The Ghost and Miss Demure

by Melanie Jackson

  Karo woke with the first penciling of rose-colored light that sneaked into her window through the sheer lace and scattered raindrops that clung to the glass casement in the east wall. She was momentarily confused and alarmed about the weight of the blanket that covered her, and she struggled against it until she realized who was with her in the monstrous bed: Tristam.

  A whole range of emotions skated through her body when she looked down and saw the telltale marks on her breasts. Ashen fingerprints were there for anyone to see.

  “Well, hell,” she said quietly. She did not want to wake Tristam up until she had come to some conclusions about what emotions she was feeling zoom around in her gut. Regret? Elation? Terror? Joy?

  Karo swallowed. Why couldn’t she relax in the afterglow and not worry about what would happen next? Couldn’t she just shut her eyes and ignore the handprints that decorated her flesh? Or maybe enjoy them? The previous twenty-four hours had been enough of a battery on her nerves, Karo decided. She deserved a coffee booster before confronting her folly, and it was best to finish sinning before beginning one’s penance.

  “Tristam?” she whispered, rolling over to study his face. Even relaxed in sleep, it was chiseled and refined. His golden hair hadn’t a single lock gone askew. It seemed unfair that he should be so controlled when she was so…

  Reminded of her own state of dishabille and mussiness, Karo thrust a hand into her dark mop and tried to restore some order. It didn’t work any better than the million other times she had tried, and she soon gave it up as a lost cause. Besides, the milk was spilt, and it was far more fun to let her fingers explore the golden fur that covered Tristam’s chest in a T from nipples to navel.

  Desire rose up very quickly and repressed the butterflies beating at her insides: it was an excellent if temporary panacea. She let it come welling up until it was double what she had felt the night before.

  Ignoring the chill, Karo tugged the comforter away from Tristam’s hips and allowed her eyes to gorge themselves on his nakedness. She understood for the first time why lust was so often described with the same words used for gluttony; they were very similar sensations of mouthwatering hunger, and both inspired in her a huge desire for animalistic wallowing.

  She cast a quick look at Tristam’s face. His eyes were still closed and his muscles relaxed. Feeling adventuresome, Karo leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to his flat stomach, inhaling deeply. The scent was faint, but she could still detect a mixture of vanilla and coconut.

  Karo kissed her way down his abdomen, sucking lightly on the taut flesh. She smiled when she found his sex stirring to life. It also received a small kiss. And then a rather deeper one as it stretched for her mouth. A moment later she heard Tristam draw in his breath and felt his muscles tighten under her cheek.

  She turned her head and stared up fully into her lover’s golden eyes. A few wisps of sleep remained to cloud them, but they were alert enough to follow what she was doing.

  “Good morning.” She was quite proud of her nonchalance in the face of such daring.

  “Good morning.” His voice was rough with either sleep or arousal. “Don’t let me interrupt you. Please, carry on.”

  “I plan to.”

  They were awakened for the second time that morning by a cannonade of blows on the front door knocker.

  “Good God!” Tristam groaned. “That doesn’t sound like Opportunity. Could the Campions be here this early?”

  “I think it must be the voice of Doom. Do we have to answer?” she asked plaintively as he rolled from bed and paced over to the window.

  He pulled the sheers aside and then swore with profane vehemence as he began hunting for his lost clothes. “It’s Clarice.” He found his pants and began to dress. “What the devil can she want? Sorry, love, but I’m afraid that I’ll have to go and be civil to my fellow human being. My employer. Why don’t you stay here and rest? There’s no need for you to deal with this.”

  “Clarice Vellacourt? Why on earth is she here? She didn’t say she was coming, did she?” Karo also went to the window, but all she could see was a cream-colored Lincoln parked in the middle of the drive. “Good Lord! Do you think she knows about what we did with Hugh? Maybe she sensed something?”

  She heard a low whistle and turned back to find that Tristam had stopped dressing and was instead ogling her smudge-marked nakedness with an appreciative leer. She accused, “You look like Douglas Fairbanks on the bridge of a galleon getting ready to abscond with a fiery heroine and some sacks of stolen gold.”

