Shades of Midnight

by Linda Winstead Jones

  “You should have stayed upstairs and out of my way!”

  Lucien turned to face Eve. The pink flush on her face was caused by anger this time, not embarrassment. “You don’t want anyone to know your house is haunted.”

  Eve fisted her hands and glared at him. “No, I do not. I want to build an ordinary life here. I don’t want to be the crazy ghost lady. I don’t want people to point and whisper when they walk by my house or when I see them in town. Dammit, Lucien, I want to be normal!”

  Lucien shook his head in wonder. “Why on earth would you want to be normal?” Eve was an extraordinary woman. Beautiful, intelligent, sparkling with curiosity. Normal women were boring.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” she said, spinning around and walking away from him with her head high and her spine too straight.

  “You’re right,” he said, doggedly following her as she walked into the foyer. “I don’t understand at all. How could I possibly understand why the most exceptional woman I’ve ever met wishes to be ordinary?”

  She snorted beneath her breath. “Exceptional,” she muttered. “What hogwash.”

  Lucien caught up with Eve and placed a hand on her shoulder, bringing her escape to an end near the foot of the stairs. “It’s not hogwash, Evie. You are exceptional.”

  “Don’t call me Evie,” she insisted, and even though she tried to be stern he could hear the tears in her voice. Her wavering demand broke his concentration, more than any angry words she could throw at him, more than any logical argument.

  Lucien dropped his hand. Tears from a living woman terrified him. Perhaps if he didn’t physically hold her back, Eve would escape and they could finish this conversation when she was less emotional. He could not handle emotional.

  But Eve didn’t walk away, she turned around to bravely face him. “You gave up the right to call me Evie. You gave up the right to sweet-talk me.” Tears made her eyes bright, but they did not fall. “Maybe if I can be an ordinary woman, an ordinary man will love me. I want to have children, and learn to make apple butter, and go to church on Sundays to sit with my neighbors. I want a home, a place where I belong. Maybe if I can build a new life here, I’ll quit dreaming about the life I will never have.”

  Her lower lip trembled, and she grew visibly angrier. Lucien relaxed a little. He could handle anger much better than he could handle tears.

  “Dammit,” she said forcefully, “I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in love with a man who is more comfortable communicating with the dead than with the living!” With that she spun and ran up the stairs.

  She was almost at the top before a stunned Lucien followed, taking the stairs two at a time. “Aha!” he said as he bounded into the upstairs hallway.

  Eve stopped outside her room. “Aha? Have you just discovered something miraculous?”

  “Yes,” he said, walking toward her slowly. “I have.”

  “What?”

  “You still love me.”

  Her eyes went wide. “I most certainly do not!”

  “You said…”

  “I once loved you,” she said, trying to amend what she’d said in anger. “While I admire your professional capabilities, on a personal level I don’t even like you.” She waved a dismissive hand. “You’re a Yankee, after all. And on top of that you’re annoying and forgetful and unfeeling.”

  He didn’t believe her. “Oh, I feel. And so do you.”

  Eve pursed her lips tightly for a moment before replying. “I do not love you. I feel absolutely nothing. What is it going to take to get this ridiculous notion out of your head?”

  He thought a moment, and the solution that came to him was perfect. “Kiss me,” he said.

  “What?”

  “One kiss.” He took a step toward her. “If you feel nothing, I will concede that perhaps you really don’t love me anymore, and our relationship can continue on a purely professional level.”

  “I’m quite sure I’ll feel nothing,” she said softly as he took another long step. “Nothing at all. There’s no reason to continue.”

  “What kind of experiment would it be if I just take your word that you’ll feel nothing? I prefer to judge your response for myself.”

  “Lucien,” she said as he stopped before her, “this really isn’t necessary.”

  “I think it is.” He took her face in his hands and lowered his mouth to hers. He’d wanted to do this since she’d opened the door to him last night, but until his lips actually touched hers, he hadn’t realized how much he needed this.

