She sounded so convinced. He was not. “Why?”
“Because of the other man,” Eve whispered.
Lucien waved her answer off with a dismissive hand. “No. Why make her believe he forgave her? If he was enraged over her indiscretions, why not kill her in a rage? Why pretend to love and forgive her and then kill her and himself?”
“I don’t know,” Eve admitted.
Again on the streets of Plummerville, they walked and talked, their voices low, onlookers forgotten.
“Perhaps he did know about her fall from grace, as it were,” Lucien began. “Being imperfect himself, Alistair truly might have forgiven Viola, but someone else… a rejected lover, a jealous wife, an indignant brother or father, killed them both.”
“Not a jealous wife,” Eve insisted.
“Why not?”
“We know the killer was a man.”
Lucien shrugged. “We don’t know that to be true, though I suppose we can assume it to be the case. Still a jealous woman might have hired or begged or blackmailed someone into doing the deed for her.”
Evie sighed. “You make things so complicated! The simplest explanation is almost always the correct one.”
“Almost always.”
“Besides, if the murderer was someone unconnected to the Stampers, someone who just killed them for money and then left town, we will never know what really happened.”
“No matter what happened that night, we might never know. It’s been thirty years, Eve.”
She stopped before the busy general store and looked up at him. “Not for Viola. For Viola, it’s not thirty years ago, it’s right now, and the murder happens every night. She dies violently every night.”
He wanted, so much, to reach out and touch Evie’s cheek. Instead he said, “While we’re here, let’s do a little shopping.”
She turned away and headed into the general store. The skirt of her drab green dress swayed nicely, as he watched her walk away. His Eve was a temptation, a wonder, the only woman for him. Unfortunately she was also a gift he might never be able to reclaim.
Chapter 9
Eve tried to convince herself that people only stared at Lucien because he was so handsome… and because he was a stranger to most of the customers who browsed the shelves of the general store, she added mentally when it occurred to her that to dwell upon his more pleasing attributes was a waste of her time.
But it was more, and she knew it. Lucien was different. People always sensed that he was different, and were either perplexed, annoyed, or intrigued. Again she felt a deep rage on his behalf. Different was not wrong! She wanted to stroke his head and kiss his brow and call his mother much worse names than stupid, but she didn’t dare. For one thing, she didn’t want him to know she cared. For another, you just didn’t criticize a man’s mother too much, no matter what she’d done.
She placed sugar and tea in a small shopping basket, and Lucien browsed through the penny candy. No tobacco for him, thank goodness. She hated the stench of cigar smoke, and would not have it in her house, in any case. But Lucien had a sweet tooth. She decided to buy an extra pound of sugar.
“Eve!” a bright voice called.
Eve spun around to see her closest friend in Plummerville, Daisy Willard, closing in with a wide smile on her face. Daisy was everything Eve was not. She was a beautiful woman, with pale blond hair and eyes almost as blue as Lucien’s. She dressed in colorful, frilly dresses and was given to wearing bows and satin ribbons. Perhaps she and Eve had become such good friends because they were the only unmarried women in Plummerville between the ages of twenty-five and thirty, except for that sour old widow Katherine Cassidy. Eve and Daisy didn’t talk about babies and cake recipes, like the other women near their ages, they talked about the world, books, and their gardens. Daisy had a wonderful garden.
“I didn’t expect to see you in town today,” Daisy said brightly as she gave Eve a quick hug. She glanced into Eve’s basket. “Why, look at all that sugar. Are you actually going to do some baking?” It was a small joke between them; neither of them could bake worth a fig. Still, when Lucien was around Eve wanted to try to learn.
“It was a spur-of-the moment trip,” Eve said, hoping beyond hope that Lucien would continue to peruse the sweet offerings at the front of the store. She had not talked about her ghosts to anyone, not even to Daisy. She would have a terrible time explaining Lucien!
“Are you going to bake a cake for the Halloween fair?”
Eve shook her head. “No.”
