My Lady Caroline

by Jill Jones

  Without responding, the ghost handed her half-full glass of wine to Alison, then whispered, “Come.” Its light was fading, and as it left the room, it became nothing more than a faint glow. Curious, Alison followed it, feeling the familiar chill air against her skin.

  The shade led her to the library and misted right through the closed doors, leaving Alison standing outside, her hands full with the two wine glasses. “Open the door,” she commanded. “Or can you do that now?”

  She heard footsteps approaching from the other side of the door, and a frown creased her brow. The ghost didn’t make any noise when it moved.

  But it was no ghost that responded to her demand.

  “Is there something I can do for you, Miss Cunningham?” Jeremy Ryder appeared to have recovered from whatever had disturbed him earlier, but he was clearly surprised to see her standing there with two glasses of wine.

  “I…uh, thought perhaps you might like an aperitif,” Alison stammered, searching for a logical explanation for the awkward situation she found herself in at the moment. Damn that ghost. “Dinner is at eight, if you would care to join me.”

  Now what made her do that? Alison could have bit her tongue, but it was too late.

  She saw the suspicion on his handsome countenance. “I thought I was persona non grata around here,” he said with that smile of his that Alison found so disturbingly sexy. She found all of him sexy, in fact. Way sexy.

  “You are,” she replied, trying not to appear as shaken as she felt. “But there is no need for us to be enemies. Do you want this or not?”

  He nodded his thanks. “Very thoughtful, Miss Cunningham.”

  She wanted to cry out that thoughtfulness had nothing to do with it, that she’d been set up by the ghost, but of course, that would make no sense to anyone but her. What was that minx Caroline up to? Matchmaking? Or had she seen the ghost at all? Was this predicament of her own making?

  Either way, the handsome Jeremy Ryder stood directly in front of her, his dark eyes inscrutable even as they drew her gaze and held it. She felt her stomach take a tumble and her knees turn to jelly. An unfamiliar glow tingled through her, and to her horror, she realized she was hoping he would kiss her again. She could not tear her gaze away from the outline of those lips, nor stop remembering the way they’d felt against hers in the midnight darkness. Her control continued to disintegrate as other sensations stirred from deep within her heart, longings that had been aroused the night before and that didn’t seem to have vanished with the morning light.

  “What…are you finding in here?” she managed at last, forcing her consciousness back into the moment, indicating the library behind him. A queer look lit upon his strong features for a moment, then was quickly covered up. What was that? she wondered. It looked like…guilt.

  “It’s quite a valuable collection,” he said stepping aside to let her pass. “I think it may take days, a week even, to inventory everything.”

  Alison felt his masculine presence in the room. Perhaps because the room itself exuded masculinity. The large wing chairs by the hearth had been uncovered to reveal their dark brown leather upholstery. A stuffed fowl of some sort flew over the rough stone wall above the fireplace. The bookshelves were of a rich dark wood, and the floor was of rough hewn planks covered by worn but still lovely Persian carpets. The air smelled musty, and there was a lingering odor of tobacco. Had the late Lord Chillingcote smoked a pipe?

  She went to where a three-footed stand supported a large, unabridged dictionary. “I wonder what the last owners used this room for?” she asked rhetorically, flipping the pages absently.

  “What does anyone use a library for?” Jeremy replied, closing the door and coming into the room. He surveyed one wall of books. “Reading. Writing. Thinking.” He pulled a volume from one of the shelves. “But I think whoever put this collection together did it out of love.”

  What a curious thing for the man to say, Alison thought. He didn’t seem the type to be a sentimentalist. “What do you mean?”

  “Many of the books here are rare. Very rare,” he added for emphasis. “Like this one. A first edition of Wuthering Heights. Do you know how difficult it is to come by such an artifact? How much someone would have to pay for it?”

  “I would think something like that should belong in a museum or a university,” she replied with unveiled disdain, positive that she’d been right in her assessment that he was very much the mercenary. “Private collectors keep so much to themselves that should belong to the public.”

