My Lady Caroline

by Jill Jones

  “Anything that girl does is my business,” he replied, stuffing his mouth full. He chewed noisily a moment, then washed the remnants down with coffee. “I’m the trustee of her parents’ estate, you see.” He seemed to expand just at the thought of the control that gave him over his client. “I’m only telling you this because if you do have designs on her, you might as well know that she has absolutely no experience in handling money, that whatever insurance money that is left by now won’t be around long the way she goes through it. So if you’re going to marry her for her money, you’d better hurry up, unless…” he peered at Jeremy, who sat in appalled silence, “unless you can help me convince her not to throw her money away on wild schemes like this one.”

  “You assume far too much, Mr. Hawthorne,” Jeremy said, standing to leave. “I have no intention of marrying Alison for her money, I would never collaborate with the likes of you on anything, and…,” Jeremy looked around at the beauty of the countryside stretched lazily in the sunny morning, “I’m not sure this is such a wild scheme. Excuse me, but I am going to make arrangements for your taxi.”

  “Don’t bother,” he heard Drew Hawthorne call after him. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Jeremy stood in the Great Hall, clenching and unclenching his fists, breathing deeply, trying to regain control. He’d come close to punching out the autocratic asshole. But he knew if he did, it would likely only make matters worse for Alison. He sensed Alison was in danger. Hawthorne, although probably not a physical threat, posed a very real legal and emotional threat that she was going to have to face sooner than later.

  He didn’t know the structure of the trust, of course, but he had known other instances in which the beneficiary, in this case Alison, had no say over what the trustees did with the money that she would eventually inherit. How could Alison’s father ever have trusted the likes of Drew Hawthorne over his own daughter, he wondered, incredulous.

  But there was much he didn’t know.

  What he was certain of at the moment, however, is that he could not leave as he had planned, not until he saw that she was rid of the bullying attorney.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  First it had been her father. Then the law firm and that idiot Hawthorne. And now it appeared that Jeremy was just like all the rest…well, except in that one department, Alison laughed bitterly to herself as she reached for a tissue. It was several hours later, and the storm of tears had run its course, leaving her makeup streaked and her carefully chosen silken attire a rumpled mess.

  All the men she’d known in her life, including her father, had wanted to control her, tell her how to live her life, what to think, and especially what to do with her money. Not that any had seemed to give a damn what she wanted or that she might be capable of handling life for herself. She’d thought she would throw up when she heard Jeremy tell the lawyer that he wasn’t going to stand by while Hawthorne took advantage of her inexperience.

  Noble gesture.

  But what made him think she needed him?

  Fury dried her tears. Men. She’d like to pack the whole gender in a space ship and send them all back to Mars. In the meantime, she’d deal with Drew Hawthorne and his gang in the only way she knew how.

  She picked up the phone.

  First, she called Gina Useppi who, in a nervous voice, verified that the money had not yet been transferred and wanted to know if anything had gone wrong. Assuring her this was only a temporary nuisance, Alison reminded the agent that the appraisal was due the following week.

  Then she called Judge Frieberg. It was Thursday, and he was at his golf club in Boston. She knew exactly where to find him, because her father had golfed with him every Thursday for years. Benjamin Pierce had been part of the foursome, she remembered, still bitterly angry at the elder attorney who had betrayed her by placing her in the hands of his slimy son-in-law. She caught the judge just before tee time, and within twenty minutes, when she called her banker, the money was released. There had been no real injunction, just a fatherly phone call from the judge, urging the bank to use caution. Drew Hawthorne had spun him a story about how weak-willed Alison was and how she had fallen into the hands of a predatory real estate agent in England who was trying to pawn off a derelict, worthless piece of property onto her inexperienced little self.

  Alison wanted to scream right through the phone loud enough so that everyone at the bank could hear her wrath. Get your hands off my money!

  She waited one hour, the time she had given the bank to transfer the money. If it took one second longer, she had warned them, she would file a lawsuit against them, charging them with manipulating her money.

