by Beth Trissel
He bit back his astonishment. “Of course. Good to see you again, Bailey.”
She smiled at him. Not a token nicety, but a genuine curve of her pretty, unpainted mouth, reflected in the glowing warmth of her eyes. “Welcome home, Eric.”
A strange fluttering stirred in his middle and palpitations charged his heart. “Thanks. Good to be back.”
What Eric expected to find on his return to Maple Hill he couldn’t have said. The old home was much as he’d left it, he supposed, but certainly not Bailey Randolph looking like she’d stepped out of a fairy tale. She might have been dressed for a Madrigal dinner in that ankle-length, green velvet dress with long, puffed sleeves. He almost expected cries of “Wassail! Wassail!” and the arrival of a roast suckling pig with an apple in its mouth borne into the room by medieval serfs.
Leaning on his cane with one hand, he swept his other at her. “Wow, just look at you. All grown up.”
She blushed with apparent pleasure, and, if possible, her eyes glowed even more. “Surprised to see me?”
He smiled through his shock. “Sure am.”
“Bailey’s staying with us for awhile.” Meg’s explanation struck Eric as vague, but he was too preoccupied with Bailey to give it much thought.
How he’d ever considered her mousy, he couldn’t imagine. From his hazy recollection of Bailey, she’d been half-hidden in that wealth of hair. Now, pulled back from her forehead in a gold clasp covered with seed pearls, her delicate features were revealed. The sweatpants and baggy T-shirt she’d worn before had done nothing to emphasize her curves, if she’d had any then. In this dress, he noted the angular lines of her former skinny frame had softened and filled out. The wide waistband beneath the gathered bodice accentuated her modestly clad, but shapely figure.
He’d heard fashions had run wild in his absence, ranging from miniskirts to long maxis and most everything in between. Bailey’s attire was definitely unusual—stunning—and suited her. Unprepared for the near electrical jolt to his heart, he had to remember to close his dropped jaw. Maybe it was partly the effects of jet lag and he wasn’t thinking clearly, or maybe he’d been away too long and didn’t know how to act around American girls anymore, but in that moment Eric thought he’d never seen a more beautiful young woman. And that sense of destiny assailed him again.
Meg nodded her graying, sandy bob as though all were right with the world while Eric’s was spinning off into space. “So glad you two are getting reacquainted. Wonderful to have you home, Eric. The house just wasn’t the same without you.” Her Southern accent made even single syllables sound double.
Keeping one arm around Bailey, Meg slipped her other around his waist. Her head met somewhere under his arm as she drew him into a surprisingly strong embrace. There the three of them stood in an impromptu hug. Eric had no idea what to say. Apparently neither did Bailey. Awkward was the word that came to mind. He caught a whiff of Meg’s classic perfume mingled with the hint of starshine emanating from Bailey. Whatever the fragrance was, she smelled good.
He shifted uncomfortably in Meg’s hold, and she loosened her grip. “Mustn’t keep you standing about. I’m sure you’re worn out after all your travel.”
Maybe that explained the weird vibrations coursing through him at the sight of Bailey. He was asleep on his feet.
“It’s just the three of us for dinner this evening,” Meg continued. “Ella says everything’s ready. Please be seated.”
She waved him and Bailey toward the table, the large diamond on her aged hand glittering—the ring from his father that had been in the family for generations. His mother wore it before her death, and Eric secretly thought it should have been buried with her. Not that he faulted the ever gracious Meg.
Ella stumped in with a plate of biscuits hot from the oven and a wide smile on her broad face. “High time Mr. Eric was back in his proper place at the table. Miss Meg wouldn’t let no one else set there while you was gone.”
The sheen of tears in his stepmother’s eyes betrayed the depth of her emotions, her understated demeanor such a contrast to Ella’s outspokenness. Meg dabbed at the watery glimmer with an embroidered handkerchief tucked in the sleeve of her red cardigan. “We’re so grateful you’ve safely returned to us.”
