The House on Blackberry Hill: Jewell Cove #1 (Jewel Cove)

by Donna Alward

  With a breath of relief, Tom swung the door open and pulled Abby into the musty kitchen.

  * * *

  Abby’s relief at being out of the claustrophobic column of the stairwell was brief. As Tom turned to lead her into the kitchen, her heart stopped. Over Tom’s shoulder she saw a woman standing in front of the fireplace. Sad eyes watched her from a pale face. Dark hair curled around her shoulders and her simple, pale blue dress fell just to her knee.

  Before Abby could make a sound, the image faded for just a moment. This was impossible. It had to be a trick of light, something in her imagination. Because the other alternative was that Abby was looking at a ghost, and just thinking the word was completely ludicrous. Yet as her eyes adjusted to the light in the room, the figure was still there, faint but there just the same. Standing there watching her with a look of expectation on her face. A shiver crept up Abby’s spine as the moment spun out. The woman’s expression changed. Her eyes flashed, her lips thinned, and the air in the room chilled in a cold, frustrated wave.

  “Abby? Hey, are you listening?”

  She whipped eyes back to Tom, still standing in front of her, staring at her strangely. “Are you okay? I said your name like three times.”

  Confusion tangled her thoughts. “Did you see that?” She looked back toward the fireplace but there was nothing there. She pressed her lips together. She hadn’t imagined it. She hadn’t. The feeling had been the same as when she’d passed the bottom of the stairs the first time she’d come in the house. Heavy and sad. Oppressive.

  Desperate, she realized, and her stomach tumbled nervously. But how could that be?

  “See what?”

  And if she breathed a word of it to Tom he’d think she was out to lunch and rightfully so. She’d fall over laughing herself—if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes. She shook her head. “N … nothing. Looks like you were right. The stairs did come right down to the kitchens. It’s cold down here.” She wrapped her arms around herself.

  “It would have been hot as hell with the ovens going, especially in the middle of summer,” Tom remarked. “Damp down here now, though. I don’t think Marian used it much from the looks of it.” He pointed at the door at the other end of the room and frowned. “That was barred from this side so no one could come down. And the bookcase upstairs hid the only other way in.” Tom went over to an old wood table and examined it. “Except mice, it seems. There are droppings here. You really do need to get someone in to take care of that. I’ll give you a name.”

  The entries were barred from both ends, but Abby was sure she’d just seen someone, logical or not. And she got the feeling that that someone was Edith Foster. It was the woman in the picture on the mantel in the dining room. The dress was much plainer, but the face was the same.

  If it was Edith Foster, it did indeed mean Abby was seeing ghosts.

  Which was just flipping crazy. She hadn’t just inherited a mansion, she’d inherited a haunted one. Holy shit. The old-timers were right.

  Oblivious, Tom continued on. “If you plan on using this part of the house again, I’ll have to factor that into the quote,” she caught him saying, but she struggled to register the words in her brain.

  “I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “It’s just eerie down here. No wonder Marian closed it up. Let’s go back upstairs.”

  Wasting no time, she led the way back through the door, up the stairs and into the attic. Tom followed behind, more slowly as he stopped to lock the kitchen door and then the servant’s entrance. It had to be Abby’s mind playing tricks on her, that was all. The house was large and old and it had only taken one mention of ghosts that first night at the pub to set off Abby’s overactive imagination. It had been a shadow, nothing more, probably from going from the darkness of the stairs into the watery light of the kitchen. Perhaps if she told herself that enough, she’d believe it.

  Except there were other things she couldn’t explain. Feelings, glimpses in her peripheral vision. The stairs in particular. And Isabel Frost’s strange facial expression when she spoke of Edith falling down the stairs.

  She spent the next hour going over plans with Tom, listening to his ideas for the kitchen and downstairs bath with half an ear, along with his promises to send along the names of local companies he could subcontract for the other necessary jobs.

  But when he was gone she put on a pair of gloves, went outside and started pulling weeds from the back garden. She needed the sun and the feel of the warm breeze on her face to chase away the coldness of the basement.

