He was on his own. “I’m very happy that you’re taking such good care of my wife and son. We’ll take the single and once she gives the okay, we’ll move our things.”
“£200 per night, breakfast and dinner included.”
Mike almost choked. Emma and James wanted them out of there for sure.
“Fine.” He produced his credit card.” I suppose you’ll need our passports.”
“Please.” James jotted notes while Emma processed the charge.
Mike signed the slip.
“Are those the only bags you have?” James gestured in the direction of the front hall.
“Yes. I pack lightly and tightly.” Mae said. “I’ve been their housekeeper for years and have it down to a science.” She’d finally recovered, but her diction and accent were a queer cross between British and brogue.
The key rattled against the metal fob as James led the way up the opulent curved staircase to a small room adjacent to the landing. He opened the door and it swung open to reveal a twin bed, a wash stand, a desk and chair, with one small window overlooking the front entrance.
“Bath is down the hall to the left. I’ll bring up extra towels. You can come down to dinner when you’ve gotten settled.” James closed the door behind them.
Mae’s face went ashen. “This was the footman’s room. He could look out if anyone came to the front door and be down in a flash.”
“Cozy.” At this point a blanket on the floor would be welcome. Hopefully, they’d come across Liz at dinner and she’d cooperate. Having despaired of finding her, Mike hadn’t thought through what would come next between them.
“I wonder what excuse she gave for traveling alone. They’re protecting her.” Mae stared out the window. “We should walk about. That’s the only way we’re going to find them”
Mike let Mae lead the way. “If they don’t sequester her in her room. Or she doesn’t bolt as soon as they alert her. Let’s go downstairs.”
“Dear, God.” Mae’s eyes fixed on the portrait labeled ‘The Earl and Countess of Camberley.’ “It’s like a gate just opened in my head. Her father was a brute. I remember the beatings, the harassment. He touched us all . . . inappropriately. Elisabeth wouldn’t leave my sister and I behind. She was kind, loyal, and gave up everything to be with Edward.”
Mike studied the oil painting. “I guess the artists painted things to flatter the subjects. Elisabeth’s mother looks so young.”
“That’s not the Countess Katherine remembers. And we don’t have time to worry about it.”
They followed their noses toward the aroma of fresh baked bread. Only one table in the large room was set.
“One room left, my arse,” Mike whispered. “We’re the only ones here. Except for Liz and the baby. That was Eddie’s car seat, I’m sure of it.”
“And they probably just put it into a cab and sent her off.” Mae snooped around, and gasped. She pointed to a piano in the corner. “That is the Countess. And Elisabeth.”
Jared’s head reared, and Mike’s temples pounded as the ghost surveyed his beautiful wife, so unhappy, so troubled, standing next to her mother, whom she favored. Elisabeth seemed like a younger version of Liz, with the same gray green eyes, auburn hair, delicate features.
Emma joined them. “I’ve Cornish pasties. What would you like to drink? Wine, ale, soft drinks?”
Mike gladly turned away from the troubling image, but his neck muscles ached from holding Jared in check. He wasn’t hungry in the least. Should he insult the woman further and go looking for Liz? Or sit, eat, and snoop some more?
“No alcohol for me. But a ginger ale would be smashing.” Mae said.
“And you, sir?”
“Tea.” They sat, and Mike craned his neck to see anyone passing through the hall.
“As soon as she serves, I’m begging off.” Mae said. “I’ll find Liz if she’s here. You stay and distract the gruesome twosome.”
“I’ll try.” As long as he didn’t have to stare at Elisabeth.
“She needed to come back.” Mae looked around the room, her eyes vacant, dreamy. “So many wrongs to right.”
Jared responded to Katherine’s spirit. Mike fought back, he needed to be in control if everyone else was losing it.
Emma brought the steaming pies and beverages. Mike ate his and picked at Mae’s untouched plate so as not to anger or raise their suspicions further. Emma and James must have been eating in the kitchen because nearly an hour went by and there wasn’t a sound anywhere. Should he just get up and leave? Wait for Mae? Go searching on his own?
Mike drummed his fingers on the table, wished for more tea, wished for a warm bed. Wished that Elisabeth and Eddie would come in and this whole charade would soon be over. He crossed and uncrossed his legs, fidgeted.
Jared entreated him to look at the portrait again. Mike turned away. He had to stay in control. A tap on the glass patio door in the back of the room spooked him. Mae’s face peered in. He leaped over, found the latch and let her in-along with a blast of cold air and a few snowflakes. “What’s going . . .”
“Quick,” she gasped. “I found them. Follow me.” Something in her voice belied desperation, fear.
Mike hurried after her down the main hall and off into a darkened side room. “What’s happening?”
Tears streaked Mae’s face. “Liz is headed for the gazebo, carrying Eddie.”
