The Ghost and Miss Demure (13 page)

Of course, he’d never had any of these women look at him like he was a roasted leg of lamb smothered in mint jelly before, a seven-course meal held just out of reach of the starving victim. And it wasn’t his imagination indulging in a spot of wishful thinking. It actually happened sometimes: Karo would stare at him, and suddenly she would begin to breathe deeply, almost as if she was inhaling his scent and having an erotic daydream. Her eyes would go sort of blank and dreamy. At those times, her very readable face was an almost unbearable turn-on. It made him feel unusually hawkish and territorial.

He’d resisted her firmly for several days, but she kept doing it, so he’d finally given in and answered her silent siren call…only to see her turn away from him, to reject him completely—and apparently over some damn book.

A new, foreign instinct said to pounce quickly before she got away from him. He felt almost possessed, as if some entity compelled him to swoop down and take her, willing or not. But aberrant desires were no excuse for bad behavior, and he knew Karo’s history with unscrupulous employers. Hadn’t he already had a stern talking to with himself on that very subject? So, what ailed him all of a sudden?

His too tight slacks provided the readiest answer. The divine and insane matchmaker had been at it again. Only, this time the usual roles were reversed: it was a gold arrow for him, and apparently only a silver one for the object of his desire. He did not at all care for being on the other side of the coin.

“Bloody hell!” he said in disgust. “And it’s only been a week. I’m probably going to die before we get this house in order.”

Karo made her way across the shell drive. The sound was not cheerful. Every crunch reminded her of the last time she’d been out grinding across the sea’s dead bones. Now,
there
was an unpleasant old phrase that people didn’t use anymore. Dead bones. There was a cemetery full of human bones just behind the cookhouse, too. She had never previously been troubled by the thought of the dead being close at hand, but the thought of
old Vellacourt perhaps hanging out in his family crypt was not a pleasant one. Of course, far better the crypt than the library. What had she seen that day?

Karo ignored her sniveling id as she pushed her reluctant limbs past an overgrown rhododendron and walked up the shadowed step of the first outbuilding she came to. Giving a businesslike shove of the narrow door—she could be Clint Eastwood when she had to—she nearly fell on her face. The hasp wasn’t latched and someone had oiled the hinges. Surprising.

The inside of the old cookhouse was dark, and her graceless entrance had stirred up a smell of melancholy and disuse. The atmosphere was even less appealing than she expected, but that might have been doubled because she was half-prone on the packed earth floor and churning up a great deal of dust and droppings into an unhealthful miasma that made her wonder about the Hunta virus.

She had plenty of time while climbing back to her feet to be grateful that Tristam had convinced her to bunk in the main house. She hadn’t taken up archaeology because she didn’t like being in dirt or dealing with critters that had more than four legs or less than two. This bleak hole had both filth and a probable collection of creatures with improper leg counts. The dust was sticking to her sweaty body with aggravating persis tence, and it itched fiercely. Finishing up her search as quickly as possible, she would rush back to the main house where she could have a wash in antiseptic conditions.

Upright, Karo surveyed the moldy room, letting her eyes grow accustomed to the new dusk. She grimaced at the dozen saucer-sized daddy longlegs hanging on the wall in a living wallpaper. Arachnids, her least favorite too-manylimbed creatures—it figured that they would be here in abundance. At least this kind wasn’t dangerous since their fangs were too small to penetrate the skin. She was a bit prepared for rural perils. Of course, she had other things to deal with. Like, a ghost?

Bravely, she turned her back on the eight-legged abominations and considered the room with an artist’s eye. The space would be marginally brighter when the one tiny window was scraped clean of what she had mistakenly thought were rotted curtains but in actuality were cobwebs and other filth grown dense from years of neglect. “Ugh.” Nothing was going to make the place cheery. An electric light might help the gloom, but it smelled swampy and inhabited by unhealthful objects.

“What did you expect of the slaves’ cookhouse—Bokhara rugs and skylights?” she muttered, taking another shallow breath and then following her nose to the far left corner where the floor had settled at the foundation. It was no great shock to find that there was a small pool of stagnant water beside the old hearth; it went without saying that the roof leaked.