Guilt pricked Eric. He hadn’t exactly hurried back, but been forced to return after his unfortunate injury took him out of commission. He’d planned a career in the Marines that would keep him far away from Maple Hill. For some unfathomable reason beyond the death of his parents, as if that weren’t sufficient cause for pain, he associated the gracious home with loss. Like an ache from an old injury he couldn’t quite place, it gnawed at him all the same—rather like his damnable leg.
Well, he was back now, at least until he chose what course to pursue next. “Thanks, Meg.” His voice was gruff. He never called her mom.
Voice tremulous, she said, “Your father would be so proud of you.”
Eric gave her a rueful smile. “My father managed to make it through World War Two relatively unscathed.” Survived D-Day with both legs intact. Amazing, really. And then he’d dropped dead fourteen years later of a heart attack, the unseen killer.
The lines at Meg’s brow deepened in sympathy. “You’re here now. That’s the important thing.”
Not to Eric. Leaning on his cane, dressed in his green service uniform, chest covered with medals, he truly must look the wounded hero back from the war—a war with all the hardship and none of the glory his father or great Uncle Edward had returned to after serving in both World Wars. Americans were as cold toward Eric’s sacrifices in Vietnam as the chill wind blasting him when he stepped off the plane. Tonight he’d pack his uniform away in the trunk alongside his uncle and father’s, and tomorrow he’d dress as a civilian—the tomorrow he’d thought would never come.
He returned his focus to Bailey. Pain shadowed her eyes. He shouldn’t have said anything, shouldn’t have reminded her of her brother. Not that she could forget. Eric’s presence must be reminder enough of the war that seemed so far removed from Maple Hill, and yet its effects were keenly felt.
Ella plunked the biscuits down on the table beside the cut glass butter dish. “Be thankful you kin still walk.”
Barely. But Eric made no protest. Ill at ease from the unaccustomed attention and emotion stirring inside, he limped to the head of the elegant table and lowered his frame into the carved wooden chair.
Meg settled in the seat at the other end of the table, looking snug in her tweed slacks. The old house was never warm unless you positioned yourself directly before a stove or hearth. He sniffed smoke from the living room hearth, but the fire in the dining room wasn’t lit. Keeping multiple fires going was a lot of work. Efforts had gone elsewhere. He admired the spotless white linen set with the holly-sprigged china and crimson goblets from Christmases past. Fresh pine ringed the silver candelabra at the center of the table. Ella’s strawberry jam, relish, and pickles were heaped in cut crystal.
He gestured at the spread. “It looks splendid, ladies.”
Meg inclined her head. “Ella outdid herself.”
Ella boomed, “We wanted everything nice for you.”
She beamed while Meg gestured an uncertain Bailey into the chair at Eric’s right. “That will be your place, Bailey dear.”
The caramel streaks in Bailey’s hair and the pearls on her clasp were luminous in the candlelight. Her velvet dress shone with the rich green of the woodlands. She perched on the edge of her seat as though she might flit away at any second. Fitting for an elfin sprite, he supposed, but he hoped she’d stay. Maybe if he could think of anything reassuring to say—
Meg signaled him from her end of the table. “Eric, would you say Grace?”
That wasn’t what he’d had in mind, but he blessed the food and expressed his gratitude, scarcely aware of what he said while his mind turned over the baffling conundrum of Bailey. Discovering her at Maple Hill like this was as unexpected as coming across roses abloom in the snow.
He thought all color had gone from his world, then here she was—an explosion of color, awakening his dulled senses. What did it mean? What could it mean?
Ella ran her unabashed scrutiny over the girl. “Who you supposed to be, Miss, the Christmas queen?”
A typical Ella remark.
Bailey flushed. “You said to dress for dinner.”
Hands on her stout hips, Ella tossed back, “Not one in a castle. Ain’t you got nothing normal to wear?”
Eric wished the older woman weren’t so outspoken. Bailey looked as though she’d rather be most anywhere else and angled her eyes toward the double doors that led to the living room and, if one kept going, to the far hall and up the stairs.
Eric came to her rescue before she bolted to her bedroom. “I think she looks lovely.”
Meg smiled her approval. “And so festive. Like a pretty Christmas present.”
