Page 52 of Air Of Mystery
“According to Gabriella,” I continued, “it was her sister, Camilla, who followed the ghostly apparition of a boy, to what is now the hotel section of the mansion, to find the missing dowry...”
“The flower girl—Zoe was her name, she told her mother that a boy showed her how to open the panel in the ballroom. Then that same boy led her through the passageway straight to Danielle and the twins.”
“Did she say what he looked like?”
“She described him as talking funny and wearing long shorts.” Charlie gestured to right below his own knee.
“Wearing long shorts...Oh! Like breeches,” I guessed. “Which would have certainly been worn by children—little boys—from the 1800s.”
Charlie nodded.
“And the flower girl said that he was ‘talking funny?’” I thought about that for a moment. “Could he have been speaking French?”
Charlie studied me calmly. “That’s what we—I mean they—assumed.”
“I wonder who Jacques is...or was. I need to speak to Gabriella, see if she’d give permission for me to speak to Archer about his experience. But thisisexciting because it means there is still an active haunting going on up at the mansion!”
“Gabriella asked me to bring you up to speed and talk to you about this latest...incident.”
“Manifestation,” I corrected automatically.
“Right,” he said on a long exhale.
For the next few minutes, we worked on finishing the dinner dishes. Once they were put away, I pulled the plug on the sinkand draped the dishrag over the faucet. “Were you nervous to tell me?”
“No, but I worried that I’d lose your attention once I did.”
I gave him a friendly hip bump. “I assure you, although I may be excited at the prospect of the haunting, I am more...enthusiastic, shall we say, about spending some quality alone time with the gorgeous man that I have all alone in my apartment.”
His lips quirked. “Is that right?”
“It is.”
He nodded and placed the dish towel he’d been using aside. Before I could guess what he was planning, he reached down, scooped me right off my feet, and planted one on me.
Charlie then carted me across my apartment and dropped me on the mattress, making me laugh when I bounced. A moment later he was climbing in beside me. He took me in his arms, rolled over on his back, and I ended up tucked against his side.
“I like that skylight,” he said, staring up at it.
I began nibbling on his neck. “Me too. I like sleeping beneath the night sky and the stars.”
“It suits you.” He groaned when I began to work on his ear.
Hitching the skirt of my dress up, I hitched a leg over and straddled him. “Mind if I’m on top this time?”
He grinned. “No. I don’t mind at all.”
“Good,” I told him. “Because Charlie?”
“Yeah?”
I leaned in until we were nose to nose. “This time,youmay want to hang onto something.”
“I promise to be brave,” he said, straight faced.
With laughter, I lowered my mouth to his and kissed him.
CHAPTER NINE