  “A bleeding heart liberal? I would never have guessed.”

  “I suppose you don’t think it’s necessary for the Great Unwashed to have access to such important historical relics. What would they know about it anyway?”

  Alison saw the muscles in his jaw tense. “Is your opinion of private collectors based upon personal experience, Miss Cunningham? Or are you indulging in a romantic stereotype that is sometimes held of the breed of person who has the money, the interest, and yes, the love of the items, to bring them together into such a stupendous collection as this?”

  His rebuke stung. She knew no one personally who collected rare and valuable books and manuscripts. She’d been swayed against the idea by Caroline’s insistence that her own relic not fall into the hands of a private collector. And in her case, it would be a justifiable point. If the memoirs, wherever they were, proved to be authentic and shed a new light on history, they did belong in a museum or university where scholars and historians could study them and glean new, more accurate information about what actually happened between Lord Byron and Lady Caroline Lamb.

  But she hadn’t considered that a private collector might be motivated by love. She’d figured greed to be the driving force behind wealthy procurements of precious antiquities. And she’d figured men like Jeremy Ryder preyed on that greed to line their own pockets.

  Her own attitude astounded her. Maybe she was a bleeding heart liberal.

  “What value is such a stupendous collection, as you say, if no one gets to enjoy it?”

  “How many times have you tried to gain access to very rare documents at a museum or university library, Miss Cunningham? The Great Unwashed, as you say, has little likelihood of enjoying such documents in these places, as access is normally granted only to qualified scholars.”

  The tone of this entire conversation was another new experience for Alison. Even though they appeared to be at odds over the issue, it pleased her that there was an issue. Jeremy Ryder was the first man she’d enjoyed an intelligent exchange with since her college days. He’d disagreed with her, he’d even labeled her, but he hadn’t talked down to her.

  And yes, she admitted to herself, maybe she had indulged in some elitist stereotyping. But the fact remained, that if and when the memoirs surfaced, they must be brought to the light of day, and not sold off to a private collector, no matter how much the collector might love them.

  “Perhaps you are right, Mr. Ryder. But tell me. What will happen to these,” she swept her arm indicating the hundreds, perhaps thousands of books, in the library, “when the bank gets hold of them? Will they be auctioned to the highest bidder?”

  Jeremy swirled the wine in his glass. “That could happen. A house such as Sotheby’s might place them for the best price. Or…other arrangements are often made between the seller and…known collectors.”

  “Who will take the cream before the rest are sent to auction.”

  Jeremy looked across the room at her with an inexplicable expression. “Yes.”

  “Then you must admit, Mr. Ryder, that it is possible there are a great many valuable artifacts, items that might even change our view of history, that lie in the vaults of these collectors and that are not available even to scholars to evaluate.”

  “It is a romantic notion, the part about changing our view of history, but what you say is possible. Not likely, however. Mostly collectors have items like these,” he held up the ancient book. “Anyone can read Wuthering Heights.
You can buy it in soft cover from any good book store. It is simply the rarity of one of the original books that gives it its value. Not the content.”

  Alison nodded, but silently acknowledged that the relic she sought was valuable not only for the rarity, but also, and especially, for its content.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I asked you not to send blood but Yet do—because if it means love I like to have it. I cut the hair too close and bled much more than you need—do not you the same and pray put not the scissors points near where quei capelli grow—sooner take it from the arm or wrist—pray be careful…Your wild antelope.”

  Lady Caroline Lamb to Lord Byron

  As I write these memoirs, I have on my desk the golden chain given me by Caroline, & I am reminded of the inventive ways in which she attempted to link us, not all of which was I able to resist. In August of that same infernal year, she delivered to me a present so ingenious, so deliciously wicked, it set fire to the darkest corners of my Desire in spite of my growing hatred of the woman. It was a lock of hair, but taken not from her head, taken instead from that other crop of curls that adorned her most private parts.

