s fry-ups.

“You’ll get there yet,” Jace said, meaning that she’d eventually be able to eat a whole one of the enormous breakfasts.

“I hope not,” Nigh muttered, but his good mood was infectious.

Thirty minutes later they were piling heavy backpacks into Jace’s Range Rover and heading north. It was a gorgeous, sunny Saturday and in spite of a lack of sleep she was looking forward to the day.

“Today we have a rule,” he said as he pulled onto the highway.

“And what is that?”

“Today we only talk about us, you and me. No one else.”

He didn’t have to say who they were not to talk about, but she knew. Thinking that, for the first time, there would be no ghosts—old or new—between them made her feel wonderful.

“I’ve been awake most of the night,” he said, “and I’ve been thinking about something.”

“Oh?” she asked. “And what is that?”

“I like England.” He glanced at her. “It’s wet and cold, and eccentric doesn’t begin to describe the people, but there’s something about this place that appeals to me.”

She was looking at him hard.

“My grandmother has been saying for years that someone should write the history of our family. We go back a long way and there have been some unusual characters in our family. We know all this by word-of-mouth tradition and through some old trunks full of letters and uniforms and family documents. But no one has ever written a complete story about my ancestors.”

She waited for him to continue, but he was silent. “You mean you’re thinking of writing your family history?”

“Maybe,” he said.

“And living in England while you do it.”

“It did go through my mind.”

“And you’d live in Priory House?”

“Heavens no!” he said. “I thought I’d buy a little house somewhere. Something old and nice, but something that could be heated.”

“A Queen Anne former rectory,” she said, her voice dreamy.

“Sounds great to me,” he said. “In fact, it sounds perfect. But it would have to have a garden.”

“And a conservatory. It must have a conservatory. You know something? Writing has been something that I thought I might like to do too.”

“Really? What would you write?”

“About what I’ve seen. And I’d do some ghostwriting.” She gave him a quick glance. “Not
that
kind of ghost, the other kind. I’ve met some old reporters who had fantastic stories to tell. There was one old guy who’d seen everything since World War Two, and what he could tell wasn’t to be believed.”

“Tell? He didn’t write it down?”

“Not a word. To him, every word he did write was a chore. He could dictate a thousand words over the phone, but he couldn’t sit and write anything. And all the good stories he knew couldn’t be told—at least not then, that is. Now he could tell what he saw during the many wars he’s been through.”

“Does he want to write his memoirs?”

Nigh snorted. “What do you think reporters live on if it isn’t ego?”

“Bourbon?” he asked innocently and she laughed.

They talked all the way to the trailhead, then kept talking while they got their packs and started walking. They talked a great deal about their dream houses and what they had to have, but never once did they speak of the house as belonging to the two of them and of their living in it together. Nor did they speak of the fact that they were thinking of changing their lives in a way so they could live together.

At noon they sat down on a rock by the side of the trail and ate the ham sandwiches Mrs. Browne had prepared and drank their Thermoses of tea. Nigh had peeled off her sweatshirt an hour before and it was tied around her waist. She leaned against a tree as they ate in companionable silence, the sun warm on them.

“The Raider,” she said. “That sounds like my kind of man.” She was referring to the story Jace had told her about one of his ancestors. During the American Revolutionary War a young man had disguised himself and fought for the freedom of his country. It didn’t bother her that he’d fought against the English.

Jace kept looking ahead at the forest. They were surrounded by trees, the birds singing. They were alone. “Besides men wearing masks, what is your kind of man?”

Nigh had to take a drink of tea to keep from saying
you.
“Big, brawny, rugby player,” she said. “Or polo. I really like polo.”

“I have a cousin who plays polo.”

“What’s his name? Maybe you’ll introduce us.”

“Lillian.”

They laughed together and minutes later they picked up everything and started walking again. They went about a mile when Nigh called a halt. “I don’t know how you stand this,” she said, looking at his heavy shirt as she put her pack on the ground. “I’m about to burn up.”

“This is nothing. You should spend a summer in the American South. How did you stand the Middle East if you don’t like hot weather?”

“Dry heat,” she said, pulling her long-sleeved shirt over her head. “And—” She broke off because Jace was staring at her chest with wide eyes and open mouth. She had worn the tiny T-shirt to get his attention, but this was ridiculous! Hadn’t he ever seen…

She looked down at her shirt and realized he was staring at the logo on her T-shirt. “What is it?”

“That,” he whispered and raised his hand to point at her chest. “Where did you get that?”