Ella shrugged beneath the thick sweater that must’ve taken the wool of many a sheep to knit. “That fancy dress makes a nice change from them ratty jeans, I spose.”
Bailey shot Eric a grateful glance. The light in her eyes warmed his soul and made him feel like a knight coming to the rescue of a damsel in distress.
“Ya’ll eat up. I cooked plenty.” Ella stumped back to the kitchen, and her nimble and thankfully quiet daughter, Rosa Mae, appeared with a platter of steaming roast beef. She’d already greeted Eric at the train station and driven him home. Without further comment, she calmly went about serving the meal.
Despite his appreciation of Ella’s home cooking, he was torn between enjoying the food and not being able to keep his eyes off of Bailey. Discreetly, that is. If anyone had told him that minutes after his return to Maple Hill he’d be falling under the charms of Bailey Randolph, he’d have laughed it off as a hearty joke. He could use a good joke about now. That nameless ache inside him welled up when he gazed at her.
What had gotten into him? It wasn’t as if he could have a relationship with Bailey. The words Bailey and relationship didn’t belong in the same thought. What a couple they’d make, the hardcore soldier and the lady on her way to a Renaissance Fair. One of them would have to change. From what little he knew of Bailey, he doubted she’d bend without considerable persuasion. Perhaps even therapy.
She was odd, possibly mentally unstable. The poor girl lost her brother in February during that heinous Tet Offensive. No doubt Brian’s death had worsened her condition, and no one had offered Eric an explanation as to why she appeared to now be living at Maple Hill. What had she done to offend her family, led a peace march or something equally distasteful? He heard she’d fallen in with hippies, an antisocial, antiestablishment, anti-American bunch.
At this moment, though, she didn’t look anti-anything. She looked simply irresistible.
She bit into her biscuit and lifted her eyes to his with a contemplative gleam as she chewed. She shifted her gaze from him to the framed photograph of the young marine on the wall. After a swallow of water, she said, “You look like him in your uniform. Even have the same short haircut, although he’s wearing a cap.”
“You think?”
She returned her gaze to the picture. “Yes.”
“Thank you, I guess.”
“Yes.” There was an insistent note in her reply. “He’s quite handsome. Who is he?”
“My great uncle, Edward Burke.”
Ella boomed from the kitchen. “You’re the spitting image of Mister Edward. I remember him well, was a girl in this house in them days.”
Bailey tilted her head at the kitchen. “What happened to him?”
Ella’s bulk appeared in the doorway, a tea towel in hand. “The house would be his if he’d lived, but he died young.”
“In the war?”
“Not right off. They sent him back home to mend from an injury he got at the front. Only he never mended. Passed away soon after his wife. Pretty little thing. Broke his heart her going while he was gone. It never seemed right to me them dying that way, but that’s the Lord’s affair.”
A dull pain pierced Eric’s middle.
Bailey leaned forward in her seat. “What happened to her?”
Ella paused and considered. Her scrutiny passed between Eric and the aged photograph and back to the persistent girl. “It’s a sad tale and not one for this happy homecoming, Miss Bailey. Ask me another time.”
It occurred to Eric that no one had ever told him the whole story of Edward Burke and his young wife before, and that maybe they should. He’d always felt a bond with this relative he’d never known. But as Ella said, this was not the time.
Meg nodded. “Quite right.”
Bailey sat up straighter in her chair. “Wait, which was Edward’s room, Ella?”
Her mouth crimped at the edges and she answered with evident reluctance. “I reckon you know which one.”
A strange expression came over Bailey’s face. Ella shook her head at her. “No more of that talk now, you hear.” She turned back to the kitchen, her stiff back registering disapproval.
Eric eyed Bailey quizzically. She’d gone white. “What’s all this about?”
Bailey darted her gaze at the kitchen and back at him. She pressed her lips together.
“Come on. You can tell me.”
She ran the tip of her tongue over her bottom lip and blurted, “I think there’s a ghost upstairs.”
Ella shot back, “Ain’t no such thing!”
“Now Bailey,” Meg chided gently.
Eric wasn’t certain what to make of her sudden disclosure, but played along. “Whose room is he in, yours or mine?”
