Lord Melvedere's Ghost (16 page)

Tugging
on the bell pull, she used the time before Doreen arrived to study
the panelling closely. Everywhere in Melvedere seemed to be
panelled, except the morning room, sitting room and dining room.
Those were wallpapered in brightly coloured silks that were
elegantly understated yet clearly expensive.

She
cautiously patted the wall in front of her, reassured by the solid
thud. Tapping each panel in turn gave her the same sound. With her
back to the bedroom doorway, she patted the panels and shivered at
same dull thudding noise that came back at her.

A slow
shiver of unease swept through her. She didn’t believe in ghosts.
They didn’t exist. As soon as one left this mortal coil that was
it, you ceased to exist. Didn’t you? She touched the top of her
head tenderly and wondered why the man had come back last night.
What had he wanted? Why had he awoken her? Was he just checking up
on her? Or did he just want her to know that he was a ghost, and
that he was around and keeping an eye on her? Or did he want
something else entirely?

No, really,
Cecily mentally chided
herself.
Ghosts don’t exist, you
ninny.

Still, a
small cautionary voice inside asked her what she was going to do if
she was wrong.

Later
that morning, having been washed, dressed and fussed over by an
anxious Doreen, Cecily felt strong enough to answer Jamie’s
summons. If she was well enough to attend him, could she please go
down to the study seemed a reasonable enough request. He
undoubtedly wanted to know what had happened to her yesterday. She
had very little recollection of what had happened after she had
stumbled out of the corridor, back into daylight, except the fierce
anger on Jamie’s face. She wondered if he was angry at her for
venturing off on her own. But, she reasoned, it wasn’t as though
she had intended to do it. It had been purely by chance that she
had fallen through the doorway.

She left
her room and stopped outside the door long enough to carefully tie
a piece of red ribbon around the handle. With a satisfied nod that
she wouldn’t get caught out a second time, instead of turning
toward the end of the corridor that would take her to the large
hallway and main staircase, she turned toward the wall next to the
back staircase.

Yesterday she had been certain that the secret corridor had
run in both directions, so why hadn’t she been able to see the wall
of the servants’ stairs? The servants’ stairs were made of stone
and certainly solid enough. To reassure herself she pushed open the
servants’ door and peered down the stairs. The echoing sound of
pots and pans clanging reached her ears.

Nothing so strange there,
she mused,
closing the door quietly. With a glance around her, she slowly and
carefully began to pat the panelling on the wall beside the door,
trying to locate the exact position she had been standing in
earlier. It didn’t take her long before her knocks changed from
dull thuds to echoes.

She
pushed each panel cautiously, frowning in consternation when
nothing gave, clicked, or allowed her to swing the door open. Why?
She had no intention of leaning against the wall again, thank you
very much, she wasn’t going to go back in there again without
Jamie, a candle and some very long rope tied to something solid in
the corridor. But she wondered how she had found it so easy to get
in yesterday. As far as she had been aware, she hadn’t pushed any
levers and, as far as she could see, there was no handle to get
into the corridor, so how had she managed to get in?

She
frowned at the panelling, stymied for a moment to find an
explanation. Putting the matter to one side for now, Cecily slowly
made her way down the stairs to the study, and Jamie.

“
Doreen told me that you were up,” Jamie muttered, rising from
his desk. He had just spent the longest hours of his life. Although
he had checked on her several times throughout the night, he had
grown increasingly concerned with how solidly she had slept, and
was very glad to be able to ease his fears by seeing her up and
about, even if she did look so pale she was almost translucent
again.

Cecily
closed the door behind her and had barely taken more than two steps
before she was swept against Jamie’s chest. Closing her eyes, she
stood meekly wrapped in his arms, aware of the similarity of their
hold to yesterday’s embrace.

Several
long moments later, Jamie eased back enough to study her closely
for any signs of hidden pain or distress. His relief grew at the
pure blue, faintly teasing glint in her eye.

“
Don’t ever do that to me again,” he growled, capturing her
lips in a quick yet very thorough kiss. He was far more shaken than
he cared to admit when he finally released her. Grabbing hold of
her wrist, he led her toward the chaise and drew her down to sit
beside him, nodding toward a tray of tea things already waiting on
the small table.

“
Would you like tea?”

“
I’ll pour,” Cecily offered, feeling slightly strange at the
familiarity of his greeting, and the almost domesticated ritual of
taking tea with him.

“
I am sorry about yesterday,” she whispered after several
moments of companionable silence.

“
Can you remember much of what happened?”

“
Everything,” Cecily declared firmly, meeting his curious gaze
with a determined stare. “I may have had a knock to the head, but I
am not so befuddled that I cannot remember exactly what
happened.”

“
What did happen?” Jamie demanded when she made no attempt to
expand on her explanation.

“
I -” She froze, her cup half way to her mouth as she stared
with horror filled eyes at the tall man in the painting beside the
door and she read the small brass plaque at the bottom of the
painting. Michael James Calverton, Lord Melvedere.

Her
blood turned cold as she stared at the hauntingly familiar face of
the man who had escorted her out of the hidden passageway
yesterday, and who had appeared at the end of her bed last night:
Lord Melvedere’s Ghost.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“
Who -” she gulped, nodding toward the portrait of the austere
looking gentleman who looked like an older version of
Jamie.

“
Who? That? He is my father, Michael Calverton, Lord
Melvedere,” Jamie glanced from the familiar portrait of his long
deceased father, to Cecily’s horror filled gaze. “What’s wrong? Did
you know him?”

Cecily
mentally ran through what she could remember of the man from the
corridor. The gentle smile was absent in the portrait, replaced by
a rather arrogant look that matched the military pose. One booted
foot resting casually on a stone beside the stream and, unless she
was mistaken, it was the stream she had been sitting at on her
first day here. On his knee rested a book.