  There was more to Edith’s death than an accidental fall. Abby had gotten that feeling by what Isabel hadn’t said at the café, and she was doubly sure of it now. It wasn’t even a matter of believing if it was or wasn’t true. She’d seen it. And everything within her said that Edith had some unfinished business when she’d died and left a husband and two daughters behind.

  Two sisters who were then separated for the rest of their lives.

  CHAPTER 8

  Tom’s quote came in, and while the number seemed unbearably large, Abby knew two things: it was fair considering the amount of work involved, and she trusted him to do the job he said he would. It was in the way he looked at things, touched them. He appreciated the house and what it represented, so she gave him the green light to get the ball rolling. Within twenty-four hours he’d begun ordering materials, booked the roofers, and had started fixing up the verandah—replacing the floor, railings, and spools.

  Abby kept wondering if she’d see the mysterious figure again, but there’d been nothing out of the ordinary and she was starting to wonder if she’d imagined it. She’d gone through several of the boxes and chests upstairs but hadn’t found any family clues—yet. The boxes had only been filled with clothing, table linens, and an old set of Royal Albert china, which Abby carefully carried downstairs, washed, and put in the china cabinet in the great hall. It was an enormous job going through everything, and she managed a box at a time in her spare moments, hoping that at some point she’d find something that told her more about the Foster family story.

  Several of the renovation jobs would require subcontractors, and one of the first things to happen was a visit from pest control. Abby couldn’t ignore the truth—she heard the scratching in the walls and saw the evidence. While the exterminator did his work, Abby made a trip into Portland, her car loaded down with rugs to be professionally cleaned. Once they were dropped off, she stopped at a department store and stocked up on linens—new sheets for the beds and towels for the bathrooms in colors that would coordinate with the new paint choices she’d made. Considerably lighter in her wallet and hungry, she had a fast-food salad before she headed back to Jewell Cove.

  She spent the afternoon indulging in the luxury of shopping, wandering through town and finally taking the time to pop into several of the colorful shops on the streets above the harbor. There was the soap-and-scent store, Bubbles, where she splurged on several handmade bars: cranberry and lilac and, of course, the local blueberry. She went into the Leaf and Grind, a quirky little shop full of dark wood shelves, aromatic coffee beans, and glass jars of tea leaves lined up behind an old-fashioned counter. She treated herself to several kinds of loose tea and a new teapot and cups in cream and crimson, the perfect colors to complement the drawing room or library. At the pottery store she bought a gorgeous set of serving bowls for the kitchen, picturing them on the corner shelf Tom had suggested she add.

  At first it seemed foolish to spend the money on such things, considering she wasn’t going to remain in the house, but she rationalized the purchases because she’d want the house to show to best advantage when the time came to sell.

  Arms filled with shopping bags, Abby stowed everything in her trunk before heading to the market to pick up a few days’ worth of groceries. On the way there, however, she spotted one more store on the corner. It was hard to resist the mauve-colored build
ing with the darker purple trim—especially when she looked up at the street name and saw that the store was appropriately situated on the corner of Lilac Lane and Main. The oval sign out front said TREASURES. She climbed the wood steps to the building and followed the flower-lined boardwalk path to the door.

  The shrill buzz of a saw reached her ears, followed by a quick moment of silence and then the whine of a power drill. She paused at the steps to the wide deck that was under construction. Her lips fell open at the sight of Tom in a T-shirt, on his knees on the floor of the deck. He set a screw and then pulled the trigger on the drill, anchoring the decking board to the two-by-six beneath. As he reached into his pouch for another screw, the muscles beneath his shirt shifted. Abby licked her suddenly dry lips and debated whether she should turn and go back the way she came. But that was silly. Why should seeing him keep her from going into a store, for Pete’s sake?

  “Hi,” she said, gripping the strap of her purse.

  Tom looked up and pushed back the ball cap on his head. She noticed his slightly shaggy hair curled around the edge of the cap, giving him a youthful, roguish appearance. Oh, boy. She had to stop noticing things like that.