“But you will be there,” Daisy said.
She had put off this discussion for two weeks, because she knew Daisy would argue. But now was as good a time as any. “I don’t think so.” Halloween was the thirtieth anniversary of Viola’s death. She wouldn’t feel right partying on the streets of Plummerville while Viola relived that night once more.
As expected, Daisy’s eyes grew wide. “Why not? It’s always fun. Much more fun than the Fourth of July celebration. The mayor doesn’t speak at Halloween, thank goodness. Instead of ending the day with a boring speech, we all gather around the bonfire and tell ghost stories!”
Eve shuddered. Ghost stories could be entertaining, but since beginning her work with Lucien and his cronies, four years ago, she no longer garnered any pleasure from those scary tales. To believe in ghosts as a concept was one thing. To have them tap you on the shoulder and say hello was another entirely.
Daisy’s eyes sparkled. A hint of a smile touched her perfectly shaped mouth. “You’re scared,” she said softly.
“I am not.”
“You are.” Daisy laid a hand on Eve’s arm. “You’re afraid of ghosts and goblins and witches…”
“I am not!”
Daisy’s half smile faded. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I was having fun with you, and you really are frightened. Eve, it’s just a child’s holiday. A night for all of us to be children again.” She nodded her head. “We’ll go to the festival together, and if you like I’ll hold your hand and chase away anyone who dares to scare you, and I will give you the talk my mother used to give me, when I was younger. There are no ghosts, no witches, no goblins.”
The thought of Daisy Willard—five foot one and slightly built and dressed in sunny yellow—protecting anyone made Eve smile. And now was not the time to tell Daisy that while she wasn’t sure about goblins, ghosts and witches were very real.
“That’s very sweet, but I have other plans.”
“Other plans?”
More explanations were apparently called for. Explanations she did not want to give. Eve’s life in Plummerville was as regulated and boring as Daisy’s. They never had other plans.
“Evie, do you like licorice?”
Eve closed her eyes at the sound of Lucien’s voice and the steady clip of his step behind her.
“I can’t remember,” he mumbled. “I should remember. You like either licorice or… peppermint!” He sighed. “It’s peppermint you like. You detest licorice.” He turned before he reached her, heading back to the candy counter. “Sorry,” he muttered as he walked away.
When he was gone, Daisy smiled and whispered, “Evie?”
“He’s an old friend.”
“He doesn’t look very old,” Daisy teased. “Oh, is he the reason you have other plans for Saturday? This is quite shocking.”
“He’s staying at Miss Gertrude’s boarding house,” Eve explained. “And he really is an old friend. Nothing more.”
Daisy didn’t argue, but she didn’t believe the protest, either. Her face was so open and easy to read, and right now everything on that face sparkled. “Does your old friend have a name?”
“Lucien Thorpe.” Eve held her breath as she waited for Daisy to recognize the name.
Apparently she didn’t. “We must all have dinner at my house. Tomorrow night?”
“We really shouldn’t…”
“You can’t have other plans for tomorrow, too!”
What could she say without telling Daisy ab
out Viola and Alistair and Lucien’s attempts to send them on? If she wanted to tell anyone, it would be her friend. Daisy was a woman who could be trusted, of that Eve was certain. But when—no, if the time came, she didn’t want to share the news in the general store.
“Tomorrow night would be lovely,” Eve said.
Daisy clapped her hands and grinned widely. “Wonderful! I was so terribly bored, with nothing to look forward to until the Halloween festival on Saturday, and now I have a cozy dinner party to plan. A fall theme, I think,” she said, tapping a slender finger on her chin. “Is your friend Mr. Thorpe a picky eater?”
“Not at all.”
“All men like beef and potatoes,” Daisy mused. “And I could try to make a pie. The last one was a disaster, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t try. Pumpkin,” she said with a decisive nod of her head.
“I have to go,” Eve said, trying to make her escape before Lucien returned. Daisy and Lucien would meet soon enough.