“It’s from Queen Jane’s School,” she said. “It’s a posh little public—to you, private—boarding school about two miles from Priory House. It’s astronomically expensive and I don’t know anyone in Margate who has ever gone there. Gladys Arnold works there.”

“Stacy had a shirt like that,” Jace whispered.

“So does everyone who lives within thirty miles of here. The school puts on fund-raisers and sells things with the logo on them. We used to buy things from them until—”

Jace was still looking at her with wide eyes. “You don’t think Stacy went there, do you?” Nigh asked. “She could have bought the shirt in several places. They sell them in a few shops in London.”

“I don’t know,” Jace said, “but it’s a lead. We have to go back. We have to find out if she did go to that school. We have to—” He stopped talking and started going back the way they’d come at double speed.

For a moment Nigh stood where she was. “So much for a romantic day out,” she said, then hitched up her pack and ran after him.

It took them only forty-five minutes to get down the trail and back to the car, then Jace drove back to Margate as quickly as he could.

“Turn here,” Nigh said and Jace took the turn so quickly Nigh grabbed the handle over the window. “I’m assuming you want to see Queen Jane’s School.”

“Yes,” was all Jace said, which was the most he’d said the whole way back.

“Turn up this dirt road,” she directed and he followed her instructions. When they came to a dead end, he stopped the car, got out, and looked down over the house and grounds below.

Nigh stood beside him. The school was in an enormous old Victorian house, rather pretty, with manicured, treeless lawns that were divided into various playing fields. There were girls of high school age running about with balls or hockey sticks, all wearing the school colors of green and white.

“So how do I find out if Stacy went there?” Jace asked.

“I guess we could go and ask them. I’m sure they have records. But…”

He looked at her. “But they must have heard that a Stacy Evans died in a pub not ten miles from their school and if they didn’t say anything then, they aren’t going to want to get involved now.”

“My thoughts exactly,” she said.

“Maybe we could try the Internet. They may have an alumni association.”

“They do, but it’s sealed. You have to be an alumni to get into the thing.”

Jace looked at her as though to ask how she knew that.

Nigh shrugged. “Sometimes the girls deign to come into Margate to see how villagers live. The locals always want to know which one is the daughter of a duke, or an earl, so we used to look them up. The school found out about it and sealed the records from outsiders. And now the girls are rarely allowed into Margate, so that’s why you didn’t see the logo around town. It’s become very much a separation of them and us.”

“So how do we find out?” Jace asked. “You’re the journalist. How do we see if Stacy went to this school?”

“Short of breaking into the records office, I have no idea.” When she saw Jace’s face, she took a step backward. “I was joking. You can’t break into the school. Maybe if it weren’t in session you could do it, but there are three hundred girls living there now.”

Jace stared at her a moment, then started back to the car, Nigh right behind him. When they were inside, she asked him what he was going to do.

“Contact some people, namely Clive and Gladys.”

Nigh’s mouth fell open. “You’re going to ask Clive to help you? He’s a policeman!” When Jace’s look didn’t change, she started getting upset. “You can’t do this! You absolutely can
not
do this! And you especially can’t get a policeman to help you do this.”

“Do you know anything about Clive Sefton’s background?”

Nigh knew all about the young man’s troubled past. He had been arrested so many times it was a joke. Drugs. Gambling.

“You can’t do this,” Nigh said again, but this time her voice was weaker.

Jace backed the car up, turned around, and headed back to Priory House. Twenty minutes after they arrived, he called Clive and Gladys and invited them to dinner, along with Mick. Jace had ordered Mrs. Browne to prepare a feast, then he’d headed for the shower.

Nigh went to her bedroom and debated whether or not to get in her Mini and go home. In her profession she’d seen the consequences of illegal behavior too many times. On the other hand, she’d seen the consequences of legal behavior. All in all, she didn’t know which was worse.

She took a bath, then dressed in plain black trousers and a pink cashmere sweater. Dinner was in an hour.

“I can’t so much as see the yearbooks without a search warrant,” Clive was saying, his mouth full.

“Why in the world is this school so secretive?” Jace asked, spearing another slab of rare roast beef. “The public has more access to prisoners than to these girls. You’d think that Margate was a den of sin and that the virtue of the girls had to be protected from us.”

As he spoke, the heads of Nigh, Clive, Gladys, and Mick got lower and lower. By the time Jace finished, their noses were almost touching their plates.

“Okay,” Jace said, “out with it. What happened to make the school hate Margate?”

“Mutual fascination,” Nigh said.