  “Fair maiden, thou art—” he began.

  Another fusillade of knocking battered the still air with its painful percussion, and this time a cat’s plaintive bellow could also be heard. Tristam rolled his eyes and swore. “Damn. I’ve got to find a shirt.” Keeping to her image of a corsair, he leapt over the bed, bussed her with the briefest of kisses, and hurried from the room. She could hear him humming Rule, Britannia under his breath as he rummaged through the armoire in his new bedroom at the end of the hall.

  Karo longed for a shower, but duty called. Instead of a leisurely bath in three inches of fairly warm water, she settled for a cold washcloth. She stuffed her sore-muscled flesh into a pair of jeans and a clean blouse and was just slipping on her shoes when she heard the screech of bolts being pulled back from the front door.

  “Tristam!” came a breathless voice that couldn’t possibly belong to the octogenarian Karo had taken to imagining. “Darling, I was ready to call the rescue squad. What took you so long to get to the door?”

  “It’s seven in the morning, Clarice. I wasn’t dressed yet.”

  “Well, hell!” Karo muttered. And feeling suddenly suspicious and alarmed, she yanked on her laces and galloped downstairs to referee the meeting between Tristam and the breathless voice. She was torn equally between fear of Clarice’s true nature being exactly what she suspected, and trying to think up reasonable explanations for what they had done to her ancestor, just in case Hugh had made a bedside appearance and handed out an indictment before retiring to the Great Beyond.

  The voice was a tip-off, but Karo’s first look at Clarice Vellacourt was still a bit of a facer. She was glad that her ego had already passed through the crucible of envy and come out hard as brick, because Clarice’s well-groomed appearance would have stunted it in embryo had it still been vulnerable to such petty comparisons. As it was, it still lost a little mortar around the edges. How could the woman have traveled any distance by car and not have a single wrinkle in her linen skirt?

  Her shoes were immaculate, too. Karo looked down at her own footwear. Her once white sneakers were now an unattractive shade of dusty gray, and there was a tiny tear in the left toe where she had snagged it on an antler. Still, she had no choice but to carry on. There wasn’t time to take a bath, repair the hair and apply makeup, let alone shop for new clothes and get a manicure.

  Tristam and his employer both turned at the sound of her hurried steps, and Clarice’s charming smile disappeared as if Karo was mephitic. Karo wasn’t sorry to see that dentistry go into hiding. Teeth that white and bright could only be porcelain caps buffed with a professional strength floor wax, and it was inconsiderate of the woman to flash them around when neither Karo nor Tristam had been given a crack at a toothbrush.

  She was prepared for Clarice to gather herself into the insincere but polite conversational greetings that happen when two strangers don’t care for one another, but perhaps Clarice had been gone from Virginia long enough for this custom to have worn off. Or it might be that the Vella-courts had never bothered with good manners and she wasn’t about to start with the hired help.

  “Clarice.” Tristam’s voice was pleasant but firm as he drew his employer’s attention. “This is my assistant, Karo Follett. I lured her away from Williamstown for this project. She’s the one responsible for keeping your treasures safe, and for designing the Belle Ange cookbook. And…Karo, this is Clarice Vellacourt.”

  Clarice should have
been pleased with the professional laurel Tristam had lowered onto Karo’s brow, considering how cheaply her experience was being gotten for this dirty job, but the woman did not seem impressed. Her quivering nose and icy stare seemed to relegate Karo to the ranks of the smelly slaves and ugly Neanderthals she wouldn’t hire to clean her bathroom.

  “How do you do?” Karo asked the blaze of red hair that was presented to her as Clarice swung around to confront Tristam, eyes full of accusation.

  The head turned back. Its expression was back under control. “Well! Hello. Did I also drag you out of bed, dear?” There came a sharklike smile. “How thoughtless.”

