Chapter Thirty-Two

The Present Holds A Ghost Or Two

From the vantage point of the balcony outside the main bedroom of Gull Cottage, two ghostly figures looked down at the young couple who were standing close together beside the truck in the moonlight – both of them unaware they were being observed and discussed. But they could have been echoes of the watching spirits in another time.

"Your little Kat is deeply conflicted," Captain Daniel Greig told his wife. "She wants to leave and yet she also wants to stay. Do you think this Edward could come to love her as much as I love you?"

Emma Greig smiled, as she watched Kat trying not to look up at her young man as he leaned closer. "Oh, I'm sure of it now. When he thinks he is unobserved, his eyes hold nothing but troubled confusion. But he's still wary of being hurt again. They need to go with care."

She pointed to the intimate scene unfolding below. "Look how still he stands and how close. He's a man who likes to observe as he dreams of their future, together. But he holds those dreams close, fearing they may evaporate with the light of day. And she does not trust him, or herself, enough, yet…"

"Yes, as I once dreamed the same from the very first moment I saw you that long ago day." Daniel put his arms around his love, enclosing her in his long, ether-wrought cloak. "You were very beautiful and so far beyond every one of my impossible dreams. Your family hated me on sight. What could a rough Maine seaman want with their precious daughter, they demanded to know."

"Ah, but we were wise and didn't listen to their carping. We ran away instead and you brought me here. I have always loved this house, and you." Emma smiled. "Kat also dreams, as does her Edward. They dance around like two hesitant lovers who have yet to truly embrace each other. But he would do better not to crowd her so much. My Kat is instinctively drawing back from him. But he has questions she doesn't know how to answer."

"Maybe he needs a lesson or two about how to woo a shy lady properly." Daniel smiled at that. "Just say the word and I shall school him for you."

"Maybe…" Emma shrugged as she twined her fingers through his. "He needs to get out of his lawyer's head and understand who's standing right in front of him. See my Kat for who she truly is."

Her husband's soft chuckle was a whisper through the rustling leaves of the soft Montecito night. "As if I didn't know you have engineered all of this for your own pleasure and entertainment. You approved of Kat telling our story to Carolyn for publication. Your touch is deft and sure. Carolyn was an excellent choice."

"Of course, I gave Kat my blessing before I died. I knew she could never afford the cost of the property taxes, so I told her to find someone suitable for the house. Someone willing to hear our story and then she must follow her heart. So far, she has done very well in her choices. I approved of Mr and Mrs Miles as soon as they set foot in our house. They will care for it as we did and keep all its secrets. Kat will make good use of the money they paid for the property."

She raised her shoulders. "But she also needs to find someone. Someone she could trust not to let her down," she continued softly. "I worry for them. Look at them, down there. They are both so lonely."

Daniel shook his head. "Yes, when I slipped into my portrait this evening to observe, I overheard Kat finally telling her own story to Carolyn. You had told me of her upbringing, but it was still heart-wrenching to hear her speaking of such loneliness."

"Yes, I heard her, as well. I wanted to say something, then. But Carolyn handled it well. She is a compassionate listener." Emma touched a gentle fingertip to her husband's bottom lip. "I hated to leave her behind with such unfinished business. But it was finally time to go, and I was so very impatient to finally hold you close again. I had lived without having your arms around me for long enough and I was tired…"

"I know…" Her love pressed a kiss to her temple. "Still, you worry for them. Kat will find her own level. You must give them time to adjust to the possibilities of learning to love again."

"Yes…" Emma sighed as she looked up at her husband. "That last night we spent together, I told Kat she must find a man who would love her for herself, alone. Someone like you who would cross the world for love and not count the cost."

She lifted her hand to his bearded cheek. Her love was much taller than her, and she'd always loved the sense of security that his height had given her.

She felt loved and cherished. "A man would have to be a blind, addle-pated fool not to see how very special my Kat is. But that Marcus was a crass eejit. I detested him on sight. He was too full of himself and no good for my girl. But his callous desertion of her for another woman has made her doubt herself and she has retreated inside her shell. She must be reopened with gentle and loving care."

