“Randall used to make up stories about one,” Gabe said. “I never believed him.”
“Perhaps you should have,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “Charlie will tell you all about it,” she promised.
Charlie needed no further urging. “It’s a monk,” she heard him telling Gabe. “Almost seven feet tall and carrying his head under his arm-”
“Charlie!” she admonished.
“Sorry.” He grinned at Gabe. “He’s still got his head. But he goes howling through the abbey on moonless nights, ’cause he’s unhappy that Henry VIII threw out the monks and…”
They wandered out of earshot, off in the direction of the abbey, and Freddie breathed a sigh of relief.
“He might have kissed me,” she told Stella, still trembling just slightly from her narrow escape.
Stella, her mouth full of unchewed hay, looked back with bovine indifference.
Dinner was ready and the table was set. The door banged open, and Gabe and the children stamped into the kitchen.
“We’re gonna stay at the abbey!” Charlie yelled.
“An’ see the ghost!” Emma shouted.
“An’ write a story about it,” Charlie went on.
“Tonight,” Emma finished.
Freddie stared at them-then at the man standing behind them. “I beg your pardon?”
“We’re going to spend the night in the abbey,” Gabe said. “Check out this seven-foot tall headless monk. Write him up for posterity-in the
That was what Freddie thought she’d heard.
“I really don’t think…” she began, then her voice faded as she realized all three of them were holding their breath. Charlie’s and Emma’s looks beseeched her.
“We won’t be scared, Mum,” Charlie said stoutly. “Promise.”
“Course not,” Emma added, then chewed on her lip. Freddie saw her daughter’s fingers edge out to grip Gabe’s strong thigh. His hand slid down to cover Emma’s smaller one.
“Charlie’s always wanted to,” Gabe said. “He said you promised he could when he found an adult willing to do it.” His clear blue eyes challenged her. “I’m adult,” he told her quite unnecessarily. “And I’m willing.”
Freddie swallowed. Her fingers knotted.
“If you’re worried, come along.”
“Come along? You mean, spend the night…” Again her voice faded, this time from breathlessness.
Gabe nodded. “Spend the night,” he affirmed. “With me.” He winked at her.
Heat crawled up Freddie’s neck and face.
“And us, too,” Emma put in, blissfully unaware of the adult subtext.
“She knows we’re going to be there,” Charlie said scornfully. “What do you say, Mum? Will you come?”
All three of the looked at her again, breath bated, eyes sparkling-the children’s with enthusiasm, Gabe’s with something…something else.
She shouldn’t.
But she had, in fact, told Charlie he could do it in the company of a willing adult. And now, heaven help her, he had one.
And Emma wanted to go, too. She could hardly expect Gabe McBride to deal with both of them. They were her children, after all.
It was only for one night. The abbey was huge. There was nothing to say they had to be, all of them, in one room.
“All right,” she said at last, to the sound of an incredible exhalation of pent-up apprehension. “Yes.”
If Earl could see them now, Gabe thought with a hint of a grin as he folded his arms behind his head and looked around the dimly lit master bedroom of Stanton Abbey.
There they were, all four of them, piled-amid sleeping bags, flashlights, empty cups of Horlicks and the remains of two packets of chocolate biscuits-in the ancient sumptuous bed that had held generations of lordly Stantons for the past umpteen hundred years.
Earl would have a fit.
Freddie had had a fit on his behalf.
“We can’t stay there!” she’d protested when Gabe had led them into the bedroom.
“You said this is where he appears.”
“I know, but-”
“So how can we see him if we’re not there?” And ignoring her protests, he’d herded them all in and begun to spread sleeping bags on the bed.
“We’re really going to stay here?” Charlie’s eyes had gone wide and round at the sight of the huge high bed with its heavy brocade curtains and canopy.
“All n-night?” Emma wanted to know. She’d looked nervously from Gabe to her mother, swallowing hard.
“Not-” Freddie began.
“-all night,” Gabe finished. “Only until we see the ghost. Unless-” he grinned at the children “-you fall asleep.”
They’d stared at him, astonished. As if! they seemed to say.
Now it was barely midnight, and both of them were already zonked.
Of course it had taken a lot of energy to jump at every creak and rattle, to shiver at the sound of an owl overhead, to gasp, “What was that?” at the drafts that blew in around the window frames and moved like a spiritual presence through the room.
No wonder they were tired.
As close as they’d come to seeing the Stanton Abbey ghost was a mouse that had scuttled from one side of the room to the other. Emma’s shrieks had scared the mouse almost as much as it had scared them.
After that, and after Freddie’s exhortations to settle down, they’d subsided into watchfulness. They’d watched for the ghost. Freddie had watched them.
Gabe had watched Freddie.
In the dim light he could barely make her out, but it didn’t stop him trying.
It had been a stroke of genius getting them all in here together so he had the leisure to look his fill. During the day he was gone. At meal times she was flitting about and the children were clamoring for his attention.
But tonight, once the chatter had died down and the children had settled, Gabe had had the opportunity at last to simply look at Freddie Crossman.
He’d have liked to do a lot more than look.
It didn’t seem to matter how much he berated himself for this obsession