  “Yes, but perhaps your flight was early.” Karo smiled with equal insincerity. She would be polite and accommodating, but she would not allow herself to be emotionally bullied by another mantrap, southern belle in a pink sweater and a fur coat; that had happened enough this lifetime. “I’m afraid we put in a rather late night. The library is still a disaster area. I hope that isn’t why you’ve come.”

  Tristam cleared his throat and took Clarice by the arm. “Perhaps some coffee,” he suggested, pulling her gently in the direction of the kitchen. He grimaced at Karo in a way that was probably fraught with meaning, but she chose not to understand.

  “Why, thank you, darling! I could certainly enjoy a cup of your espresso.” Clarice turned to Karo and added, “I won’t take you away from your library, dear. And feel free to take a moment to comb your hair.”

  “You won’t keep me away,” Karo answered cheerfully, following them. “Tristam and I have an agreement. I don’t work or comb my hair until I get an infusion of caffeine, and I’m afraid that these days there’s only one kitchen for both masters and slaves.”

  “It’s best to let her have it, Clarice,” Tristam told their guest, while shaking his head at Karo and frowning direfully. “The troops have a right to be fed. We’ll have a quiet chin-wag later and you can tell me why you’re here ahead of schedule. In the meantime, let me catch you up on what we’ve done.”

  He guided Clarice down the narrow hall, leaving Karo to trail behind. She tried not to be hurt by this admonishment and near dismissal by her lover of less than twelve hours. It was only what was to be expected, wasn’t it? This was, after all, why she avoided getting involved on the job. When one did something stupid like she had, one ended up on the morning after having to sort out one’s professional life from personal emotions. She was supposed to just white them out like they didn’t exist and behave like an obedient dog, even when the object of her adoration was paying way too much attention to another woman.

  This clutching sensation in the depths of her chest was a new symptom, but she recognized it for what it was: lust plus a little something extra. Then she was able to identify the biggest of the uncomfortable new emotions that were buffeting her insides, and it turned out to be huge. It dwarfed all the other feelings, and was very likely going to break her foolish heart when it left her stomach and went for her soft head.

  Karo looked down at ’Stein, who had materialized underfoot. The cat had failed to follow Tristam to the kitchen and was instead twining himself about her ankles and stropping his furry face on her sneakers in what she chose to think was a gesture of comfort and support, not a need to get rid of some cobweb he’d walked through.

  “It’s nice to know that somebody loves me,” she told him while bending to scoop him up into her arms. She returned his caress with her hairless cheeks. ’Stein purred his approval at her display of affection. Unfortunately, his pumpkin-colored fur was the final coffin nail in her ailing ensemble. Her sneakers looked like they had grown hair.

  “Okay.” Karo took a deep breath and stared into his pleasure-slitted eyes. “Let’s go get some coffee and see how deep that hussy has her hooks into him. I’m going to be really sorry if I have to get another job before Halloween, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve blown it, would it?”

  Her persecution complex only grew as the day wore on. The air outside was still and moisture laden when they went into the gardens to see the sights, but the gauzy fog had lifted with the temperatures, and it looked like it was going to be a perfect fall day. Karo ignored Clarice’s hints that she should make herself scarce and followed the two out to the marble bathhouse that the Campions had discovered the week before.

  The house was located next to the Roman-style fountain chipped out of the inferior, local stone, and it was the most unattractive building she had ever seen. As yet, they had not uncovered either the Parthenon or the Great Pyramid, but they were bound to be out here somewhere. Hugh had been fond of mimicking the fashionable architecture of the old world, with varying degrees of failure. It was just a matter of finding the Coliseum in the shrubbery now, which was still thick enough at the perimeter to be hiding the entire Lost City of Atlantis—and maybe the Tower of London, too.

  What a pity that Clarice didn’t get lost in the bushes or fall in a well. Not a deep one. Just a real smelly, slimy hole.

  Tristam’s fluid voice intruded on Karo’s sulking—that is, on her study—and Karo looked up from leprous granite to see Clarice was again batting her lashes at him, pretending to hang on his every word. She was up to no good. Did Tristam realize?

  “No one could be that dumb,” she muttered under her breath. “He won’t fall for it.”

