[Hope Chest 01.0] Mesmerist

by Pam McCutcheon

  Gina’s indrawn gasp proved she wasn’t as indifferent as she would have him believe. “Compliments don’t sway me—I’ve heard too many false ones,” she said and squirmed from beneath his arm to peer out of the concealing palms. “They’re gone now. We can come out.”

  Reluctantly, Drake had to admit he had no further reason to stay hidden, though he was loath to give up the closeness they had created.

  Her color high, Gina stepped out into the hall and smoothed her apron, unnecessarily calling Scruffy to heel. Giving Drake a challenging glance, she said, “As someone said to me not so long ago, I’m going to hound you until you leave, so be prepared.”

  Drake watched her depart with a feeling of bemusement. So she was going to hound him, eh? Oddly enough, he found himself looking forward to it.

  Chapter 4

  The next several weeks went fast for Gina as she fell into a routine. Today was no exception. A bell ringing in the hall woke her at dawn and she rose to dress quickly in her ugly gray uniform dress. Since she wasn’t allowed to wear makeup—and she wouldn’t know where to find any even if she could—her morning toilette went quickly. She splashed water on her face and pinned her hair up, determined not to be late to the Major’s morning muster.

  Gina already had a penchant for attracting trouble with her twenty-first century ways and attitude, so she tried to make up for it by abiding by the other rules. It kept the powers that be happy . . . and kept her at the resort where she could work on saving Drake. Luckily, the doctor hadn’t seen anything amiss with her attitude, at least nothing that required hospitalization, so she no longer feared him. But the Major with his rigid rules was another matter.

  She made it to the muster just in time and fell in with the rest of the employees, ensuring she lined up straight with the waitress next to her. The Major obsessed over the silliest things, and he really hated a crooked line. Thankfully, she’d learned early on how to pass his inspection—all she had to do was remain neat and tidy and keep her mouth shut. If she didn’t give Major Payne any reason to notice her, she didn’t get in trouble.

  Today, he banished several employees back to their rooms to rectify problems with their uniforms, but when he came to Gina, he merely looked her up and down, harrumphed, and moved on.

  Beside him, Esme nodded with approval and Gina repressed a grin. She’d come a long way from the first day when she’d needed help just figuring out how to put her clothes on.

  Once the stiff-rumped hotel manager grudgingly dismissed them, Gina headed off to the kitchen to seek out Chef Sasha. The rotund Russian chef was chewing out a subordinate for some unknown grievance, but when he spotted Gina, he paused and struck a dramatic pose, exclaiming, “You! You haf come for more treats for your little pooches, neh? Vell, this time Sasha says no!”

  Gina bit back a grin. They had this conversation every morning and it was always the same, but she knew she had to play the game. Staring pleadingly up at the tall chef, she said, “But, Mr. Sashenka, we must keep the guests happy. And they want their dogs to have the best . . . as only you can provide.”

  “I haf served the Russian court with these hands. Now you wish me to cook for little doggies?”

  Sasha continued grumping for awhile, but he had a soft heart under that dramatic exterior, and once Gina had praised him enough, he relented. Throwing up his hands in a gesture that nearly dislodged the hanging pots, he said, “Enough. You may haf a few scraps.”

  Gina thanked him profusely but he waved her away to the corner where she knew choice scraps of meat and bone would already be waiting on a tray. As Sasha turned a blind eye, she signaled one of the kitchen helpers to carry it for her. She’d learned it was much easier to collect the half-dozen unmannered dogs she was to tutor if she was accompanied by the meat tray.

  Once she had fed and exercised the dogs, then attempted to teach them some manners, she returned them to their owners. Finally, she had the afternoon free until she had to feed them again. But instead of ferreting out Drake Manton as she usually did, Gina went to her room to think.

  Lying on the bed and petting Scruffy, she wondered what to do about the mesmerist. She had to save the man’s life so she could go home. Though she’d found a way to fit in here in the past, it wasn’t her time, and she felt out of place. Besides, she really missed some of the modern conveniences . . . like hot showers, old movies, steamy romance novels, and Haagen-Dazs.