*
“Dinner?” Lucien wagged a rope-like piece of licorice at Eve as she put away the purchases he had carried for her. “Why?”
“Daisy is my best friend here in Plummerville, and she wants to cook a meal for us. That’s all.”
“We don’t have time,” he said, pulling out a chair from the small kitchen table and sitting. “Tomorrow night we’ll need to be here, trying to connect with Viola and Alistair so I can send them on.”
“We won’t be out late. Daisy always eats early.”
“Just explain to her what we’re doing, and…”
“No!” Eve turned about sharply, and before his eyes bright pink spots formed on her lovely cheeks. “I don’t think that… we really shouldn’t…”
“I thought you said this woman was your best friend.”
“She is.”
“And yet she doesn’t know that your house is haunted.”
“No.”
Eve’s insistence that she wanted to be ordinary echoed in his mind. “She doesn’t even know what you’ve done, does she? The articles, the book…”
“A book no one read,” she muttered.
“I read it,” he said. “It was quite brilliant.”
She pursed her lips in disbelief, then reached for one of the peppermint sticks he had bought her and stuck it in her mouth.
The articles and single book had been written under the pseudonym E. J. Hart, and while the book had not been a commercial success, it had been brilliant. Perhaps because in reading it he saw so much of Eve. In the words, the observations, the flow of the sentences. He had read that book a dozen times or more, in the past two years.
“Does she even know you’re a writer?”
“Yes.” Eve lifted her chin and wagged her peppermint stick. “I have written several articles on gardening, since coming to Plummerville.”
He couldn’t stop himself; he burst out laughing. “Gardening?” He almost choked on a piece of licorice.
“Articles about gardening are very popular. I might even write a book on the subject, next year.”
“Oh, Evie,” he said, his laughter dying. “Weeds and bugs and dirt can’t be as exciting as…”
“I don’t need exciting,” she interrupted. “I’ve had enough excitement to last me a lifetime!”
Evie tried to walk past him, on her way out of the kitchen with her head high, spine rigid, chin uplifted. She looked fearsome, as if the peppermint stick she wielded was a mighty sword. As she came near, Lucien reached out and snagged her wrist. With a gentle tug, he pulled her onto his knee. She tried to get up, but when he tugged her back down once more, she stayed.
“We’ll have dinner with your friend, if you like,” he said calmly. “And I will refrain from mentioning your ghosts or any others, if that will make you happy. But, Evie… it is a mistake to deny who you are. Trust me on this one, I know from experience.”
“I can be whoever I want to be,” she insisted, her gaze turned to the fascinating sight of the kitchen window, lace curtains, and gleaming panes of glass. She perched on his knee and sucked on the candy, almost absently.
“You’re very lucky, then,” he said softly. “I am who I am, and there’s no changing that. I can never be a teacher, or a farmer, or a lawyer. I can never deny who I am.” He didn’t want to try, not ever again. “If you can forget what you’ve seen and what you know in order to be this blasted ordinary woman, then good for you. I for one will miss the Evie Abernathy who can go head to head with a ghost or two and a ragtag collection of admittedly odd spirit chasers and come out laughing.”
She played with the peppermint stick, seemingly unaware that every move she made was maddeningly seductive. “There were fun times, I suppose.”
“You suppose.”
She looked at him dead in the eye, her lips wet and sticky, her mind somewhere else. Was she remembering all the good times they’d had before he’d ruined everything?
“I just fell into it, you know,” she said, stopping to lick her lips. “My father met Hugh shortly before he died, and I was so lost… I had nowhere to go and Hugh quickly put me to work taking notes for him. It grew from there; it took over my life so gradually that before I knew it I was… one of you.”
“Hugh has a penchant for finding and saving lost souls.”
Eve nodded slightly, her head down. “He does that, doesn’t he? We met Hugh too late for him to help my father, but he was a godsend for me.” She lifted her head and looked at him. She was no longer lost in the past, but was very much right here.
