“He wouldn’t have.” Hayley spoke quietly. “From everything we’ve learned about him, he wouldn’t have brought a woman of her class, one he considered a convenience, a means to an end, into the house he was so proud of. He wouldn’t have wanted her around his son—the one he was passing as legitimate. It’d be a constant reminder.”
“That’s a good point.” Harper stretched out his legs, crossed them at the ankles. “But if we believe she died here, then we have to believe she
“Maybe she passed as a servant,” Stella suggested. She gestured, and her wedding ring glinted gold in the softening light. “If Beatrice didn’t know her, what she looked like, Amelia might have managed to get a position in the house, so she’d be close to her son. She sings to the children of the house, she’s obsessed with the children here, in her way. Wouldn’t she have been even more so with her own child?”
“It’s a possibility,” Mitch commented. “We haven’t found her through the household records, but it’s a possibility.”
“Or she came here to try to get him.” Roz looked at Stella, at Hayley. “A mother, frantic, desperate, and not completely balanced. She sure as hell didn’t go crazy after she died. I’m not willing to stretch credulity that far. Doesn’t it play that she would have come here, and something went terribly wrong? We have to consider that if she came here, she might have been murdered. Blood money to cover up the crime.”
“So the house is cursed.” Harper lifted a shoulder. “And she haunts it until, what, she’s avenged? How?”
“Maybe just recognized,” Hayley corrected. “Given her due, I guess. You’re her blood,” she said to Harper. “Maybe it’s going to take Harper blood to put her to rest.”
“I have to say that sounds logical.” David gave a little shudder. “And creepy.”
“We’re a bunch of rational adults sitting around talking about a ghost,” Stella reminded him. “It doesn’t get much more creepy.”
“I saw her last night.”
At Hayley’s statement all eyes turned to her. “And you didn’t tell us?” Harper demanded.
“I told David this morning,” she shot back. “And I’m telling everybody now. I didn’t want to say anything in front of the kids.”
“Let’s get this on record.” Mitch rose to go to the table for his tape recorder.
“It wasn’t that much of a big.”
“We agreed last spring after the last two violent apparitions, that everything goes on the record.” He came back to sit again, and set the recorder on the table. “Tell us.”
Talking on tape made her feel self-conscious, but she related everything.
“I hear her singing sometimes, but usually when I go in to check, she’s gone. You know she’s been there. Sometimes I hear her in the boys’ room—Gavin’s and Luke’s old room. Sometimes she’s crying. And once I thought . . .”
“Thought what?” Mitch prompted.
“I thought I might’ve seen her walking outside. The night y’all left on your honeymoon, after we had the wedding party here? I woke up—had a little more wine than I should, I guess—and I had a little headache. So I took some aspirin, checked on Lily. I thought I saw someone, out the window. There was enough moonlight that I could make out the blond hair, the white dress. It appeared like she was going toward the carriage house. But when I opened the doors, to go out on the terrace and get a better look, she was gone.”
“Didn’t we have an agreement, starting after Mama finally decided to clue us in about nearly being drowned in the bathtub, that we put everything on record?” Anger simmered in Harper’s voice. “We don’t wait a damn week to make an announcement.”
“Harper,” Roz said dryly. “That horse is dead. Don’t start beating it again.”
“We had an agreement.”
“I didn’t know for sure.” Hayley’s back went up, and it reflected in her tone as she glared down at Harper. “I still don’t. Just because I thought I saw a woman walking toward your place didn’t mean she was a ghost. Could just as likely—more likely—have been flesh and blood. What was I supposed to do, Harper, call you over at the carriage house and ask if you were getting a bootie call?”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Well, there you are.” Pleased, she nodded decisively. “It’s not like you never have female company over there.”
“Fine, fine. Just FYI, I didn’t have female company—flesh and blood variety—that night. Next time, follow through.”
“Class,” Mitch said mildly, and gave a professorial tap of pencil on notebook. “Can you tell us any more about what you saw, Hayley?”
“Honestly, it was only a few seconds. I was just standing there, hoping the aspirin would kick in before morning, and I caught a movement. I saw a woman—a lot of blond or light hair, and she was wearing white. My first thought was Harper got lucky.”
“Oh, man,” was Harper’s muttered comment.
“Then I thought about Amelia, but when I went out to see better, she was gone. I only mention it because if it was her, and I guess it was, that’s twice I’ve seen her in about a week. And that’s a lot for me.”
“You were the only woman in the house during that week,” Logan pointed out. “She’s been more likely to show herself to women.”
“That makes sense.” And made her feel better.
“Added to that, it was the night after Mitch and I were married,” Roz said. “She’d have been miffed.”
“And it’s the second time we’ve got a firsthand report of her walking toward the carriage house. There’s something there,” Mitch said to Harper.
“She’s not letting me know about it. So far.”
“Meanwhile we keep looking. We believe she lived in this area, so our best bet is Reginald kept her in one of his properties.” Mitch lifted his hands. “I’m still pursuing that avenue.”
“If we find out her name, her whole name,” Hayley asked him, “would you be able to research her the way you did the Harper family?”
“It’d give me a start.”
“Maybe she’ll tell us, if we just find the right way to ask. Maybe . . .” She trailed off when singing came through the monitor. “She’s with Lily, and she’s early tonight. I’m just going to go up and check.”
“I’ll go with you.” Harper got to his feet.
She didn’t argue. Even after more than a year, the sound of that sad voice sent a chill up her spine. As was her habit, she’d flicked lights on in her wing so she wouldn’t have to come back up in the dark. They reassured her now, as the sun was nearly set, as did the sounds of Luke and Gavin playing in the sitting room.
“You know, if you’re uneasy being over here alone, you could move into the other wing, closer to Mama and Mitch.”
“Just what the newly married couple need. Me and a baby as chaperones. Anyway, I’m mostly used to it. She’s not stopping.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “She almost always stops before I get to the door.”
Instinctively she reached for Harper’s hand as she eased open the door she always left off the latch.
It was cold, but she’d expected that. Even after Amelia was gone, the chill would linger. Yet Lily was never disturbed by it. Her breath puffed out, a little startled cloud when she heard the distinctive creak of the rocker.
That was a new one, Hayley thought. Oh boy.
She sat in the rocker, wearing her gray dress. Her hands lay quiet in her lap as she sang. Her voice was pretty, unschooled but light and tuneful. Comforting, as a voice singing lullabies should be.
But when she turned her head, when she looked toward the door, Hayley’s blood ran as cold as the air in the room.
It wasn’t a smile on her face, but a grimace. Her eyes bulged, and were rimmed with violent red.
As she spoke—thought—the form began to disintegrate. Flesh melted away to bone until what sat in the chair was a skeleton that rocked in rags.
Then even that was gone.
“Please tell me you saw that.” Hayley’s voice trembled. “Heard that.”