She flicked a dismissive hand. "And as for that awful woman, Edward had taken up with. She had more hair than wit. I was so glad when he finally dismissed her over-painted image from his thoughts tonight. Now, even her memory has been erased."

"Ah but look at them standing down there. Neither is willing to give an inch. They are like us. Stubborn to the bone." Daniel's smile widened and he chuckled. "We can hope that all will be well, in the end. We will see."

"Serendipity?" Emma's eyebrows arched, lovingly.

"Of course…" Her husband hugged her close. "Everything is a mystery until something chooses to reveal itself. And this Edward… he looks like he is no fool. But he needs to learn to trust himself, and her. He also needs to leave his shell behind before it's too late."

"They'll both need to find the courage," Emma said. They knew that was true.

"As with everything," Daniel remarked, taking in the scene, as he caressed his wife's slender shoulders. "We must have courage and love."

"I am desperate to know how it will all end. I hope for the best. I will keep watch as I listen to Kat telling the rest of our story to Carolyn. I cannot wait to read the final manuscript."

"You always need to know, my love," Daniel chided gently, his soft chuckle drifting on the breeze. "You will never change. And we will both keep watch. You forget who directed Carolyn to retrieve my portrait from the attic and restore it to its rightful place above the mantle. I can keep a weather eye on many things from that excellent vantage point. Our house is alive once more and full of love."

"That blasted Cousin Harriet had no right to hide you away from my sight after you disappeared at sea and no word came…" Emma shook her head. "I searched and searched for you in the house, but that harridan selfishly died before I could wring a confession from her. I missed looking up at you and praying you were still alive, somewhere…"

"I was always alive within your loving heart," her husband whispered in a sigh. "Always…"

"Always…" Emma nodded as she turned within his embrace, reaching up to kiss his bearded cheek, before moving on to caress his full mouth with her own. "Are you ready for a new adventure, my love? Because I am. I feel so alive tonight and need to ensure that love's path runs true and smooth."

She glanced down at the young couple below them. "Humans can be such fools to each other, at times. They often do not say what they are thinking or feeling. We may need to help them along, just a little. A nudge or two in the right direction."

"Wither thou goest, my love. There too, go I…" Daniel drew her close to him as he brushed his lips across hers. "Cuisle mo chroí…"

"What did you say?" Emma whispered against his seeking mouth, momentarily distracted.

Her love smiled as he ran the tip of his tongue across the seam of her lips, encouraging them apart. "It's something Devon says sometimes when he's alone with Carolyn. I overheard him say it the other day. It's Irish, I think. He said it means, the pulse of my heart…"

"Ohhh, that's so lovely…" Emma sighed, moving her lips across his. "The pulse of my heart. Say it again. Just for me…"

"Cuisle mo chroí…" Daniel replied willingly, before drawing her close to him from breast to hip and there was no longer any need for words.

The soft October night wind drifted through the moonlit garden and sighed around the house. But it found no hindrance in their joined figures as they faded slowly from the scene…

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"I… um, what price are you talking about?" I finally managed to ask, after enduring a fraught silence that stretched my nerves near to breaking point.

Edward shook his head and remained silent. His nearness made my heart jump and accelerate. I could have hit him right then. Instead, I curled my hands into fists against my thighs and hung onto my good sense not to provoke him further.

I had no idea what to expect or what he was asking of me to keep my confidence. I was seriously regretting making my confession to him. But I didn't know he would immediately try and use it against me.

We were standing out of the wide pool of light cast from the open back door to the house. I was glad that the warm October night concealed my burning face.

No man of my experience - certainly not Marcus - had ever been so forward with his demands on so short an acquaintance. I shivered with reaction and deep uncertainty. The ground beneath my feet felt like quicksand and I was sinking fast, and I didn't want to feel like that.

'Why didn't I just leave the man to ponder his unfounded suspicions? Refuse his offer of escort to my truck and just drive away?'

But, of course, I knew why. I needed to talk with him. Tomorrow, he would make an appointment to see Kelvin Graves, the executor of Mrs Greig's will. Then he would return and tell his parents about his findings. I would be well and truly sunk, either way.

