A Haunted Romance (7 page)

Probably Trent had just noticed a key and put it somewhere he thought she’d see it. He’d been in a hurry to leave. She’d ask him when he came over. And they were not having sex. At least not until she’d gotten his help installing a bed. It would be awkward, she supposed, to deny him at that point. And silly to deny herself the pleasure.

If she thought about Trent for the rest of the morning, she’d not be able to concentrate on anything. She had writing to do, and she wanted to at least check to see if that key fit the chest upstairs. She wolfed down her cereal. She had to force herself to go rinse out the bowl and put it in the dishwasher. It was all too easy for her to get focused on the things she wanted to do and let the dishes pile up.

As she rinsed the remainder of milk out of the bowl, she remembered her desire to get a cat. Lapping up lots of sugared milk from a bowl wasn’t good for cats really, but that didn’t stop the sight from triggering thoughts of owning one. She hadn’t been allowed to have a pet at her condo, and that was one of the things she’d been looking forward to about owning a freestanding house.

Unable to wait any longer, she grabbed the key and ran up the stairs. She knelt down by the chest, key in hand.

Cat’s hands wouldn’t shake. Either it worked, or it wouldn’t. Chances were there was nothing much inside anyway.

She slipped the key into the lock and after a moment of jiggling, the lock gave with a little
pop
. She flipped open the lid, letting it thump against the floor. The thing was filled with papers and books and magazines. Just a glance made her suspect it was all very old. The books were leather bound; the papers were yellowed, the words written in a beautiful flowing and almost unreadable script. She lifted out the first book—it appeared to be something in French,
Memoires de Saturnin
, it said on the spine, in gilt—and gingerly opened the front cover. The title page said 1803, but she didn’t read French. She set it carefully onto the sleeping bag, thinking that was a safer place for it than the wooden floor.

The Pearl: A Journal of Facetiae Voluptuous Reading
, said the plain cover of the magazine underneath. Volume Five. London. Printed for the Society of Vice, 1879. It was in English apparently, that was something, and it didn’t crumble when she picked it up. There were several more like it beneath, all different volumes of the same magazine.

It seemed wrong to try to look at it on the floor, so she carried it over to the dresser, which she had not yet managed to pile anything on top of, and opened it there. There was a line drawing—naked people, but not particularly sexy looking, and it wasn’t at all clear to her what they were doing, although the one woman seemed to be pointing to the other’s bottom. She read a bit of the text: “He roughly forced my thighs apart, and throwing himself upon me, I could feel the hot, soft head of his cock forcing its way between the lips of my vagina. I struggled and contracted myself as much as possible, and having previously well bathed the parts in a strong solution of alum and water, he experienced as great tightness and difficulty in penetration as if I had really been a virgin. My subdued cries of pain were real, for his big affair hurt me very much, but he gradually won his way, which was at the last moment facilitated by a copious spend.”

“All righty then,” she said to herself. The writer sure did like long words. The chest must have belonged to some old pervert, long ago. Perhaps the papers and books would have a clue as to the owner.

The whole right side of the trunk was full of paper, stacked all the way to the brim. The tight conditions had kept the paper flat, which had probably saved it, but there was no guarantee it wouldn’t crumble in her hands, so she started by reading the first paper on top.

The handwriting was difficult to read at first, but it was regular and precise, and once she got the hang of it, she could make it out.

Dearest Minerva
, it began,
Every day it brings me joy to have encountered such a delightful creature as you, even though we shall undoubtedly never meet. Still, your words evoke in me such resoluteness of purpose that I should always strive to write ever more voluptuously, if only so that I might inflame the loins of one more reader. That you remain a virgin is one of our times’ great tragedies, and one you must rectify should there ever be an opportunity. If I were but there, I would find a way to cross the formidable barrier that is your father and breach your maidenhead forthwith and take care to introduce to you such other pleasures of the flesh so as to leave no portal untravelled.

