Jane Austen Made Me Do It (36 page)

“Where would that be?” Sheila asked.

“In the old part of the abbey. The part with stone walls and candles.” Cathy shrugged as if to downplay the oddness of what she had just said.

“Hey. That must be part of the ghost tour. I didn't know they let people stay there. I'll have to ask for that next time I come.”

“Ghosts?” Cathy gave a little shiver. Had she spent the early hours of the morning communing with a ghost? Oh, sure. That made perfect sense. Not jet lag. Not a dream. A ghost. She felt so much better.

“Sure. This is a haunted abbey. At least that's what the pamphlet says. Pick one up at the front desk.” Sheila returned to her plate.

Breakfast continued with the usual chitchat. “Where are you from?” “What do you do?” “How long are you staying?” “Where do you go from here?” “Any plans for the day?”

Cathy answered them all with a minimum of elaboration. “Boston.” “I'm an editor.” “I'm not sure how long I'll be here.” “Bath.” “Nope. No plans.”

“Then come with us,” Sheila said in response to Cathy's last answer. “We're taking the coach to Clifton. Maybe go on to Blaise Castle. The brochure says it's the finest castle in England.” Sheila waggled her eyebrows.

Cathy grinned. “So I've heard. Sure. Why not. I'd love to go.”

Cathy spent the rest of breakfast examining the other diners and waitstaff, hoping to catch a glimpse of her early morning visitor. No one looked remotely like the mysterious Henry, although she did think she saw a tall fair-haired man disappear around the corner into the kitchen. She very nearly got up to follow him but was distracted by the group at her table standing in unison. Apparently it was time to leave.

Cathy boarded the coach with everyone else and found a seat by a window. She was immediately joined by a florid young man
who she guessed was probably about her age. She nodded politely and returned to her perusal of the abbey.

As the coach driver closed the door, she saw him. Henry, coming out the main entrance. She was sure of it. As he passed the coach, he raised his head and looked directly at her, a quizzical expression on his face. Was it her Henry or was it her imagination?

“Wait!” She tried to rise and signal the driver that she wanted to get off, but was stymied by the man sitting next to her. He grabbed her arm and pulled her back into the seat.

“Sit down,” he said in a hearty voice. “We're leaving and it's too late to change your mind now.” And before she could wrestle free, they were on the road toward Clifton, and Henry or his doppelgänger was left in the courtyard staring after the departing bus. Cathy continued to gaze out the window, trying to ignore her seatmate.

“Name is Jack Thorpe,” he informed the back of her head. “Been traveling with these yahoos for nearly a week. Nice to see a new face.”

Relenting, Cathy turned to face Jack, suppressing a snort. John Thorpe. Just her luck.

It was all the encouragement he needed to keep talking. “What do you drive?” he asked, but did not wait for an answer. “I just picked up a vintage Corvette. Got it for a steal off of an old schoolmate. Doesn't get great mileage, but, hey, you don't expect that on a Corvette, eh?” He elbowed her in the ribs.

Cathy tried to turn back to the window, but he wasn't done. “Wish I had it with me. Be much better than tooling around in this old crate. If I had it here, I could really show you how touring in England should be done.”

Cathy stifled a yawn.

After an interminable tour, during which Jack stuck to her side like Gorilla Glue, the coach deposited the group back at the
Abbey Hotel. Cathy turned down an invitation to join them for dinner and escaped to her room.

It was still daylight, and the Radcliffe Suite looked a tad less atmospheric than it had last night during the thunderstorm. There were fresh towels on the chest in the bathroom, and the tapestry had been straightened over the oak door on the far wall. Without hesitation, Cathy crossed the room and pulled it back. The door was still there and was still unlocked. She yanked it open and light from her room flooded the vaulted chamber revealing … a vaulted chamber … with shelves … and a clothes rack. A walk-in closet?

