Lord Melvedere's Ghost

by King, Rebecca

  Cecily held the door and followed Jamie into the room, glancing at the wall around the door. She felt her blood run cold as she stared at yet another painting of Jamie’s father. Was the man haunting her? Everywhere she turned there were paintings of him, always behind doors. She cast a dismissive glance around the room feeling as though she was intruding on sacred ground. The urge to get out of there was strong, and she found herself moving back to the doorway only to stop and stare at the painting with new eyes.

  “Is it that simple?” Cecily whispered, her eyes locked on the now hauntingly familiar face of Jamie’s sire.

  “Is what that simple?” Jamie asked, placing one hand on her back he studied her face closely. Once again she was studying the portrait of his father as though it was about to jump off the wall and chase her out of the room. “He really was a nice man you know,” he declared defensively.

  “I know,” Cecily replied steadily. “I also think that the paintings are there for a reason.”

  “What do you -” He watched in astonishment when Cecily put her hand on the panel directly behind the corner of the portrait and a faint click was heard near the passage door.

  Jamie swung the door closed.

  Cecily pushed the panel again. The click moved the door.

  “Good Lord,” Jamie whispered, pulling the door open and moving into the passage. “Do it again.”

  Cecily pushed the panel, the door swung open and Jamie reappeared in the library.

  “There is a portrait of your father beside the passage doorway in the study too.”

  Jamie was impressed, stunned and delighted with her cool logic. “We could do with you on the Star Elite,” he muttered, only half jokingly. At least she wasn’t afraid of his father’s portraits.

  Thrilled with their success, Cecily began to grow in confidence and nodded toward the darkness. “Shall we go and explore a bit more?”

  Jamie bit back a smile and waved her before him. “After you.”

  Cecily tipped her chin up and smiled supremely at him as she passed. She was feeling rather pleased with herself and didn’t mind admitting the fact. It was the only thing she had ever really applied herself to that had given her a sense of accomplishment. She still had no clue what was happening with the books in the library, or the boxes in the hidden room, or have any clue as to why the passages were there at all, but she had at least found a few answers.

  “Wait,” Jamie whispered, tugging on her hand and drawing her to a halt. Something had caught his eye in the corridor ahead, and made him stop. Turning back around, he studied the darkness behind them. The hairs on the back of his neck began to stand on end again, and he silently drew Cecily to stand behind him.

  “What is it?” Cecily whispered, holding on to the back of his shirt. She lifted her candle aloft but couldn’t see anything except darkness.

  Every instinct Jamie had ever possessed warned him to remain perfectly still. There was someone else in the tunnel. He cursed the darkness and, although he had a gun, he hated to use it in such close quarters on an unseen enemy. He wanted to see who he was fighting blast it. Shaking his head, he wondered if he should just push Cecily through into the library and charge down the corridor, until his common sense took hold. It was better for his enemy to come to him. He glanced at Cecily’s candle.

  “Put it out,” he whispered.

  “No,” Cecily replied firmly. It was her safety, her sanctuary, and there was no possibility of anyone, not even Jamie, taking it from her.

  When Jamie tried to grab the candle, she lifted it aloft only for Jamie to try to snatch it from her. He slid one hand around her waist to hold her steady against him while trying to relieve her of the light. Cecily tipped her head back and glanced at the candle.

  “What’s that?” She whispered, trying to ignore the sheer masculine presence of Jamie who was flush against her.

  Jamie almost groaned, and had to struggle to keep his mind off the feel of her in his arms. She felt so right being so close against him that his body began to respond in a way that made him glad of the darkness, and her inability to see his instinctive response to her.

  Glancing up, he frowned at the missing bricks further up the wall. He moved Cecily to one side. He had to stand on tiptoe, and even then it was a stretch but, using the brick that Cecily had used earlier to prop the secret room’s door open, he had enough height to be able to see through the small holes; holes that had been cut into the painting where his father’s eyes should be. He briefly contemplated sending Cecily into the room to see if she could see his eyes but knew she would be frightened by the sight of his eyes moving in a portrait, so jumped down off the brick.

  “See if you can reach the holes,” he whispered, watching Cecily stretch onto the very tips of her toes.

  “I can’t reach,” Cecily whispered, disappointed. She wanted to see what he had seen.

  “Can you reach one of the holes? Here try this.” He guided her hand upward and dislodged one of the strips of material before quickly disappearing into the library. One glance was all it took and he reappeared in the passage with a sigh of disgust. He wondered if the painting in the study was the same and knew that he didn’t need to go in there and check to know that it was.

  “God in heaven,” he growled, helping Cecily down from the brick. “Let’s go.” His blood began to boil and he looked down at his fingers. Unsurprisingly, there was little dust on them, meaning that the painting had been disturbed recently. Someone had been overhearing conversations in the library for some time. But who? Why? What were they listening for?

  “Is it the painting?” Cecily sensed rather than saw his brisk nod as he stalked ahead of her. He was bristling with anger and, as a result, the tension within the passage increased with each step they took. They followed the passage to the right, around the far wall of the library, but it ran to a dead end. Doubling back, they made their way to the small flight of circular stairs that took them alongside the servant’s stairs up to the next floor.

