Charon's Crossing (A Paranormal Romantic Suspense Novel) (11 page)

"Why? I mean, what brought him all the way from England? Do you know?"

"George the Third sent him, to govern the island. And to make money growin' sugar and turnin' it into molasses and rum."

"You mean, Charon's Crossing was a distillery?"

Olive's laughter was soft and melodious. "It was a plantation, with its land planted in sugar cane." She walked to the other side of the terrace and pointed out over the deep green landscape. "You see there? Where those flamboyants are bloomin'? Well, back behind them, all grown over now, you can still find what's left of the kitchen and the bathrooms."

"But the house has a kitchen. And several bathrooms."

"Added on, all of them. The rest of the outbuildin's, what's left, anyway, are further back. The sugar mill, the stillhouse, the boilin' sheds, the slave quarters—"

"Slave quarters?"

"Sure. There was slavery everywhere in these islands."

Kathryn grimaced. "I'd forgotten that." She looked at Olive. "Was the island really important to the English?"

"Very, until they lost the War of 1812." A mischievous grin lit her face. "Well, they didn't really lose it but they surely stopped thinkin' of themselves as the sovereigns of the seas, and all thanks to you Americans."

Kathryn laughed. "I know that much, at least. Tell me more about this man who built Charon's Crossing."

"There's not much more to tell. Lord Russell was typical of his time, I suppose. Pompous, dictatorial..." Olive frowned. "You know," she said slowly, "I'd forgotten, but he had a daughter. Her name was Catherine, too. With a
C
instead of a
K.
Could it be you were named for her?"

"I guess. My name—spelled all different ways—has always been a family favorite."

Olive hesitated. "Do people refer to you as Kat, then?"

Kathryn felt a sudden tightness in her throat.

"No," she said, after a moment, "no, they don't. Why do you ask?"

"Well, I think that was what she was called, this Catherine. Cat, you know?"

"Are you sure? How can you know that?"

"Oh," Olive said with a wave of her hand, "it is how she is spoken of in all the..."

"In all the what?" Kathryn said, when the other woman suddenly fell silent.

A flush rose in Olive's dark cheeks. "It's just jumbie nonsense, Kathryn. Surely, you are not interested in—"

"But I am." Kathryn forced a smile to her lips. "After all, this girl is my ancestor. What were you going to say?"

"Only that there are stories, that's all. Tall tales. Island tales. There is nothing unusual in that. My people have always been great storytellers."

"Tales about Charon's Crossing?"

"About everything," Olive said with a quick smile.

"And what stories are there about Cat Russell?"

"Kathryn, really, I have no wish to bore you with—"

"I'm not bored, I'm fascinated." Kathryn smiled stiffly. "What do they say about her?"

"Only that she was very beautiful."

"And? Come on, Olive. What else?"

"Well, they say men flocked to her. Powerful men. Handsome ones, the ones other women wanted." Olive leaned closer. "It is even said she had two different lovers at the same time."

Kathryn's smile eased. "Really?"

"Oh, yes. One was an older man, with lands and estates in England. Lord Waring, his name was."

"And the other?" Kathryn was leaning back against the railing now, enjoying the story. Why on earth had she been so nervous about hearing it? It was just what Olive had said, island, gossip. And, she had to admit, fun to listen to, even though it was a couple of hundred years old. She shot the other woman a conspiratorial grin. "Don't tell me," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "He was young. And gorgeous. And a rogue. Right?"

"Young, yes. He was an American, the captain of his own ship. And some did call him a rogue."

"Why? What did he do?"

"In 1811, his ship was commissioned to sail under the British flag as a privateer, seizin' ships and goods owned by the French. But they say he took to lootin' any ship he could catch, regardless of her nationality."

"A pirate," Kathryn said with delight.

"So some called him."

"Well, go on. You said he was Cat Russell's lover."

"Yes."

"And gorgeous?"

"So it is said." Olive was laughing. " 'Course, what else would they say? A rogue would never be described as anything but tall and handsome, with hair the color of burnished gold and emerald green eyes...."

Kathryn clutched the railing for support, her hands as white as her face.

"Kathryn? Kathryn, what is it? My Lord, girl, you look as if you're going to faint!"

Olive was right. She was going to pass out, right here on the terrace...

"Kathryn?"

Kathryn dragged a breath deep into her lungs.

"I'm—I'm all right," she whispered.

"You are not," Olive said in a no-nonsense tone. "I knew we should have stayed out of this sun! You need time to acclimate to—"

"Olive? This man. Do you know his name?"

"What man? Honestly, Kathryn..."

"Catherine Russell's handsome lover." Kathryn gripped the realtor's hand. "What was his name?"

Olive clucked her tongue. The girl needed a cold compress, at the very least. Her face was not only pale, it was shiny with sweat, and her fingers felt icy. But it was obvious there would be no convincing her to go indoors until she'd had her foolish question answered.

"I can't see that it matters, Kathryn," she said with a touch of impatience, "but if you must know, his name was Matthew McDowell."

Chapter 5

Kathryn stood at the front door, waving and smiling cheerfully as Olive's red Ford Escort wobbled down the rutted drive. She held the smile until the little car swung around a narrow curve and vanished in a swirl of dust, and then she groaned, slammed the door closed, and slumped back against it.