  She had no idea if there was such a valid charge. She’d just made it up, but it must have worked, because one hour later, the British bank had been notified that eight hundred thousand dollars was being wired to the escrow account as it should have been almost a week before.

  But Alison wasn’t finished.

  “Gina,” she said, gathering courage with each victory of the day. “Get the contract, and bring along a blank one. We’re going to London.”

  Six hours later, just as the sun was going down, Alison dropped the agent back at her office and headed toward Dewhurst Manor. The smile on her face wouldn’t go away. She pulled into the drive and got out, noting that another evening thunderstorm was brewing. Well, it would be nothing compared to the storm she was about to raise inside.

  She found both Hawthorne and Jeremy, an odd pair, waiting for her in the Great Hall.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Hawthorne yelled, his face contorted with rage. “I hope you know you’ve stirred up one hell of a mess at home.”

  “Yes, I suppose I have,” she replied with cyanide sweetness. “I’m glad you are here together, for I want you both to hear what I have to say.”

  Jeremy watched with a mixture of awe and amusement as Alison Crawford Cunningham showed them both exactly what she was made of. He hadn’t known her father, but he was certain if the old man was looking down from the next world, it was with pride for his daughter’s quick thinking and determination. He admitted later, he couldn’t have negotiated the deal any better himself.

  “This solves your problem, Hawthorne,” she said, waving the papers under his nose. “You no longer have to worry whether or not I will blow that insurance money, because I just have. Or at least a big chunk of it. I have bought this derelict, worthless piece of property, as you described it to the judge, from my ‘predatory’ real estate agent. It’s a done deal, Hawthorne. Signed, sealed, delivered.” She threw the contractual agreement on the sideboard.

  Hawthorne blanched. “But…but that’s not possible. It takes time…”

  “Get real, Hawthorne. All it takes is money. Connections don’t hurt either. So now, you have no reason to remain here one more minute. This is my property, and I want you off it immediately.”

  Hawthorne looked at Alison with pure hatred on his face. “You little bitch,” he said then, his lip curling. “You little rich bitch.” He took a step toward her, and Jeremy prepared to intervene, thinking the irate attorney was about to harm her. But Hawthorne held himself in check, the muscles of his jaw twitching with tension. “You’re gonna be sorry,” he hissed. “You’re gonna be real sorry you didn’t listen to me, sweetheart.” With that, he hurried down the hall toward his room and, Jeremy hoped, into history.

  “Well done,” Jeremy said, turning with a grin to face her. “My turn.”

  Her face softened. “Yes. It’s your turn. All the way to London, I thought about some of the things you have said to me, that I was paying too much money for the house, that the furnishings were as valuable as the house, that they would be difficult to replace once they left here. So,” she drew in a deep breath and let it out again in a satisfied sigh, “I made a deal with the bank.”

  “Go on,” Jeremy said, hardly daring to think what kind of bad deal his pals at the bank were likely to dish out to an innocent like Alison.

 
“You aren’t going to like it, I’m afraid.”

  “Like you said, it’s a done deal. What did you come away with?”

  “All of it.”

  “All?”

  “The house. The grounds. The furniture.” She laughed. “The title. I’m now officially the Lady of Dewhurst Manor.”

  Jeremy gave her a slight officious bow. “And at the risk of poking my nose into your business, may I ask at what ransom you came away with all of the above?”

  He watched Alison go to the sideboard, where she picked up the contract and brought it to him. “The same as I was going to pay for the house alone.”

  A glance at the bottom line told Jeremy she wasn’t joking. “That’s a real coup, Alison,” he said, taking her hands. “Congratulations.”

  But she pulled away from him. “Thanks. But that means you’re through here as well, Jeremy. I own the furnishings, and I’m not planning to sell them, so you’re job’s finished.”

  “And you want me out, too,” he finished her statement.

