Page 83 of The Mistletoe Countess
I’ve only belonged to you—and wish for no other. Stay safe and come back to me soon, my dear hero.
Yours,
Grace
He trailed a thumb across her name, the words seeping through his defenses with a power none should possess.
He cleared his throat and found Elliott staring, brow raised in unvoiced question.
“You knew about this?” Frederick raised the paper.
“I did.”
Frederick grinned and placed the paper into its sheath. “She’s quite unexpected, isn’t she?”
“If I might say so, sir. In the best possible way.”
“Indeed, Elliott.” And Frederick needed to solve the mystery of his brother’s death before anything worse happened. Especially if the target moved from him to Grace.
What a day! First she met with the workmen with such success that even Brandon offered a smile. All right, perhaps not a smile, but a confident nod of approval. Then she sketched plans for the East Garden, complete with a meeting with Mr. Archer about the possibilities of a water garden. And now she walked up the Great Hall steps for her first official ghost hunt.
She couldn’t keep her grin from spreading to impish proportions. Oh no, Lillias would never have been prepared for something like this.
Grace’s candle flickered with an otherworldly glow as she opened the door into the unused wing. Vacant darkness seeped around her little light, crowding in on all sides, and a clang from the grandfather clock in the Great Hall behind her chimed midnight.
The witching hour.
If ghosts were going to visit, wouldn’t it be now?
She looked back over her shoulder toward the corridor leading to the Great Hall, a faint view of the Christmas tree catching her attention. Perhaps she should have waited for one o’clock instead. That’s when the ghosts came for Ebenezer Scrooge, and since itwasclose to Christmas, maybe ghosts followed a certain schedule.
She glanced back down the long corridor to the Great Room. No wonder Frederick never heard the wailing. She swallowed a growing lump in her throat at the realization. Oh dear. She was rather far away from anyone else, wasn’t she? Perhaps she should have alerted Ellie to her plans. Or at least brought Zeus along as company. Of course, none of the stories she’d read had involved dogs on ghost hunts. Could dogs sense ghosts better than humans?
With hushed feet and a determined lift to her chin, she slipped farther into the Morning Room. The shadows grew especially thick toward Lord Edward’s office, unless her imagination played tricks on her. Which was quite possible. When she was twelve, she’d convinced herself she’d cried hard enough to wake the dead when out of a rainstorm came a cat that looked very similar to her dear Puddles. At daylight, she’d realized the poor thing wasn’t even the same color, but she’d kept it anyway.
The floor beneath her step gave a creak, and she nearly screamed.
Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to have readAt Chrighton Abbey, Hamlet, and Dickens’sA Christmas Carolas ghost research before coming to the east wing at midnight.
At least Dickens’s story had a happy ending.
Her candlelight flickered, moving the shadows along the floor and walls like an eerie dance. The floor creaked again, a strange, hollow, moaning sound.
No wait. Her breath caught. That wasn’t the floor.
Every hair on Grace’s arms stood to attention, and a chill tiptoed up her spine until it spread beneath her hairline. She pressed against the wall, sliding to a sitting position behind a massive wingback.
The sound started at a distance—low and mournful—and swelled through the room, closer. Grace blew out the candle to hide in the shadows, but then she groaned. Couldn’t ghosts see in the dark? Her shoulders slumped. So basically, the only person who needed the light was her.
What sort of ghost hunter was she?
A flutter of white drew her attention to the hallway. Grace’s air stuttered to a complete halt in her throat. She could only see an outline of a person-shaped image clothed in a flowing white gown, but the awful moan poured from the figure again, louder and more pitiful. Grace searched the space around her for a weapon. The candlestick certainly wouldn’t help. The chair looked too heavy.
She pulled off one of her shoes and rolled her eyes heavenward. How on earth would her shoe stop something without a body or soul?
She paused. Well, she could give it a sole.
She stifled her snicker and peered around the corner of the chair.Somethingmoved across the floor—no, almost glided—and slipped back into the darkness in the direction of Edward’s office.