Karo leaned over the squirming puddle. The brown water bulged with mosquito larva. Her insides dipped sharply and she was glad that she hadn’t inhaled a large plate of Tristam’s bacon
and eggs before facing this. She would have to get the gardeners in here right away; none of them needed these bloodsuckers crawling out in the lingering autumn heat and plaguing their nights.

She straightened and turned her inspection to the scorched fireplace. It also seemed to be alive with scurrying insects. She nudged the ashes with a cautious toe and disturbed a pile of black beetles in the soot and char, though what they could be hunting for, she couldn’t begin to imagine.

“Great. A roach motel,” she muttered, wiping at her forehead with the back of her dirtied hands. The temperature was absolutely stifling. They would have to do something about the ventilation in the little building or people would be dropping like flies on a pest strip.

She saw a movement from the corner of her eye and turned reluctantly. Half of the room was very dark and filled with old pots. Could something be nesting here—an opossum or a baby squirrel? She hoped it wasn’t a snake trapped inside after the storm. Next to spiders, the creatures she feared most were snakes.

“Okay, guy. Show yourself,” she demanded bravely. “Slither for it now and you won’t get exterminated. Oh, spit!”

Once again, the spiky shadow unfolded with inhuman speed. Old Vellacourt himself was soon hanging in the corner and turning the cookhouse into a coke blaster. Karo fell back against the wall, too frightened to care about the spiders.

Amazingly, through her terror, she found her voice. “Look. If it’s about the book, there’s nothing
I can do,” she whispered, wondering with half her brain if she was truly still sane, while the other half cataloged the ghost’s seventeenth-century riding regalia. The black and gold was severely elegant and went well with his insect eyes. He was dressed as a cavalier and not a Roundhead. She tried not to think about the way his overcape billowed around him in the drafts of hot air rising up from the floor. It was much too evocative of watching sulfur clouds billow up from hell.

“And if it’s about the ghost tours…well, I can’t do much about that, either,” she went on. “I’m not the one in charge. You’d do better to take this up with Tristam or your great-great-whatever niece. She’s living in Florida.”

Nothing. Not a twitch in that expressionless face to show that he could hear.

“Look, could you maybe just tell me what you want? Do you want to be left alone? Is that it?”

The mouth opened. The thin lips pulled back from pointy teeth, and when she saw their gleaming length, Karo wished that he had remained silent.

“No,” a thin voice whispered. She had the feeling that the ghost was exerting great effort in order to speak.

“Then, you want us to bring people here?”

It was too hot to feel relief, but Karo was glad that this high-temperature spook wasn’t upset with Tristam’s plan. She had little desire to tell her employer that their deal was off and she was heading for the west coast on the first red-eye. If she walked out on this job because of a haunting, her career on the east coast was truly over.

“Yesss.” The white head nodded, and the cobweblike strands floated upward like they were rising on a thermal updraft. His cloak was spread out like bat wings, blocking the doorway.

Did he know that she wanted to run? The thought was annoying. So was the heat. Her clothes were beginning to squish with sweat. Static was dancing over her body, making her hair rise, and she was feeling faint. The only thing that kept her still was the fact that Vellacourt stood between her and the egress.

She didn’t know if it was possible to outrun a ghost, but she was ready to give it a try. The moment he moved away from her escape route, she’d book. Somehow, she couldn’t find enough courage to run
through
him.

“Okay. That’s our plan. A few more weeks and they’ll start coming. There’ll be lots of tourists, God willing and the river don’t rise.”

The ghost said nothing.

“Look.” Karo wiped her forehead again and set about bargaining. She needed a job, but there were limits. Either the spook respected her boundaries or she was out of there by sundown. She’d just have to find some way to make Tristam come with her, because in spite of her words, she didn’t want Vellacourt plaguing him. “Look, in the meantime, I’d really appreciate it if you left me alone. I do not care to sweat, you see. It’s not ladylike. I thought ghosts were supposed to be cold anyway,” she grumbled. “What’s wrong with you? Is it hellfire that’s finally got you?”

The specter gave a laugh but the only sound that came out of that white face was a dry rustling
like the beetles made while scrabbling over one another. It was unpleasant, but not terrifying. Karo’s calm returned by slow degrees. “I mean it…Hugh. May I call you Hugh?”

