Whispers at Midnight (36 page)

She had not made a good choice of direction
if she meant to improve her mood. The air here was still and there
was an atmosphere of despair such as one might expect to find in a
cemetery. But there was more. There was the disquieting feel of
unrest, as if those who lay within the iron gates had not found the
peace that death promised.

A high iron fence of ornate Oriental design
surrounded the plot. The fence was wrapped in the tangle of a
honeysuckle vine that still bore a few stray blooms. A single bee
buzzed in a lonely vigil about one of those blossoms to collect the
sweet nectar that lent a faint fragrance to the air.

The cemetery itself was nestled inside a
copse of small oaks which in the hot afternoon cast gloomy shadows
over the weather-darkened gravestones. Amanda felt flushed and warm
after the exertion of her walk. She did not like this place.
Already she regretted having come. But as she drew near, she was
compelled by a rather sudden if morose curiosity to take a closer
look at the tombstones. Without hesitating more, she unfastened and
swung open the heavy gate.

It was almost as if she had entered a
closed-off room, dank and musty with age. The temperature seemed a
few degrees cooler inside, but surely that was her imagination: the
coolness was caused by the shade, nothing more.

She had meant to visit this place sooner,
but somehow had put off doing so. Jubal Wicklow was buried here,
and it was a simple matter to tell which was his tombstone. There
was one that overshadowed the others both in design and in size and
was as ostentatious in its own way as was Wicklow. Almost as
prominent as his stone was the empty patch of ground beside it that
had been reserved for Evelyn.

Amanda could not make herself walk on that
bit of earth. She made her way cautiously around it. Poor Evelyn.
Where had her bones come to rest? Had she once hoped to lie beside
her husband in eternity?

Just standing by Jubal Wicklow’s grave gave
her a shivery feeling. His stone was nearly as tall as a man and
carved of gray marble. Formed into the top was a small figure she
recognized as a likeness of the Turkish King; above it were the
three circles like the windows at Wicklow.

Amanda drew nearer, feeling, oddly, an aura
or presence about the place that made the hairs tingle on the back
of her neck.

Slowly she knelt before Jubal’s tombstone
and scraped away a layer of velvety green moss that had crept up
from the ground. A heavy stillness hovered like a grim cloud inside
the black iron bars of the cemetery fence. It seemed greatest near
the old man’s grave.

“Jubal Wicklow,” she read aloud from the
marble pillar that stood like a pagan tower among the simpler
tombstones bearing Christian symbols and inscriptions. Below his
name she found the dates of his birth and death carved into the
stone. Beneath the likeness of the king the word “Guardian” had
been carved. Just beneath that was an inscription lettered in
Persian.

Slowly she traced a finger over the symbols.
Not because she wanted to but because some peculiar prompting made
her do so. She believed she had seen the inscription elsewhere, and
at last realized it was the same as that written on the base of the
Turkish King.

Her curiosity aroused once more, she thought
there must be some reason of significance for Jubal Wicklow to have
had the passage repeated on his tomb. She determined she would copy
the symbols and see if she could find a translation.

If there were any truth to the tale of gold
being hidden in the house, it stood to reason that Jubal would have
left a clue. It occurred to her . . . No, that was not the case at
all. She had not really come to the conclusion without help. Her
mind had been guided to believe that the inscription was
meaningful.

Amanda rose to her feet. The atmosphere of
the graveyard depressed her. She did not think she could stand any
more of the gloom of the place. It reeked of heartache.

She decided to walk down to the river and
follow its bank back to Wicklow.

But just as she pushed the gate open to
leave, she heard the sound of a horse’s hooves on the road below.
She knew the rider could not see her because of the shield given by
the clump of trees.

And yet she had a clear view of the road for
many yards in each direction. Perhaps if the hoofbeats had not
stopped, she would not have been prompted to stop and look, but
when the rider halted and dismounted, Amanda paused to see if there
were some trouble.