She backed up a step. How ridiculous could she be? Of course it was a closet, or a dressing room or another bedroom or something that would make sense in a hotel suite. Not a candlelit chamber with instruments of torture and a strangely attractive but ephemeral inhabitant. Feeling stupid, she slammed the door and went in search of the room service menu.

As she was staying in a converted abbey and not a five-star hotel, room service turned out to be tikka masala from the Indian take-away in the village. By 10:00
P.M.
, fed but disheartened, Cathy changed into her nightgown and crawled into bed.

A light rain had begun to tap against the window, and she pulled the covers over her head and wondered if she was losing her mind. How in God's name had she come to the conclusion that the walk-in closet held a sexy phantom? In what part of her jet-lagged brain had she conjured up Henry, and why, pray tell, did she think that the man outside the coach had been the same person? She must be missing Jeremy more than she thought, or perhaps she had narrowly escaped a nervous breakdown. Or maybe she had not escaped it at all.

It was dark when Cathy woke from a heavy sleep. The rain still pattered against the windows, and the only light in the room
was a watery glow from somewhere outside. Not the moon; it was raining. Streetlamps? Fairies? Rolling to her side, Cathy snuggled into the warm form beside her in the bed.

“Mmmmm.” She threw her arm over the body and nuzzled the neck, feeling the enticing rasp of a day's growth of beard and the agreeable smell of clean linen and male skin. An arm curled around her shoulders and drew her closer.

“What?!” Snapping bolt upright, Cathy snatched a pillow and held it in front of her like a shield.

“What?” A sleepy, masculine voice with a deliciously familiar accent issued from the body beside her. Henry? Fumbling on her nightstand, she flicked the light switch. Which was not working—again. Naturally. But she was prepared this time. Scrambling from the bed, she lit the candle she had placed beside the lamp and turned back to the bed.

Henry, her cobweb man, her ghost, the figment of her imagination, lay cocooned in the covers, looking up at her with a smile of gentle bemusement. “Come back to bed, Cathy.” He patted the spot she had just vacated.

“Come back to bed? What are you doing here? Who are you?” Cathy looked around the room, trying to figure out what was going on. The tapestry was pulled back and the door to the walk-in closet stood ajar.

“What do you mean, ‘who am I'? I'm Henry.”

“You're a dream,” she said, backing a little farther from the bed.

“Thank you, darling.” Henry grinned. “I love you too.”

She couldn't help it. He made her smile and kindled a sudden warmth within her. It made no sense. Not only did she not know who this man was, she was pretty sure that he wasn't even real. And yet, there he was in her bed, and there was that inviting niche right beside him.

Cathy moved back and sat on the edge of the bed, looking down into the face that had become oddly familiar and incredibly dear within such a short time. Sighing, she rolled back onto her pillow and turned to face him. “What the heck. Promise to tell me who you are in the morning.”

“I assure you that you will know everything about me by morning,” Henry said, gathering her close and just holding her.

“Did I see you this morning outside the coach?” she asked, settling into Henry's embrace.

“Did you? I wonder.”

“Really. I thought I did,” Cathy insisted.

“Shouldn't you have gotten off to find out?”

“Oh, I wanted to, truly, but an awful man wouldn't let me and then we were on the road.” She placed her hand over his heart. “I'm sorry,” she whispered.

“Nothing to be sorry about, my dear. Here you are now. That's all that matters.”

“Is it really? Frankly, I don't understand any of this and, if I thought you were real, I certainly wouldn't be in this bed with you.”

Henry laughed. “I'm as real as you want me to be,” he said.

Oh, that voice. Cathy smiled to herself as the candle guttered.

In the morning he was gone, although Cathy could have sworn she could smell a faint whiff of his citrusy scent when she buried her head in the pillow. Which she did for several seconds, trying to remember the night. Why did he seem so real after dark and so … nonexistent in broad daylight? She lay looking at the velvet canopy over the bed, weighing the possibilities. Vampire? She felt her neck. No. She didn't believe in vampires. Ghost? Ditto. Visitor from another dimension? Nah. Visitor from another planet? Please! Figment of her fevered imagination?
Bingo! Cathy rolled out of bed. One more day in the abbey and then on to Bath.

