Four Dukes and a Devil (8 page)

They stood, awkwardly silent, next to each other in the dark. She wondered where the dog had gone. If she came back the next day and found it, would she also find her dress?

Distantly, she heard water lapping at the shore across the street. Did Sam hear that in his bedroom when he went to sleep at night?

“How well do you know Covington Burgess?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest. The evening’s chill had penetrated her sweatshirt.

Sam shrugged, pushing his hands into his pockets. “Well, I live right across the street from him, but I wouldn’t say I know him well. He’s got pretty much a hand in everything around town, too, from the school board to the town council, so it’s hard not to have some dealings with him if you live here. How do
you
know him?”

“I only know of him. Rachel said something about him being…” She hesitated, realizing Sam might consider him a friend. “She, uh, she just said he might be…” Her wine-addled brain couldn’t come up with an alternative to the truth.

Sam laughed, and angled toward her, adding in a low voice, “A pain in the ass?”

She smiled, relieved. “Something like that.”

The rumble of an engine came from behind Covington’s house, and headlights illuminated the driveway. Two widely spaced headlights, Gray noted, before an enormous, seventies-era Oldsmobile crept into the light from the streetlamp.

“Oh my God.” Unconsciously, Gray stepped closer to Sam. “Is he okay to drive that thing? How does he see over the wheel?”

She could feel Sam’s warmth as he took her hand again. “Telephone book,” he whispered.

The three of them sat on the long bench seat in the front, Gray in the middle, leaning heavily into Sam, her hands clutching his forearm as they bounced over the gravel-and-sand road that led to Gray’s house by the sea. When it came into view, the place loomed in the inky night, a hulking, sprawling shape against the shore. Gray blinked, a sinking feeling in her gut. The place couldn’t have looked more ominous. Surely it was the power of suggestion. Though Covington Burgess hadn’t said much, his
You ain’t heard it yet, I gather
was enough to confirm that if he hadn’t started the rumors about the house being haunted, he at least had heard them.

Why hadn’t she left any lights on? she wondered, feeling trepidation to her core. Then,
hadn’t
she left lights on? She could swear she remembered turning on the outside floods before she left, knowing she’d be driving home in the dark. Had something happened? She glanced uneasily from window to window as if she might catch a glimpse of Mrs. Danvers from
Rebecca
in one of the windows, about to set fire to the place.

“Here you go, missy,” Covington said. “Don’t know how you stay here, myself. Place has always given me the creeps. Might want to leave some lights on next time you go out.”

“Th-thank you.” Gray slid across the seat as Sam opened the door and got out, gently pulling his arm out from under her clawlike grip. She glanced at the elfin man beside her. His face, lit only by the dashboard light, looked vaguely malevolent, like the face of the house. “For the ride. It was nice meeting you,” she added, taking Sam’s hand to rise from the car.

“You be careful, now.” Though the words were kind, he said them as if irritated at having to remind her. Covington dipped his head to look out the passenger door. “Sam, you ready?”

The car drifted forward with a groan of ancient brakes, and he threw it in
PARK
. The machine lurched against the transmission.

She stumbled into Sam as the car moved. “You gonna be all right?” Sam asked, steadying her.

“Would you mind coming in with me?” she asked, voice low, eyeing the darkened house anxiously. “Just for a minute. To make sure everything’s…okay?”

“Sure.” He smiled softly. “Hey, are you all right? You’re shaking.”

She forced a little laugh. “I’m just cold. And it’s so dark.”

He nodded, looked at her an extended moment, then leaned down to look in the open car door at Covington. “Hey, Cov, why don’t you go on back? I’m going in with Gray just to check the place out.”

“I can wait,” the man snarled. “Long’s you ain’t plannin’ on painting the livin’ room or nothin’ while you’re in there.”

“No, no. I don’t want you to wait. I can ride her bike home. It’s not that far. You go on back to bed. I’m sorry we woke you.”

“You didn’t wake me. I was awake anyway. Just ’cause you wah makin’ more noise than a flock a geese don’t mean I wasn’t awake already. Damn arrogant,” he finished, muttering the final words.