  Eve was unyielding, for a moment, stiff and angry and determined not to feel. He moved his mouth over hers, parted his lips, sucked her lower lip ever so slightly into his mouth.

  She didn’t succumb all at once, but very gradually melted. Her lips softened, her body relaxed, and she began to fall into him. Her hands rested on his waist, for a moment, as if she needed the support. Gentle hands, sweet hands. He loved her hands. Eventually, those hands slipped around his waist and she held on tight.

  The kiss took on a rhythm, a sensual, unrestrained cadence in time with their heartbeats.

  Eve’s mouth worked gently against his, yielding and demanding. Her fingers clutched at his back.

  He dropped his hands from her face and let his thumbs brush against her fine, soft neck. He reveled in the feel of her skin, marveled at the sensation of her velvety flesh against his rough hands. Eve was like silk, her mouth and her flesh, and he wanted her. He hadn’t realized it was possible to want a woman quite this much.

  The catch low in her throat was proof enough that Eve was not unaffected, as she had insisted she would be. The experiment was done; he had proven that she did still feel something for him. But he didn’t want this kiss to end, not yet. Not ever. His arms circled around her and he pulled her close. The kiss deepened, reaching down to his very soul.

  He couldn’t help his physical reaction to such a kiss. With their bodies pressed close, Eve no doubt felt his response, but she didn’t shy away from the evidence that he wanted her. Lucien knew he should end the kiss and step away, but he couldn’t. Eve was the one to draw back, to gently break the union of their lips and to slowly shift her body away from his.

  Lucien smiled as he took her face in his hands once again. “I knew it would be wonderful,” he whispered.

  Eve’s face blushed pink, and her lips were lusciously swollen. If his fingers brushed against her neck, he would surely feel how her heartbeat had increased. Her breasts rose and fell as she took a deep breath.

  “You enjoyed your little experiment?” she asked calmly. “Well, that makes one of us. Purely professional from here on out, right?”

  “Evie…”

  “I suggest you obtain a room at the boarding house this afternoon, before it gets dark. You can leave your contraptions here, if you’d like, while you see to checking into your room.” Her coloring returned to near normal. “I won’t touch them, I promise.”

  “Surely you felt…”

  “Nothing,” Eve said softly. “I felt absolutely nothing.”

  She turned her back on him and opened the door to her bedroom. As the door slammed behind her, a confused Lucien muttered, “Right.”

  What a muddle this was. He could handle a much-too-friendly ghost, a murdering spirit, and sleeping on the hard floor. He wasn’t sure he could handle making what had happened with Evie right again.

  She wanted very badly to belong.

  And he knew deep inside that she already did belong. With him.

  Chapter 5

  Plummerville was like a thousand other small southern towns. It was self-sufficient, thanks to the stores along main street and the farms just beyond the city limits. Many of the residents had been born here and would die here, most without even the desire to see what lay beyond the familiarity and comfort of home. All along the main street neighbors visited, or smiled and nodded to those who passed. Shops flourished. Women chatted with one another, in that mystifying way that always managed to as
tonish Lucien, where they all talked at once and seemed, still, to comprehend every word. They discussed everything, from the smallest details of their lives to the latest news they’d read in today’s paper.

  Since the rented room he called home, at the moment, was located in Wilmington, North Carolina, and many jobs in the past had taken him into this region of the country, he was accustomed to the southern accents that surrounded him. Here in Plummerville the accents were deeper, in some cases, as melodious as Eve’s in others. As he walked down the street he listened, catching bits and pieces of conversations. A few of the people he passed wondered aloud about the stranger in town.

  Whether they mentioned his presence aloud or not, the people along the way very carefully watched the outsider who walked down their street. The unfamiliar was always of interest in a small town like Plummerville, and outsiders were not to be trusted.

