Someone to Love (3 page)

“Good,” he said, his mouth full. “Excellent.”

“It’s from me Jamie.”

“He your son?” Jace asked when he’d swallowed.

“Oh, heavens no! Wish he were, but then we all wish Jamie was our son.” She nodded toward a framed photo on the wall. Since it was half-buried under hanging pots, dish towels, and strings of garlic, he could barely see it. The photo was of a handsome young man, blond, blue-eyed, and he looked vaguely familiar. “He’s Jamie Oliver,” she said and seemed to expect Jace to know who that was. When he didn’t, she gave a look of disgust, her eyes wrinkling at the corners. Jace thought that whatever her age, it didn’t match her little-old-lady looks. He thought she was either a lot older than she appeared, or a lot younger.

“Jamie Oliver!” she said louder, as though Jace was deaf as well as ignorant.

When he still looked blank, she grabbed a thick book off the countertop and put it on the table beside him. It was a cookbook and on the cover was the young man in the photo on the wall. “Ah,” he said, “a cook.”

“Julia Child was a cook,” Mrs. Browne said, going to the cabinet beside the sink and opening a door. Inside was a refrigerator of a size that Americans would use to hold their drinks on the family boat. She withdrew a bottle of something dark and brown, poured a big glassful, and set it on the table in front of him.

She was looking at him as though he was supposed to say something.

“If this sandwich is an example of what Jamie Oliver can cook, then I say he’s an artist.”

She looked at Jace for a moment as though trying to figure out if he was lying, then she smiled, showing that her top left canine was missing. She seemed to be pleased and went back to the range to stir a pan.

Jace smiled, feeling that he’d passed Test Number One, and took a deep drink of what he assumed was beer. He didn’t usually drink beer in the afternoon, but he didn’t want to offend Mrs. Browne—again. The brown liquid was beer, but it was so strongly flavored and so strongly alcoholic that he thought he might choke. Mrs. Browne had her back to him, stirring her pot while she told him all about Jamie Oliver and what a magnificent chef he was and how she followed his advice to the letter. Behind her, Jace was quietly trying to rebound from the swig of beer. His eyes were watering and his head swimming. He thought he might have to lie down on the stone floor to recover.

Mrs. Browne turned around and looked at him, her eyes narrowed to slits. “That beer’s too strong for your American stomach, isn’t it? I told Hatch it wouldn’t suit you. ‘That’s English beer,’ I told him. ‘Yanks drink things that say “light” on the bottle. They don’t drink that homemade concoction of yours.’ Here, I’ll take it.”

As she reached for the glass, Jace felt that he was representing all of American maledom and he held onto the glass. “No,” he said, then cleared his throat since his voice had come out in a squeak. “No, it’s fine. I love it. See?” he said, then picked up the glass and drained it.

When he finished, he thought he might pass out, but by strength of will, he stayed in his seat and looked at her. He hoped his eyes weren’t going round and round as they felt like they were.

Mrs. Browne gave a little smile as though she knew exactly what was going on, then she turned back to her bubbling pot. “Well, maybe I was wrong about you Yanks. You go tell Hatch that you like his beer and he’ll give you more.”

“That’ll be a treat,” Jace said under his breath, then tried to pick up his sandwich, but missed. His hands went one way and the sandwich another. “Who is Hatch?”

She turned on him, hands on hips. “Didn’t that uppity estate agency tell you anything? Hatch is the gardener. Of course he hasn’t been here as long as I have, and I have no idea what his parents did before he came here, but he’s been here a while. He’ll be wantin’ instructions from you as soon as you’re finished here.”

Jace again tried to get his hands onto his sandwich but again missed.

Frowning, Mrs. Browne moved the plate under his hands. When Jace got hold of the sandwich, he smiled at her in accomplishment.

“Instructions about what?” Jace asked, his mouth trying to hit the sandwich. He bit his hand twice, but it was numb so he felt nothing.

Mrs. Browne was watching him and shaking her head. “The gardens. Hatch will want to know what you want done to the gardens.”

“I have no idea,” Jace said as he sank his teeth into the sandwich. That the little finger on his left hand was in the bite didn’t bother him. “I know nothing about gardens.”

“Then why did you buy this great bloomin’ place?”

“To see the ghost,” Jace said, chewing and wondering how much of his little finger was left.

Mrs. Browne smiled warmly. “And she’ll be glad for the company. The last two families were scared to death of her. Poor thing.”

“Then you’ve seen her?”

“No,” she said, turning back to her pot. “Never seen her or heard her. I’m not a ‘sensitive,’ as they’re called. Some people can see her and some can’t. She talked to a few of ’em, but they all got scared and run away. You gonna be calm when she comes clankin’ down the stairs in the wee hours?”