“Uh, okay, good. Glad we didn’t wake you. I’ll be fine here, really. You go on.”

Covington’s fuzzy head began to shake, and a sound like wheezing emerged from his throat. A laugh, Gray realized after a moment of alarm.

“I see what yah up to. Young men nevah change,” he crowed. “All right, then. I’ll go on.”

He shifted the car into reverse and nearly took Sam’s head off as the car lumbered backward. He slammed on the brake.

Sam took hold of the door, said, “Thanks for the ride!” and closed it.

Covington pulled backward out of the drive. They were alone, in a pitch-black night, with the sea roaring softly in the background and a possibly haunted house standing sentry in the foreground.

“How do you know that I have a bike?” Gray asked suspiciously.

Was it her imagination, or did he look abashed?

“Everybody’s got a bike around here. Lots of times they come with the rental house.” He took her arm. “Come on. Let’s check this place out.”

They walked down the drive, sand crunching softly beneath their feet and the ocean growing louder as they approached the house. The place was perched high on a cliff, but tucked behind a dune covered in sea grass, making the beach from ground level just the ghost of an idea beneath the sliver of moon.

“I love this old place,” Sam said, as they pushed up the dune on the ocean side of the house by mutual yet unspoken assent.

“You know it?” she asked, as the sea came into view, white-caps folding in on themselves against the shore below.

“I’ve known it since I was a kid. My family used to come here on vacation—I grew up outside of Boston—and we always made up stories about this old place, not that it doesn’t have enough stories all on its own. The fact that it’s situated all by itself on such a big plot of land made it look especially old. Like even time had given it a wide berth.”

“Do you know about the ghost, then?”

He turned, and she caught the flash of his smile in the moonlight. “The Duke of Dunkirk?”

“Yes, exactly! So you know the tale? Rachel thought Covington Burgess had made it all up, to keep them from getting a good price on the house.”

“Cov?” He shook his head. “Nah. That legend’s been around for decades. Not that it isn’t exactly the kind of thing he’d do. But I remember reading about the duke in an old book when I was a kid.”

“But the supposed fact that he was buried here, under this house, that’s just crazy. Why would a duke be buried here?”

“Well, he wasn’t a duke when he got here. Or rather, he didn’t know he was a duke.”

“What do you mean?” She shivered in the cold.

“Do you want to go inside?” He reached an arm out for her, and she tucked herself into his shoulder, smiling.

“No. I want to hear the story.”

They gazed out over the ocean.

“All right, then. The duke was apparently born a younger son. Not, in other words, destined to inherit the title. So, being an adventurous young man, he decided to come to the New World and try his hand at whaling. While he was gone, though, both his father and his older brother died, making him the duke. The sad thing is, he never knew it. He died on a whaling expedition, and his buddies brought him back here to bury him. Legend has it he walks the earth as the ghostly Duke of Dunkirk because he never got the chance to be duke while he was alive.”

“But surely once he died, the title fell to someone else. Making the whole ‘walking the earth as the duke’ thing kind of pointless.”

“That’s just it. When he died, the title died with him. He was the last of the line. So I guess his mission is to keep the Duke of Dunkirk as alive as he’s able to be.”

Gray snuggled into Sam’s side. It was amazing how comfortable she felt with him. His arm around her shoulders felt just right, and their bodies fit together in a lovely, cozy way. She had the brief thought they might fit in other ways, too. She shivered, but not with cold.

“Come on,” Sam said. “Let’s get you inside. You’re freezing. I’ll just check the place out and go.”

As they started to turn toward the house something caught Gray’s eye, and she froze, staring down at the beach.

“What?” he asked.

She peered into the darkness, unsure if she was losing her mind or not, but the beach was now empty. A second ago she could have sworn she’d seen the white dog loping along the sand.

“Nothing,” she said, scanning the beach for the man in the long coat. But whatever she’d seen was gone. Or had never been there. She laughed, looking up at Sam. “I think all this talk of ghosts has gone to my head!”