  Yes, the streets were quite busy with the hustle and bustle of the living. And then there were the ghosts. Lucien could tune them out when he wanted to, but the fact of the matter was that the dead were everywhere. There were so many souls who could not or would not move on. Others, brighter lights that came for a brief time and then were gone, came to watch over a loved one. And life went on around them, oblivious.

  Lucien had never been oblivious. His first words had been spoken to a ghost. His mother had been perturbed that her son had so many imaginary friends, then horrified when one of those friends had proven herself not to be imaginary at all. He would never forget the expression on his mother’s face when, at five years old, Lucien had delivered a message from her long-deceased Aunt Bliss. They were living in his grandmother’s house at the time, his father gone three years, his mother not yet remarried.

  Lucien had walked over to his mother, tugged at her skirt, and said, “Aunt Bliss said to tell you her brooch is in the top dresser drawer, in the back under some old linens. She wants you to have it.”

  Mary Louise Thorpe had turned pale and swayed on her feet as if she might swoon, then rushed to the dresser drawer to discover that the brooch she had often admired was truly there. A practical woman, she had taken her son on her lap and tried to reason with him. And herself. He’d been snooping and had found the brooch. He’d overheard her and her mother talking about Aunt Bliss. The color came back to her cheeks as she began to convince herself of a more reasonable explanation. And then Lucien reached out and touched his mother’s red curls, and said, “She has hair like you, only hers is not so curly.”

  Since Aunt Bliss had died more than ten years before Lucien’s birth, and he had never seen a photograph of the woman, Mary Louise had been unable to explain away his observation.

  And she had been terrified of her son since that day.

  As he stepped into Miss Gertrude’s boarding house, Lucien closed his mind to the past and to the ghosts who were everywhere. In both cases it was like shutting a door, solidly and surely.

  “Good afternoon.” The gray-haired woman who greeted him stood behind the counter that stretched along one side of the large room that apparently served as both lobby and parlor. Her smile brightened considerably as she placed the book of recipes she’d been perusing aside. Since she was pleasantly plump and wore a wide smile, and the aroma of something spicy drifted his way from the dining room, he assumed the food here would be good, at least.

  “Good afternoon,” he said. “I’d like to procure a room.”

  The curious proprietor, Miss Gertrude herself, he assumed, glanced behind him. “Just for yourself, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long do you plan to stay with us?”

  “I’m not sure.” As he reached the counter, Miss Gertrude presented a leather-bound book for his signature.

  “With or without meals?”

  Lucien hesitated. Evie liked to feed him, usually, but she had been testy of late and might be more than happy to allow him to go hungry. “With, I suppose.”

  She gave him a decent price, and he paid for the first three days in advance.

  Miss Gertrude glanced at the signature in her book. “Well, Mr. Thorpe, what brings you to Plummerville?”

  Again, he paused to consider his answer. Eve did not want everyone to know her house was haunted. Mrs. Markham might tell, but perhaps he should not. While he detested lying, and even a lie of omission seemed very wrong, at the moment he didn’t want to do or say anything that might annoy Eve any more than he already had.

  “Business or pleasure?” Miss Gertrude prompted.

  “A bit of both,” he said, feeling that to be a safe answer.

  “Then you must have friends or family in town,” the curious landlady continued.

  Lucien smiled. “That I do.”

  *

  Eve placed her copious notes across one side of the dining room table, then sat in a chair and began to shuffle the papers this way and that. After several weeks of investigation, she had almost too much information to sift through.

  Justina Markham’s insistence that Viola would never have cheated on her husband rang true, even though it contradicted everything else Eve had heard. But then again, Mrs. Markham might have been simply defending her friend, protecting her already damaged reputation. She had confirmed what others had told Eve, that Alistair was no one’s idea of the perfect husband.

  And where was the wrapper? Eve had seen with her own eyes that Viola had been wearing it when she’d come down the stairs to her death, but Mrs. Markham had said twice that her friend’s body had been unclothed.