“Maybe I’ll give her some of Mr. Hatch’s beer. That should loosen her chains.”

Mrs. Browne laughed. It was a rusty sound, as though she didn’t laugh often. “You go on now and have a look-see. Unless you need to lie down a bit on a count a the English beer.”

Jace heaved himself up by his arms because he was dead from the waist down. “Tell me, Mrs. Browne, am I bleeding anywhere?”

Again came that rusty little sound. “You go on now. I’m spendin’ the afternoon with me Jamie so you can have a good dinner. Hatch makes wine as well as beer.”

“Lord save me,” Jace muttered as Mrs. Browne put her strong hands on his lower back and gave him a push. When he opened his eyes he was standing outside and the door was being closed behind him. The sunlight threatened to crack his brain open.

“So you came to see
me,
did you, Mr. Montgomery?” said a soft voice behind him, a woman’s voice.

Jace turned as fast as he could, but considering the state of his body, that wasn’t very fast. No one was there, but he thought he smelled something. Flowers and wood smoke, he thought. It lasted only a second, then it was gone.

He turned back, put his hand over his eyes, and looked out across the gardens. Green trees, green grass, flowers. He saw it all, but there was no person in sight. Had he just been spoken to by a ghost? He smiled. Maybe he should have been frightened, but he had an odd thought. He could say anything to a woman who was already dead and he wouldn’t have to worry about the consequences. “You can’t hurt someone who’s already dead,” he said aloud.

“That proves that you didn’t meet the nasty little boy who lived here in 1912,” came the woman’s voice, so soft the wind in the trees almost drowned it.

Jace gave the first semblance of a laugh that had passed his lips in years. He put his hands in his pockets and tried to lift his neck, which was nearly as numb as his feet, and went in search of the gardener.

W
hen Jace awoke the next morning the inside of his mouth felt like it had been used as a lint filter for a dryer. Worse, for a long moment, he couldn’t remember where he was. Enough light was seeping in between the heavy curtains that he knew it was morning, but he couldn’t remember how he got wherever he was.

He lay still on the bed, blinking into the gloom. He remembered Mrs. Browne’s lunch, then being pushed outside and meeting Mr. Hatch, the gardener. He was a little gnome of a man, so short he made Jace, at six two, feel like a giant. But for all Mr. Hatch’s small stature, he was certainly strong. When Jace first saw him, he was using a big handsaw to cut up a huge limb that had broken off a tree and fallen across a path.

“You wanta grab that end?” the man said in an accent that made Mrs. Browne’s sound as though it was from an English drawing room. “My helper is out sick today. If you ask me, what’s made him sick is that girlfriend of his. Too pushy, that one. Makin’ the boy think he’s somethin’ he’s not. Mark my words, she’ll be the downfall of him. All uppity, but she cleans the toilets over at the school. What’s the matter with you, boy? Can’t you pick up that thing? What they teachin’ you at that school?”

Jace stood up and looked at his hands. He could see them but he couldn’t feel them, so he couldn’t pick up his end of the heavy log. “I don’t know what school you’re talking about and I have no strength because Mrs. Browne fed me a bottle of the beer you made.”

The little man stood up straight and under his weathered skin Jace thought he saw a glow of pink. “You’re the new owner.”

“‘The Yank,’ as Mrs. Browne calls me. Jace Montgomery.” He held out his hand to shake, but the little man didn’t take it.

“Beggin’ your pardon, sir, I thought you was the lad the vicar said he was sendin’ to help me. What with you bein’ a big, strappin’ fellow, I thought you…” He trailed off, not seeming to know how to get himself out of the jam.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Jace said, trying to put the man at ease. “Shall we try again with this log?”

“No, sir, the lad’ll be along soon now. He’s one of the vicar’s charity cases and the vicar is savin’ the boy whether he wants to be saved or not.”

“Maybe he’ll run off with your other lad’s girlfriend and you’ll get rid of both of them at once.”

Mr. Hatch gave a smile and Jace again tried to lift his end of the log. This time, with great concentration, he was able to help move it to the far side of the path.

“Where does this lead?” Jace asked, looking down the graveled path.

“Yonder,” Mr. Hatch said. “All the paths lead nowhere, then they connect up and lead back to the house. They were made for a lady of the house that didn’t ride. Ain’t no stables anywhere on the property, so if you’re wantin’ a horse you’ll have to build somethin’ to put it in. But then, you won’t be stayin’ long enough to build anythin’ so no need to worry about that.”

“And why won’t I be staying?”

“On account of the ghost.” He looked at Jace with his wrinkled, weathered face twisted into something that Jace assumed was meant to be frightening. “A real fright, she is.”