  “Hey yourself.” He smiled, putting the drill down on the deck floor. “Out shopping?”

  “I didn’t want to hang around while the Orkin man did his thing,” she admitted. “I took the rugs to that place you recommended in Portland, and then thought I’d browse around town. I’ve been here over a week and I’ve hardly seen anything.”

  He watched her carefully. “No stop at the Realtor’s?”

  She shrugged. “Not much point until the renovations are completed, is there?”

  He nodded briefly and sat back on his heels. “This’s my cousin Jess’s place,” he said. “Just finishing a new deck for her and putting up a pergola on that side for her to display some summer stuff. Figured I’d get it done now that your veranda is usable and while I wait for materials to start arriving for your place. Speaking of, we should go over countertop and cupboard samples for the kitchen so you can decide what you want. That stuff has to be special-ordered so the sooner the better.”

  She swallowed, thinking about poring over granite and stain samples with Tom, standing close to him and smelling the spicy scent of his aftershave. Something had happened that day in the attic, something more than finding some clothes or discovering the back staircase. The air between them had crackled with attraction. Standing there looking at Tom now, his shirt damp with sweat, Abby could almost believe she’d imagined it all and more than once she’d considered that it was all one-sided. After all, Tom Arseneault was incredibly gorgeous. She’d have to be blind not to notice. He could probably crook his finger and have any woman in town. She bit down on her lip. He probably had a girlfriend. She had no business thinking about him that way, in a secret staircase or anywhere else for that matter.

  She untangled her tongue and tried a smile. “We can do it whenever it fits your schedule.”

  “After I finish here, I’m all yours.”

  Now that was an intriguing idea. A pert comment sat on her tongue but she kept it to herself and asked, “What about Saturday? You want to come over to the house?”

  He reached for a scrap of wood and tossed it on a growing pile beside the deck. “Saturday’s good, but why don’t we drive into Portland and hit the supplier’s showroom? It’s easier to decide when you can see things put together rather than trying to visualize it from a little chip, you know?”

  Drive into the city together? She blinked as realization dawned. They’d be alone in her car—or his truck—together, maybe have lunch just the two of them. Like a … date, only not. The idea flustered her more than it should.

  He’d stopped working and was watching her expectantly. She had no good excuse. It’s not like she could tell him what she’d been thinking.

  “That would be okay,” she replied. “What time?”

  “Ten? Is that too early? It could take us a while.”

  “Ten sounds fine.” Ten meant that they’d be spending most of the day there. They’d definitely have lunch together.

  She was totally making more of this than she needed to.

  Tom stood up, tossing another scrap to the side. “Sounds good. Anyway, I’m due for a break, so come on inside and meet Jess.” He put his drill to the side but left his nail belt on. Following him into the shop, Abby couldn’t help but notice how the soft leather fit around his hips, making her mouth go dry.

  There was music playing in the background of the shop, some sort of light Celtic tune with a fiddle that fit perfectly with the down-home, seaside feel to the place. Large windows overlooked the harbor, flooding the entire place with sunlight. There were shelves and tables everywhere, of varying heights and shapes, and at first glance it seemed a bit chaotic until Abby realized it was all laid out with great precision to maximize the floor space. Pigeonholes were stuffed with a rainbow of yarns while a nearby rack was host to ready-made items—scarves, shawls, socks, and a tiny clothesline that held baby booties with miniature clothespins. Knitted dishcloths filled a basket and beside that was a selection of needles, crochet hooks, and patterns.

  Another area formed a children’s corner, complete with craft kits, kites, stuffed animals, puppets, and puzzles. There were soaps in every shape, color, and scent Abby could imagine, and then candles—soy, paraffin, beeswax. Tapers and pillars and tea lights and others in covered Mason jars. Cinnamon and butter pecan and banana bread and chocolate chip cookie scents, jasmine and rose garden and lily. Closer to the cash register was jewelry, and one whole wall was dedicated to quilts. Several were hung on full display, while others were folded and draped over quilting racks. Beside the quilts were supplies—piecing squares, patterns, thread, needles, and one entire shelf filled with bolts of cloth.

