Stormy Persuasion

Thank you for downloading this Gallery Books eBook.

Sign up for our newsletter and receive special offers, access to bonus content, and
info on the latest new releases and other great eBooks from Gallery Books and Simon
& Schuster.

or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com

Chapter One

J
udith Malory knelt in front of the window in the bedroom she shared with her cousin
Jacqueline, both staring at the ruined house behind the Duke of Wrighton’s mansion
and formal gardens. Although Judith was the older of the two young women by a few
months, Jack, as her father had named her just to annoy his American brothers-in-law,
had always been the leader—actually, instigator was more like it. Jack said that she
was going to be a rake, just like her father, James Malory. Jack said she was going
to be a pirate, just like her father. Jack said she was going to be a superlative
pugilist. . . . The list went on. Judith had once asked her why she didn’t have any
goals to be like her mother, and Jack had promptly replied, “But
that
wouldn’t be exciting.”

Judith disagreed. She wanted to be a wife and a mother, in that order. And it was
no longer a faraway goal. She and Jacqueline were both turning eighteen this year.
She’d had her birthday last week, and Jacqueline would have hers in a couple months.
So they were both going to have their first Season come summer, but Jacqueline’s debut
was going to take place in America instead of London, and Judith didn’t think she
could bear not being able to share this occasion with her best friend. But Judith
still had a couple of weeks to figure out how she could change this disagreeable arrangement.

The daughters of the two younger Malory brothers, James and Anthony, the girls had
been inseparable for as long as they could remember. And every time their mothers
brought them to visit their cousins Brandon and Cheryl at the duke’s ancestral estate
in Hampshire, they’d spend hours at this window hoping to see a light glowing eerily
in the ruins again. The night they’d first seen it had been so exciting, they couldn’t
help themselves.

They’d only seen the light on two other occasions since then. But by the time they’d
grabbed lanterns and run across the extensive lawn to reach the old, abandoned house
on the neighboring property, the light had been gone.

They’d had to tell their cousin Brandon Malory about it, of course. He was a year
younger than they were, but it was his home they were visiting, after all. The Duke
of Wrighton’s title and estate had passed to him through his mother, Kelsey, who had
married the girls’ cousin Derek. His parents had elected to move into it when Brandon
was born, so he would grow up aware of his stature and consequence. Luckily, being
a duke hadn’t spoiled him rotten.

But Brandon had never actually seen the light himself, so he wasn’t the least bit
interested in the vigil tonight or any other night. He was currently on the other
side of the room engrossed in teaching Judith’s younger sister, Jaime, to play whist.
Besides, having just turned seventeen, Brandon looked more like a man than a boy,
and not surprisingly, he was now much more interested in girls than ghosts.

“Am I old enough
now
to be told the Secret?” Brandon’s younger sister, Cheryl, asked from the open doorway
to her cousins’ room.

Jaime Malory leapt up from the little card table and ran over to Cheryl, grabbing
her hand and pulling her forward before turning to her older sister, Judith. “She
is. I was her age when you told me.”

But it was Jacqueline who answered, scoffing at her younger cousin, “That was just
last year, puss. And unlike you, Cheryl actually lives here. Tell her, Brand. She’s
your sister. She’d have to promise never to go investigating on her own and you’d
have to make sure she keeps the promise.”

“Investigate?” Cheryl looked at her two older cousins, who’d been refusing for years
to tell her their secret. “How can I make a promise if I don’t know what I’m promising?”

“This is no time for logic, puss,” Judith said, concurring with Jacqueline. “Promise
first. Jaime had to, and she doesn’t even live here. But you do, and without the promise,
we’d end up worrying about you. You don’t want that, d’you?”

Cheryl gave that a moment’s thought before she shook her head. “I promise.”

Judith nudged Jacqueline to do the honors, and Jack didn’t disappoint, saying baldly,
“You’ve got a ghost for a neighbor. He lives next door.”

Cheryl burst into giggles but stopped when she noticed Judy and Jack weren’t laughing.
Wide-eyed, she asked, “Really? You’ve seen it?”