  And, truth to tell, she wanted to save Drake’s life for his own sake. As a ghost, he’d been a bit melancholy and demanding, but the live man was really very nice. With his dramatic looks and compelling dark eyes, you’d think he’d be more arrogant and condescending. Instead, he was surprisingly kind. Not many men in this era would be so unfailingly polite to the women who pursued him, or treat a hotel employee as an equal. Though she’d vowed to never have anything to do with a man again, Drake’s kindness disarmed her and the pain she sensed beneath his polite exterior made her long to comfort him.

  Good grief, what was she thinking? He’d be in even more pain if she didn’t do something. Death by fire wasn’t exactly gentle.

  The problem was, Drake had proven very elusive and she needed to come up with a new tactic to convince him to leave. Hinting hadn’t done it, nor had outright telling him to go. And when she’d tried to spook him by siccing all the single women in the resort on him, her scheme had backfired. She still found it difficult to pass a potted palm without thinking of his warmth, his tenderness, his—

  Forget it. This was getting her nowhere. And all her scheme had done was make him go further into hiding. When he did emerge for brief periods, she found it very difficult to get near him. Besides, if all those matchmaking women hadn’t scared him away, what would?

  Hmm, that was it. Since he wouldn’t listen to reason, she had to scare him away. But how? Threats wouldn’t work—she didn’t have anything to threaten him with, except Mrs. Biddle as a mother-in-law, and he seemed perfectly capable of avoiding that dire fate all by himself.

  What would frighten a man like Drake Manton? A sudden idea came to her and she smiled. Perfect. What better way to keep him from becoming a ghost than to scare him off with one? Besides, it would serve him right, after haunting her.

  Plans bumped around in her head, but she realized they all required one thing—an accomplice. Scratching Scruffy’s ears, she said, “But I can’t tell anyone why I want to scare him away, so who can I get to help me, someone who won’t ask difficult questions?”

  Scruffy had no answers, but a slow smile spread across her face. She had it. The very person—Rupert Smith.

  She tracked down the bellboy and waited until he finished taking a load of baggage to a room, then pulled him aside. “Rupert, I need your help.”

  The lanky bellboy grinned down at her. “Sure, Gina. What do you need?”

  “I need you to help me scare away a guest.”

  Rupert backed away. “Whoa. I’m not about to run some rig that’ll get me sacked. I need this job.”

  “You won’t be sacked, I promise you. My plan is foolproof—we won’t get caught. And if we do, I’ll make sure they know it was all my idea.”

  “I don’t think I can risk it.”

  “Come on, Rupert,” she wheedled. “I’ll give you two weeks’ pay if you’ll help me.”

  That had him thinking—money was one of the few things sure to get Rupert’s attention. But he wasn’t really as mercenary as others had made him out to be. Though he’d left Philadelphia and a large family with many brothers and sisters to make his own way in the world, he still sent money home regularly. All those mouths to feed were a powerful incentive, so the surest way to Rupert’s help was through his wallet “I don’t know. . . .” he said, but she could tell he was wavering.

  “All right. Four weeks’ pay, then.” She didn’t have much use for it back in this time anyway.

  She watched as Rupert wrestled with his conscience, but the money won. “All right, what do I have to do and who do you w
ant to scare?”

  “Drake Manton.”

  “Why does it have to be Mr. Manton?” Rupert complained. “He’s a big tipper.”

  “I have my reasons.” And four weeks’ pay ought to be reason enough for Rupert. “Do you really want to know?”

  He thought for a moment, then shook his head. “No, I don’t guess I do.”

  “Okay, then. Now first, do you know if any of the rooms around his are vacant?” Silly question—Rupert always knew everything that went on in the hotel.

  “The one above him is, on the second floor. Why?”

  “Because I want you to keep it that way.”

  “How?”

  “You’ve got an in with the desk clerk—just tell him there’s something wrong with the room or something.”

  “I don’t know. . . .”