They passed through an almost empty greenhouse, which smelled as dank as a cave. Even before they pushed through the door to the outside, wearing only sweaters, his blood turned to ice.
Chapter 36
Holding onto each other for moral support as well as warmth, Mike and Mae hurried over the snow kissed grass. Light from the house reflected off the white blanket, casting an ethereal glow over the wooden structure.
His toes went numb in the damp sneakers, but he was sweating–that awful nervous kind that stank like you hadn’t washed in weeks.
Liz, bundled in her coat, clutched what could only be the baby wrapped in a blanket against her chest. Her hood was down, her hair dotted with snowflakes. She stared at a small fenced in area to the left, oblivious to their approach.
Mike ran toward her. A wall of cold, more dense than even the winter chill, stopped him in mid-stride. She turned to him, eyes a vacant stare. Elisabeth had taken over Liz’s body. The baby, swathed in a woolen blanket, wearing a hat and a hood stared intently over his mother’s shoulder.
Gooseflesh prickled, Mike’s hair tingled at the roots. A luminous apparition of Edward Barrett appeared out of the trees, dressed in a tattered seaman’s tunic and trousers and muddy boots, a watch cap atop a head of bushy curls. His pink lips curled into a smile amidst a tangle of beard.
Elisabeth transfixed, unmoving, unblinking, stared as the silver shadow moved her way. Edward glided to her side.
The apparition of another man rose from the graveyard and placed himself between the pair. He spoke, oblivious to or unconcerned with Mike and Mae’s presence. “What are the two of you doing here? And who is that miserable whelp you’ve brought along?”
Elisabeth’s high born British voice condescended. “This is your grandson, Father.”
The man’s face twisted in fury, as if he were in pain. “That would mean you were my daughter, which you are not.” His piecing glare turned to Edward.
The seaman’s voice, hoarse from barking orders, projected as strongly as Baxter’s. “I once swore I would stand in your presence again, my Lord, and look you in the eye as an equal. I had no idea it would take so long, but I’m here, nonetheless. I went to my grave accepting that what I did was wrong, and instead of wallowing in my own misery, set about to make things right for everyone I’d harmed. That’s more than can be said for any life you’ve touched.” Scorn oozed from Edward’s voice. “I’d s
ay I turned out a better man than you, didn’t I? A far better one.”
“Leave!” Lord Baxter bellowed.
The living being inside Mike’s body quaked, though the ghost paid him no heed. Mae sobbed quietly and hid behind him.
Edward did not relent. “I will not. My business with you is done, Lord Baxter. Now I beg of you go back to your miserable lot, with your unhappy brood, and leave me to reconcile with my wife.”
Elisabeth, now fully in control of Liz, moved closer to Edward. “Go, Papa. Guard your pitiful legacy in your miserable little graveyard. Was it worth the glory of terrorizing and defeating all of us to then spend eternity as unhappily as you lived your life? Learning what you did after I fled makes me only more certain leaving was the best thing for me. I regret the pain I caused Mama, but she made her choices as well.”
Baxter screeched and evaporated into the darkness.
Mae, fully engulfed by Katherine, stiffened and stared at Elisabeth and Edward. “I’ll take my leave now, My Lady. It is not my place to be here at this time. Summon me when you have need of my services.” She walked back to the conservatory.
Mike, now the sole, intact human amongst the spirits, allowed the emboldened Jared to emerge. He’d waited two lifetimes for this moment, and there was no reason to deny him.
Edward approached him. “And what of you, Jared?”
“I have no intentions of leaving without my wife, Captain.” Mike sensed no ill intent. He held his head up, did not back away.
Edward smiled and bowed his head. “And so it should be, my friend. So it should be.” He hovered above ground, at least two heads above them both.
Elisabeth walked toward him, the baby in one arm, her other outstretched. Edward’s boots touched down, and he glided toward her.
Mike’s heart beat in his throat. “Don’t touch him, Liz.” He started toward her.
Too late. Her hand cut through his mist. She stared at it as if it were covered with blood and gore, then wrapped both arms around the baby again. “Edward.”
As if locked in eternity, in their own private world, the pair stared unblinking at each other. Edward appeared more substantive than the other ghosts. Almost real. Almost. And Mike’s son, his living, breathing child was sandwiched in between them. Eddie gazed at his biological father like he knew him, though how could that possibly be?
Mike’s voice trembled. “Liz, please back away.”
Eddie turned toward Mike’s voice and grinned. For all he knew, his mother and this apparition where as alive as he.
Elisabeth, Liz–who ever she was at this moment–and Edward ignored him.
Edward’s voice rang clear, like a country church bell, soothing, forlorn. “What are you doing here, my love? The choices you made: To marry me, to leave London and your family, your inheritance, were made freely. Your mother would still have died, your father would still have remarried. Decisions made cannot be reversed, nor consequences remedied. Because of my foolish mistakes our happiness, too, was short lived. I came back to put things right but can not walk amongst the living any longer.”