  She nodded. “It’s best. If I find the memoirs, I’ll let you know. I’ll need help in having them published…”

  Her sentence was blown apart by an ear-shattering screech that rattled the heavy chandelier overhead and seemed to shake the old house to its very foundation. An explosion sounded somewhere in the vicinity of the kitchen, and Jeremy heard the screams of the servants who rushed panic-stricken into the Great Hall.

  “Th’ power’s off in th’ kitchen, m’am,” Mrs. Beasley said, her eyes wide with fear. “It’s like th’ electrical box just blew up.”

  Suddenly things went berserk around them. Books tumbled from the shelves in the second-floor gallery and rained down into the Great Hall. Old William LaForge flopped on the wall and tilted at a crazy angle. The electric lights in the room flashed off and on until many of the old bulbs burned completely out. A few exploded from the energy surge. Jeremy reached for Alison and pulled her into the protection of his body, wondering if this was an air raid or an earthquake.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Hawthorne scrambled back to the Great Hall just in time to receive a knock on the head from a falling book.

  Jeremy and Alison looked at each other.

  “The ghost has remembered.” They spoke their thought at the same time, then burst out laughing, while Drew Hawthorne, rubbing his bruised and battered forehead, looked on in bewilderment.

  Alison hoped Caroline would calm down before she brought the entire house down around their ears. “Okay, okay, we’re coming!” she called out. She wished she had a video camera to record the look on Drew Hawthorne’s face. The ghost may have missed him last night, but he was getting a full show at the moment. “Which way do we go?”

  The familiar mist gathered and hung like golden fog for a moment in the room high above them, then Caro’s ghost materialized for all to see. “They’re in the cellar,” it panted. “Go to the wine cellar.”

  “But I’ve already searched there,” Jeremy protested. Alison shot him a glance. “So you were after the memoirs!”

  He shrugged. “Could be. It doesn’t matter now, does it?” He turned to the ghost. “You’re sure they’re in the cellar?”

  Its reply was to dissolve into a flash of brilliant light which swept through the room as it had at the pool the night before. The light dipped and bounced and beckoned, as if it were a young child eagerly tugging on its parents’ hands.

  “Let’s go,” Jeremy said.

  “Shouldn’t you get your flashlight?” Alison asked. The afternoon was waning, and the encroaching storm was already darkening the sky.

  “Good idea. Wait here.” He dashed down the hall to his room and returned only seconds later. In the meantime, Drew Hawthorne attempted to gather his wits.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, his face white as a traditional ghost’s. “What was that…that thing?”

  “The ghost,” Alison said.

  “Ghost. What ghost?”

  “I thought I told you the place was haunted.”

  “Yeah, but…”

  Jeremy was back with the flashlight. “You stay here,” he told Hawthorne.

  “B…by myself?”

  Alison refrained from snorting at the man’s pathetic cowardice. “The ghost is going with us. You’ll be perfectly safe here.”

  But Hawthorne, along with the three alarmed but curious servants, followed Jeremy and Alison down the stairs toward the cellar. Jeremy released the secret door latch and opened the door to the Dutch room. Caroline’s comet-like shape zoomed past them, made several passes around the room, then began rattling with all its ectoplasmic might the chain that secured the wine cellar.

  “Look at that!” Alison laughed. “This proves it. Ghosts really do rattle chains!” But it was more than a ghostly joke that filled her with such joy. It proved once and for all that she wasn’t crazy. There was a ghost. There were memoirs. And they were about to make a discovery that might, as she’d told Jeremy, change the way the English-speaking world viewed a certain period of history.

  She hoped so, if only for Caroline’s sake. Alison watched as Jeremy struggled to wrest the chain and its huge lock from the ghost. “Let go, for God’s sake, or we’ll never get in there,” he yelled at the ghost, who obeyed immediately but buzzed loudly in anticipation. “Hurry! Hurry!” it said.

  Alison heard Hawthorne behind her. “I don’t believe this,” he muttered.

  “Then why don’t you leave?” she said crossly. She wished he wasn’t here to witness what was about to take place.