She was surprised to see that the rider was
a woman dressed in a dark gray riding habit. As she dismounted, she
was mostly hidden behind her horse, but Amanda could determine that
she had shielded her eyes and was looking about as if uncertain of
her direction. Amanda was about to start down the hill to offer
assistance when she heard the sound of another horse approaching.
Some instinctive feeling made her draw back in the cover of the
trees until the second rider galloped into sight. This one she
recognized at once. There was no doubt the red-haired man was
Gardner, nor that the roan was the gelding he rode.

Gardner dismounted quickly and passionately
embraced the woman who waited. They were clear of the horses by
this time and the woman had removed her hat, but was still
unrecognizable because a scarf she had tied over her hair partially
hid her face.

Amanda’s breath caught in her throat. She
was filled with a queer apprehension that grew even greater a
moment later when the couple led their horses from the road and
into the forest. Uneasily she latched the gate behind her and
hurried along the path to Wicklow, having abruptly forgotten her
desire to walk by the river.

She knew she had witnessed an assignation,
and suddenly she was remembering the woman she had seen in the
window that first day Gardner had come to Wicklow. Was it the same
woman who had impersonated her and claimed the emerald earrings in
Williamsburg?

She broke into a near-run before she reached
the house, the dull, nagging edge of doubt racking her mind. Had
she been suspicious of the wrong brother all along? Who was the
woman Gardner had met secretly? She wished she had been able to
glimpse that mysterious face.

As Amanda ran up the broad steps, Wicklow
seemed unnaturally quiet and repelling. The sun was beginning to
slide from the evening sky, and as she entered, she found the hall
dark. For a moment she had the sensation she might be stepping into
a dark tunnel from which she would never emerge. She knew
immediately she would find no one else inside and was struck as
suddenly by how starkly alone she actually was.

She would have welcomed even Ezra’s annoying
squawks and recitations as she climbed the dark stairs, but he too
had deserted her. She felt, as she never had, the vastness of
Wicklow, its size and silence, its strangeness seeming to mock the
emptiness in her life.

It was true she had filled the house with
people, but none of those staying at Wicklow were bound to her by
more than the urgency of their own needs. Now she wondered too if
there were not among them some involved in a plot to oust her from
the house.

She was convinced beyond a doubt that both
Ryne and Gardner believed there was gold hidden in the house, and
one of them wanted her out of the way in order to find it. Which
one? How would she know which one? She lay down upon the bed and
buried her head in the pillow. She needed a plan to protect herself
. . . if it were possible to do so alone.

***

“She is sleeping so soundly I hadn’t the
heart to awaken her,” Emma reported as she returned to the dining
room, having come down from Amanda’s room.

“Is she ill?” Trudy asked.

She sat next to Ryne. Gardner was at the
head of the table and Emma at his left. Trudy was smiling and
radiant, having been barraged by a steady outpouring of compliments
from Ryne since she had come downstairs.

“Poor dear looks exhausted,” Emma went on as
she took it upon herself to direct Gardner’s Mrs. Campbell to begin
serving dinner. “All that worry over the jewelry being taken, you
know. Upset her badly. Worse than she lets on.”

“A baffling puzzle,” Gardner commented as he
swirled the contents of his wineglass in a slow circle before
tasting it. “My bet is one of Mother’s former servants came
searching for the jewelry, found the receipt by chance, and seized
upon the opportunity to claim the emeralds.”

Trudy’s eyes dropped to her lap beneath the
arresting smile and penetrating blue gaze of Ryne’s eyes.

“Meet me in the garden . . . midnight,” he
whispered to Trudy as Emma turned her head to Mrs. Campbell and
ordered that a tray be prepared for Amanda. When Emma looked
around, Ryne spoke up loudly. “What other explanation could there
be?”

Trudy giggled behind her napkin as Ryne
caught her eye and again exchanged a private message with her.

Emma’s brows raised disapprovingly. She shot
Trudy a dispraising glance which seemed to have a withering effect
on the girl. Trudy’s smile disappeared and she began to toy with
the food before her as if her appetite too had vanished.

Ryne, however, was undaunted by Emma’s
censuring glance and continued his fond perusal of Trudy.

He quite blatantly placed his hand over
Trudy’s on the table and said, “I would like for you to ride with
me tomorrow, Trudy. Would you?”