  She begged me to take her to Newstead, where we could have “lived & died happy,” not knowing I had put the infernal Abbey up for sale to meet my critical need for cash. Of course, I refused, & attempted again to send her away. She had a nasty encounter that same day with her father-in-law, Lord Melbourne, who severely reprimanded her for her behavior as regards our affair. Her reaction was to run away, but this time not to me. In fact, Lady Bessborough, her mother whom I thoroughly despised, & Lady Melbourne, came to my quarters, alarmed & expecting to find us ready to elope, & were genuinely surprised that I had not seen Caroline on that day. I promised to find her, however, and bribed the coachman who had delivered her latest note, who took me promptly to the home of a surgeon in Kensington wherein Caroline had taken refuge. She’d sold her jewelry for passage out of Portsmouth, where she would have headed had I not intervened. I convinced the good doctor that I was her brother come to fetch her home to her family.

  Caro was nearly senseless from hysterics, & I had to carry her off by sheer force. She cried out that no one wanted her, that her love for me was utterly unrequited, & begged me to throw her in the Thames. After some time, I was able to comfort her until she returned to normal. I convinced her that she must return to Melbourne House, that they were all worried about her & would forgive her. I sent her off in a carriage, my heart heavy with guilt and confusion, for I realized then that no matter how poorly I treated her, she would never forswear me. It saddened me to see her thus, yet a part of me wished fervently I had allowed her to make her escape.

  Jeremy stood in the shower, wishing the plumbing would provide more than the lukewarm trickle of water that ran down his spine. If Alison Cunningham wanted to turn this place into something hospitable, she would have to spend a bundle on plumbing and wiring, he surmised.

  Alison Cunningham.

  Who was she? Where did she come from, besides Boston? Her actions indicated that she was wealthy, probably extremely so, but her feelings about historical artifacts belonging to the public seemed to be far from aristocratic. He guessed her to be in her early twenties, although her slight build and gamine ways might make her seem younger than she was.

  Alison Cunningham.

  A strange, fey creature indeed. Jeremy wasn’t sure quite how to deal with the fact that he’d seen her in his highly sensual dreams at least a fortnight before he’d ever laid eyes on her in person. Or what to make of her appearance earlier, or rather he should say, her disappearance in the Great Hall. And what about the wine she’d brought when she’d demanded he open the library door? Had it been meant for him? He wasn’t sure, because she seemed genuinely startled to see him. But if not for him, then who?

  And he also wasn’t sure of the real reason Alison Cunningham was at Dewhurst Manor. A young woman doesn’t show up out of nowhere, in a foreign country, and spend half a million pounds for a rundown property without a reason. Jeremy considered that as he dressed for dinner. What possible reason could someone like Alison have for acquiring Dewhurst Manor? But try as he might, he could come up with no logical explanation.

  Alison Cunningham.

  Another set of questions assaulted him. Why was he so drawn to her? Drawn, he decided, was a totally inadequate description of his intense attraction to her. Every time he was in her presence, his feelings spun totally out of control. And this was completely out of character for Jeremy Ryder, who always carefully called the shots when it came to women. He was confounded by his reaction to the American woman. Granted, she was very pretty, but then, so were all of the women he had dated.

  But it was more than her good looks that seemed to render him witless in her presence. Those wide golden eyes held an appeal that somehow struck his heart. Whether she knew it or not, her expression much of the time seemed to cry out for something…someone’s help or support, an expression that seemed distinctly at odds with her determined manner. She was a complex, unreadable woman, a tantalizing puzzle Jeremy found too tempting.

  Glancing at his image in the mirror, he wondered what the evening would bring. He’d been most surprised when Alison had invited him to join her for dinner, and even more so at his own eager acceptance. He ran a brush through his thick, dark hair and adjusted the collar of the crisp white shirt which he wore open-necked under a midnight navy blazer. How would she dress for dinner? he wondered, his breath catching slightly in anticipation that she might appear again in the lovely low-cut gossamer gown he’d seen her in earlier. He frowned at his reflection. Had he seen her earlier? She’d given no indication of being in the Great Room with him, had not mentioned returning the lock of hair. But if it hadn’t been her, what was it he had seen? For he was certain his eyes hadn’t been playing tricks on him. Somebody, or something, had returned the lock of auburn hair. If it hadn’t been Alison, then…

  Jeremy didn’t want to think about it.