  Upstairs, the passages didn’t appear to be so extensive. They first turned left and took the right turn at the end of the corridor.

  Jamie’s temper rose with each doorway they opened. As he suspected, every guest room in the west wing had a secret doorway into the passage, and that included Cecily’s bedroom.

  She gasped as the doorway into her room swung silently inward, and they were suddenly standing beside the fireplace, staring at her bed. She glanced at the far corner of the room where she had seen Jamie’s father disappear last night and shuddered. Had he been trying to warn her that there was another way in and out of her room?

  Jamie studied the doorway carefully. He didn’t say anything to her for fear of frightening her further, but it was evident from the dust that hers was the only guest room to have been accessed using the passage for quite some considerable time.

  Driven by the need to find answers, Jamie drew her back out into the passage and they retraced their steps, all the way around the back of the house to the east wing.

  His suite of rooms included a walk-in dressing room, a large bedroom, a closet and a sitting room. It ran the entire length of the east wing of the house and was his personal space. He was coldly furious by the time they approached the last door on the corridor running along the back of the house. This too had been disturbed recently.

  He opened the door, and his eyes grew cold at the sight of his bedroom.

  “Come on,” he muttered, drawing Cecily ahead of him into the room. Moving to the bell pull, he tugged on it several times before grabbing hold of Cecily’s hand. He drew her through the suite of rooms into the sitting room. It was about the only room in the house, alongside the morning room, dining room and sitting room, that were unaffected by the passages. Although they hadn’t checked to see if there were any other passages upstairs, another flight of stairs weren’t evident right now, and he had more important things to think about.

  Locking the door to the sitting room behind him, he brushed
the dust off his fingers and tried to rein in his temper. He was livid, not only for his own inability to protect Cecily, but for the abilities of his unseen enemy.

  “What do we do now?” Cecily sighed, brushing dust off her breeches and pulling cobwebs out of her hair.

  “Sit here for a minute,” Jamie replied quietly, shaking his head like a dog and sneezing at the dust. “We will talk about it when the tea things have arrived.”

  “Won’t the servants think it strange that you want tea for two in the middle of the afternoon?” Cecily asked with a frown. The servants already had a poor enough opinion of her without Jamie filling them with idle gossip by entertaining her in his bedroom.

  “I am not having tea,” Jamie sighed, moving to the door in the bedroom when Warren arrived to answer his summons.

  “They go further than I realised,” Cecily declared softly when Jamie had returned and taken a seat beside the fire. She could think of nothing else to say, and Jamie had yet to speak.

  “I didn’t even realise they existed.”

  “I think they were built when the house was built,” Cecily sighed. “I don’t know much about architecture you understand, but it looks to me that the passages have been built with the house.”

  “I agree. They are something my father must have known about, so why didn’t he tell me? Why did anyone feel the need to keep them a secret?”

  Cecily shook her head, wishing she had answers for him. Despite her success in the passage, she felt woefully inadequate against the weight of so many unanswered questions. It was just all so very confusing. She had no idea where to begin.

  It was so very tempting to tell him about the sight of his father, but Jamie was a practical man. He was one of life’s thinkers, who preferred to plot logically rather than believe in highly illogical nonsense of ghosts and things.

  Tea arrived without much ceremony, and was carried in by Jamie who had dismissed Warren’s slightly quizzical look at his unusual demand for tea. They tucked into the cake hungrily and allowed the companionable silence to settle around them before Jamie poured himself a liberal shot of brandy from the decanter next to his chair.

  Cecily was lost in the quandary of whether she had seen the ghost of Jamie’s dad in the passage, or whether it was her wayward imagination. Jamie was lost on just how quickly he might be able to seduce Cecily.

  It was clear that whoever was using the passages had been to his room, and Cecily’s, and as such, she wasn’t safe even in her own bed at night. All of the guest rooms were in the west wing of the house. The lady of the house’s quarters had been converted into guest rooms and a sitting room shortly after the demise of his mother, but still there had been no mention of any secret passages being found. It pointed to the fact that his father knew they were there, and had instructed the workmen to ignore them.

  His thoughts turned to Cecily, who once again looked smudged, dirty, and so adorable that he wanted to replace the teacup at her lips with his lips. The feel of her held flush against him in the passage, and the all too innocent way she had accepted his help, was emblazoned on his mind. His body and soul reached out to her, demanding nothing less than her. She had yet to understand the importance of her presence in his house, but she would. He would see to it.

  Right now that left him with another problem. He had intended to allow Cecily to reside in and around the Melvedere estate to allow her the time to get used to being around his home as well as in his life. Now that he knew he couldn’t protect her, he had to push things along a little. She didn’t know it yet, but she didn’t have the freedom to make her own mind up on her future. He had to take matters into his own hands, and that meant protecting her in every way possible.

  That posed yet another problem.

  Cecily.

