Maybe he should look up that come-hither kitchen maid, after all.
Jake took a moment and considered the thought. Though it might solve his immediate problem, the idea held little appeal. He hadn't come to Rowanclere to diddle the help; he'd come to find the Declaration so he could get on with his life. Maybe though, he'd alter his adventure itinerary a bit. Once the Declaration was on its way to Texas, rather than setting out to explore Africa first, maybe he'd head straight for the South Sea islands. From what he'd heard, the native women would revel in curing him of this condition. If they didn't kill him in the process, that is. "But what a way to go."
"Pardon me?" Mrs. Dunbar asked.
"Oh, nothing. I'm sorry. Please, go on."
She shot him a puzzled smile before continuing her lecture. "He died at the Battle of Pinkie, fighting Henry the Eighth's army during the 'Rough Wooing,' when he attempted to enforce the betrothal of the infant Mary, Queen of Scots to his son Edward. Over the years, each laird left his stamp on Rowanclere, some better than others, which is why you see the mishmash of styles we have today. Now, if you like, I shall show you the guard chamber. The vault is the best example of the late sixteenth-century rubble masonry construction of the house."
Jake had to duck to enter the dreary, windowless room. As his eyes adjusted to the dimmed light, his gaze was drawn not to the cement work, but to the small skeleton hanging from a metal bracket on one wall. "What the he—heck is that?"
"Oh, we call him Young Fergus. I'm afraid we don't know his true name."
His jaw gaped. "You keep a boy's bones hanging on a parlor wall?"
The woman shrugged, a this-is-nothing-unusual lift and lower of her shoulders that left Jake speechless. " 'Tis the guard chamber, not the parlor, and Young Fergus likes it here. We dinna ken when someone strung him together and hung him in this room, but we've found references to him in Rowanclere papers dating back three hundred years. Just last autumn we tried to give him a decent burial, but he was quite... loud... in his protest of our efforts."
Jake's gaze narrowed. "Loud?"
"All but raised the roof with his shoogles and skrieches."
"Shoogles and skrieches?"
"Shakes and screeches. Sometimes terrible moans."
Jake paused a beat, then arched a brow. "We're talking about the skeleton."
"Aye."
He shifted his stare from his landlady to the skeleton.
On second glance, something about the bones struck him as off, but he couldn't put his finger on what. Still, bones were bones and they did not "shoogle and skriech."
"So you're claiming Young Fergus left more than his bones behind?"
She flashed him a brilliant smile. "We call him our guardian ghaist."
As if on cue, the damned bones rattled, the arms and legs swinging like a puppet's. Jake all but jumped out of his boots.
Embarrassment flooded him as he sucked in a deep breath and attempted to calm his racing heart. He was glad of the dimness of the light filtering through the small window slits because he feared at that very moment, his face might be tinted a bit red. Although, come to think of it, a blush was a damned sight better than pasty, scared-as-hell white.
"What kind of trick is this?" he groused, striding toward the skeleton.
"No, Mr. Delaney!" cried Mrs. Dunbar, darting clumsily in front of him, effectively blocking his path. "Ye canna touch Young Fergus."
"Sure I can," he replied, stepping around her.
She grabbed his arm and planted her feet, attempting to pull him to a stop. It worked. Jake wasn't one to push around a pregnant female.
He dragged a hand down his cheek. "What's going on here, ma'am?"
She hauled him toward the doorway. "It's for your own safety, sir. Young Fergus won't abide being touched by strangers. He can be quite the wicked deevilock when he so wishes, and I'll not have harm done to you. My conscience would not bear it." She paused and sighed dramatically: "This tour was a mistake. This is precisely why we tend not to encourage visitors. Please, promise me you'll allow the puir wee one his privacy. Otherwise, I fear I cannot in good conscience continue your tour."
Jake couldn't help but grin. She'd managed to talk him right between a rock and hard place. As much as he wanted to piece together the mystery of these pranks being perpetrated on him, he needed to find the missing Declaration more. "All right, Mrs. Dunbar. I'll leave Young Fergus in peace." For now, anyway. "What's next on the tour?"