  He looked at his watch, then left the room. On his way toward the dining room, he stopped at a large vase of flowers that stood by a window in the Great Hall. Fresh from a florist, he surmised, then grinned and selected two flowers from the arrangement.

  Didn’t a gentleman always bring flowers to a dinner party?

  Alison saw the tall square frame silhouetted in the doorway and drew in an involuntary breath as the man entered the room. Jeremy Ryder was devastating. If she’d thought him handsome before, tonight, dressed as he was, he could have been a casual Prince Charming. All of her well-meant determination to stay cool this evening flew out the window. She swallowed hard.

  “Uh, hello.” She summoned a self-conscious smile. Did he have any idea the effect he was having on her? God, she hoped not.

  “I brought you these,” he said, handing her the two long-stemmed flowers, a red rose and a pink carnation. “I’m afraid I didn’t have time to go to the florist myself, so I took the liberty of…borrowing them from one of the arrangements in the Great Hall.”

  Alison stared at the flowers. A rose and a carnation. Just as Caro’s ghost had kept bringing her. Just as Byron had given Caroline. What was this man up to?

  “Is this a joke?” she said, eyeing him with suspicion.

  “A joke?” He raised his eyebrows, then his expression grew serious. “I see I have erred, Miss Cunningham. I shall return them to the vase.” He turned to go.

  “No. It’s…fine. About the flowers, I mean. It’s just…what made you pick out those particular ones?”

  It was his turn to regard her with curiosity. “I have no idea. They seemed rare and beautiful at the moment. Why do you ask?”

  A shiver slithered its way up Alison’s spine. How uncanny that his words should so mimic those of Lord Byron when he’d brought Lady Caroline a rose and a carnation at the beginning of their love affair.

  At the beginning of their love affair.

  “Never mind,” she said, not wanting him to pres
s the issue further. “I’ll have Mrs. Beasley put them in a vase for our table tonight.” She turned and made her way hastily into the kitchen, her cheeks on fire. That man had a way of bringing the most unsettling thoughts to her mind.

  Back in the dining room, Alison indicated for Jeremy to take the seat opposite her. On her left, the table stretched the length of the room, with the capacity to seat over thirty people. “I decided if we sat at the head and foot of the table, we’d have to text our conversation,” she said lightly, trying to ignore Jeremy’s sexy, clean-shaven appeal and the dark wisps of hair that were just visible beneath his open collar.

  “It is a rather stately dining hall,” Jeremy remarked, his eyes never leaving hers, and Alison felt his unspoken question…what on earth are you going to do with such a huge, rambling estate? Fortunately, Mrs. Beasley appeared with the first course, a light vichyssoise prepared by the young chef she had brought in, and Alison shifted the conversation.

  “I think I am fortunate to have that woman,” she said when the housekeeper had left the room. “She seems very capable, and she’s brought in some marvelous help, all in a day’s time.”

  “Yes, quite fortunate. Gina Useppi had given me the impression that the local people were hesitant to work here because of its…reputation for being a haunted house.” He gave her a small smile that made her heart skip a beat. “Do you think the house is haunted, Miss Cunningham?”

  Alison’s eyes widened slightly, and she gave Jeremy an odd look. “Shall we suspend formalities, at least for this evening?” she suggested, hoping to avoid his question. “I’m not used to being called Miss Cunningham. I much prefer Alison.”

  “Alison then,” he said. “Do you?”

  “Do I what?”

  “Think the house is haunted?”

  Why did he insist on pursuing this subject? The last time, Caro’s ghost had practically given itself away to him, blowing out the candles and leaving them dangerously close in the night. Would he provoke the ghost again into making an appearance at the dinner table?