“Oh, he has his own room. And how did you know it’s a he?”
“I just assumed. What makes you think it’s a he?”
“A feeling I had.”
Eric studied her closely. She didn’t appear over the top crazy, but it was difficult to access her mental state on such short acquaintance. “Are you frightened to stay here, Bailey?”
“Perhaps a little.” Her voice was small.
He reached across the table and took her hand, cool to the touch, and gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t be. I’m sure the ghost is just your imagination.”
She didn’t appear entirely convinced, but held endearingly to his hand. Her fingers felt right in his, as if they belonged there, a delightful and disconcerting sensation in one. “You’ll see. Everything will be fine.”
“Of course it will,” Meg soothed. “You’re just overtired and having trouble with your nerves.”
This might cover a myriad of conditions requiring anything from a restorative hot toddy and a nap to hospitalization. Eric must seek further for what troubled Bailey. If he were to go along with her premise, though, the idea of a male ghost seemed most appropriate, and he had a pretty good idea which room she’d assigned him.
At that moment, his life swung onto a whole new track. Downhearted from his injury and having to leave his beloved Corps with only the offer of a dry desk job to consider or sitting for the bar and embarking on a career in the law, he’d returned home wanting only to rejoin his comrades in arms. But now, an unforeseen mission lay before him, to stay and explore the tantalizing mystery of Bailey Randolph and her ghost.
Chapter Three
Like a haunting melody, the man’s low voice threaded through Bailey’s troubled dreams. He seemed to be calling her…but to where? Uncertain if she were awake or still asleep and dreaming she was conscious, she sat up in bed in the yellow room. The butter colored walls and gold-flowered curtains, dimly seen from the low light outside her partly open door, gave the room its name. Aunt Meg must’ve left the lamp on in the hall. A halo shone from the top of the walnut stand at the head of the passage.
Reason dictated Bailey should remain in her snug bed and go back to sleep, assuming she was awake. But reason didn’t enter into the summons compelling her from her nest of covers to stand on the icy floor. She stuck her feet into the pink slippers Ella lent her, admittedly warmer than her own
pair. The long-sleeved, white nightgown Ella also supplied and had insisted Bailey wear fell to the floor and covered her fuzzy footwear. Sporting lace at the cuffs and a high, empire bodice tied with ribbons, the old-fashioned nightgown looked as if it originated in the nineteenth century. Granted, some styles were timeless and this was pretty in its way, but the soft flannel was redolent of the cedar chest where it must’ve been stored, with a pungent hint of mothballs.
Ella would hear no argument. “Like ice in that bedroom. You’ll be glad of this nightie, right enough, when yer froze to the bone, so don’t be turning up your nose at it, Miss Bailey.”
Hugging the warm cloth to her, Bailey padded across her room and crept down the three steps to the hall. Maple Hill had been built in stages and steps adjusted for the uneven levels, but some of them creaked. She slipped past Aunt Meg’s cracked door. No point in worrying Meg with her nocturnal ramble, bound to be deemed peculiar at best. The cold wind rattled the windows in the hall and flung sleety snow at the glass panes. She shivered in the draft leaking through the casings and other crevices in the old house. It was no wonder black snakes sometimes found their way inside in the summer.
The pale light trailing down the hall illuminated the closed door to her right. She stopped outside the wooden barrier, darkened and scored with age, and pressed her ear to its hard surface. Nothing unusual reached her above the rattle of the wind. Likely the smoke she detected had floated upstairs from the living room hearth. If a bum had stolen into the house and taken up residence in here—a wildly unlikely premise—she shouldn’t seek him out alone.
Worse—if a ghost lurked within, she didn’t want to come upon this unearthly specter by herself. Or at all. She shivered from more than the frigid air, but didn’t turn back.
It might well be that the figure and light she’d seen earlier were simply the fabrications of her overactive mind. Supposedly no one had stayed in here for decades, presumably because it wasn’t needed. Ella gave the room an occasional dusting then shut the door. Any spillover of company slept elsewhere, including the two spare bedrooms downstairs.