“How so?” Jace asked.

Mr. Hatch looked around to see if the young man the vicar was sending over was coming, but they were alone. “Come with me and we’ll share a glass of my wine and I’ll tell you everything. I’ve been here thirty years and I know all there is to know.”

Jace couldn’t resist the temptation to say, “Do you know more than Mrs. Browne?”

“Hmph! That one? She spends her days droolin’ over some boy on the telly. That cook. Now, mind you, I’m as open-minded as anybody, but is cookin’ a fit job for a man? And callin’ himself ‘the naked chef.’ Is that a proper thing for a man to do?”

Jace thought about asking Mr. Hatch if planting daffodils was a manly occupation but thought better of it.

When they reached a brick shed, Mr. Hatch stepped into the dark interior and returned with a blue glass bottle and two stained ceramic mugs. “Over here, under her tree,” he said. “We’ll have a bit of rest and I’ll tell you all that you want to hear.”

I’m going to regret this, Jace thought as he took the cup of wine. It was made from raspberries and was delicious, but it was even more lethal than the beer. Mr. Hatch downed two cups full for every half a cup that Jace drank, but even so, after forty-five minutes, Jace wanted to curl up under the tree and go to sleep.

But for all Jace’s questions, Mr. Hatch didn’t tell him anything about the ghost. He talked at length about putting in a bed of dahlias, but he didn’t mention the ghost—and he evaded Jace when he tried to ask. Jace got the impression that Mr. Hatch was so sure that Jace, an American, would stay at Priory House for so short a time that he wanted to do as much to the garden as possible before the house was put up for sale again. And he didn’t want to hasten the end by talking about the ghost that had scared so many other people away.

Maybe it was a feeling that two could play at this game, but Jace didn’t mention that the ghost had spoken to him, and that she didn’t sound like anyone’s idea of a lady highwayman.

“Ah, here he is now,” Mr. Hatch said, emptying his glass for the fourth time. “I’ll get him to help you up to your room.”

“I’m fine,” Jace said as he put his hand on the tree and tried to stand up. Legs that were once numb but functioning had now turned to rubber. “I’ll be fine. I want to hear about the ghost and about—”

That’s the last thing Jace remembered before he awoke in a strange room with his tongue feeling like it had turned into a caterpillar. Surprisingly, his head didn’t hurt, but his mind was fuzzy. Eventually, he remembered the two soft comments by an unknown voice.

“Are you here?” he whispered, but there was no sound. He lay still, listening and thinking about what he’d heard. Yesterday, in between two drunken sessions, he thought he’d heard a woman’s voice. She’d even made a joke to him. Could that have happened, or was it just the byproduct of some outrageously potent booze that he’d been given?

“Please answer me,” he said. “If you’re here, please talk to me. I want to contact someone.” Until he said the words out loud, he hadn’t realized he’d thought them. He’d told his uncle Frank that a ghost in the house didn’t bother him, but now he was seeing that he liked the idea of a ghost. Maybe she could contact Stacy for him. He wanted to ask her what had been so terrible in her life that she couldn’t bear to go on living.

When there was no answer to his questions, Jace began to feel silly. He had no idea where he was in the house. He remembered that the master bedroom had an enormous four-poster bed in it. The man who had remodeled the house back in the 1850s had bought the bed from an auction of the furnishings of a bankrupt duke. The bed was made of heavily carved, age-blackened oak, and the mattress was eight feet square. To make sure the bed stayed in the house, the remodeler had had the room built around it. The only way to get the bed out was to cut it into pieces. Over the years, the bed had come to be included in the sale, like the windows and the sinks.

But now Jace was in another room. It was half the size of the master bedroom and much prettier. There were windows on two sides, one set forming a pretty alcove where a deep window seat had been built. He could imagine Stacy curled up there with a book while the rain lashed against the windows. She’d always loved the rain.

For the first time since Stacy’s death, Jace felt at peace. He closed his eyes, wanting to go back to sleep, but he knew he couldn’t. How long had he been asleep? Since he passed out under what Mr. Hatch called “her” tree? The man said he was going to tell Jace about the ghost, but he hadn’t. He’d spent their short time together enumerating all that needed to be done to the outside. There were ditches that needed to be cleaned, plants that needed replacing, things like manure that needed to be bought. “You need some animals around here,” Mr. Hatch said, draining his cup of the potent wine. “We need the manure. That a place this size should have to buy cow dung goes against what’s right.” Thirty minutes later, Jace found out that there were a lot of things that Mr. Hatch thought went “against what’s right.”

Now, lying in the bed, he thought, Someone is doing this. Someone is making me feel calm. Part of him thought that was absurd, but another part knew that he hadn’t felt this calm since Stacy died. “If you’re here, please talk to me,” he said.

