Ready & Willing (8 page)

She shook her head. “No, I went into that shop looking for a chair.”

“So you think.”

“So I know.”

“Mrs. Magill, there are forces at work here beyond both you and me. That, too, is something I know with confidence.”

She eyed him warily. “Forces,” she repeated. “Like . . . a supreme being?”

It was more her tone of voice than the question itself that caught him off-guard. “Do you not believe in a supreme being?” he asked, unaccustomed to such an idea.

“Not in the traditional sense, no.”

“Then in what sense do you believe in one?”

She gave a little shrug. “I’ve always kind of considered myself an Emersonian Transcendentalist. That there’s divinity in everyone, and we achieve it by living a good life and being good people.”

“Emerson’s essay ‘Nature,’ ” Silas said, recognizing the philosophy and naming the title of the work in which Ralph Waldo Emerson first introduced it. “I find comfort in the knowledge that people still read Emerson. Though I myself found his suggestions in that particular work to be unsound.”

“You read Emerson when you were alive?”

“Don’t sound so surprised, Mrs. Magill. I read a great deal when I was alive, on a great many subjects. Yes, I read Emerson. However,” he added, “I am reasonably confident that Mr. Emerson had nothing to do with my arrival in the shop up the street.”

“And where were you before you arrived in the shop up the street?” she asked.

Silas tried to recall, but could not. “I don’t quite remember. I only know that I entered the shop at roughly the same time you did.”

He gave it some more thought, to see if any other ideas or images made an appearance in his head, then wasn’t altogether surprised when a few vague ones did. “I have a somewhat indistinct remembrance of comfort and tranquility. And an absolute absence of fear.” He waited for more impressions, but there were none. “Perhaps as time passes,” he said, “I shall be able to remember more.”

She studied him in silence for a moment longer, then nodded, once. With one quick swipe, she palmed her eyes, his cuff links still fisted in one hand. Then she pushed herself up to standing, inhaled a deep breath and released it slowly, and met his gaze again, this time dry-eyed.

“So if you showed up in the shop to meet me,” she said,

“and I can’t give away your portrait, then I guess it goes to reason that you’ll be hanging around until you do whatever you have to do. Save Nathaniel Summerfield’s soul. Or whatever he has that passes for one,” she concluded with clear disdain.

“In those assumptions, you are correct, Mrs. Magill,” Silas said. “I won’t be going anywhere until after that. And even then, I’m not entirely clear on the rules.”

“But why me?” she asked. “Why don’t you haunt Nathaniel yourself?”

The answer came to him immediately. “Because people without souls can’t be haunted.”

Her dark brows shot up at that. “Then that means his soul is already gone. We’re too late. So you should be going.” Hastily, she repeated, “Nothing personal.”

“It’s not gone yet,” Silas told her, not questioning his knowledge of that. He only knew it was true, the way he knew other things were true. “Not permanently. It’s somewhere between Nathaniel and the place souls go when they depart this world. Not here, but not there yet, either. It’s in . . .” He wasn’t sure what the word was for the condition.

“Limbo?” Mrs. Magill suggested. “Purgatory? The astral plane?”

“Not those, but something like them.”

“So how do we get it back into your descendant?” she asked. “Because having met the man, I don’t think he has room inside for a soul anymore. He’s too full of loathsomeness.”

“Yes, well, I can see how the lack of a soul might render one disagreeable.”

“Oh, trust me, Captain, your great-great-however-many-greats grandson goes way beyond disagreeable. And I suspect he was that way a long time before he crossed paths with Edward Dryden.”

Her tone of voice when she uttered the censure made Silas suspect there was something mingling with her disapproval that was not altogether disapproving. Mrs. Magill was turning out to be quite the intriguing houseguest.

He reminded himself that it was he, not she, who was the guest here. An uninvited one at that. The sooner he completed the task he had been sent here to perform, the sooner he could return to wherever he needed to return and leave her to move on with her life.

