Page 27
None of this made sense. Not whatever attacked her at the talking board, or locked them in the cellar. Not the kiss—and more—she’d shared with Valebrook, or how she’d reacted to it. Her body still thrummed, her core vibrating with the unfulfilled need for release. Her clothes scratched her skin; the evergreen scent of Valebrook’s skin permeated her senses.
She shoved herself away from the door and stripped off her clothing, ignoring how her breasts grew heavy and thighs trembled while she tugged on her worn nightdress and robe. With that task managed, she could focus on a matter far more pressing than the vexing earl and his intoxicating touches.
For the first time in her life, she’d summoned a spirit. She had no indication of how, or who it could be, or what the spirit might be trying to tell her. The idea was as exciting as it was frightening, and she could think of only one way to learn more.
She crept to her grandfather’s turret by candlelight. Pounding rain lashed the windows, occasional slashes of lightning sending eerie shards of illumination through the thick glass. The sound changed in the study; the precipitation tapped gently on the pepper-pot roof, as though the storm didn’t dare disturb the important work taking place within.
Not that she’d managed anything of value since the study’s occupant died.
She settled onto a velvet-tufted ottoman and crossed her legs beneath her. The pile was worn in places, from where she’d wiggled about while asking him questions or kicked her feet as a girl. Back then, the piece of furniture had seemed impossibly large, like she could stretch out and not reach the edges. Now she barely fit.
“Hello, Pop.”
He didn’t answer, but that wasn’t unusual.
Her gaze drifted over the ornate desk her grandfather claimed was rescued from a sinking pirate ship and infused with the spirits of the drowned sailors. Fountain pens and inkwells littered the surface, scraps of paper with scribbled words she’d never deciphered, books opened and layered one on top of the other. Her contributions were there, too: a spray of flowers she’d picked from the cliffs, now desiccated and drooping in the cloudy glass vase. A sketch she’d made of the manor.
Her journal sat in one corner, the only area free of dust. She refused to spread out any further, in case his spirit returned to reclaim his space. Her grandfather had bought it for her, a place for her to store your wisdom as you discover it, as he’d said. As a girl, she’d invented her own rituals, methods for cleaning the dishes without scrubbing or summoning the unfortunate toad she’d hidden in a box under her bed for an exciting but ill-fated time. Her grandfather never mocked her, only encouraged her with more questions annotated in the margins.
But his notes ended with his death, and the volume ceased to be a place for dreams and whimsy. Instead, it became a chronicle of her methods of deception. Plans and diagrams for the rapping table, or the precise amount of saltpeter required to make a candle snuff out at the perfect moment. A map of the secret passages in the original structure and the shops that sold grease pens for the mirrors.
She cleared her throat. “I—I need your help. I seem to have summoned a spirit.” A fractured laugh slipped free. “I’m as surprised as you surely are. But I don’t know what comes next.”
She imagined her grandfather wrinkling his nose, his bushy brows gathering as he let his brilliant mind swirl. He’d never answer her questions directly, though, a habit that irritated her to no end.
What was different today?
“Today was a disaster. The Americans and the Bunton-Talmadges. And…” Her cheeks heated. “This earl. He’s… he’s flummoxing me. And I made a mistake with him.”
How so?
“I kissed him—he kissed me.” She imagined how he would have tilted his head with a quizzical look, and she huffed a resigned sigh. “More than a kiss. I… I enjoyed it more than I should have. But it was wrong and wholly inappropriate.”
Propelled by her shame and a desperation to make sense of her situation, she stood, striding to the desk. She sifted through her journal, flipping the pages without seeing the words.
“He wants to prove I don’t have the sight like you and Grandmother do.” The admission stung, no duller from having been whispered in this room countless times before.
You see many things. Yet her journals were full of nonsense, nothing of value until she started documenting her deception.
“I see him ruining us. Ruining me. And I don’t know how to stop it.”
Her memory swung to the wine cellar, his heady touches and kisses—
Oh. She’d summoned a spirit, and it was the earl’s late wife—and then she kissed the man. Of course, the spirit would want to intervene.
“If I angered a spirit, how do I fix it?”
Thunder shook the turret so violently that she gasped. Her candle on the desktop wavered, and she snapped her gaze to the dancing flame. When she looked down again, her journal lay open.
She snorted. “The dead frog? Really, Pop? This is how you help me?”
But her attention lingered on a snippet of her grandfather’s handwriting scribbled in the margin beside her childlike print.
Love will set him free.
Her breath caught. If she had summoned Christina’s spirit into the house, Bridget couldn’t release the spirit alone. Valebrook had loved Christina; that love had brought her ghost to Ashveil, and that love would set her free.
She snapped the book shut and let her thoughts drift to Valebrook himself. The incorrigible, arrogant man who kissed like a rogue and comforted her like a gentleman. Fortunately, to free Christina’s spirit, she wouldn’t need to show any love for him.