T
he house was chilly when they entered, clattering into the mudroom with sand in their shoes and the suddenly still feeling against their cheeks of stepping out of the wind.

“I thought I left the heat on,” Gray said. “And some lights. That’s so odd.”

“Maybe it’s a fuse.” Sam waited a beat while they moved into the kitchen from the side door. “Or the ghost.”

She laughed nervously. “You don’t really believe all that stuff, do you? About the dead duke and all?”

He looked around the kitchen as they stepped from the mudroom. It looked just the way he’d always pictured it. Painted cabinets, high ceiling, old but solid-looking appliances, hardy wood counters. “Hey, anything’s possible.”

She flipped a switch, and the kitchen lights came on.

He raised his brows. “That rules out the fuse.”

She sent him an eye roll. “Reality rules out the ghost. I’m just going to check the thermostat.”

She headed for the dining room, and Sam followed, nearly plowing into her when she stopped suddenly, sniffing the air. “Do you smell that?” She turned slowly in a circle, nose in the air.

“What is it, Lassie?”

She shot him a half-amused glance. “It’s the weirdest thing. Every now and again I could swear I smell smoke. Not like the house is on fire, but cigarette or pipe smoke. It’s happening again now. Don’t you smell that?”

He sniffed.

“See what I mean?” She watched him intently.

“Yeah.” He walked the perimeter of the room. “Actually, yeah. It’s faint but…”

“Do you think something’s burning?”

He shook his head. “Doesn’t smell like wood burning. It’s like you said, more like a pipe or something. You know…” he added, “the Duke of Dunkirk was rumored to be an avid pipe smoker…” He gave her an intense look of doom.

She went motionless, eyes wide. “Really?” Her voice was close to a whisper.

God, I am an ass.
He smiled and shook his head. “I have no idea. I was just messing with you.”

She let out a breath, her shoulders sagging, but he could see amusement in her eyes.

“Thanks a lot. I wasn’t even thinking it was the ghost.” She moved to the thermostat. “Here’s the problem. It’s pushed down below fifty. No wonder it’s not on.”

She moved the plastic lever to the right, the furnace kicked on with a thump and a groan.

“Do you mind if I look around a little?” he asked. “I’ve been curious about this place my whole life, always wondered what it looked like inside.”

“Sure, go ahead.” She watched him walk from the room and admired his physique. She was glad he wasn’t in a hurry to go home. Even better, while he was looking around, she’d have the chance to clean herself up a little. She had the feeling her hair was wild, and her makeup definitely needed touching up.

Ten minutes later she found him in the music room. At least, she called it the music room. It was where the ancient stereo and crateful of record albums were. She’d found some old Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald, one with Louis Armstrong, and had been playing them since she got here.

He knelt before the crate, flipping through the albums. When he heard her enter, he turned his head and grinned at her. “Hey, you
do
have all of Sinatra’s albums on vinyl. There’s some really good stuff in here.”

She knelt beside him. “I know. The old jazz is my favorite.”

“Oh, man, this is
great.
” He pulled an album from the back and flipped it over, reading.

“What?” She leaned close, brushing his shoulder with hers.

“Rubenstein, playing the Emperor Concerto.” He glanced at her. “Beethoven. Does this thing work?” He lifted the plastic cover over the turntable.

“Yes. I’ve been playing it every day since I got here. I was amazed the needle was still good. The thing looked like it hadn’t been touched in a decade.”

“Okay, go stand over there. Midway between the speakers. This is going to blow you away.”

She looked at him curiously, and he gave a sheepish smile. “Sorry. Don’t mean to order you around, but trust me, you’ll love this.”

“I didn’t feel ordered around.” She stood and moved to the center of the room. “I just didn’t realize you were a classical music buff.”

“All my life.” He handled the album gingerly, careful not to touch the surface. “My parents told me I was born humming Bach. Now, close your eyes.”

She smiled. “Okay.”