Strange, but even though he knew the place whence he had come was one of complete peace, joy, and solace, a setting that wanted for nothing and offered every comfort, he found himself reluctant to go back.

He pushed the idea away. Nonsense. The world in which Audrey Magill lived was nothing like the one Silas had inhabited while alive. As many changes as the world had wrought in his own lifetime, they were nothing compared to the ones that had come since his death. He would never find solace or comfort in this world. From what little he had learned since his return—mostly by reading Mrs. Magill’s newspaper—peace and joy seemed to be absent here. Certainly the time in which he had lived had had its share of woe and injustice, but this brave new world seemed neither brave nor new to Silas.

That thought, too, he relegated to the back of his brain. He had been charged with a task that must be completed. The sooner, the better. For everyone involved.

He was about to say that very thing to Mrs. Magill, but she spoke first. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll go see your loathsome grandson again. And I’ll do whatever I have to do to get his soul back for him.” She crossed her arms mutinously across her chest. “Even if I have to shove it down his throat.”

Five

AS AUDREY STOOD IN NATHANIEL SUMMERFIELD’S
office the following day, she took perverse pleasure in the fact that she once again hadn’t made an appointment to see him. Oh, she’d thought about making one the day before, after talking to Silas, but she’d decided the guy was probably booked up weeks in advance, and she wanted her house—and her life—returned to her as soon as possible. Besides, Nathaniel Summerfield seemed like the kind of guy who had to have his life all nice and orderly—something Audrey liked, too—and showing up unannounced would doubtless rankle him, a concept she liked. A lot.

Having some knowledge of her adversary this time, however, she’d decided to dress in the same uniform he did, so she had dug out the most masculine of her own power suits, a tailored black outfit pinstriped in a dark berry, to do battle with his. She’d also donned her pointiest-toed high heels to increase both her height and her sense of command. Her only concession to femininity was the Art Deco pin affixed to her lapel, black slants complemented by geometric shapes the same dark red color as her shirt.

His receptionist recognized her immediately and frowned, then reached for the telephone on her desk. Audrey half expected her to call security and have her thrown out, but, surprisingly, she announced her arrival to her employer. Except that she didn’t announce Audrey by name. She simply referred to her as “that woman who didn’t have an appointment yesterday, either,” in a voice that, once again, let Audrey know that, to Nathaniel Summerfield, the only thing worse than not having an appointment was . . . Well, that there was nothing worse than not having an appointment.

Even more surprising than not being immediately accosted by burly security guards was the fact that Nathaniel Summerfield evidently told his secretary to send Audrey right in. So off she went, back into the lair of Silas Summerfield’s loathsome grandson. Who, okay, didn’t look all that loathsome. There was just no denying the resemblance Nathaniel bore to his dead ancestor. He even sounded like Silas when he thanked his secretary for showing Audrey in.

The resemblance ended, however, at his attire. As he stood up from his chair behind the big desk, she saw that he was dressed much as he had been the day before, in an overwhelming power suit that had doubtless set him back four figures. But where yesterday’s had been charcoal, today’s was dark brown. Coupled with the ocher shirt and a necktie splashed with a bit of swirling whimsical color that should have looked out of place on him, but somehow didn’t look out of place at all, the ensemble made the brown eyes she’d found so tempting the day before look positively decadent now.

That almost forgotten heat erupted in Audrey’s midsection once more, and try as she did to tamp it down again, it wouldn’t quite go away. As had happened yesterday, the moment she laid eyes on the man, something inside her that had been smoldering slowly to death suddenly sparked to life again, reminding her of things—of feelings—she’d very nearly forgotten. Things—feelings—she’d been denied for far too long.

She told herself it was only because he was so handsome, a walking, talking piece of Greek god sculpture wrought by the hands of a master. But were she honest with herself—and Audrey always tried to be that—she would have to concede that it was something more than his good looks.

