Нора Робертс - Black Rose

“Who told you about her?”

“My father, my grandmother. My grandmother more, I suppose. The family would talk about her casually, in vague terms. She was both a point of pride—we have a ghost—and a slight embarrassment—we have a ghost. Depending on who was talking. My father believed she was one of the Harper Brides, while my grandmother maintained she was a servant or guest, someone who’d been misused somehow. Someone who had died here, but wasn’t blood kin.”

“Did your father, your grandmother, your mother, ever tell you about their specific experiences with her?”

“My mother would get palpitations if the subject was brought up. My mother was very fond of her palpitations.”

Mitch grinned at the dry tone, watched her spread some brie. “I had a great-aunt like that. She had spells. Her day wasn’t complete without at least one spell.”

“Why some people delight in having conditions is more than I can understand. My mother did speak to me of her once or twice, in a sort of gloom-and-doom manner—something else she was fond of. Warning me that one day I’d inherit this burden, and hoping for my sake it didn’t shatter my health, as it had hers.”

“She was afraid of Amelia, then.”

“No, no.” Roz waved that away, nibbled on a cracker. “She enjoyed being long-suffering, and a kind of trembling martyr. Which sounds very unkind coming from her only child.”

“Let’s call it honest instead.”

“Comes to the same. In any case, other times, it was bearing and birthing me that had ruined her health. And others, she’d been delicate since a bout of pneumonia as a child. Hardly matters.”

“Actually, it’s helpful. Bits and pieces, personal observations and memories are helpful, a start toward the big picture. What about your father?”

“My father was generally amused by the idea of a ghost and had fond memories of her from his own childhood. But then he’d be annoyed or embarrassed if she made an appearance and frightened a guest. My father was fiercely hospitable, and mortified on a deep, personal level if a guest in his home was inconvenienced.”

“What sort of memories did he have?”

“The same you’ve heard before. It hardly varies. Her singing to him, visiting him in his room, a maternal presence until he was about twelve.”

“No disturbances?”

“Not that he told me, but my grandmother said he sometimes had nightmares as a boy. Just one or two a year, where he claimed to see a woman in white, with her eyes bulging, and he could hear her screaming in his head. Sometimes she was in his room, sometimes she was outside, and so was he—in the dream.”

“Dreams would be another common thread, then. Have you had any?”

“No, not . . .”

“What?”

“I always thought it was nerves. In the weeks before John and I were married, I had dreams. Of storms. Black skies and thunder, cold winds. A hole in the garden, like a grave, with dead flowers inside it.” She shivered once. “Horrible. But they stopped after I was married. I dismissed them.”

“And since?”

“No. Never. My grandmother saw her more than anyone, at least more than anyone would admit to. In the house, in the garden, in my father’s room when he was a boy. She never told me anything frightening. But maybe she wouldn’t have. Of all my family, that I recall, she was the most sympathetic toward Amelia. But to be honest, it wasn’t the primary topic of conversation in the house. It was simply accepted, or ignored.”

“Let’s talk about that blood kin, then.” He pulled his glasses out of his shirt pocket to read his notes. “The furthest back you know, personally, of sightings starts with your grandmother Elizabeth McKinnon Harper.”

“That’s not completely accurate. She told me my grandfather, her husband, had seen the Bride when he was a child.”

“That’s her telling you what she’d been told, not what she claimed to have seen and experienced herself. But speaking to that, can you recall being told of any experiences that happened in the generation previous to your grandparents?”

“Ah . . . she said her mother-in-law, that would be my great-grandmother Harper, refused to go into certain rooms.”

“Which rooms?”

“Ah . . . lord, let me think. The nursery, which was on the third floor in those days. The master bedroom. She moved herself out of it at some point, I’m assuming. The kitchen. And she wouldn’t set foot in the carriage house. From my grandmother’s description of her, she wasn’t a fanciful woman. It was always thought she’d seen the Bride. If there was another prior to that, I don’t know about it. But there shouldn’t be. We’ve dated her to the 1890s.”

“You’ve dated her based on a dress and a hairstyle,” he said as he scribbled. “That’s not quite enough.”

“It certainly seems sensible, logical.”

He looked up, smiling, his eyes distracted behind his glasses. “It may be. You may be right, but I like a little more data before I call something a fact. What about your great-aunts? Reginald Jr.’s older sisters?”

“I couldn’t say. I didn’t know any of them, or don’t remember them. And they weren’t close with my grandmother, or my father. There was some attempt, on my grandmother’s part, to cement some familial relations between their children and my father, as cousins. I’m still in contact with some of their children.”

“Will any of them talk to me?”

“Some will, some won’t. Some are dead. I’ll give you names and numbers.”

“All,” he said. “Except the dead ones. I can be persuasive. Again,” he murmured as the singing came from the monitor across the room.

“Again. I want to go check on Lily.”

“Do you mind if I come with you?”

“No. Come ahead.” They started upstairs together. “Most likely it’ll stop before we get there. That’s the pattern.”

“There were two nursemaids, three governesses, a housekeeper, an under-housekeeper, a total of twelve housemaids, a personal maid, three female kitchen staff between 1890 and 1895. I’ve dug up some of the names, but as ages aren’t listed, I’m having to wade through a lot of records to try to pinpoint the right people. If and when, I’ll start on death records, and tracking down descendants.”

“You’ll be busy.”

“Gotta love the work. You’re right. It’s stopped.”