  Although she had willingly allowed him to hold her, and had returned his kisses with an innocent enthusiasm that had nearly unmanned him, she was a very strong minded young woman. She was a woman who, for the first time in her life, had to make a decision on her future. Having been under the totalitarian rule of her father for her entire life, would she agree to any man deciding her future for her? More importantly, would she forgive Jamie afterwards when he took that decision out of her hands?

  “What do we do now?” Cecily asked when she could stand the silence no longer.

  “Say nothing to anyone. I am going to do a search of those passages, and especially that secret room, later tonight when everyone is in bed. I know it is going to be difficult, but try and pretend that nothing has happened. Right now, I think we need to clean up and change for dinner.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  As far as Jamie was concerned, Cecily was his, and he was going to move heaven and earth to keep her safe. He could see no reason to hide his intention of taking her to wife. The sooner the staff understood that she was not his mistress and never would be, and would instead be the lady of the house, the sooner any wayward gossip would stop.

  Yes, theirs was a slightly unconventional courtship in that one usually didn’t move one’s intended into their future home without a ring on her finger, but this was what happened when working with the Star Elite. Luckily, her arrival at Melvedere had been shrouded in secrecy, and his staff had been warned with serious consequences if they breeched his privacy and discussed anything that went on in the house.

  He knew the staff very well. They had been working for his father for many years before Jamie took over. Mrs Nantwich and Warren had both watched Jamie grow up. He would trust them with his life and knew they would not allow any of the staff to run rife with nefarious gossip.

  Still, there was the redoubtable Miss Emstridge to take into consideration. Although he could vaguely recall his father mentioning that he had taken on someone to catalogue the library, Jamie couldn’t remember the finer details and had yet been able to find the time, or interest, in locating his father’s old papers relating to the woman. He made a note to send word to his man of business and find out how much he was paying the woman but, until he could find any more information on her, he had to keep an eye on her, for Cecily’s sake if not his own.

  He waited in the sitting room for Cecily to appear and tried hard not to pace up and down before the fire. He felt edgy and restless, feelings that were altogether unfamiliar to him. He didn’t like it but wondered if this was what being in love was like. As though if you sat down you immediately wanted to get back up again, and if you began to pace, you were constantly keeping one eye on the time, knowing that life wouldn’t settle back down again until that one person; the one who held your world steady, reappeared in your life.

  “That’s a fierce frown,” Cecily declared, closing the door behind her. He looked positively forbidding with one booted foot on the fender of the hearth and an elbow propped on the mantle. She wondered if she would have to pry his jacket away from the fire the way she did with Basil when he turned toward her.

  Jamie stared. His jaw dropped. Gone was the dirty and grubby urchin who had followed him around the passages, clinging to his shirt and a candle. In her place was a stunningly beautiful young woman whose graceful elegance positively radiated from the top of her glossy dark head, to the very tips of the rose coloured shoes he could see peeking out from beneath what had to be one of the most stunning gowns he had ever seen. Although very pale in colour, the delicate pink accentuated the faint blush in her cheeks. He couldn’t ever remember the blue of her eyes being that startling in clarity before, and wondered why or how he had missed it.

  Giving himself a mental shake, he pushed away from the hearth and moved toward her, picking up a goblet of wine from the table. He had only half filled it because he was fairly certain that she had not had much of the stuff while living with her father, and he didn’t want her accusing him of taking advantage while she was inebriated. Although he was going to do everything within his power to get her to accept him, he was not so callously calculating as to take advantage of her while she was drunk. He wanted her to remember their f
irst night together and, hopefully, spend many more nights with him in the future.

  “I thought it might be nice to eat in here tonight,” Jamie smiled, handing her the goblet and escorting her to the table that was sitting before the fire.

  The small round table was laid with the finest crockery and cutlery she had ever seen. The silverware positively gleamed in the candle-light and embraced beautifully decorated porcelain plates. Taking a sip of her wine, Cecily nervously took a seat.

  “What about Jonathan and Miss Emstridge?” Cecily gulped, unable to think of anything else to say.

  “Jonathan is off out and about, and Miss Emstridge is eating in her room tonight.” In reality Jamie had absolutely no idea if Miss Emstridge ever ate in the formal dining room, or was waiting for an invitation to join them but, while he was in residence, an invitation to dine with him and Cecily would not be forthcoming. Miss Emstridge was staff, albeit not a servant, but she was still staff nonetheless and, as such, he was not going to allow her to dine with him. He may be prepared to ignore the dictates of society when it suited him, but he wasn’t altogether a complete novice when it came to asserting his rights as the man of the house.

  It wasn’t lost on Cecily that this was one of the rooms that didn’t have any passage running alongside it, and wondered whether that was the reason why Jamie had chosen it. It was quiet and, as long as they kept their voices down, they would be able to speak privately without being overheard. She wondered what he wanted to talk about and sensed the brewing questions that as yet remained unanswered.

  Her initial delight at the sight of the intimate table for two suddenly evaporated, and she looked at the display with something akin to dismay. Should she say that she wasn’t hungry and take a tray in her room? Or should she just take a seat and answer his questions?