Still, it is not my desires you wish to hear about, is it? I am working on the manuscript as we speak, and when it is published, I will send a copy to you, gratis of course. You shall like it, I think; it has more of what the French call
le vice anglais
and features a servant girl most defenceless against the predations of her employer, his wife, and their numerous friends. Of course she is overcome with the pleasure of it once she has been fully initiated so that she contrives to ever place herself in more compromising positions.

Your own work is coming along well? We’ll see it, and published too, before this time next year? Chalmers is most eager to receive it, as here in London I will say that your previous manuscript—

Chelsea almost turned the page without thinking of how it might crumble into dust, and it took all her willpower not to do it anyway. She pictured Minerva, reading passages like the one from the magazine, perhaps writing her own stories from what she had read, but never able to experience what she wrote about. Until the day before, sex for Chelsea had never been anything she thought she would have especially missed. Sex was usually better in her fiction actually; no one ever failed to fall to Cat’s seductive powers once she had her eye on them. Maybe Minerva had her own experiences later; it was impossible to tell from the letter what age she had been when it was written to her or whether it was the first of the papers collected in the chest or the last.

There was a story in those papers, and Chelsea was eager to find it out. She doubted her publisher would appreciate the time spent away from writing, but she wasn’t flush enough to hire someone to do it for her. She’d get a scanner. Acid-free plastic sleeves would be good too—where was she going to get those? She’d talked to the county archivist back home once doing research, and he’d know the answer to that question. She replaced the magazine, which she decided she probably shouldn’t have touched in the first place, put the French book back on top of that, just as it had been before, and pushed the whole thing to the side of the room underneath the picture.

If Trent had a look at the contents, even the letter, she suspected she was in for some teasing that she’d rather avoid.
I have portals I’d rather leave untraveled.

She bit her lip. She was kind of curious actually. But Trent was a bit too big to be a good choice to introduce her to anal sex. The idea of going down on him, on the other hand—she fanned herself. What was it that made him so seductive? She didn’t have any of the sense of being in control of the situation that Cat always did. And maybe that was just it. She had plenty of control over the rest of her life, as long as she met deadlines.

There was a knock on the door. Trent couldn’t be here that soon, could he? She didn’t think it was even past noon. In any case, she bent down and turned the key in the lock. She would have to tell him she wasn’t going to let him use bolt cutters and leave it at that. But if he’d left the key for her to find—she sighed and ran down the stairs.

It was Dalton Cornick at the door when she opened it. That would put off the troublesome questions, at least. He was dressed in a long-sleeve black spandex shirt that hugged his muscles and blue jeans, and he held an envelope in his hands.

“Saw you had mail in your box. Thought I’d bring it up to you and check up on you,” he said.

“Oh.” She took the mail from his hand and glanced at it. Some sort of real estate development company, probably junk mail, but it was addressed to her. She didn’t think she could have gotten on any mailing lists yet. “Thank you. Um, want to come in for a moment?” It was cold and rainy out, and she felt awkward conversing on the porch. It’d been nice of him to bring the mail up, she supposed, although she didn’t want everyone looking at her mail. Still, no harm done this time.

Dalton grinned and entered. “Thanks. Icky day out. Need any errands run?”

Maybe it was just small-town charm that made everyone helpful, but she had the distinct impression it was more than that. Did Dalton have the hots for her too? If so, it would be the one and only time she’d ever been chased after by two men at the same time.
I’ll cope, somehow.

Dalton was the kind of man her mother would want for her, but he just didn’t get her motor running somehow. Trent, on the other hand… She wiped the grin off her face because she didn’t have a good explanation for it. “Errands, um…” She had all sorts of stuff she needed done, but most of it she’d have to do herself. “The grocery shopping yesterday was very helpful, thank you. How much was it?”

“I don’t remember. Don’t worry about it.” There was a pause while he looked intently at her, and then he smiled. “Anything else?”

“Is there a computer store nearby?”

“In New Market there’s a small one,” Dalton said. “Not in Selby. Something wrong with your laptop?”

“No, no, I want a scanner actually.”

Dalton thought for a moment. “You’re planning to stay, then?”

Chelsea nodded. “Yeah.”

