'You go on and show Lena. Me, I'm going to walk on home.”
'I'll take you home, Grandmama.”
'No, you stay awhile.' However casual her tone, there was a sly look in her eye. 'I want to walk, then it'll be time for my nap.' As she started to rise, Declan got up, offered his hand. And made her smile. 'You got a pretty manner about you. You come back and see me when you're not busy. I'll make you some sauce patate-potato stew-before you get so skinny your clothes fall off your bones.”
'I got the phones hooked up.' He dug in his pocket for a scrap of paper, found a pencil in his shirt pocket and wrote down the number. 'If you need anything, just call.”
'Yes, indeed, a very pretty way.' She turned her cheek up, inviting his kiss. When he walked her to the door, she gestured for him to lean down again. 'I approve of you sparking my Lena. You'll have a care with her, and most don't.”
'Is that your way of telling me I don't have a chance with you, Miss Odette?”
She laughed and patted his cheek. 'Oh. If I was thirty years younger, she'd have a run for her money. Go on now, and show her your house.”
He watched her walk by the trees with the spirit bottles dangling.
'You like my grandmama,' Lena said from the parlor doorway.
'I'm love-struck. She's wonderful. Listen, it's a long walk to her place. You ought to-was 'If she wants to walk, she walks. There's no stopping her from doing anything.' She wandered to the front door to stand beside him. 'Look there, it's Rufus come to walk her home. I swear, that dog has radar when it comes to her.”
'I kept hoping he'd come around.' He turned to Lena. 'Bring you with him. I started out two nights this week to go to your place, and talked myself out of it.”
'Why's that?”
'There's persistence, and there's stalking.' He reached up to twirl her hair around his finger. 'I figured if I could hold out until you came by here, you wouldn't consider getting a restraining order.”
'If I want a man to go away, I tell him to go away.”
'Do men always do what you tell them?”
Her lips curved into that cat smile that made him want to lick at the little black mole. 'Mostly. You going to show me this big house of yours, cher?”
'Yeah.' He caught her chin in his hand, kissed her. 'Sure. By the way.' Now he took her hand as he led her toward the staircase. 'I have Miss Odette's permission to spark you.”
'Seems you need my permission, not hers.”
'I intend to charm you so completely, we'll slip right by that step. Fabulous staircase, isn't it?”
'It is.' She trailed a red-tipped finger along the banister. 'Very grand, this place of yours, Declan. And from what I've seen of it, I realize you're not a rich lawyer after all.”
'Ex-lawyer. And I don't follow you.”
'You got enough to put this place back, to keep it-you do mean to keep it?”
'Yeah, I do.”
'Then you're not rich. Step up from rich. You're wealthy. Is that the case?”
'Well, money's not a problem. It doesn't buy happiness, either.”
She stopped on the landing and laughed. 'Oh, cher, you think that, you just don't know where to shop.”
'Anytime you want to help me spend some of it.”
'Maybe.' She looked down over the banister toward the grand foyer. 'You'll be needing furniture eventually. There's some places I know.”
'You have a cousin?”
'One or two.' She lifted her eyebrows at the noise and cursing from the end of the long hall.
'Plumber,' Declan explained. 'I had him start on the master bath. It was … well, it was an embarrassment of avocado. If you know anyone who wants some really ugly bathroom fixtures, let me know.”
He started to steer her away from the door of what he now thought of as his ghost room. But she turned the knob, opened it. Declan found himself holding his breath as she stepped inside.
'Cold in here.' She hugged her arms, but couldn't stop the shiver. 'You ought to try to save the wallpaper. It's a pretty pattern. Violets and rosebuds.”
She was halfway to the gallery doors when she stopped, and the shiver became a shudder. The feeling that poured into her was grief. 'It's a sad room, isn't it? It needs light. And life.”
'There's a ghost. A woman. I think she was killed here.”
'Do you?' She turned back to him. Her face was a little pale, her eyes a little wide. 'It doesn't feel … violent. Just sad. Empty and sad.”
Her voice had thickened. Without thinking, he went in, went to her. 'Are you all right?”
'Just cold.”
He reached down to rub her arms, and at the contact, felt a quick shock.
With a half-laugh, she stepped back. 'I don't think that's what Grandmama meant by you sparking me, cher.”
'It's this room. There's something strange in this room.”
'Ghosts don't worry me. Shouldn't worry you. They can't hurt you.' But she walked to the door, had to fight a need to rush her steps.
She wandered through the other bedrooms, but experienced none of that grief, the dread, the dragging loneliness that had driven her out of the first.
At the door to Declan's room, she smiled. 'Well, not so rough in here. You got taste, cher.' She poked her head in the bathroom, where workmen clanged and cursed. 'Which is more than I can say for whoever did this bathroom. That you there, Tripadoe? Your mama know you eat with that mouth?”
She leaned on the doorjamb, spent a few minutes chatting with his plumbers. And Declan could stand back and just look at her.
It was pathetic, he told himself. This puppy– dog crush he'd developed.
And when she glanced at him over her shoulder, he felt the jolt right down to the soles of his feet.
'Why don't I show you the ballroom. It's going to be the showcase.”
'Sure, I'd like to see that.' But when they started out, she gestured toward the stairs. 'What's up there?”
'More empty rooms. Storage, some of the servants' quarters.”
'Let's have a look.”
'It's nothing special.' He made a grab for her hand, but she was already going up.
'Can you get to the belvedere from here?' she asked. 'I used to look over at that and imagine standing up there.”
'It's easier from the-don't!”
His sharp order had her hand freezing on the dull brass knob of the nursery. 'What's wrong? You got a woman chained in here? All your secrets locked inside here, cher?”
'No, it's just …' He could feel the panic rising, burning the base of his throat. 'There's something wrong with that room.”
'Something wrong with most of them,' she tossed back, and opened the door.
He was right. It hit her immediately, that same throbbing sense of grief and loss and loneliness. She saw walls and floor and windows, dust and neglect. And felt as if her heart were breaking.
Even as she started to speak, the cold swept in. She felt it blow over her skin like breath, pass through her hair like fingers.
'It's the center,' she declared, though she was far from sure what she meant, or how she knew. 'Can you feel it? Can you?”
He swayed in the doorway. Bearing down, he dug his fingers into the jamb. His fear was unreasonable, spearing like knives into bones. It was his house, he reminded himself grimly. His goddamn house. He took a step inside, then a second.
The room spun. He heard a scream, saw Lena's face, the alarm that leaped over it. He thought he saw her mouth move, form his name. Then his vision grayed, white spots dancing through the mist.
'Declan. Here now, cher. Here, darling.”