There was a rustle of fabric near the window and he turned, fully expecting to see a transparent white shape, but there was nothing. However, there was no wind in the room to make the curtain move.

Sighing, Jace swung his bare feet off the bed. He was fully dressed, but his shoes and socks had been removed. Wonder who took them off? he thought.

He went in search of the nearest bathroom. One thing he’d learned about English houses was that no matter how much they cost, a bathroom that wasn’t “down the hall” was a rare thing. On the Internet, he’d seen twelve-million-dollar houses with a third floor that had seven bedrooms and only a powder room to share. To bathe, people had to go downstairs.

He found a bathroom en suite, as the English say, meaning that a door opened into the bedroom. As his head began to clear, he realized that the room he had slept in was one of the bedrooms that the previous owners had used for storage. When Jace had seen the room, it had been full of big packing boxes and racks full of garments in zippered bags. His visit had been cursory and his mind hadn’t been on the house itself, so he’d not realized the room was as beautiful as it was.

When he saw that his toiletries were on the sink, he realized he was in the master bathroom. He was glad to see that there was a shower as well as a huge tub. He stripped off his clothes, took a long shower, brushed his teeth eleven times, then put a towel around his waist and went in search of his clothes. While he slept, someone had taken his suitcases out of his car and unpacked them.

Suddenly, his calmness was gone, replaced by panic. Where was his suitcase? With a growing sense of foreboding, he searched for his large case. It took him a while, but he found it in the back of a built-in cupboard in one of the closet-bedrooms. He pulled the suitcase out and opened it, then searched the lining. When he felt the leather case of the photo, he breathed a sigh of relief. He had brought only one photo of Stacy and he’d hidden it under the lining of his suitcase. He’d decided that it would be better if he kept what he was doing and why a secret. He would tell people he was interested in their lady swashbuckler ghost rather than in a woman who’d committed suicide just a few years ago. Jace feared that if he showed the photo and asked questions, someone would warn the person Stacy had met to get out of town. He wasn’t sure how he was going to do it, but he knew that his questions had to be subtle and he had to work around what he actually wanted to know.

“So you found me!” Mrs. Browne said when Jace at last found her kitchen.

“No problem,” he said, lying. Once again, he’d taken a wrong turn. Frustrated, he’d gone outside and tried to find another way in. For such a big house, it had extraordinarily few exterior doors. In the end, he had to circle the entire house before he found the door that Mrs. Browne had pushed him out of the day before. Seeing that the long walk had made his heart beat faster, he knew he’d made the right choice when he put on a sweatsuit. A run around his seventy-two acres would be good for him.

“It’s late, but I think I can still make you a breakfast,” Mrs. Browne said.

He looked at the clock on the wall. It was 8:05 in the morning. “That would be kind of you.” He took a seat at the big table in the center of the room. “Where do you live?” He knew there were two apartments in that wing of the house. He was told that the housekeeper lived in one but the other one was vacant. He wanted to be sure he didn’t accidentally wander into Mrs. Browne’s private territory.

She had her back to him at the Aga and when he saw her stiffen, he knew she’d taken his question the wrong way. “Do you mean to evict me?”

“Throw out Jamie’s girl? How could I do that?”

She rewarded his jest with a bit of a smile and a platter of food: three sausages, three fried eggs, broiled mushrooms and tomatoes, and two thick slices of fried bread. It was accompanied by a pot of tea strong enough to float fishing weights.

Jace looked up at her in astonishment. “This is from Jamie?”

“No, that’s a good English breakfast. But if it’s too much for the likes of you…” She reached out to take the plate away.

Jace stopped her. Living alone, he tended to eat a boring bowl of cereal for breakfast, but since he’d slept through dinner last night, he was ravenous. “I’ll manage,” he said, picking up his fork.

“See that you do. You’re a mite thin to be livin’ in England.”

Jace looked at her back and thought that no matter what he accomplished in his life, to Mrs. Browne he’d always fall short because of where he was born. The food was delicious. It was high calorie, cholesterol laden, and bad for him, but wonderful tasting. “So where
do
you live?”

“Across the way,” she said, waving her hand in the general direction of “outside.”

Jace wanted to ask more, but just then Mrs. Browne saw a girl walking through the courtyard.

“There that dratted girl is again! Mark my word, she’s stealin’ raspberries. That old man Hatch says the birds get ’em, but I think they’re in it together. She’s sellin’ ’em is what I think. If I ever catch her, I’ll sack her.” With that, she bustled out of the kitchen, running for the outside door. Minutes later, Jace saw her running across the courtyard after the poor girl, who seemed to be guilty only of shaking the dust out of a rug.