  And in the midst of it all was the most beautiful woman Abby had ever seen. She was tall, with hair as black as Tom’s knotted at the nape of her neck in the kind of loose bun—a study in precise disarray—that made Abby envious. She’d never been able to achieve that careless bohemian, feminine look with her hair. The woman wore black leggings that ended mid-calf and a loose tunic that she’d belted around her waist. Sandals with metallic accents glittered on her feet. She was currently standing on tiptoe as she reached to put an item on a top shelf. “That’s your cousin?” she asked Tom quietly.

  “Jess. She’s pretty, huh?”

  “She’s gorgeous.” She smiled up at him. “Guess your side of the family missed out on those genes, huh?”

  Tom laughed unexpectedly, making Jess turn her head, finally realizing they were there. “Oh, my gosh, I didn’t even hear you come in! Sorry!” She beamed at them and hurried over. “I was thinking up a new candle recipe for tomorrow’s class and totally got lost in my own head.”

  “Jess, this is Abby Foster. The new—”

  “Owner of the house up on Blackberry Hill!” Jess finished for him. “Oh, goodness, how are you liking it? It’s huge, isn’t it! But beautiful, I bet. Tom said he’s going to be helping you fix it up again. You made his year. He’s been in love with that house for ages.”

  Abby’s lips twitched as she looked up at Tom, who appeared slightly embarrassed. “Oh, don’t be bashful,” she teased. “It’s not exactly a secret.” She looked at Jess. “He put his foot through the veranda floor when he showed up, you know.”

  “And you called Bryce. We heard all about it.”

  “Don’t be a brat,” Tom said to Jess.

  “Well, we did.” She turned her brilliant smile on Abby. “Anyway, Tom will do a good job for you, he’s the best carpenter around. And I’m glad to meet you at last. The whole town’s been buzzing about you.”

  Abby hated being the center of attention, but right now she didn’t seem to mind, especially when it came from someone as openly friendly as Jess Collins.

  “This place is amazing,” Abby remarked, still glowing in the warmth of the welcome. “Treasures is definitely a
good name for it. You’ve got everything in here.”

  Jess beamed. “The family didn’t think I could make a go of it, but we brought them around, huh, Tom?” She looked up at Tom with affection written all over her face. “Tom made all of my shelves and tables, you know. He believed in this place before the rest of the family did. And I haven’t forgotten that.”

  Something significant seemed to pass between the cousins but after a moment it was gone. “Come on, I’ll give you a tour. You should come back on the weekend. We’re having a beading workshop on Saturday morning. Within an hour you’ll have a gorgeous pair of earrings or even a necklace.”

  “We’re headed to Portland on Saturday to shop for cupboards and a countertop,” Tom replied.

  “Right,” Abby echoed. “Sorry. I really wish I could.” She was shocked to find that she meant the words. She’d never really been a joiner before. And she wasn’t staying in Jewell Cove, so it didn’t really make sense to foster any new friendships, did it?

  Jess paused. “But Tom, Saturday is the picnic at Sarah’s. You promised.”

  There was that look again. Abby’s gaze went back and forth between the two of them. Tom’s jaw tightened, Jess’s eyes narrowed.

  “You can’t back out now,” she threatened. “You promised Mom.”

  “No one will miss me.” He shrugged.

  But Jess shook her head and put her hand on his arm, stopping him from turning away. “Everyone will miss you.” There was an accent on the word “everyone” that Abby didn’t miss. Jess smiled at Abby but there was worry in her dark eyes. “My brother is moving back to town, and we’re having a family picnic at my sister Sarah’s. She’s got fireworks and Tom’s already built a dance floor.”

  “Jess,” Tom said, his voice thick with warning.

  “It’s okay, Tom,” Abby said. “We can do it another day. I’m free whenever. You should spend time with your family.”