“About five years ago, we did,” Judith said.

“Judy even spoke to it,” Jacqueline added.

“But Jack saw the light first, from this very window. So we just had to go have a
look. We’d always thought that old house must be haunted. And we were right!”

Cheryl walked forward slowly and joined them at the window to take a quick peek at
the old eyesore her parents had complained about more’n once. She let out a relieved
breath when she didn’t see any light. She wasn’t nearly as brave as her cousins were.
But in the moonlight she could see a clear outline of the large, old manor house that
had fallen to ruin long before any of them were born, a big, dark, scary outline.
With a shudder, she turned and hurried over to her brother for protection.

“You didn’t actually go inside that house, did you?” Cheryl asked.

“Of course we did,” Jack said.

“But we’ve all been warned not to!”

“Only because it’s dangerous with so many broken floorboards, crumbling walls, and
a lot of the roof caved in. And cobwebs. There’s cobwebs everywhere. It took Judy
and me forever to get them out of our hair that night.”

Eyes flaring a little wider, Cheryl said, “I can’t believe you actually went inside,
and at night.”

“Well, how else were we to find out who was trespassing? We didn’t know it was a ghost
yet.”

“You should have just told my father you saw the light,” Cheryl said.

“But that’s no fun,” Jack pointed out.

“Fun? You don’t need to pretend to be so courageous just because your fathers are.”
When the two older girls started laughing, Cheryl said, “So you’re just pulling my
leg? I should have known!”

Jacqueline grinned at her. “D’you really think we’d keep the Secret from you all these
years just to pull your leg? You wanted to know and now we’re finally telling you.
It was incredibly exciting.”

“And only a little frightening,” Judith added.

“And foolhardy,” Cheryl insisted.

Jack snorted. “If we let things like that stop us, we’d have no fun a’tall. And we
had weapons. I grabbed a shovel from the garden.”

“And I took my scissors along,” Judith added.

Cheryl had always wished she was as brave as these two. Now she was glad she wasn’t.
They’d thought they’d find a vagrant, but they’d found a ghost instead. It was a wonder
their hair hadn’t turned white that night, but Judy’s gold hair was still streaked
with copper, not gray, and Jack was still as blond as her father was.

“We couldn’t tell where the light was coming from when we stepped inside the house
that night,” Jack was saying. “So we split up.”

“I found him first,” Judy said, continuing the story. “I’m not even sure which room
he was in. I didn’t notice the light until I opened a door. And there he was, floating
in the middle of the room. And none too pleased to see me. I promptly told him he
was trespassing. He told me I was the trespasser, that the house was his. I told him
ghosts can’t own houses. He just stretched his arm out, pointing behind me, and told
me to get out. He was a bit harsh. He seemed to growl at me so I did turn about to
leave.”

“And that’s when I arrived,” Jack said. “Only to see his back as he floated away.
I asked him to wait, but he didn’t. He just bellowed, ‘Get out, both of you!’—so loud
it shook the rafters, or what’s left of them. We did, ran right out of there. But
we were only halfway back to the mansion when we realized he couldn’t really hurt
us. And we were missing the opportunity to help him move on. So we went back and searched
every room, but he’d already faded away.”

“You wanted to help him?” Cheryl asked incredulously.

“Well, Judy did.”

Cheryl stared at the slightly older of the two cousins. “Why?”

Judith shrugged evasively, saying, “He was a handsome young man. Must’ve been only
twenty or so when he died. And he seemed so sad when I first spotted him, before he
noticed me and got belligerent and protective of his crumbling ruin of a house.”

“And because she fell in love with a ghost that night,” Jack added with a snicker.

Judith gasped. “I did not!”

“You did!” Jack teased.

“I’d just like to know what caused him to become a ghost. It must have been something
quite tragic and frightening, if his hair turned white before he died.”

“White hair?” Cheryl said with owlish eyes. “Then he must be old.”

“Don’t be silly, puss,” Jacqueline admonished. “My sister-in-law Danny has white hair,
doesn’t she? And she was as young as we are now when she met Jeremy.”