I wanted to be the one to tell them. I owed them that much. I owed Carolyn a great deal more. But I refused to be blackmailed tonight.

'Can I brazen it out now?' I inhaled sharply. 'Laugh off his remark as if it's nothing?' Sadly, I knew I was not that good an actress. And now, all sorts of fanciful notions were rioting around inside my overworked imagination.

Edward's waiting silence and widening smile said he knew he had me right where he wanted me. 'Blast!'

"All right, what must I pay?" I tried again as my unwilling gaze dropped and snagged on his lips. God help me, I couldn't prevent my tongue from quickly moistening mine.

"Just this…" Edward finally replied softly, watching my reaction as he leaned closer… and kissed me on my upturned cheek. I felt the brush of his pirate's beard against my hot skin.

I blinked. "I…" I swallowed tightly. "Well, that was taking an unfair advantage of the situation," I snapped crossly as I moved sharply away from him.

I felt the burn deepening in my cheeks. I was very glad of the darkness. Disappointment was a sharp pain in my heart, and I knew it was reflected in my tone.

Right then, I could have sworn I heard the sound of masculine laughter on the soft evening breeze. But Edward's moonlit expression was now deeply thoughtful, and he wasn't laughing as he watched me climb into my truck to escape his distracting presence.

I sat behind the steering wheel, looking pointedly at his hand that was still holding the door open. He moved slowly into the space I had just occupied.

"Look, I'm sorry if I upset you." He sighed heavily. "But we made a bargain and it needed to be sealed. I will keep my side of it until the end of the week."

His lips quirked wryly as he leaned closer. "Then I want to know all the details of why and how you were bequeathed this house and the reasons you needed to sell it. I know there's a lot more to the story than you're telling."

"And there are also two sides to every story," I replied stiffly, frowning at his restraining hand that was preventing me from leaving. "Right now, I want to go home."

"Chicken…" he challenged softly before he released the door and stood back. "And we shall talk about it. That's now a part of the bargain we just sealed with a kiss."

"I am not a chicken," I retorted quickly, trying not to look at him. "I'm just a very busy person and I don't have time to sit here talking to you all night."

"If we had all night, we would not be doing a lot of talking," he replied softly.

"Edward?" Carolyn called from the open back door. "I thought Kat had already left."

She took a step closer. "Are you coming back inside? We've cleaned up and we're going to play cards. We need a fourth."

"I'm coming…" her son replied, still watching me. "I will give you until the end of the week to tell my parents your part in their buying this house. It's only fair that they know the whole truth. I don't like secrets and unsolved puzzles."

"Very well…" I whispered, knowing I could not deny him. I had asked for time, and time he had given me.

"Good night…" He nodded as he stepped back. "And I won't be here to disturb your time with my mother tomorrow afternoon. I'll be working with Michael. He wants me to get to know the business side of the operation and understand it. So, I won't be around much at all until the end of the week."

"Thank you…" I replied as I breathed a cautious sigh of relief.

"You're welcome." He shook his head with a grimace.

But he remained standing in the driveway as I shut the door and started the engine. As I drove away, I couldn't help glancing up at the rear vision mirror as I wiped tears of anger from my eyes. He was still there until I turned right onto the roadway, and he finally disappeared from view.

My heart was pounding, and my throat was now drier than the desert. The end of the week was only three precious days away. And I knew he could reappear at any moment, armed with the incontrovertible truth he'd received from Kelvin.

I had no earthly clue how I was going to be able to return to the house tomorrow afternoon and pretend as if nothing at all had happened between us. But I knew there was still more of Emma and Daniel's story to tell, and they would be very disappointed if I reneged on the emotionally charged deal, I had made with her, just before Mrs Greig had died. I had promised to do exactly as she asked.

I was also deeply aware she and the Captain were not truly gone from the house. That was its biggest, and most enduring secret that I would very soon need to confess. Whenever I felt the house was smiling down at me, I knew it was.

Sometimes, I was sure I had caught glimpses of them out of the corner of my eye while I worked in the house or out in the garden. I often sensed they watched from the shadows and the Captain's restored portrait.