  “Roman ruins were all the rage, and it was a great way of tarting up the well,” her lover said, helping his employer over a broken step. She laughed softly and clung to his arm. Karo was left to help herself.

  “I just adore Roman sculpture,” Clarice cooed. “So classically romantic.”

  Karo looked at the caryatids holding up the vaulted roof and sneered. They were done by the same artist that had carved the stubby winged cherubs on the bench in the rose garden. There must have been a shortage of stonecutters in the New World for Vellacourt to have continued patronizing this particular artisan.

  “Vellacourt wasn’t married to any one architectural style.” Tristam went on with his lecture by quoting directly from the visitors pamphlet Karo had whipped up, which clearly Clarice had never read. “The house itself is a handsome example of Gothic Revival, but almost Victorian in its elaborate decoration. For example, the flying buttresses…”

  He looked good in the sun, all Errol Flynn with golden muscles and Lord Peter Wimsey melodious piffle. Karo could smell the vanilla from where she stood, and her recently oversexed body displayed its usual sorry symptoms at his presence. Karo snorted at herself in disgust. What was she doing out here? Trailing along like the kid sister and pestering the adults? She should be ashamed. Had she no pride? No faith? No better things to do?

  Tristam wasn’t a shallow twit, she reminded herself. He had to be polite to his employer, and that was just what he was doing. The woman might even get around to telling him what she was doing in Virginia. And really, Clarice didn’t seem like the kind of female interested in much of anything beyond her own fascinating self. Of course, what little bit of interest she did have seemed directed at Tristam, but he was a big boy. He could handle a man-eater. Couldn’t he? Karo chewed her lip and lingered indecisively.

  ’Stein, who had stuck with the humans, even to the point of wading through wet grass with his tender, house-raised paws, made a rather well-timed meow and came to sit on Karo’s feet. She had to admit that he made a valid point: her thoughts had been more than a bit catty, and she was disgracing herself with such immature behavior. Karo had a last wistful and immodest wish that Clarice might have caught them in the act on a blanket in the rose garden.

  In her fantasy, her makeup was in place, her hair completely detangled and she was wearing a wispy little something in virginal white. Cruel circumstance had left Karo with the reality of facing her rival with post-coital hair and clothes, and too little sleep. Life just wasn’t fair.

  She pulled her eyes away from Tristam’s heroic form. It was a nice fantasy, showing that polished-toothed homewrecker in the clearest possible way about the
transcendental relationship that Karo and Tristam shared, but it was only a fantasy. Besides, who even said they shared a transcendental relationship? Tristam certainly hadn’t. Not in any clear, declarative terms.

  Karo sighed, dislodged the cat from her feet and turned smartly in the wet weeds. She started back for the house at a brisk pace, keeping her face forward and her shoulders back. She might not have neat hair, but she did have her dignity. Now.

  “Peace at last!” cooed the hated voice. “Tristam, darling, now that we’re alone, I really must speak to you about a personal matter.”

  Karo didn’t pause to eavesdrop on their conversation, even when she reached the deep cover of the boxwood hedge where she could linger unseen. She just had to trust that Tristam would keep his head and remember to pump Clarice for information about Eustacie’s misplaced bones—and for nothing else.

  Would she have time to shelve all the books and still pack up her suitcase before dark? Maybe she should call her friend Diane to see if there was room for a guest tonight. The Honda was in no shape to travel any farther than Williamstown. Her poor car. She should probably shoot it and put it out of its misery. It would be the kindest thing to do since her father wasn’t around to work any mechanical voodoo.

  Not that she was planning to leave Belle Ange without a fight. And of course Tristam would resist all advances from this hussy. But a careful woman was ready for all eventualities, and she would prepare just in case this turned out to be the new worst day of her life. After all, she who fights and runs away…Only, if she ran there would be no coming back to fight again.

  “Is it a legitimate business expense?” Karo mumbled, staring at the phone on the kitchen wall. She made all her personal calls on her cell, but this one felt like Tristam’s fault. Therefore, it was job related.