“I thought maybe that scream the other night would have scared you off.”

“Nope.”

“You’re a brave girl,” Dalton said. “Good to hear it. You’ll get a better deal in the city, I imagine, if you’re taking trips back to DC to get more stuff anyway.”

“I’ll head back tonight, I think, and then come back in the morning.”
I’ll sleep better at home too
. She didn’t want to run from a bunch of sounds, but a night off from the noise would help. There was no way she was turning her back on the mystery of the chest.

“Sounds like a plan,” said Dalton.

“Dalton, you didn’t by any chance leave a key on my table, did you?”

“A key?”

“Yeah.”

Dalton shrugged. “Sorry, I don’t know anything about a key. What’s it go to?”

“Some old chest in the attic.” Chelsea shook her head to get the hair out of her eyes. “Nothing important.”

“Ah,” said Dalton. “Well, then, if there’s nothing else, I’ll be going.”

“Okay. Thanks for dropping by.”

Dalton smiled and started to walk out and then paused in the doorway. “You’re a mighty pretty young lady,” he said, getting the words out as fast as he could. Then he walked down the stairs and hopped in his SUV before she could even thank him for the compliment. She didn’t feel very pretty wearing sweats. She changed into a blouse and skirt, took a deep breath, and went to the office to tackle her novel.

Chelsea sat and wrote for the next two hours. She knew she’d be annoyed at herself if she didn’t, and as usual, she got into it once she got past the first few words. By the time Trent knocked on the door, she was so absorbed she barely heard him.

He had the bolt cutter with him, holding the end in one hand, the length of it balanced on his shoulder like the rifle of a soldier on parade. Since Dalton hadn’t left the key, Trent must have—but he wasn’t sure what it went to, or he’d not bring the bolt cutter. Chelsea smiled at herself. Her deduction skills could occasionally match those of her fictional detective.

“Good to see you,” she told him.

“It’s good to see you too.” He smiled warmly. “So what’s on the agenda for today?”

“I thought I’d take you up on that offer to help me get a mattress.”

“Sounds good. Forecast says we might get some snow next week. Have you got chains for your tires?”

Chelsea shook her head. She’d heard of tire chains, but she wasn’t even sure what they looked like.

“We better pick those up too. If you had a truck, you might get by, but there’s no way your car is making it up your driveway in radials if it’s icy. And parking on the street is not an option out here.”

She thought of the twisty mountain road and nodded. There wasn’t even any shoulder to speak of. “Does the road get plowed pretty well?”

Trent grinned. “Not if we wait for it to happen. But me and some of the neighbors get out in our trucks and keep it clear. Don’t worry. You’ll be able to get to your driveway, but getting up it is your problem.”

“Sounds more than fair.”

“We gonna be needing these?” Trent hefted the bolt cutters.

“Thank you, but no. I found the key you left, and it worked, but there’s no paintings or anything like that in it—just some old papers.” Hopefully he wouldn’t ask what kind of papers.

“I didn’t leave a key.”

Chelsea blinked. “But there was a key on my dining room table this morning, and you were the last one to leave.”

“I didn’t leave it,” insisted Trent. “I went straight out, not nosing about looking for a key, and I’d have yelled upstairs to you if I’d found one that looked like it would work on that chest.”

“Come on, Trent. Dalton didn’t leave the key, I asked him, and besides, I’m not sure he was ever even in that room. I didn’t find it sleepwalking. It had to be you.”

“If I tell you that I didn’t leave a key, I didn’t leave a key.” His annoyance seemed genuine, but it simply made no sense.

“Okay, okay.” Chelsea put her hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Anyway, there’s just some old papers in there now. Some books. I’m going to talk to an archivist when I go back to Falls Church to pick up some of my stuff and ask about the best way to handle them, because they look pretty old and the paper’s yellowing.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Not that I could tell.”

She knew she wasn’t a very good liar, and Trent looked at her for a good long time afterward.

“Okay, then,” he said at last. “It’s your stuff now in any case. Let’s get you a mattress.”

Chelsea smiled and followed him out.