Cathy loitered in the lobby, looking at ghost brochures, trying to avoid the group from yesterday's dreadful trip to Clifton. She was almost successful.

“There she is.” Sheila's cheery voice rang out across the hall. Cathy's heart sank as she slowly turned around to find herself facing the argyle-clad chest of Jack Whatever-his-name-was.

“Um, hi,” she said, trying to step around the bulky form invading her personal space.

“Wait,” he said, taking her arm. “We're heading to Stonehenge today. You've got to see it.”

Cathy was not about to be importuned twice by the same person. “No, thanks. Seen it,” she said, wresting her arm from his grasp. “I've got other plans. See you.” And she practically ran toward the door before anyone else could stop her. Once outside, she looked wildly around. Plans. She had plans. What were they and how could she get away before the Stonehenge contingent emerged? She looked down at the brochure still clutched in her hand. The Winchcombe Ghost Walk. Why not?

Winchcombe was an unprepossessing little town, but did have some interesting ninth-century and Neolithic sites, all apparently haunted. Cathy wandered the purported route to a Neolithic burial chamber. The lane was lined with hawthorn and primrose, but an occasional break in the hedges afforded a glimpse of the homes along the lane.

She came to a small gap and stopped, entranced by the sight: the back garden of a substantial stone house, alive with bloom and filled with the excited noise of a litter of puppies. She lingered to watch them play, wondering why they seemed so familiar,
and fighting a strong urge to climb the fence and join them. The back door opened and the puppies tumbled over each other in a rush to enter the house. Cathy peered into the shadowy doorway, but couldn't tell who held the door. Nor could she figure out why she wanted to know. The door clicked shut, and she moved on in her pursuit of Neolithic ghosts.

One last night in the abbey. Cathy bolted down a sandwich from a stand in town and headed back to her room, loath to miss any possible time with her cobwebby lover. Once at her door, she fished around in her backpack for her key and thought about what a shame it was that her real life could not hold a candle to her nervous breakdown.

Having found the key settled at the very bottom of her pack, Cathy entered the Radcliffe Suite, flung her backpack onto the bed, and headed right for the closet.

What an idiot she was. Cathy stared at the empty shelves for a full minute before returning to the bed and throwing herself down in a heap of confusion. A bout of weeping led to a nap and another middle-of-the-night awakening. But this time, there was electricity and she was alone. Alone and miserable, missing someone who did not exist, wondering about her sanity and trying to decide whether she should continue with her holiday or just pack up and go home.

By morning, she had decided to continue on to Bath. Why waste those reservations at the B&B in Bathwick and why miss a chance to tread in Catherine Morland's footsteps? She packed, made one last check of the closet, and went to the lobby to check out.

It was early enough not to have to fend off the people she had come to think of as the Annoying Tourists, for which she thanked heaven as she stood on the sweep waiting for the man who was delivering the hired car. She shaded her eyes against the sun and
watched an ancient Land Rover pull into the drive and swing toward the entrance. She stepped back as it pulled to a stop in front of her and the driver's door opened.

She stepped back again when she saw the driver. “Henry?”

He grinned. “Well, here they call me Hal,” he said. “Hal Woodston.” He gave a little bow. “But you may call me anything you like.”

“What … what are you doing here?”

“I'm here to take you home. The puppies are anxious to meet you.” He picked up her suitcase and tossed it into the back of the car.

“But …”

Henry leaned over and kissed her. “Don't ask questions, dearest. Everything is just as it's meant to be.”

“Why not?” Cathy climbed into the passenger seat and buckled her seatbelt. She would sort out all that identity and imagination stuff later. Now, why not, indeed?