"The library," she said, beaming a smile bright as sunlight reflected off the loch.
Again, Jake was struck by his hostess' beauty. Taught by experience, he braced himself against an anticipated, though unwelcome, surge of lust.
It never came. Not when she smiled at him. Not when he followed her out of the guardroom and into the huge, high-ceilinged library. Not even when she familiarly took his hand in hers and pulled him from bookshelf to bookshelf, pointing out old histories and tomes, pride ringing in her voice and the scent of rosewater teasing his nose.
It didn't make sense. What was this on-again, off-again reaction he had to Mrs. Dunbar? Why did just looking at her sometimes make him hard enough to drive nails, while other times he felt only the compulsion to make her sit down and put her feet up to rest?
It made no sense. Sure, he'd endured stretches of celibacy in the past, but it had never affected him like this. Maybe that wasn't the problem. Maybe it was something more.
A sense of trepidation crept up his spine as Jake shifted uneasily on his feet. Maybe something was physically wrong with him and this was an early symptom.
Maybe he was developing a Condition.
Hell.
While his hostess rattled on about the room, Jake took renewed interest in the books lining the shelves. He scanned the titles searching for a medical text, or maybe one of those marriage books he'd heard was popular, if furtive, reading in England.
Now that the horrible possibility had occurred to him, Jake Delaney needed to know the truth. For all his education, this was a subject he knew nothing about. Men didn't discuss it. The very idea gave them the shakes. Jake could feel the shudder in his limbs even now.
He interrupted Mrs. Dunbar. "Does your library have medical books?"
"Why, yes. We have a few. Folk remedies, mainly, but I think we might have a text recommended by the medical school in Edinburgh."
"Where? May I look through it?"
She nodded, then moved to a section of shelves on the north wall. "There. The fifth shelf. It's too high for me, but if you'll-—-"
Jake grabbed the leather-bound tome she indicated off the shelf. Immediately, he began to leaf through it.
He prayed he'd find the answer to his question between its pages. Now that the dreaded idea had occurred, Jake simply had to know.
Could an indecisive cock be the first sign of impotence?
* * *
Seated behind a spyhole into the library, Gillian listened to her sister rave on about books—her favorite subject outside of her husband and the child she nurtured in her belly. Gillian rolled her eyes. Only Flora would lose herself in books at a time like this. "Give me the signal, sister," Gillian whispered.
To her dismay, Flora kept on talking. Gilly peered through the wall, confident of her anonymity. Mr. Delaney would need to possess an extraordinary sense of detail to notice the eyes in the portrait of a sixteenth-century Brodie ancestor hung high above him had changed from a flat gray to a very lifelike blue.
Besides, he hadn't so much as glanced in her direction. For the past ten minutes his gaze had been glued to the pages of the book he was reading. Flora didn't seem to mind. Gillian wasn't certain she'd even noticed. Once her twin started talking books, she tended to get lost in her own enthusiasm.
"My mother-in-law disapproves of fictional literature," Flora was saying. "As a result, Laichmoray's library suffers a lack of novels. Thank goodness we don't have that problem here at Rowanclere. I, for one, fail to see the harm in spending a few pleasant ho
urs lost in an imaginary world. What about you, Mr. Delaney? As a writer, do you consider reading a fictional story a shameful waste of time?"
"What was that?" Jake said, glancing up.
Flora repeated her question and the Texan drawled his reply. "No, ma'am. Can't say I have a problem with reading stories or writing stories, either. But the other kinds of tale-telling... well, I reckon I don't hold much truck with that."
"Hold much truck?" Flora repeated. "I'm afraid I am unfamiliar with the term."
"Approve of. I don't approve of lying, Mrs. Dunbar. Or of preying upon peoples fears with tricks and pranks. That's just a different type of lying... or fiction, if you will."
Gillian's eyes narrowed at his words, and she grimaced as she watched her twin's smile turn sickly. Oh, Flora, don't let him bother you. Remember the reasons why we are doing this.
It was as if her sister had heard her. Flora's shoulders squared, her belly went out, and her chin lifted. But before she had a chance to voice her reply, Robyn burst into the library holding the mongrel in her arms and calling Flora's name.