Moments later she heard the low
thump
of the needle making contact with the record and the
pop
and
hiss
of vinyl. The opening orchestral chord made her jump, then the hands of a master descended on the piano keyboard. From the opening arpeggio, she was enraptured. Sam had turned the music up so loud that the notes seemed to travel both up her spine and the keyboard in unison, swelling around her, buoying her upon a wave of sound.

It was marvelous. As the music built to crescendo after crescendo, piano and orchestra merging and dancing against one another, she felt a form of delirium take her. She’d never experienced music like this before, thunderous enough to drown out all her thoughts, yet so beautiful it filled her with joy. As if the strings had been plucked within her, vibrating her emotions.

Behind her, she felt Sam move close, the nearness of his body creating ripples of sensation within her even though he didn’t touch her.

She turned her body to face him and found him looking down at her, eyes gentle in warm light. She was overcome with the desire to touch him, to feel him touch her, to make a connection with this man who really had very little to do with who she was or what she wanted. Yet he felt so familiar, as if she’d known him for years.

Whatever part of herself she had shed earlier in the evening was the part that had determined this man was not her type, and all that was left was the impassioned woman here before him. A woman enraptured by the music, and the night, and his presence, and the very air around them that still trembled with the last notes of Beethoven.

In the silence, her fingers rose to his chest and traced the outline of his breast pocket. “Thank you for that. It was…incredible. I’ve never heard anything like it.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it.” He said it quietly, as if he meant it,
really
meant it. As if for him it wasn’t just something to say.

“Thank you, too, for coming in with me tonight,” she said, adding, chagrined, “I was nervous.”

Slowly, he reached out, and his hands came to rest on her hips. “Are you nervous now?”

The low tone of his voice set her nerves atremble.

She looked up into his face, complex, changeable, expressive. She felt like she could look at that face forever and never be bored.

With a tightening of his fingers, he pulled her close, his body against hers, and bent his head down to catch her lips.

The fire was immediate and furious. The fire between them, that was. If she’d thought she’d smelled smoke before, this was an all-out conflagration.

His hands moved up to cup her face, his mouth probing, his hips pressing hers. Against his hard body, hers went soft, melting into him, going hot and liquid to her core.

Could she possibly be this reckless? What on earth could stop her? She had never in her life slept with someone on a first date—and this hadn’t even been a date. But she was consumed by a desire so fierce she didn’t recognize herself. Her hands roved up his back, then down to his hips, clutching the taut muscles of his buttocks and pulling his hardness against her.

His hands dropped to her breasts, pushed up under her sweatshirt, then under her shirt. She felt his hot palms on her flesh and moaned with relief. She had to have him, she could not—
would not
—stop herself.

At first she thought he had moaned in return, and registered it as vaguely odd that she’d seemed to feel it in the floor. But when an inhuman wail vibrated up the walls, she froze.

Sam did, too.

They both looked over at the turntable. It had turned itself off.

“What the hell was that?” Sam’s voice was almost as low a rumble as the furnace.

“I…I have no idea.”

You ain’t heard it yet, I gather.

Fainter now, but still audible was a weary
woo-ooo-ooo,
a sound for all the world like something a cartoon ghost would make at a Halloween party.

“Do you think this is this what Covington Burgess was talking about?” She gripped his arms with rigid hands.

Sam pulled back and raised one brow. “Let’s not go invoking ghosts just yet. Seems to me it has to be the heating system. Have you used the furnace before?”

“Yes, I’ve had it on most nights since I got here. So, five nights, not including tonight.”

He looked at her in bemusement. “Gray, it’s June.”

“Sam, it’s cold. Don’t forget, I come from Virginia. Where summer means
warm
weather. Besides, I’ve never heard anything like
that
before.”

The sound had stopped, but inside Gray’s head it echoed like a threat.

Sam’s eyes scanned the room. “I’ll go check it out. Is there a basement? And a flashlight?”

“Yes to the basement. I’ll look for a flashlight.”

She rummaged through some drawers in the kitchen until she came up with an old but solid Maglite. She watched him make his way down the wooden steps to the basement. It was really more of a cellar, with a packed-dirt floor and rough stone walls that looked as if the long-ago builders had chipped the foundation out of the earth with miners’ picks.