“
Cecily? What is it? Do you want me to get a doctor
again?”

Cecily
winced at the mention of the doctor. Although Doctor Richardson had
been a very kindly man, and had apologised profusely for the
discomfort, he had seen to her cut with a ruthless efficiency that
had her clawing at the sheets and sweating in agony. It had been a
blessed relief to see the man go.

“
No!” She winced at the unintended ferocity behind her protest
and immediately mumbled an apology. “I am fine.”

Her mind
raced frantically, wondering whether she could tell him. She wasn’t
entirely sure she believed it herself. Ghosts? Really? Dragging her
gaze back to her teacup, she carefully placed back in the saucer
with shaky hands.

“
He is just someone I can vaguely recall meeting somewhere
before, that’s all.”

“
Where?” Jamie frowned, nonplussed. As far as he knew, his
father’s contacts had all been in London, and he had never been in
Tissington in all of his life, let alone since Cecily had been
born. His father had been dead for the past five years, at
least.

“
I cannot remember,” Cecily replied vaguely. “Maybe he looks
like someone who is familiar,” Cecily offered with a rueful smile
of apology before resuming her tea. She took a deep breath to
fortify her nerves. She hated keeping secrets from anyone, let
alone Jamie who had been so kind and thoughtful toward her, but
seeing a ghost; his father’s ghost, was something that she was
struggling to make sense of for herself. How could she explain it
to someone as stoically logical as Jamie?

“
You still haven’t told me what happened yesterday,” Jamie
gently reminded her, when she made no attempt to engage in
conversation. He mentally sighed, and wondered just how difficult
it was going to be to get reliable information out of her. Even if
she did remember anything, he couldn’t be sure if her bump to the
head had jumbled the information up.

“
How long has he been dead?” Cecily whispered, nodding back
toward the portrait. She couldn’t bring herself to look at it
again, and shivered as she waited for his answer.

“
It will be about five years this January, I think,
why?”

“
I take it that he liked books? It is unusual in portraits like
that for someone to be carrying a book, usually the pose is with a
hunting dog, or something,” she whispered vaguely.

“
My father adored books. He lived for them, and spent his
entire life collecting rare and out of print copies as often as he
could. I do believe that he has read nearly all of the books in the
library,” Jamie declared almost proudly. “When he purchased one or
two, he always insisted on reading them before they went onto the
shelves. Of course, some of them have been handed down through the
generations and are centuries old.”

“
Miss Emstridge is cataloguing them, is she not?”

“
Supposedly,” Jamie sighed ruefully, making a mental note to
start to question Miss Emstridge a bit more carefully before giving
her notice. “I have yet to see any of her lists though.”

“
Is this your family seat?” Cecily asked, trying to find a way
of discovering if Jamie was already aware of the hidden passageways
or not.

“
It is. I inherited the estates when my father passed away,”
Jamie had no idea where this line of questioning was going, but was
pleased that she wanted to know more about him, the house and his
family. It still didn’t divert his attention from finding out what
he really needed to know, but if she wanted a few moments to
satisfy her curiosity then he was more than willing to accommodate
her.

“
So you know every inch of this house like the back of your
hand?” Cecily sighed, staring at the panelling surrounding them
with cautious eyes.

“
Yes, I think so,” Jamie replied carefully, watching Cecily
closely. She was staring at the wall as though something was going
to jump out and bite her.

“
Are you sure?” Cecily’s voice was gentle, but the careful look
she gave him was asking him something else, something he couldn’t
pick up on.

“
I -” she jumped when the study door opened suddenly and Miss
Emstridge stalked in.

“
Oh, I am sorry, I didn’t realise Miss Tinsdale was still in
here,” Miss Emstridge announced, casting a disparaging glance at
their proximity on the chaise and the half drunk tea. “I wanted to
speak to you about a rare and precious tome coming up for sale
later this month, my lord. I think your father wanted to add it to
his collection,” Miss Emstridge announced, completely ignoring the
fact that she had just barged in and disrupted their
meeting.

Jamie
wondered how Miss Emstridge knew that, given she had only been in
employment a few months before his father passed and even then he
had been too ill during the last few weeks of his life to spend
much, if any, time in his beloved library.

“
Later, please, Miss Emstridge. If you could come back in about
an hour, there is something I wish to discuss with you too. Oh, and
if you could bring the catalogue you have been detailing, I should
like a look at it.” He wasn’t oblivious to the sudden narrowing of
Miss Emstridge’s gaze at his request to see hard evidence of her
five years’ of work. His time in the Star Elite had taught him how
to observe, and look for a person’s true feelings, and he knew Miss
Emstridge wasn’t what she appeared. Mentally cursing his own lack
of attention to detail with regards to running his own estates, he
dismissed Miss Emstridge with a nod and a wave of his hand. He
noted the flash of anger in her eyes as she turned away and
considered the quiet, almost silent glide the woman used as she
left the study.

“
Sorry about that,” Jamie muttered, finishing the last of his
tea. He wondered if he would have to apply thumb screws, or
undertake some heavy seduction to get any information out of Cecily
at all.

“
I haven’t seen Jonathan recently, is he still
here?”

Jamie
mentally rolled his eyes. “Yes, he is still here.” He felt a surge
of jealousy toward his colleague and chided himself for being
ridiculous. Cecily was merely grasping at any strands of
conversation she could to take his mind off getting the information
he really wanted. He had seen the ploy used more times than he
cared to count, but Cecily didn’t know that she was up against a
master. He wasn’t about to give up his quest for information
without one hell of a fight.