“Yes, we did,” Jace said softly.
“And how is he?”
“Very well and he sends his love,” Jace said, then stood up and left the room. He’d heard all he could stand and had been near Mrs. Browne all he could bear.
“She’s yours,” he said to the inspector, then he went outside to find Nigh. The ordeal of the last three years was over.
23
Nigh would never say so, but she already missed Mrs. Browne’s cooking. There was no great roast of beef with four vegetables, but a takeout of curry over rice, a combination of Chinese and Indian cooking.
She and Jace had driven back to Margate after talking to Tony and after Jace had talked to an inspector at Scotland Yard. No one thought that Mrs. Browne was going to escape, so the police had waited until the morning to drive to Margate and arrest her.
Jace couldn’t bear to stay in the same house with the woman so they’d camped out at Nigh’s little cottage. He hadn’t slept much. Three times she’d awakened and seen him standing at the window and looking out at the night. She wanted to go to him and offer him comfort, but she didn’t. She guessed that he needed to be alone.
So now they were alone in the big house and it had never felt bigger or more empty. She knew that Jace would put it up for sale soon.
When he came in, he still looked as though he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Hatch will fill in the tunnel and plant it full of flowers,” Jace said. “Or maybe the next owner will want to rebuild it.”
She put a plate down in front of him and handed him a spoon to help himself. Distractedly, he began to fill his plate.
“What about Danny and Ann?” Nigh asked as she sat down across from him.
Jace looked as though he didn’t know who she meant.
“Ghosts? Remember? I talked to Danny Longstreet and you had Ann Stuart run through you? Remember them? The two ghosts who saved our lives?”
“Yeah, I remember,” he said. “What about them?”
“What’s going to happen to them?”
Jace looked at her in consternation. “I don’t know. I’m not a clergyman. Maybe you should ask the vicar. Maybe he can—”
“Look,” she said, exasperated. “No one does anything without a reason. Those two spirits have had over a century to appear to people but they haven’t.”
“That’s not true. People at Tolben Hall have seen Danny, and lots of people here have seen Ann.”
“Mostly kids,” Nigh said. “And no one ever saw them together. And I’ve never heard of their saving any lives before. I’m sure there have been accidents at this house but Ann never intervened. But she did with us.”
“Maybe they like us. You are related to Ann, aren’t you?”
“Maybe,” Nigh said, pushing the food about on her plate. “Maybe. But I keep thinking there’s something else. Mick said the two people in the bushes looked sad. Now that they’re together at last, why weren’t they jumping all over each other?”
“Maybe they can’t,” Jace said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of ghosts fornicating.”
Nigh looked at him, her mouth open.
“What?” he asked.
“That’s it. They can’t. And they’re not going to leave this earth until they can.”
“Can what?”
Nigh took a big bite of food. “It’s okay for a woman to die a virgin if she gets glorified for it. Think of your state of Virginia. Named for a virgin queen, right?”
“Right,” Jace said hesitantly.
“And all those virgin martyrs. They were known to be virgins. But it was thought that since Ann Stuart was engaged to a randy man like Danny Longstreet, then she wasn’t a virgin. I made a remark to Danny about Ann having had sex before the marriage and he nearly took my head off. He was adamant in telling me that Ann was a virgin.”
Jace was still looking at her in puzzlement. “What are you driving at?”
“I’m not sure, but I think Danny and Ann are waiting for something.”
“And what is that?” Jace asked. “And please don’t tell me it’s an exorcism. I do not want to go through one of those things.”
“I think they want to make love,” Nigh said. “Through us.”
Jace paused with the fork to his mouth.
“It makes sense,” she said. “You’ve been celibate for three years and it’s been so long since I had sex that I may have become a virgin again.”
Jace reached across the table and took Nigh’s hand. “Let’s go.”
She drew back from him. “When I was sixteen the then-owner of Priory House let me rummage around in the attics so I could write about its history. There’s a trunk up there that contains a wedding dress and I think it belonged to Ann.”
“I thought her father burned everything.”
“He also thought he’d destroyed his daughter. I want to find that dress and—” She looked down at her hands.
Jace went ’round the table to kneel in front of her. “Miss Nightingale Augusta Smythe, will you marry me?” he asked.
Nigh hadn’t been expecting his proposal, but she soon recovered her shock. “Yes,” she said, then put her arms around his neck, but he pulled back. He handed her a little blue box. She opened it to see the most beautiful emerald-cut pink diamond that she’d ever seen. “Where? How? When?” she asked all at once.
He just smiled at her. “Shall we go to the attic and see if we can find an old wedding dress? We have a duty to perform for some very dear friends.”
Epilogue
Nigh cried when Ann and Danny appeared for the last time. There was no more sadness on their faces. They held hands and walked away, through a wall, then to…Nigh had no idea where happy spirits went. Heaven, probably.
She and Jace had spent their first night together with their bodies inhabited by others, but they hadn’t minded. If it weren’t for Ann and Danny, they’d still be in the tunnel. The night hadn’t been strange at all, except that Nigh had indeed felt virginal. Had she been fully herself, she would have leaped into bed, but she found herself being shy and waiting with curiosity and a simmering lust that threatened to burn her up.
It had been marvelous to feel sex as though she’d never read a sexy novel, never seen a sexy movie, and certainly never touched a man. Everything was new and wonderful to her.
Nigh had found herself shocked, then delighted at some of the things Jace/Danny had done. There had been tenderness and enthusiasm, gentleness and a laughing roughness. The night had been filled with it all.
But there was also a sadness. She could feel Ann’s love for Danny, and his for her, but she could also feel that they knew this was their one and only time to experience physical love. They had waited so very, very long!
That Jace had been a good sport about it all made Nigh love him more. “The next one’s for us,” he said the following morning, after they’d seen Ann and Danny float away, holding hands and smiling.
Nigh said, “I don’t know, Danny Longstreet was pretty good.” For a second, a nanosecond, she saw Danny’s face behind Jace and he winked at her, then he was gone forever.
“Do you mind if I sell this house right away?” Jace asked. “I really can’t take any more of it.”
“Gladly,” she said. “Where do you want to go?
“Near Cambridge or Oxford for the libraries,” he said, getting out of bed. Ann’s wedding dress was draped across the foot of the bed. Last night, when he’d seen Nigh in it, he said that if he’d never known that they were related, he would have when he saw her in that dress.
“Cambridge it is, then,” she said, looking at her ring. “How long has it been since I told you I love you?”
Jace went dead still. “Actually, you’ve never told me.”
Nigh thought about that. “Maybe I haven’t. Why don’t you come over here and let me tell you?”
“Why not?” he said, then got back into bed with her.
x, Someone to Love
(Series: Montgomery - Taggert # 10)
Someone to Love Page 26