And tonight, I had heard the sound of masculine laughter in the soft night wind. I knew now it hadn't been a figment of my overworked imagination.

"Okay, you win…" I sighed roughly. "I will come back tomorrow afternoon. Thankfully he won't be there. Edward Bridges will soon find someone else to torment. I'm sick of playing games with him."

I shook my head as I turned into the driveway of my little cottage by the sea. Carolyn hadn't been wrong in what she had said earlier tonight. The Captain's painted eyes did follow us all, and at times he appeared to be about to speak, then changed his mind. In the intervening months, I had become used to knowing they were still in the house, and they were waiting for their story to be fully told.

I was deeply conscious that I could not disappoint them now. Not after we had come so far together. I would see this project through as I had promised my beloved friend and mentor before she died and went to find her love once more.

As soon as that task was complete, then I could think about my future. As much as I wished it could be otherwise, Gull Cottage would no longer figure in those plans. I now employed competent staff who could continue with the gardening. I could afford to hire more with the money I'd finally received from the sale of the house. My bank account had never been so healthy, but it gave me little comfort.

My heart sank at the prospect of finally leaving the house behind as I got out of my truck and locked it. But I knew it would be for the best. Getting to know Edward Bridges any better, was not going to figure anywhere in my new plans. He was too sure of himself and too used to getting his own way.

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"Cuisle mo chroí…" I leaned across the bed to Carolyn and kissed her cheek.

She was sitting up next to me, leaning back against her banked pillows. The hour was late and she'd been working solidly through her notes from her last session of Kat's dictation. Notebooks filled with the ongoing story were scattered across the bedcovers as she made corrections or nibbled on the end of her pen as she read what she'd written.

I had been reading her latest Edward Grainer thriller and thoroughly enjoying it. But now my eyes felt grainy and tired. I glanced across at her and inhaled her soft perfume.

I wasn't so tired that I couldn't go in search of a little loving and some feminine attention. But she didn't look up or reply to my loving words of endearment.

Oddly, I felt I was being slowly edged out of her attention by a dead man. The idea rankled slightly.

"Cuisle mo chroí…" I said again more loudly, trying to gain her undivided attention with my hand on her knee beneath the covers.

"Mmmm…" She replied to my advances with a distracted smile as she turned the page and went on reading. "Love you, too…"

I frowned at her. "What is so important in those notes that it can't wait until morning?" I asked in a mock-aggrieved tone. "Here I am, trying to make love with my wife, the pulse of my heart, and she ignores me completely. Am I finally losing my touch?"

Beneath the covers, I ran my hand beneath the hem of her nightie and up along her inner thigh. She moved it against my palm, giving me hope I was getting through to her. I began to explore higher and heard her sigh.

She glanced up then, her smile full of apology. "Sorry, I was just thinking. This is such a fabulous story I can't put it down. It really deserves to be told. I can't wait for tomorrow when Kat comes again."

"Okay…" I shook my head. "I can see that. But, you've been reading it for hours now." I toyed with the silken skin at the heated angle of her thighs. "Are you tired?"

"Are you jealous?" Carolyn pulled off her reading glasses and tossed them aside. "I mean, you should be…" Her breathing hitched as my questing fingers found their warm target and began to explore her silken depths.

"Is there something I need to be jealous about?" I asked, leaning closer to kiss the shadowed valley between her breasts.

"Well…" She moved one shoulder. "I wasn't going to tell you, but now that you've guessed, I might as well. You see, the Captain and I, we're having a secret affair. He is rather magnificent, after all."

She tapped the pages of her notebook. "He was also quite the man, you know. And an excellent sea captain. Even if only half of these stories about him are true. He could have had a woman in every port. But he only had eyes for one…"

I shook my head as I nuzzled my way up along the line of her throat. "I've never been jealous of a dead man before. It's a new experience. I don't like it."

"Well, it was bound to happen…" My love sighed as she moved against my questing hand. "Sometimes it seems as if he's still alive. Maybe, they both are."

"Now you're being fanciful…" I frowned, drawing back a little too sharply from my sensual exploration.