  At last, Jeremy managed to unlock the door, which he opened as wide as possible. The wine cellar gaped like a huge open mouth. “Turn on the lights in the Dutch room, if the electricity works down here,” he instructed one of the servants. He flashed his light into the darkness. “I tell you, I’ve already been through this place. Caro, if those memoirs are here, you’re going to have to show them to us, my dear.”

  “Follow me,” said a hollow voice, and the figure of Caroline Lamb materialized, wearing her favorite outfit, a page’s uniform. Her eyes were large and dark, serious now, almost sad. She turned and walked through the steel door that Jeremy had discovered.

  “Wait a minute,” he called after her, quickly fumbling for the secret button. The panel slid aside, and Alison drew in her breath.

  “Well, I’ll be,” she said. “How did you know that was a door?”

  “Trial and error,” Jeremy replied, his face grim. “But I think the cellar stops here. I went all the way to the back wall. It’s solid rock.”

  “I said follow me,” Caro said, stamping her foot.

  Jeremy flashed Alison an amused look. “Yes, m’am,” he replied.

  Like a small parade, Jeremy, Alison, Drew Hawthorne, Mrs. Beasley, Kit and Kate tiptoed behind the ghost, who once again disappeared through the far wall.

  “We can’t go there, Caro,” Jeremy called.

  “Oh, I see them!” came the ghostly reply. “They are here! They are here!”

  Alison tugged on Jeremy’s shirt. “That must be the entrance to the old tunnel. Ashley T. Stone told me they filled it in when it caved in on some children at the end of the last century. Do you suppose there’s a door behind the rock?”

  “I’ll need a pick or something to dig with,” Jeremy said, rolling up his sleeves. “Here, hold the light.”

  “Hurry! Hurry!” came an excited squeal from the other side. “You can do it with your hands.”

  Alison directed the light’s strong beam where Jeremy ran his hands over the rock. It was a large boulder, he discovered, not a wall at all. “Here, help me,” he signaled to Kit. “Let’s see if we can push this to one side.” The two men struggled for a few moments and were able to move it out about five inches. “What’s behind there?” Alison asked, her heart pounding so hard she thought it might explode.

  Jeremy knelt and dug around with his fingers. “I think I feel something like wood.” He pulled out a handful of shredded rott
en planking. “It must be one of the beams that supported the opening of the tunnel. Come on, Kit. Let’s get this rock out of the way.”

  Alison joined the two men, putting her back against the boulder and pushing with her feet. Drew Hawthorne remained in the shadows. At last, the huge rock gave way, leaving enough room for one person to go inside.

  Jeremy looked at Alison. “I know this is your show, but it could be dangerous. That tunnel has been closed off for a long time. Let me go in.”

  Alison had no desire to go crawling around in the dank darkness of some long ago tunnel, no matter what treasure might be hidden there. “Be my guest,” she smiled, glad she hadn’t run him off too soon. She was grateful for his help.

  They could see Caroline’s ghostly light pulsing just the other side of the entrance. “Come on,” it urged plaintively.

  Jeremy squeezed through the small opening, then Alison handed him the flashlight, leaving the rest of them in near darkness.

  “This is creepy,” Hawthorne complained.

  “Nobody invited you,” Alison reminded him. “Do you see anything?” she called to Jeremy.

  “A lot of debris has fallen around here.”

  Alison heard the scrabble of what sounded like more falling rock, and terror suddenly spread through her. “Jeremy. Is it caving in? Get out of there!”

  “Just a minute. Wait. What’s this?”

  “Yes! Yes!” cried the ghost.

  More scratching sounds, then silence.

  “Jeremy?”

  His handsome face appeared suddenly at the entrance to the tunnel. “You called, madam?” he grinned, holding the light up to cast eerie shadows on his face.

  “Stop it!” Alison laughed nervously. “You scared me silly. Did you find anything?”

  Then, slowly he raised a battered and aged wooden box and handed it to her. “Could be.”

  He squeezed back through the opening, and put his hand in the small of Alison’s back. “Let’s get out of here,” he said.