Нора Робертс - Red lily

Hayley looked toward the second level of the library, to the table loaded with books, Mitch’s laptop. And the board beside it that was full of photos and copies of letters and journal entries. “What will that do for us?”

“The more visuals, the better,” he said. “She’s also been talking to her grandmother, who’s not doing very well, although she does have some lucid moments. The grandmother claims to recall her mother and a cousin who also worked here at the time talk about their days at Harper House. Lots of talk about the parties and the work. She also recalls her cousin talking about the young master, that’s how she referred to Reginald Jr. And saying the stork got rich delivering that one. That her mother told her to hush, that blood money and curses aside, the child was innocent. When she asked what she meant, her mother wouldn’t speak of it, except to say she’d done her duty by the Harper family, and would have to live with it. But the happiest day of her life had been when she’d walked out the door of this house for the last time.”

“She knew my grandfather had been taken from his mother.” Roz reached down, touched a hand to Harper’s shoulder. “And if this woman is remembering correctly, it sounds as though Amelia wasn’t willing to give him up.”

“Blood money and curses,” Stella repeated. “Who was paid, and what was cursed?”

“There would have been a doctor or a midwife, perhaps both, attending Amelia during the birth.” Mitch spread his hands. “Almost certainly they’d have been paid off. Some of the servants here might have been bribed.”

“I know that’s awful,” Hayley said. “But you wouldn’t call that blood money, would you? Hush money more like.”

“Bull’s-eye,” Mitch told her. “If there was blood money, where was the blood?”

“Amelia’s death.” Logan shifted, leaned forward. “She haunts here, so she died here. You haven’t been able to find any record of that, so we have to assume it was covered up. Easiest way to cover something up is money.”

“I agree.” Stella nodded. “But how did she get here? There’s no mention of Amelia in any of Beatrice’s journals. No mention of Reginald’s mistress by name, or of her coming to Harper House. She wrote about the baby, and how she felt about Reginald bringing him here, expecting her to pretend she’d given birth to him. Wouldn’t she have been just as outraged, and written of that, if he’d established Amelia in the house?”

“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 was here.”

“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.

This is what they do. This is what they give.

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.”

“Yeah.” With his hand firm on hers, he drew Hayley across the room to the crib. “Warmer here. Feel it? It’s warm around the crib.”

“She’s never done anything to scare Lily. Still, I don’t want to leave, go down again. I’d just feel better if I stayed close tonight. You can tell the others what happened?”

“I can bunk up here tonight. Take one of the guest rooms.”

“It’s all right.” She arranged Lily’s blanket more securely. “We’ll be all right.”

He tugged her hand, gestured so that she went back out into the hall with him. “That was a first, right?”

“A definite first for me. It’s going to give me nightmares.”

“You sure you’re going to be okay?” He touched his hand to her cheek, and it flitted through her mind that was another first. They were standing close, her hand in his, his fingers on her cheek.

All she had to do was say, no. Stay with me.

And then what? She could start something, and ruin everything.

“Yeah. It’s not like she’s mad at me or anything. No reason to be. We’re good, we’re fine. You’d better go down, fill the others in.”

“You get spooked in the night, call. I’ll come.”

“Good to know. Thanks.”

She slid her hand out of his, eased back, and slipped into her own room.

No, Amelia had no reason to be mad at her, Hayley considered. She had no boyfriend, no husband, no lover. The only man she wanted was off-limits.

“So you can relax,” she murmured. “Looks like I’ll be going solo for the next little while.

HE HUNTED HER up the next day, mid-morning. But he had to be sly about it. He knew her well enough to be sure if she thought he was trying to help, to get her mind off things, to give her any sort of break, she’d brush him off.

Hayley Phillips was the original I’m-fine-don’t-worry-about-me girl.

Nothing wrong with that, Harper thought. In her place, a lot of women would have been happy to take advantage of his mother’s generosity, or at least to take that generosity for granted. Hayley did neither, and he respected that. He could admire her stand—to a point. But plenty of times, to his mind, that point tripped over into just mule-headed stubborn.

So he kept it casual, even when he had to poke into two greenhouses, work his way to the main building before he found her setting up a new display of houseplants.

She was wearing one of the nursery’s bib aprons over black camp shorts and a V-necked tank. There was damp soil on the apron, and on her forearm. Only repressed lust could be responsible for him finding it so absurdly sexy.