She watched the head nod again and forced herself to step away from the wall. Cowering was so undignified.

“Look, I can’t have you bothering me like this. Tristam is going to think I’m insane. The only reason he didn’t fire me the first time you showed up is because he thinks that I was hit by lightning and that I just don’t remember lighting that fire in the library.”

“You were hit,” the ghostly voice breathed. It was growing limber but still creaked like the wet moorings on a boat. “I arranged it so that we could talk.”

“Don’t say that!” she begged, thinking of that peculiar hole burned in her shoe and dreading that he was right. “My grip on reality is not real firm at the moment, and it wouldn’t take much to tip me right over the edge. And you wouldn’t want that to happen, would you? That might queer the tourist thing.”

“You are safe here—as safe as you want,” puffed the dry voice. He raised the whip in his hand—this was the first Karo had noticed it. “He wants you by his side. You want him, too. I can help you do everything you want. You can help me. We can all be free.”

His gaze was hungry. Men! From the dumbest to the most brilliant, the enlightened to the brutal—and even the dead—they still all wanted one thing. Okay, two things, counting research.

“No! Don’t help me with anything!” she said, looking at his riding crop and having a sudden premonition of his intent. “Don’t you even think about it! People don’t do that anymore. It objectifies women. It’s disrespectful.”

“Oui?”
he asked. But the smile was knowing. “Sometimes
objectivity
is to be admired.”

She watched as he flicked the crop against his boots. “Objectivity and objectifying are not the same things.”

“But you want…”

The notion should have been repulsive. It
was
repulsive at an intellectual level, especially if participation wasn’t voluntary. But wouldn’t it be fun, just once, to be completely and utterly in control of one’s partner? Or, okay, maybe to sometimes be relieved of the burdens of self-determination and guilt and all that twenty-first century politically correct garbage women were supposed to be masters of, to become more submissive than usual? Would it be so bad to be forced into doing what your mother and some feminists always said was wrong—to be compelled to give in and have orgasms that someone else was forcing upon you? And if that was naughty…well, you had already been punished for it! A spanking instead of five Hail Marys. Either way, no lingering guilt.

Free will was great. It was everything—almost. And while political and economic equality were to be striven for, did the battle for feminine equality have to come into the bedroom? She wanted to be in control sometimes but not thought unfeminine. She wanted to be overpowered sexually and
not thought weak. The chance to give up all that responsibility in the bedroom once in a while…

No.
No, absolutely not. Especially not now. Not with a ghost. Not even with Tristam. Well, maybe—

No. No! This creature was confusing her, playing with her brain. This wasn’t free will. Was it?

“We shall see,
ma belle
. I must warn you that I know my own kind. Sometimes you must put yourself in bondage so that you may be free.” The shade laughed again as Karo’s mind raced, and then he folded in on himself in the blink of an eye. The heat went with him, sucked into some cosmic vacuum along with that ghostly laughter.

“Hugh? Wait a minute! Are you going to leave me alone?” Karo demanded of the dark place between the pots where he’d disappeared. “I really have to insist on this…Hugh? Hugh Vellacourt! I’m not kidding. I don’t want you around me. And no kinky stuff! I’m not that kind of girl.”

At least, she hadn’t been that kind of girl before. Tristam probably didn’t go for this stuff, either. In fact, though she was sure he wanted her, he seemed to be moving in on her with the ponderous slowness of an arthritic pachyderm. Which was totally okay with her.

Except, today he hadn’t been slow. Had that been Hugh? Had the ghost somehow warped Tristam? The thought was distasteful and frightening.

“Hugh?”

Nothing stirred.

“Miz Follett? Ma’am, are you in there?” A few loud crunches and then a khakis-clad shape filled
the doorway, blocking out what little light there was.

“Yes. It’s me.” Karo peered at the dark corner where Hugh had vanished and kicked over a pot. Nothing moved. All that was left was twigs and ash and dead beetles. The ghost was truly gone.

She began to shiver. The room was suddenly quite cold, and her blouse was clinging to her like an icy rag.