“Yes, and it’s no more comfortable now than it ever was!”
He chuckled. “It always felt as if it was carved from solid wood. Do you mind if I sit beside you?”
“Not at all,” Sarah replied. “A bit of warmth would be welcome.” There were sounds of wriggling. “There’s plenty of space on my left.”
Feeling carefully around so he wouldn’t inadvertently do anything improper, he found a cleared area at the near end of the sofa. He settled into it, aware of her warmth just a few inches away—and froze when the delicate scent of rosemary wafted toward him. She always used a rosemary rinse on her hair, and it conjured his memories of her as sharply as the notes of the recorder.
Suppressing a ridiculous desire to draw her into an embrace, he reached out to determine how far away she was and touched a cold hand. “You’re freezing!”
“It’s a very cold attic,” she said with a hint of chattering teeth.
Rafe stood and tugged off his warm wool coat and settled it around her shoulders. “This should help.”
She tried to push the coat away. “Then you’ll freeze, and you’re more important than I am!”
“Wrong on both counts,” he said as he sat down with his right side pressed against her. She wasn’t very large. “Having campaigned in every variety of weather from snow to burning heat to drowning rain, I don’t notice temperature much.”
“Then I thank you.”
He heard her tightening the coat around her shivering body. He said, “Please forgive my forwardness, but I’m going to put my arm around your shoulders.”
As he suited deed to word, she burrowed against him. “If I had a shred of propriety, I’d pull away and give you a furious set down for ruining my reputation, but you feel sogood!”
“I have plenty of heat to spare and we’re under hardship conditions,” he said reassuringly.
“There is that,” she added wryly. “And luckily I’m not a sheltered maiden with a reputation to worry about.”
“You said that you work for the countess. What do you do?” he asked curiously.
“After my parents died, I had no money and no relatives who could take me in, so the countess offered me the job of castle librarian. I’ve lived here ever since.”
It was a good reminder of the countess’s better qualities. Rafe considered the size of the library. “Are there enough books to keep you busy?”
“No, so I also take care of the sheet music and sometimes I help the countess with her accounts and similar secretarial work.She appreciates the excellent education my father gave me.” Sarah laughed. “I was born to be a library mouse, I think! The best part of my job is that I’m the keeper of the secret Delafield family files.”
“There are secret files?” Rafe asked, surprised. “What’s in them, or am I not allowed to know because they’re secret?”
After a moment’s thought, she said, “Since you’re now Lord Carroll, you have every right to know. The files are written in old diaries that go back for many, many years. There are listings of private loans made when there were financial problems, there are notes about illicit affairs, and sometimes damning information about friends or enemies. But the best parts of the private archives are the ghost stories!”
Chapter Six
Sarah’s words joltedRafe. “The castle has ghosts? I never knew that.” He considered for a moment. “Though when I heard the sound of your recorder, at first I thought you were a ghost. If the castle really is haunted, I’d choose a musical ghost.”
“I like the idea of that, but I’m no ghost.” She tapped his knee with a hollow wooden object that had to be her instrument. “My recorder is very real. Do you remember that you gave it to me for my twelfth birthday?”
“Of course I remember!” He smiled reminiscently. “You wrote me that the penny whistle you loved to play had been wrecked when a horse stepped on it. I couldn’t imagine you without music, so I found the recorder in a London music shop. By the time I returned to the castle, you were playing it like an angel.”
He heard the faint sound of her fingertips stroking the polished wood of the recorder. “I’ve been very careful to keep it away from horses. But it’s such an odd little instrument, not what a proper lady plays. That’s why I often come up to the attic to play. It’s very peaceful.” She chuckled ruefully. “But the door never jammed before!”
Thinking about the ghostly creature that had driven him into the attic, he asked cautiously, “Do the files have any ghost stories about animals? Perhaps…ghostly cats?”
Sarah caught her breath. “Actually, yes. There are a number of stories about feline ghosts lunging at people and driving them somewhere they hadn’t intended to go.”
Stunned, Rafe whispered, “That happened to me tonight! I came up to the attic level to escape the husband hunters. I was about to return downstairs when a giant feline phantom lunged at me. I fell back through the attic door, and it slammed shut behind me and jammed.”
Sarah gasped. “It was the same for me at the other end of the attic! I came up to play my recorder but decided the attic was too cold, so I was going to go back to my room. Then a huge, shimmering, silver cat creature leaped at me from the landing. I jumped back into the attic and it slammed shut and wouldn’t open. I…I think I saw a giant transparent silver paw swipe at me through the door, but perhaps I imagined it.”
During the silence that followed, Rafe tightened his arm around his companion. “Are we both going mad?”