"Finally," the young girl said, her breath coming in pants. "Scooter and I have been looking all over for you. Mrs. Ferguson wants you in the kitchen, Flora. She says Mr. Douglas has come for the supply order, and you need to review it so we have everything we need when Lord Harrington arrives next week."
Flora shook her head and clucked her tongue. "Oh my. You will have to excuse me, Mr. Delaney. I must see to Mr. Douglas. He can be as grumpy as Young Fergus when he is kept waiting. Feel free to use the library this afternoon, if you wish. I'll be happy to continue the tour later, after dinner, perhaps. Robbie, come with me please. You'll need to stop me if it appears I am over-ordering. I find it difficult to judge these days."
Flora dashed from the room, followed by Robyn, who paused just long enough to give Jake time to scratch the dog and say "Howdy, Scoot. You having fun with your new friend?"
Almost before Gillian realized what was happening, Jake stood alone in the library, the scheduled haunting never set into motion. Leaning away from her peephole, Gillian blew a frustrated breath. What was Flora thinking? Mr. Douglas would have waited.
Flora's appetite wouldn't. One of the results of her sister's pregnancy was a marked increase in the attention Flora paid to food. Anything could trigger it—a smell, a word, the shape of a cloud. Residents of both Rowanclere and Laichmoray had quickly learned that whenever the mood was upon her, they put themselves at physical risk by standing between Flora and the larder.
"I guess I'll have to finish this on my own," she murmured. If it even mattered.
The haunts planned for today were the easiest to physically perform. Therefore, this afternoon's practice had been intended to help Flora more than Gillian. Her "ghaist tales" were as much a part of the visitation as the rattling of Young Fergus's bones, or the moaning, groaning, and chain clanging Gillian presently sat poised to begin. Without Flora around to talk about the Headless Lady and Rowanclere's other deevilocks, ghaists, and bodachs, any noises Gillian might make would be no more than that—noises.
Besides, after that pithy comment about tale-telling a few moments ago, she might as well throw in her chains. She hadn't fooled Delaney one little bit.
What did she expect after that first debacle of a haunting?
Gillian scowled down at the Texan. He'd finally put aside his book, and when he tugged the library steps to the end of the southern wall of bookshelves, her gaze lingered on the seat of his trousers as he climbed and reached for a volume on the topmost shelf. Despite her annoyance with him, she couldn't deny that Mr. J. A. K. Delaney was a fine figure of a man.
After all, she had seen the nakit truth.
So distracted was she by the memory that it took her some time to notice what he was doing. When she did, she leaned away from the spyhole, blinked her eyes hard, rubbed them, then looked again.
Nothing had changed. The skellum was ransacking the shelves.
Gillian sat frozen, watching the scoundrel work. Not ransacking, perhaps. Searching. That was what he was doing. Proceeding methodically, he removed a book from the shelf, felt the empty space behind it, then eyed the volume closely before turning it upside down and flipping through the pages. If nothing fell out, he replaced the book and reached for the one beside it. A time or two, a slip of paper did flutter from the inner pages and he'd catch it, read it, then return it to its place.
Gillian's mouth gaped open in shock at the man's audacity. Why was he doing this? Was Delaney a thief? A swindler? A fraud?
He was most certainly a liar.
Gillian pushed to her feet and began to pace the passageway. That man. What was he looking for? Money? Jewels? Not information about the castle like he'd claimed, obviously. And to think he tried to make poor Flora feel guilty about stretching the truth with these specter schemes. What a bleen o' blethers that was.
It made Gillian furious.
She had to do something. She had to find out what he was about. A hundred different possibilities flitted through her mind, each more troublesome than the last.
She had to find out the truth. But how? Confront him? Cajole him? Accost him in his sleep?
A dozen or more minutes ticked by as she walked the floor and considered the question. Eventually, her path took her toward a corner where a spider web snagged on her hair and floated in front of her face.
Gillian reached up to bat the web away, but froze when the sticky silk adhered to her finger. "Spiders."