“I wish my father had met you, before he died. He handed money over to every swindler along the East Coast, trying to get in touch with my mother. If only he had found you…”
“It wouldn’t have mattered.”
“You could have tried to call her for him. If he had known that she was at peace, that she was waiting for him, he could have…” Her face fell. “Maybe he could have found some peace himself, in this life.”
Lucien shook his head. “Hugh told me, early on, that I had to shut out a lot of the noise in my head and choose how I would use my gift. I had to pick a path and stick to it, and I did. Your mother crossed over to the other side peacefully, as is right and proper. I find the spirits who did not make the trip successfully, and do my best to send them home. I would never, not for any price, yank a spirit back from where it belongs.”
“So she’s… all right?”
They had never talked about her mother, and she didn’t mention her father much, either. Evie lived solidly in the present. She didn’t dwell on past mistakes. Except his, apparently. But right now he could see the painful questions in her eyes, so close to his own.
“They’re both fine.” He gave her a smile and tucked a stray strand of honey colored hair behind her ear. “I see them around you, now and then.”
She jumped and pulled slightly away from him. “You do? I thought you said…”
“They come on their own accord, as they please, when they please. I don’t pull them here. They never stay very long. A few seconds, a minute or two. Just long enough to see that you’re safe and happy.”
“You never told me,” she whispered accusingly.
“You never asked. How was I to know that you wanted to be aware of their presence?” He’d learned the hard way to keep his mouth shut, unless called to do a specific job. “Do you know what would happen to me if I went around telling everyone that the spirit of their mother or their recently deceased husband or their favorite aunt popped in now and then to check on them?” He felt Evie relax, there on his knee. “If someone asks me I tell them the truth, but I keep most of what I see to myself, these days.”
“I’m not like everyone else,” she protested softly. “You can tell me anything. Everything.”
“Can I?”
She reached out and brushed back a strand of his hair. Her fingers were tender, soft as the brush of a feather. “You can.”
“So you forgive me?” he asked hopefully.
“Of cour
se not.”
Since there was no heat in her words, he didn’t take her too seriously. He cupped the back of her neck with his hand and pulled her toward him. “It’s true,” he whispered. “You’re not like everyone else. There is no one in the world like you. I was such an idiot to… to… to let that day slip by.”
“Yes,” she said as her lips neared his. “You were.”
He kissed her, and her mouth on his was so right, so sweet… he didn’t want it to end. He held her there, with his hand at her neck, but she didn’t try to pull away. She rested one hand on his shoulder, and after a moment her fingers began to rock, just as her lips did. A kiss like this, a kiss that pounded through his veins and his spirit, had to mean something. Forgiveness, perhaps? Love?
When she pulled her mouth from his he released her, his hand raking gently down her back.
Eve licked her lips as she pulled away from him. “You taste like licorice.”
“Sorry,” he said, not sounding at all apologetic.
“It’s all right,” she said. “Perhaps licorice isn’t so bad, after all.”
He smiled at her, giving her a completely wicked grin. “You taste like peppermint.”
He liked this too much, having Evie on his lap while he sat in her kitchen as if he belonged here. It was… ordinary. It was so much of what she wanted from life. Well, what she said she wanted. Did she truly want to be like everyone else?
She broke the silence, and ruined the moment with a single sentence. “I think you should go, now.”
“To the parlor?”
“Back to Miss Gertrude’s,” she said softly.
“Evie…”
“It doesn’t look right for you to be here. We don’t have a chaperone.”
“We’re both fully grown,” he said indignantly. “We don’t need a chaperone.”
“I have a reputation to think of,” she argued. Still, she sat on his knee. “The preacher knows you’re here, Miss Gertrude, Daisy, and all those people in the general store. You can’t just… move in.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not…”
“Proper,” he finished for her.
She nodded. “You can come back tonight, when it’s time for Alistair and Viola to appear.”
Shades of Midnight Page 10