She’d encountered dozens of handsome men since Sean’s death, more than a few of whom had made clear their desire to get to know her better. But none of them had even given her pause. There had never been any question since Sean’s death that she would remain single for the rest of her life, because she knew she would never stop loving Sean or be able to open her heart to someone else. Even falling in love with Sean had come as a surprise. She had been convinced, even in adolescence, that she would never marry. Not just because she’d known she wanted to focus on a career, but because she’d always been a solitary person who simply didn’t invite the interest of others. The shy, introspective only child she had been matured into a private, introspective adolescent. And after her parents’ deaths, she had only retreated further into herself. Audrey had always liked her lone-wolf lifestyle, even if it had meant loneliness was a regular companion. She hadn’t minded the loneliness. Not really. Not for the most part.

Until Sean Magill had big-shouldered his way into her life and swept her off her feet and shown her just how wonderful it could be with someone living it with her.

No one would ever be able to take his place. She was as certain of that as she was her own name. Especially not someone like Nathaniel Summerfield, who couldn’t hold a candle to him. She didn’t care how good the guy looked or how many fires he started in her belly. It was her body responding to the man who came from around the desk now, and with nothing more than the sort of physical response that even the most primitive creatures felt. Not her mind. Not her spirit. Not her emotions. The human sex drive, she’d read, was second only to the human will to survive. Having been without sex for three years, it was understandable she would react this way to a sexy man. All it meant was that she was someplace in her monthly cycle where her body needed something that the rest of her absolutely did not. In a few days, she’d doubtless find Nathaniel Summerfield as attractive as a pile of laundry that needed to be put away.

“Mrs. Magill,” he said by way of a greeting, his voice lacking anything akin to warmth.

Which was ironic, because just hearing that velvety baritone again made the fire in Audrey’s midsection leap higher.

She noted he remembered to refer to her as
Mrs.
this time, something he’d seemed incapable of doing the last time she was here, in spite of her insistence that he use the designation. And why had she been so insistent? she asked herself. Normally, she didn’t correct anyone who wanted to call her Ms., mostly because it didn’t bother her, especially when it came from someone with whom she would have only temporary contact. And she’d intended for her contact with Nathaniel to be very temporary indeed. For some reason, though, she’d wanted to make sure he understood from the get-go—and for good—that she was married. Even if she wasn’t, technically, married anymore.

“Mr. Summerfield,” she replied, striving for a coolness she was nowhere close to feeling. In fact, just saying his name added fuel to the flames in her stomach, notching them higher still.

“I see you once again arrive without an appointment,” he said somewhat caustically.

“And yet you didn’t hesitate to see me again anyway,” she shot back.

Instead of tossing out another retort, he extended his hand toward the chair on the other side of his desk. After only a small hesitation—enough to let him know she was no happier about this meeting than he was—Audrey sat down, leaning back, and crossing her legs to at least offer the appearance of not feeling cowed by the man. She hoped.

Once he was seated, too—sitting in a way that made clear he was in no way cowed by her, the big jerk—she sorted through what she needed to tell him, not sure where to begin. She still didn’t know how she was supposed to convince him that his soul was currently residing in some nether realm, and that if he wanted to get it back, he was going to have to accept help from both her and a long dead relative. But he took the choice out of her hands by starting the conversation himself.

“Would you care to enlighten me as to why you’ve darkened my door? Again? Without an appointment? Again?”

Audrey allowed herself a moment of smugness at having riled him, then answered his question with one of her own. “Care to tell me why you agreed to see me? Again? Without an appointment? Again?”

He frowned at that, then leaned forward to steeple his hands on the desk and look at her in a way that made her feel like, even if he wasn’t cowed by her, she did kind of scare him. So that was cool.

“Because after you left the other day, Mrs. Magill, I experienced something kind of . . .”

Ghostly
? she wanted to ask. Then she remembered Silas couldn’t haunt his grandson now that Nathaniel’s soul was no longer a part of him, so there was little chance she would convince him she was being haunted by anything other than prophetic dreams. Not that prophetic dreams were such an easy sell, either. But that was a better place to begin. So she only said, “Something kind of bizarre? Or otherworldly? Or surreal?”