“But you’ve never seen your son. You left before he was born.” She proffered the bundled toddler, still transfixed by the glowing image.
“And he’s a beautiful boy. I see the best of both of us in him. Cared for by a wonderful mother–and a devoted father.” Edward glanced toward Mike, then at his son. His smile mellowed, his head shook. “How I wish I could hold him. But he knows me through you, Elisabeth.”
The ghost bent to kiss the baby.
Mike lurched toward them. “Don’t touch him, Edward! Liz, back away. Don’t let him touch Eddie!”
The invisible wall of cold pushed Mike back again.
Edward spoke directly to Mike. “I’d never harm him, Jared.” A luminescent hand rested on the baby’s forehead and he bent to brush his cheek against his son’s.
Mike’s throat clutched; he expected the baby to convulse, vomit, panic.
Eddie smiled sweetly. A melody danced in the air and whirled around Mike’s head.
“Thank you for bringing him to me, Elisabeth. I hope knowing that he now has met his sire has comforted you. But his father stands behind you. You must go with your husband. You must go home. Think of me, yes. Know that I will always be but a whisper away, in a splash of a wave, in the call of a gull. But you walk among the living once again, and must never forget that.” Edward nuzzled Liz’s cheek.
Tears glistened on her face. Her eyes blinked, as if Elisabeth had come back to life. “Edward, you came to me in body once and gave me this child as a gift. Why can’t you return once again?”
His voice deepened, touched with anger, frustration. “I can no longer cross the veil. With each step you take toward resolution, I take one further away. That is the way it should be–you must move toward life and away from death. I am at peace, and so should you be. Go home. Now.” He drifted toward Mike.
Please, God, don’t let him touch me. I’ll be dead for sure. Mike couldn’t move, run. He braced for the biting chill, the aftermath. His eyes were drawn, fixed, to the ghost’s unblinking stare.
Edward swirled around him, but made no physical contact. “Thank you for taking care of them, Jared. Take her home. Make her yours. Make her forget me.” He tipped his hand in salute and dissolved into spits of snowflakes twirling around them, alighting on their clothes, their hair, covering them like a cold blanket.
Liz sank to her knees sobbing, rocking the now sleeping baby in her arms. Quaking, his knees like rubber, Mike staggered toward her. “Let’s go, Liz. Captain’s orders.”
She didn’t move. He summoned the strength to pull her to her feet. Liz leaned against him as they walked down the gazebo steps toward the conservatory door.
Mae watched as he half- carried Liz along, through a circle of fog she’d wiped off the window, as Katherine must have watched, unquestioning, discretely over her mistress. Warm, moist air streamed out as they stepped inside.
Mae said nothing and took the baby from Liz. “Oh, Eddie,” She stroked his hair and the sleepy child grinned and snuggled up to her.
Warmth, relief flooded Mike, courtesy of the hothouse as well as from knowing the child was in the custody of a living, breathing human. Was he all right? The cloying odor of gardenia, of lily pollen, irritated his nose. His eyes watered.
Mae clutched Eddie close. Tears dribbled down her cheeks. She stroked Liz’s arm. “We were so worried.”
Liz swallowed hard and stopped crying, but her chest still heaved with emotion. “I’m sorry, Mae. No one understood what I needed to do.”
Thank God. It was his wife’s voice, her inflection. All traces of the British gone.
Mae looked at Mike, then down. “I’ll take Eddie while the two of you talk.” Her voice was softer than normal, no brogue, no distinct accent. She, too, was moving between the two worlds, regaining control over her thoughts, emotions.
Liz fumbled in her pocket. “Here’s my key. Room 4.”
“Well, eh, yes.” Mae, tangled in a rare moment of speechlessness, took her leave.
Mike faced Liz, disheveled, forlorn. Her eyes met his. Yes, his wife was back in control of her body.
“Mike, I, I . . .”
“I don’t think there is anything you can say to justify what you did. The risks you took.” A fury surged through him, unbidden, uncontrollable as Jared, goaded by Edward’s words, struck like a venomous snake. He’d insinuated Jared was weak, and hadn’t fought hard enough for her attention. And he was correct; gentlemen only finish first in the movies.
He took Liz into his arms and pressed his lips to hers, a little too rough. As his ragged, untrimmed beard scratched her cheek, he imagined it irritated her soft skin, might even hurt. He felt nothing when he looked at her, not relief, not desire, not even anger. Di
d he want to take the chance Edward had given, or should he just walk away?
“Once we get home you’ll have to convince me I didn’t make a mistake when I married you.” Mike went to see his son. Yes, his son, leaving her standing there alone. Now it was his turn to make the demands.
The Widow's Walk Page 29