  “Just do it,” she said in exasperation. “Look, what I want you to do first is drop a few hints that the hotel has a ghost. Say a . . . a woman hanged herself in his room and she comes back to haunt single men. On second thought, not just in that room—in the whole hotel.” She didn’t want Drake to think he could just move to another room to escape the ghost.

  “Why only single men?”

  “I don’t know—maybe she killed herself ’cause her lying creep of a fiancé slept with another woman,” Gina said sharply.

  Rupert raised both eyebrows but wisely didn’t ask any more questions.

  Gina waved her hands to erase her last outburst. “Never mind. We’re going to make him think he’s haunted by making ghostly noises above him, okay? With any luck, it’ll make him leave the hotel.”

  “All right,” Rupert said with a shrug. “It’s your money.”

  “Good. We need to get started right away. We only have a week.”

  Drake had his first mesmerism lecture scheduled on Friday. Fearing it might gain him converts who would convince him to stay, Gina wanted to scare him away before that happened. With any luck, he’d be gone by Thursday.

  Gina explained the rest of her plan, then put it into action with Rupert’s help. They didn’t get much sleep over the next week as they worked all day and spent half the night making spooky noises in the room above Drake’s.

  Rupert proved to be a great accomplice. She overheard him tell blood-chilling stories of the hanged woman’s ghost that almost had Gina believing him, and he was extremely inventive when it came to making eerie sounds. His stories were so vivid, they even overshadowed the much talked-about circus coming to town.

  Unfortunately, none of it seemed to faze Drake Manton. Finally, after five days of inadequate sleep, Gina put down the pipe she had used to make ghostly sounds at Drake’s window. Slumping to the floor, she said, “This isn’t working.”

  Rupert nodded. “So, you want to quit?”

  “Are you kidding? Not on your life. We still have tomorrow night. I guess I’ll just have to bring out the big guns.”

  Aghast, Rupert said, “You’re going to shoot him?”

  “No, of course not.” Silly man—she really had to watch her modern expressions. “I mean I just have to go to Plan B.”

  “Plan B? What’s that?”

  Well, it had seemed reasonable when she’d dreamed it up a week ago, but now she wasn’t so sure. And if she told Rupert what she had in mind, she was sure he wouldn’t approve either. “Never mind. Just meet me here tomorrow night at the same time. I’ll tell you then.”

  The next night, Gina slipped into the room above Drake’s an hour before Rupert was supposed to meet her and dressed in her jeans and T-shirt, then stepped into the leather harness contraption she’d talked Sean Quinn, the stablemaster, into making for her. As she’d planned, the straps fit her like a bathing suit—at least, one that had really big holes in it.

  The bottom straps went around the top of her legs, the top set went over her shoulders and under her arms, and there were two other sets in between, reinforced by strips running vertically up the front and back.

  She’d seen something like this on one of those behind-the-scenes shows on television—it allowed the actors to appear as if they were flying, but the harness distributed the stress evenly across their bodies so they weren’t cut in two by the rope.

  Pleased with her ingenuity, Gina slipped a white nightgown on over the contraption so it wouldn’t show. Good—it made her look properly ghostly. Now for her face. She used the mirror to put on the “makeup” she had devised for this occasion—white flour liberally dusted over her hair and face, soot to create dark circles under her eyes and blacken her lips, and beet juice to draw a red line around her neck.

  She stood back to assess her handiwork and grinned. Yep, she looked like a hanged woman. Rupert opened the door then and she turned toward him to give him the full effect.

  She had hoped to catch him off-guard and turn him as white as the ghost she was pretending to be, but instead, he grinned. “You look ghastly.”

  “Thank you. That was the general idea.” But she would have been happier with more fear and less admiration. “Do I look like a ghost?”

  “Yes, if I didn’t know it was you, you would have convinced me.”

  Somewhat mollified, Gina said, “Well, I hope it convinces Drake Manton.”

  “What are you going to do? Pretend to float across his room?”