"I often thought so too," Carolyn confessed. "I had put it down to the age of this house. The little creaks and groans now and then. But, sometimes I've seen movements out of the corner of my eye. But when I turn to look, there's nothing, and no one, there. And yet, the more I think about him and Emma and read about their love and their home here, the more it makes perfect sense."

She tossed aside her notebook among its fellows and turned to me. "They never truly left this house. They're still here. They always have been. I'm convinced of it. We just haven't truly noticed until now." She moved one leg over my waist and rolled me onto my back as she sat astride my thighs.

She shrugged as she smiled down at me. "I know it sounds fanciful and far-fetched, but that very first day we walked into this house, I'm sure I felt someone drift their fingers across the back of my neck. It was a kind of welcome as well as a sign of approval. And I've heard and seen other things, since. Like that day I found the Captain's painting up in the attic. I'm sure he showed me where it was hidden."

Caught up in her wide-eyed tale, I heard myself say, "I'm sure I felt those ghostly fingers on that first day…"

I frowned and reassessed the words. I couldn't take them back and I could see from Carolyn's grateful expression she was happy about my unwary confession.

"Do you think they're watching us now?" she asked softly, looking about the shadowed room. "I mean, who knows where they hang out at night? And this was their room before it was ours."

"I would like to think that even spirits would allow a man, who is trying hard to make love with his wife, to have some privacy…" I too looked around at the shadows with growing uncertainty.

The fine hairs on the back of my neck stood up as a shiver feathered up and down my spine. Forget about ghostly fingers and all of that! I had never felt more like jumping out of bed and turning all the lights on.

"I just knew this house was very special…" Carolyn continued in a whisper toying her fingertips in little circles across my naked chest. "But I never knew how special. Do you think Kat knows about them and has been too afraid to tell us in case we decided to sell up and run away?"

"I think that is a very distinct possibility," I replied, still staring at the shadows. "She has lived in this house for a lot longer than we have. She will have seen things and know things. I will be very interested to read whatever Edward finds out from the executor tomorrow. There are just too many mysteries around here for my liking."

"Yes…" Carolyn sighed. "But I rather like the idea of living in a haunted house." Her sea-green eyes lit up with excitement. "Think of the stories they could tell me and all the books I could sell."

"I think you might be getting a little ahead of yourself," I advised, trapping her small hands in one of mine to draw her closer to me. "We have no clue what they might want or need from us."

I couldn't help a final, darting look about the room before I reached down to pull the bedcovers up and over our heads. I didn't care that her precious notebooks were scattered across the bed and the floor.

"Then, tomorrow we shall ask them," Carolyn decided firmly, leaving me feeling bemused. "I know the Captain likes to watch us from his painting downstairs. I felt that tonight before you called us for dinner."

I tried to hang onto all my certainties and failed dismally. Everything I had been taught in my life boiled down to three simple truths. Like my son, I believed that if I could not see something, touch it or measure it, then I had to believe that it surely did not exist. It couldn't exist.

My mind began to pound with doubts. 'I know there's no such thing as ghosts and haunted houses…'

But the Irish in me, that instinct which lay just below the surface of my rational mind, immediately went to war with that notion. 'Hadn't I been brought up on such fairytales all about ghosts, fairies and the banshee? Stories of the Púca had disturbed my childhood dreams.'

I shook my head slowly with disbelief. Of course, the confounded shade of Schrödinger's blasted cat came rushing back into my mind, right then. Now, there was a fresh puzzle to solve and if Carolyn insisted on opening this new box, to see what was inside, I hoped we had the courage to face the truth. Goosebumps prickled across my naked skin.

"Cuisle mo chroí…" Carolyn said softly, watching me closely as I struggled to believe the ultimate truth of what she was trying to tell me. "It will be all right. You'll see. They mean us no harm and they want us here. I'm sure of that…"

Keeping her eyes on mine, she pulled her hands away to strip off her nightgown and toss it outside the covers. Then she leaned down to capture my mouth with hers and there was no longer any time for words as we rose together and once more, touched against the very edge of heaven…

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