  The papers, the research, it was comforting work, and she needed work to take her mind off that kiss in the hallway. Lucien had always been good at kissing, but he’d never kissed her like that before! His experiment had shaken her all the way to her toes, had made her knees weak, had made her wonder… things she should not wonder.

  She would have thought herself terribly weak if Lucien hadn’t displayed his own response to the kiss. At least she was able to hide her reaction. Oh, she hoped her reaction had been well disguised! If Lucien knew she still loved him, she’d be in for a lifetime of always being second best, of always being forgotten. She couldn’t bear that, to give her life and her heart to a man who could dismiss her so easily.

  Since she’d lied and told Lucien she’d been totally unaffected by his kiss, they’d turned their minds to business. He’d procured a room in the boarding house, and she’d taken the time while he’d been gone to gather her wits. He’d returned, displaying his key as if he had to prove that he now had his own room, and for the rest of the afternoon they’d discussed what they knew of the night the Stampers had died.

  Lucien sat on the floor by the buffet, studying the ectoplasm he’d collected last night. He’d removed his jacket and loosened his tie, and as he bent over the dish of gunk his dark hair fell across his cheek, hiding a portion of his face from her. He seemed to think he could decipher details about the spirits by examining the sticky goo he collected. On occasion he was successful.

  “Viola wants to know why Alistair killed her,” he muttered without looking up. “I think that’s what keeps her bound to this house.”

  Like Justina Markham, Eve wanted to dismiss the notion that Viola Stamper might have betrayed her husband. But so many people swore it was true she couldn’t completely ignore the possibility. “If she was unfaithful, she knows the why of it.”

  “What if Mrs. Markham was right and Viola wasn’t unfaithful?”

  “I want that to be true.” She had come to like Viola. Too much, perhaps. “But everyone says…”

  “Rumor, Evie,” Lucien said absently. “Dismiss the rumors you’ve heard and concentrate on the facts.”

  “It’s been thirty years.” A familiar frustration bubbled up inside her. “All I have is rumor!”

  Lucien pushed his dish of gunk aside and turned to face her, his body lying lengthwise across the floor, his head propped in his hand.

  Evie frowned. A scientist wasn’t supposed to have great muscles and strong
legs. Maybe carrying around his damned specter-o-meter had built those muscles. She’d seen them close up now, after flying across the room and landing in his bed, where he’d been stretched out wearing nothing but a strategically placed sheet.

  “Don’t fret,” he said, mistaking her consternation for worry about the case. “Start with what we know as fact.”

  “And that is?”

  He smiled. “What we know from Viola and Alistair.”

  She refused to be intimidated. She would not be shy or coy or embarrassed with Lucien. “They were sexually compatible.”

  “Extraordinarily so,” he added.

  “And according to you, Viola wants to know why her husband killed her.”

  “Yes.” His easy smile faded. “What other absolute facts do we have?”

  “It was Halloween night,” Eve said. “It rained. Since everyone remembered the storm that came through that night, I think we can take it as fact.”

  “I’ll concede that one.”

  “Thank you so much,” she said caustically. “We know that at ten-fifteen Viola and Alistair were… you know, and just minutes before midnight, Alistair stabbed his wife in the back. Sometime later that night, or in the early hours of the next morning, he killed himself.”

  Lucien screwed up his mouth and wrinkled his nose. “Stabbed himself in the heart. That’s rather unusual. There was most likely a firearm in the house. Why not simply shoot himself? It’s a much more common method of suicide.”

  “I think we can safely say that there was something not quite right with the way Alistair’s mind worked.” A man who would coldly murder a woman who adored him… no, that was definitely not right.

  “Might he have forgiven her, as some of your informants have claimed, but then simply snapped on the evening in question?”

  “Perhaps.” Eve rested her elbows on the table and placed her chin in her hands. “We haven’t much time. Halloween is in four days! Once that day passes, it’ll be almost another year before the spirits who haunt this house will be forceful enough for us to see and hear them. If we can’t solve this mystery soon, I might have to wait another year to get rid of the ghosts.”