  “No, what if I bump into the furniture? Or into him? He might find out I’m not really a ghost.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to hang myself outside his window.”

  “You’re going to what?”

  “Here, I’ll show you.”

  Rupert looked shy at first when she pulled up her nightgown, but when he realized she was fully dressed underneath and saw the harness, he was intrigued. “What’s that for?”

  “It’s to keep me from really hanging myself when you lower me on a rope down to Drake’s window.”

  “Lower you on a rope? Oh, no,” Rupert protested. “You’ll kill yourself.”

  “No I won’t. Look, I’ve thought it all out. You just let me down to the first floor window, and I’ll get his attention. To him, I’ll look like a hanged woman floating in midair. Like this.” She cocked her head to the side and let her tongue protrude. “See?”

  “Then what?” Rupert asked dubiously.

  “Then after he faints or runs away screaming, I’ll tug on the rope and you haul me up.”

  “How? We weigh about the same. I don’t think I could raise you back up.”

  Annoyed with his faultfinding, Gina said, “Okay, how about this? You lower me, then run the rope once or twice around the chest of drawers over there—that’ll help hold me in place. Then when I tug on the rope, you can lower me to the ground.”

  “What if you fall?”

  “So what? It’s only a few feet down from there—I won’t get hurt.”

  Obviously still trying to find a way to convince her to give up her scheme, Rupert said, “But if I do that, how are you going to get back in without anyone seeing you like this?”

  “I borrowed a cloak with a hood. It’s over on the bed. All you have to do is drop the cloak on top of me and you can leave. I won’t ask you to do any more, okay?”

  “Do you think this will really work?”

  “Of course it will.” They did it all the time in the movies. “Come on, Rupert. You promised. And I promise—this is the last time I’ll ask you to help me.”

  Rupert heaved a heavy sigh, but she could tell the boy in him was eager to see how it worked. After all, he was only seventeen. “All right, but this is the last time.”

  No longer reluctant, Rupert tied the rope to the back of her harness and helped her climb out the window backward. As Gina bumped her way down the outside brick wall, she wondered if this was such a good idea after all. She had envisioned floating serenely in space, not hanging plastered against the wall. Oh, well, too late now. At least there was a small brick overhang above Drake’s window which helped her achieve a little distance from
it.

  She gave Rupert the sign to stop and donned her best ghoulish expression. “Wooooooo.”

  She waited a moment, but there was no sign of life from inside Drake’s room. She tapped on the glass. “Gooooo awaaaaaaay!” she wailed.

  Finally, there was some sign of movement from inside.

  To give him the maximum effect, she pushed off from the brick wall so he could see her feet didn’t touch the ground. “Goooo awaaaaay.”

  She swung back toward the window and pushed away again. Unfortunately, her next “Wooooooo,” ended in a “woooooo—oof! “ as she sailed in through the now-opened window and slammed into Drake’s chest.

  “What the devil?” he exclaimed.

  As Gina rebounded, she frantically tugged on the rope. The rope went slack, but as she slumped, Drake caught her under the arms and hauled her into his room.

  Damn. Now what? Gina struggled to free herself, to no avail. Drake’s arm around her middle was like iron—and so was the rest of his body. Jeez, the guy must work out or something. How the heck was she going to get away?

  Holding her with one arm, Drake somehow lit a lamp with the other and peered at her face. “Ah, Miss Charles. I wondered when you would put in a physical appearance.”

  How had he recognized her? Gina decided to brazen it out. Thrusting her hands against his chest, she said, “Let me go.”

  “Where’s your accomplice? And how far do you plan to take this game?”

  Ignoring the jibe about Rupert, she said, “It’s not a game. I’m deadly serious. Let me go.” But when that tactic failed to make him release her, she forced herself to go limp and let her face crumple, hoping to lull him into a false sense of security.

  It worked. As his arm loosened, she pushed him away and bolted for the door. Yanking it open, she came face to face with Chloe Harrington. Though the girl’s hand was upraised to knock, she took one look at Gina’s face, screeched, and crumpled to the floor in a faint.