Trudy’s lips quivered slightly and spots of
color rose to her cheeks. “I shall have to ask my aunt’s
permission,” she mumbled.

Ryne’s mouth spread into a grin of
amusement. “Have you any objection, Mrs. Jones?”

Emma focused her remonstrative gaze steadily
on his face.

“Perhaps another time, Mr. Sullivan. Too
much sun isn’t advisable for a young lady, you know.”

Ryne raised Trudy’s hand halfway to his lips
and squeezed it. “Another time,” he said softly, cocking his head
to one side. “Another time.”

Gardner watched with interest the drama
played out before him and smiled inwardly at seeing his brother
crash against a stone wall in an attempt to make a conquest of
Trudy Cole. He could charm the girl but he could not fool the aunt,
and she would have no part of his schemes.

Emma Jones would like to snare Ryne for
Trudy, but as a husband, not as a paramour.

He watched Ryne down a glass of wine and
signal for another. A woman would be Ryne’s undoing too—a sort of
family curse, he supposed.

Gardner was lost in thought, his jaw line
tight as he explored a problem that weighed on him like a
millstone. He did not hear Emma speaking to him until she had
called his name a second time.

“Mr. O’Reilly, what is your opinion? Do you
believe your grandfather had a cache of gold in this house?”

Gardner caught the deep gleam of interest in
Emma’s black-button eyes. The topic of conversation always came
around to the hidden gold among those who were new to Wicklow. That
his grandfather had pirated a fortune in gold coin and hidden it at
Wicklow when the house was built was a rumor that would not
die.

Gardner drew in a deep, thoughtful breath
but his expression remained sober. As a matter of fact, he did
believe the rumor. He had recently found reference to the gold in
papers his mother had entrusted to him before her death. But he
decided, as a matter of caution, that that opinion was best kept to
himself.

“Well, Mrs. Jones,” he answered slowly, “I
think my grandfather was a man who enjoyed creating a sensation in
any way possible. You need only to look round this house to see to
what lengths he would go for that end. It is likely he started the
rumor of gold himself, and equally as likely it has no basis. Keep
in mind that two generations of Wicklow descendants have failed to
find any treasure.”

Ryne laughed. “My brother does not tell you
that as youths he and I nearly took this house apart plank by plank
in search of that gold. If Grandfather did hide gold here, he did
it exceedingly well and left no clue.” Ryne tilted back his head
and downed the entire contents of his wineglass in one swallow.

“If gold were found now, it would belong to
Miss Fairfax, would it not?” Emma smiled comfortably and served
another helping of yams to her plate.

“It would,” Gardner admitted. “But the
Wicklow gold has no more substance than those ghosts who are said
to haunt the house.” He laughed. “You have not been confronted by
them, have you, Mrs. Jones?”

“I am not superstitious, Mr. O’Reilly. I
find it much easier to believe in gold than ghosts.” Emma laid
aside her fork and dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “It might
interest you to know that Miss Fairfax believes she has a found a
clue which confirms the story of hidden gold. Is that not so,
Trudy?”

A blush came easily to Trudy’s fair skin.
“Yes,” she answered in an almost nervous voice, giving the
impression that she was just a little afraid of her aunt. “Amanda
found a ship’s log kept by your grandfather. One entry states that
a chest of gold was secreted out of an Eastern country and brought
to Virginia.”

“And does it tell more about the gold?” Ryne
asked.

“No,” Trudy said. “The writing is faded and
difficult to read. We have not gotten beyond that account. Your
grandfather was fond of inserting poetry in the midst of an entry,
and that has absorbed our interest as well.”

“Poetry, you say,” Gardner commented
lightly, though his fingers were gripping the stem of his glass so
tightly the knuckles stood out. “You must keep us posted,” he went
on. “If you find another mention of the gold, perhaps I can be
convinced my grandfather did not originate those rumors as a
prank.”

“But beware,” Ryne chimed in, his voice
unsteady from the wine he had consumed. “If the tale of the gold is
true, it stands to reason that the ghosts exist as well. We might
find the treasure guarded by the ghost of Grandfather Jubal
himself. I have heard he was a heartless bastard to his
enemies.”