But they continued down the hall to the nursery. “Cold still,” Roz commented. “It doesn’t last long, though.” She moved to the crib, slid the blanket more neatly around the sleeping baby.

“Such a good baby,” she said quietly. “Sleeps right through the night most of the time. None of mine did at this age. She’s fine. We should leave her be.”

She stepped out, leaving the door open. They were at the top of the stairs when the clock began to bong.

“Midnight?” Roz looked at her watch to be certain. “I didn’t realize it was so late. Well, Happy New Year.”

“Happy New Year.” He took her hand before she could continue down the steps and, laying the other on her cheek, said, “Do you mind?”

“No, I don’t mind.”

His lips brushed hers, very lightly, a kind of civilized and polite gesture to commemorate the changing year. And somewhere in the east wing, Roz’s wing, a door slammed shut like a gunshot.

Though her heart jumped, she managed to speak evenly. “Obviously, she doesn’t approve.”

“More like she’s pissed off. And if she’s going to be pissed off, we might as well give her a good reason.”

He didn’t ask this time, just slid the hand that lay on her cheek around to cup the back of her neck. And this time his mouth wasn’t light, or polite, or civilized. There was a punch of heat, straight to her belly, as his mouth crushed down on hers, as his body pressed, hard against hers. She felt that sizzle zip through her blood, fast and reckless, and let herself ride on it for just one mad moment.

The door in the east wing slammed, again and again, and the clock continued to chime, madly now, well past the hour of twelve.

He’d known she’d taste like this, ripe and strong. More tang than sweetness. He’d wanted to feel those lips move against his as they were now, to discover just how that long, slender body fit to his. Now that he was, she settled inside him and made him want more.

But she eased back, her eyes open and direct. “Well. That ought to do it.”

“It’s a start.”

“I think it’d be best to keep everything . . . calm for tonight. I really should tidy up the parlor, and settle down up here, with Lily.”

“All right. I’ll get my notes and head home.”

In the parlor she loaded the cart while he gathered his things. “You’re a difficult woman to read, Rosalind.”

“I’m sure that’s true.”

“You know I want to stay, you know I want to take you to bed.”

“Yes, I know.” She looked over at him. “I don’t take lovers . . . I was going to say just that. That I don’t take lovers, but I’m going to say, instead, I don’t take them rashly, or lightly. So if I decide to take you as a lover, or let you take me, it will be serious business, Mitchell. Very serious business. That’s something both of us need to consider.”

“Ever just jump off the ledge, Roz?”

“I’ve been known to. But, except for the regrettable and rare occasion, I like to make certain I’m going to land on my feet. If I wasn’t interested, I’d tell you, flat out. I don’t play games in this arena. Instead, I’m telling you that I am interested, enough to think about it. Enough to regret, a little, that I’m no longer young and foolish enough to act without thinking.”

The phone rang. “That’ll be Hayley again. I need to get that or she’ll panic. Drive carefully.”

She walked out to get the phone, and heard, as she assured Hayley the baby was fine, was sleeping like an angel, had been no trouble at all, the front door close behind him.

ALITTLE DISTANCE , Mitch decided, was in order. The woman was a paradox, and since there was no finite solution to a paradox, it was best accepted for what it was—instead of puzzling over it until blood leaked out of your ears.

So he’d try a little distance where he could funnel his energies into puzzles other than the enigmatic Rosalind Harper.

He had plenty of legwork, or, more accurately, butt work. A few hours on his computer and he could verify the births and deaths and marriages listed in the Harper family Bible. He’d already generated a chart of the family ancestry, using his on-line and his courthouse information.

Clients liked charts. Beyond that, they were tools for him, as the copies of family pictures were, as letters were. He pinned everything onto a huge board. Two in this case. One for his office in his apartment, and one in the library at Harper House.

Pictures, old photos, old letters, diaries, scribbled family recipes, all of those things brought the people alive for him. When they were alive for him, when he began to envision their daily routines, their habits, their flaws and grievances, they mattered to him more than any job or project could matter.

He could lose hours paging through Elizabeth Harper’s gardening notes, or the baby book she’d kept on Roz’s father. How else would he know the man who’d sired Roz had suffered from celiac at three months, or had taken his first steps ten months later?

It was the details, the small bits, that made the past full, and immediate.

And in the wedding photo of Elizabeth and Reginald Junior, he could see Rosalind in her grandfather. The dark hair, the long eyes, the strong facial bones.

What else had he passed to her, and through her to her children, this man she barely remembered?

Business acumen for one, Mitch concluded. From other details, those small bits, found in clippings, in household records, he gained a picture of a man who’d had a sharp skill for making money, who’d avoided the fate of many of his contemporaries in the stock market crash. A careful man, and one who’d preserved the family home and holdings.

Yet wasn’t there a coolness about him? Mitch thought as he studied the photographs on his board. A remoteness that showed in his eyes. More than just the photographic style of the day.

Perhaps it came from being born wealthy—the only son on whose shoulders the responsibilities fell.

“What,” Mitch wondered aloud, “did you know about Amelia? Did you ever meet her, in the flesh? Or was she already dead, already just a spirit in this house when your time came around?”

Someone knew her, he thought. Someone spoke to her, touched her, knew her face, her voice.

And someone who did lived or worked in Harper House.

Mitch moved to a search of the servants he had by full names.

It took time, and didn’t include the myriad other possibilities. Amelia had been a guest, a servant whose name was not included—or had been expunged from family records—a relative’s relative, a friend of the family.