At least she'd managed to pull that off, though when you came down to it, waving your hand and smiling like an idiot wasn't half as hard as not passing out when you learned that the man who'd paid you a midnight visit had been dead for almost two hundred years.

Of course, she'd come close, but then Olive had taken over and Kathryn had been happy to let her lay the blame on the sun. Otherwise, she might have blurted out the truth and then they could both have spent the rest of the day trying to figure out if she really was going crazy or if she had, in fact, spent the hours before dawn playing hostess to Cat Russell's lover.

Instead, she'd let Olive swoop an arm around her waist, march her inside the house, put her into a chair and bring her a cold compress. Then she'd endured a lecture on fair skins and ultraviolet rays and overheated brain cells which had ended only when Olive had finally run out of breath.

By then, Kathryn had recovered her equilibrium, if not her sanity, though it had taken time to convince Olive.

"I really don't want to leave you, Kathryn," she'd said. "Maybe you want to reconsider rentin' that little house in town for the rest of the week."

Maybe I want to reconsider heading straight back to New York, Kathryn had almost answered, but that would have been out of the question. She had things to accomplish here and she couldn't accomplish them by running away.

Besides, there was nothing to run from. By then, she'd calmed down enough to know that whatever was happening had a perfectly reasonable explanation.

All she had to do was find it.

So she'd smiled brightly and assured Olive that she was fine and that she wouldn't set foot out the door until late afternoon, when the heat lessened.

"It's my English ancestors who didn't know enough to keep out of the midday sun," she'd said, "remember? 'Mad dogs and Englishmen'...?"

But coaxing a smile from Olive had been hard.

"Kathryn?" she'd said worriedly, "Is there somethin' troublin' you?"

For just an instant, Kathryn had come close to blurting it all out. But then she thought of what Olive had said about how unfortunate it would be if people started whispering about Charon's Crossing being haunted and about how superstitious islanders could be, and weren't there enough stories about this place already without adding one about a ghost?

So she'd swallowed hard, smiled, and said that the only thing troubling her was how much work the house was going to need.

Two glasses of iced water later, she'd finally managed to ease Olive out the door.

Now, Kathryn took a deep breath and closed every bolt the door possessed which was pretty stupid, all things considered.

What good were locks and bolts against a ghost?

A bubble of wild laughter rose in her throat and she clapped her hands over her mouth before it could escape.

There was nothing funny about any of this, dammit! No way.

There were no such things as ghosts. That was a given. And she had never heard the story of Gat Russell and Matthew McDowell before. So how could he have come wandering into her dream?

It was a reasonable question. Unfortunately, she had no reasonable answer. Not yet, anyway, but she'd be damned if she wouldn't find one.

Kathryn checked the door one last time. She was an old hand at finding reason in the midst of chaos, thanks to her parents. Living with them had been like riding a roller coaster, all highs and lows with very little in between.

She had learned early to ignore the fireworks around her by concentrating on emotionless things. Things she could trust, like math and computers.

And mops and brooms and plain, unvarnished hard work.

It had amused her father and baffled her mother to emerge from the scene of their latest battle, where the plates and whatever else they'd both hurled at the walls still lay broken on the floor, and find their daughter busily cleaning her bedroom or reorganizing her closet.

"Honestly, Kathryn, what are you doing?" Beverly would say in the same tone she might have used if she'd discovered a spaceship on the lawn.

"Nothing," Kathryn would answer, and she'd go right on cleaning and scrubbing and rearranging.

Now, she didn't even hesitate. She headed straight for the kitchen, banged open half a dozen cabinet doors before she found what she wanted, and set to work.

* * *

The explanation for what had happened came to her out of the blue in midafternoon.

She was on her knees in the downstairs bathroom, busily scrubbing away at a marble floor that had lightened and brightened perceptibly with a little elbow grease and a lot of Mr. Clean, when the answer popped into her head.

"Of course," Kathryn cried, "of course!"

She dropped her scrub brush into the bucket of grungy water, sat back on her heels and pumped her fist in the air in triumph.

It was so simple. So wonderfully simple. She'd tried to make sense out of Matthew McDowell's dreamtime appearance, imagining everything from smoke and mirrors to a hidden movie projector, and all the time the truth had been just waiting for her to recognize it.

She was busy cleaning up the cobwebs and junk that had accumulated in the house. Well, her brain had done the same thing. Dreams were nothing but a way of processing the odds and ends that lay around in a person's subconscious.

She grinned, thumbed her hair behind her ears and got to her feet. The only surprise was that it had taken her so long to figure it out.

She'd told Olive she'd never heard so much as a word about Charon's Crossing until she'd inherited it, or about Lord Arthur Russell and his daughter until today.

Well, that was true.

It just wasn't accurate.

Kathryn plucked the scrub brush out of the bucket and upended the dirty water into the toilet. Then she dumped the brush back in, collected the bottle of Mr. Clean, and made her way to the kitchen.

Her father would have surely talked about Charon's Crossing and its occupants at some point during the years. Trevor would have reveled in all that history and romantic nonsense. A mansion set in the midst of a tropical paradise, built by an ancestor with a beautiful, passionate daughter caught up in what might have been a love triangle...