“I’ll wait here,” she said, as Sam opened the door to the basement.

He glanced back at her, amused. “Good idea.”

As Sam disappeared into the dim light of the single-bulbed cellar, Gray sat on the top step. The sound had stopped, but the chill in the house remained. Didn’t they say you felt a chill when a ghost was around?

She laughed at herself. She didn’t believe in ghosts. Besides, it seemed pretty obvious this was a furnace problem. But what about the smoke smell, she wondered, then shook her head against the thought. This was what came of getting way overheated only to be left to cool off on her own.

Which brought her to the bigger issue of Sam. Ten minutes ago she’d been ready to jump into bed with him. Had he felt the same? Certainly he had seemed to.

A puff of air brushed by her cheek, and she smelled smoke again. She sat up straight, put a palm to her face, and sniffed the air, her heart racing. A second later the hairs on the back of her neck rose, as if someone stood just behind her. She twisted, pushing her back against the doorjamb.

The kitchen behind her was empty. Silent.

In fact, the basement was silent, too.

“Hey, how’s it going down there?” she called, peering down the stairs. She was starting to creep herself out. “Sam?”

The ensuing silence sent her pulse racing. She stood, one hand gripping the handrail, and stared at the six square feet of basement visible from the top of the stairs as if she could conjure him.

She heard a rustling, briefly imagined Sam wrestling with an ethereal nobleman, and took one step down the staircase.

“Sam?” Her voice was reedy. She cleared her throat. “Sam!”

A moment later he appeared at the bottom of the steps. His hair was tousled, his shirt collar askew, and what looked like a large spiderweb clung to one sleeve.

“It’s definitely your furnace.” He wiped at the web with one hand, making a face as it clung to his fingers. “The filter looks like it’s been there since the turn of the century, but there’s a valve on it I’ve seen go bad before. That’s what made the woo-woo whistling sound. I can come back tomorrow with my tools and fix it up.”

“Oh good.” She took a deep, relieved breath. Just seeing him put her at ease. She looked at his hands, imagined them taking their time…exploring…She shook herself, dragged her eyes to his face. “It’s strange that it was so
loud,
though. Do you think that’s why people have said this place is haunted?”

“Maybe. The noise travels up through the ducts, so that probably amplifies it, makes it echo. And then there’s your smoke problem.”

She noticed he held something. “What’s that?”

He grinned and lifted the narrow box in one hand. “The ghostly pipe. An old carton of cigarettes hidden behind the furnace. Somebody here must have been a closet smoker.”

Gray tilted her head. “I don’t think Robert smokes, Rachel would hate that.”

He shook his head. “These are old. The box and a couple of the packs inside are a little singed from the heat, but you can still see that this is not modern packaging. Take a look. They’re probably ten years old.”

“Is the furnace that old?”

He made a sound between a scoff and a laugh. “That furnace is ancient. I’m surprised they haven’t had to replace it. I can patch it up, but it’s a miracle it’s still working.”

He started up the stairs, holding out a deep purple box with the words
Pall Mall
on it, along with some sort of crest.

“Ooh.” She took the box in both hands. “My grandfather used to smoke these. I was devastated when he died.”

“Lung cancer?”

She gave a dire laugh. “Yeah. Go figure.”

“I guess we’ve solved the mystery, then. Laid the ghost to rest, as they say. You going to be around tomorrow?”

She startled. “Uh. Around? Sure. Maybe not awake, considering it’s going on 2:00
A
.
M
. now.” She laughed, dragging her mind back to the problem at hand. Her brow furrowed. “You know how to do that? Fix furnaces and stuff?”

“Sure, I do it all the time.”

Ah,
she thought.
He must be some kind of plumber.
“Well, great.”

She stepped back from the doorway as he reentered the kitchen, unsure what to do. Gray placed the cigarettes on the counter, and the flashlight, then they stood there for an awkward moment.

Gray thought he might move in to kiss her again—pick up where they left off when the “ghost” moaned—but instead he pushed his hands into his pockets and looked toward the door.