“True,” Cheryl allowed, then asked Judith, “Was he really handsome then?”

“Very, and tall, and with lovely dark green eyes that glowed like emeralds—and don’t
you dare go looking for him without us,” Judy added, sounding almost jealous.

Cheryl huffed, “I’m not daring or curious like you two. I have no desire to meet a
ghost, thank you very much.”

“Good, because he seems to have magical powers, too, or haven’t you noticed that the
roof’s been repaired?”

Cheryl gasped. “By a ghost?”

“Who else?”

“No, I didn’t notice. My room’s on the other side of the house.”

“I noticed,” Brandon spoke up. “And I’ve never seen workers there to account for it,
but the roof has definitely been repaired recently.”

“I hope you didn’t point that out to your father?” Jacqueline said.

“No, if I did, I’d have to tell him the Secret, and I’m not breaking the promise.”

Jacqueline beamed at him. “I knew we could count on you, Brand.”

“Besides, Father grumbles anytime someone mentions that old place. He’s annoyed that
he can’t get rid of it. He’s tried to buy it so he could tear it down, but the last
owner of record was a woman named Mildred Winstock, and she merely inherited it, she
never lived in it. And no wonder, with a ghost in residence. It’s actually been empty
since my great-great-grandfather’s day, which would explain its crumbling condition.
But then I told you why he built it and who he gave it to.”

“Who?” Cheryl asked.

“That’s not for your young ears,” Brandon replied.

“His mistress?” Cheryl guessed.

Judith rolled her eyes at her precocious cousin and changed the subject. “It’s amazing
this place didn’t fall to ruin, too, being empty for five generations as well.”

“Not quite empty,” Brandon replied. “The ducal estate has paid to maintain a minimal
staff here to keep that from happening. But Father could find no record of who Miss
Winstock left the ruin to when she died, so we’re stuck with it mucking up our backyard.”

Derek had planted trees and thick shrubbery along the property line, though, to block
the crumbling, old house from view so people could enjoy the ducal gardens without
having to look at that eyesore. But the trees didn’t block the view of the old house
from the upper floors of the ducal mansion.

Judith sighed as she moved away from the window. “All right, Cousins, time for Judy
and me to get to bed, so you probably should, too. We return to London in the morning.”

As soon as their cousins left the room, Jacqueline said, “What did you expect? They
haven’t seen the ghost like we have.”

Judith sighed. “Oh, Cheryl’s lack of an adventurous nature doesn’t surprise me. Derek
and Kelsey keep her too sheltered here, while you and I’ve grown up in London.”

“Ah, so that sigh was because we didn’t see the light on this visit? We can go search
through the ruin tonight if you’d like.”

“No, the ghost only revealed himself to us once. I’m quite sure he hides now when
we invade his domain. More’s the pity,” Judith said with another sigh.

Jacqueline threw a pillow at her. “Stop mooning over a ghost. You
do
realize he’s not the marrying sort?”

Judith burst out laughing. “Yes, I’ve had no trouble figuring that out.”

“Good, because it’d be quite difficult to get a kiss out of him, much less a nice
tumble.”

Judith raised a brow. “Tumble? I thought you scratched being a rake off your list
last year?”

“Bite your tongue. I’m just going to take a leaf from our cousin Amy’s book and not
take no for an answer—when I find the chap for me. And when I do, heaven help him.
The man won’t know what hit him,” Jacqueline added with a roguish grin.

“Just don’t find him too soon. And do
not
find him in America.”

There it was again, Jacqueline’s voyage looming in front of them. The first time Jacqueline
had sailed off to America with her parents, Judith had been distraught and inconsolable
the entire two months of Jack’s absence. The girls had sworn then never to be more’n
a carriage ride away from each other ever again, so Judy got to go along the second
time Jack visited America. But the girls hadn’t known at the time about the promise
James Malory had made to the Anderson brothers when Jack was born. Her American uncles
had agreed that Jacqueline could be raised exclusively in England as long as she had
her come-out in America, because
they
hoped she’d marry an American. At least be given the chance to.