She spent long seconds lost in thought before her mouth bowed in a slow, wicked smile. "Spiders, Of course!"
Gillian returned to the spyhole and watched the rascal continue about his task. A soft chuckle escaped her mouth. "Don't look now, Texas. But you are in for the fright of your life."
Chapter 4
The timely arrival of Mr. Douglas allowed Jake three unsupervised hours, which he utilized to make a methodical search of the library. While he didn't find the missing Declaration of Independence tucked between two of the numerous volumes of love stories, he did find a section of books that caused his heart to skip a beat.
One entire set of bookshelves held issues of early Texas newspapers bound into books. He took his time, flipping through each page of every volume, expecting at any moment to come upon the handwritten document he sought.
He didn't find it. Not in the newspapers, nor between the pages of any of the other books he searched. Still, he'd come to the right place. He knew it in his bones. Besides, when he began to sense he'd spent all the time he dared in the endeavor, he still had another whole wall yet to explore.
Jake was forced to face a truth. Making a one-man physical search of a place as big as Rowanclere Castle would not get the job done. He either would need to reveal his true purpose or trick the information out of them. After a few moments' deliberation, he settled on trickery. It seemed to fit the folk of Rowanclere better than telling the truth.
Following an early supper, he had just sunk the eight ball in a practice game of billiards, then settled into a chair pulled close to the fireplace to read the newspaper when Mrs. Dunbar swept into the room and said, "Well, Mr. Delaney, are you ready to continue your tour?"
Jake frowned. His hostess had changed clothes since the last time he'd seen her, and she looked particularly fetching in a gown of rose pink silk. "I thought I was scheduled for a visit with the laird of the castle."
"I am sorry." Her dainty brows dipped into a worried frown. "Uncle Angus is not up to seeing visitors. He's poustit this eve. Suffering the pains, the rheums."
Jake thought for a moment, interpreting the unfamiliar words. "Your uncle suffers from rheumatism?"
"Aye. Some days, like today, it sinks its teeth into him fiercely."
"I'm sorry to hear that. Chronic pain can wear a man down. Let's hope he feels better tomorrow."
"Aye." She appeared distracted for a moment, then, to his shock and chagrin, she gave her head a shake, paired a devilish smil
e with a wicked twinkle in her bluebonnet eyes, and crooked her finger right at him. "Allow me to show you the delights of Rowanclere, Mr. Delaney."
Damned if every drop of blood in his body didn't feel like it headed south.
Jake brought the newspaper with him when he stood, using it to shield his body's reaction. In a way, he was reassured by the response this woman elicited from him. Were he developing a performance problem, surely his pistol wouldn't load so fast.
No, the trouble wasn't with him. It had to be her. The trouble was he had a beautiful hostess who couldn't decide which personality to present: gentle Madonna or flirtatious vamp. Either way, she twisted him into knots.
Jake's temper kindled. To hell with going slow. Folks here at Rowanclere were big on bluffs, what with this ghost business and all. Maybe he should run a bluff of his own. Maybe he should pick her up, carry her to his chamber and tie her to his bed, refusing to let her go until the missing Declaration of Independence was in his hands.
He could see her lying stretched out before him, her hair spread around her a golden waterfall, her eyes flashing blue fire, her breasts heaving with the force of her breaths, her belly... damn! "She's pregnant, for heaven's sake."
"What was that, Mr. Delaney?"
He shut his eyes and shook his head. "Nothing. Never mind. By all means, ma'am, show me your castle."
The next half hour was a whirlwind education on furniture, architecture, and Clan Brodie history. If she dwelled a little heavily on the bloodthirsty parts, he didn't mind. Gory detail kept his mind off other unsavory things.
Like how the burr in her words seduced him like the stroke of a velvet ribbon against his skin.
The cook offered him a lemonade when they toured the kitchen, and he gulped it like a man dying of thirst, hoping the drink would cool him down. "Maybe now's a good time to give me a look at the outer wall, Mrs. Dunbar," he suggested.
Sizzle All Day, Bad Luck Wedding #4 (Bad Luck Abroad) Page 5