A Haunted Romance (10 page)

In the dream, you did.

It was just like the key. He’d been the only one with access to the house, and yet he said he didn’t leave anything there. She shrugged. She’d been all sure it was a ghost when it could very well have been Trent, having a joke. She wasn’t about to suggest he wasn’t coming clean with her though, not after the way he’d reacted last time. “Yes, I imagine you would.”

“Okay, well, I’m on my way.”

“Wait up a few minutes and let me get dressed first.”

The sound of his voice made her imagine him grinning at the phone. “You don’t have to get dressed on my account.”

I bet you are
. “I’m in flannel nightshirt, Trent. It’s too damn cold for lingerie. Let me get a dress on. Trust me, it’s sexier.”

Trent laughed. “I’ll see ya.”

She didn’t usually spend much time thinking about what she was going to wear. She had a host of long dresses that were loose and covered the fact that her shape didn’t meet the modern ideal. Back in the nineteenth century, the curve of her stomach would have just indicated that she was well fed—a desirable quality—and that she didn’t have “consumption,” as tuberculosis was often called. In any case, Trent didn’t seem to mind her curves. She got out a black dress she hadn’t worn for a while. It fit her a little more snuggly and showed off her calves, which she thought were presentable enough, as well as dipping low in front to reveal some cleavage. The last time she’d worn the dress Jacey claimed she looked trampy, but she thought it was actually pretty elegant. She had a shorter dress, and she had been tempted to wear it. Trent would appreciate it, she was sure. But she wasn’t at all sure she could keep it decent if she was down on the floor with the men sorting through the chests.

Trent gave her plenty of time; in fact, she had read a few pages of
The Way of a Man with a Maid
by the time she heard his knock on the door. She put it back on the shelves and hurried downstairs.

He was carrying a small cardboard box with newspaper clippings in it. “Lady Gray is makin’ me return these tomorrow, but she let me take ’em on the promise that I would bring ya by sometime.”

Chelsea didn’t know whether to be annoyed or not. She’d be happy to meet Mrs. Gray—but Trent had no business promising her presence.

“I figured you’d happily make the sacrifice for the information,” Trent explained. “Let’s do this on the dining room table, where there’s room.”

“You like doing things on the dining room table, don’t you?”

Trent laughed. “Some things can be done anywhere.” He winked and moved past her, heading for the dining room.

Most of the newspaper clippings were from the first half of the twentieth century. The Bentley house, it was called, but a photograph made it clear that it was Pat’s house they were talking about.

My house.

James Bentley had died in the house in 1920, a victim of the flu epidemic that swept through the country. He had no surviving relatives, according to his obituary in the paper, his daughter Minerva having died earlier the year before at the age of fifty-six. James was in his seventies, apparently, and his wife had died in childbirth in 1863. He’d owned a coal mine and had interests in the Selby and Soren Railway.

“The Selby and Soren was just a little railroad, carryin’ coal from the mines west of here to hook up with another minin’ railroad,” Trent explained. “It was swallowed up by the Norfolk and Western in the ’50s, and still later shut down entirely, but I didn’t find any connections with the house, so I didn’t bring the papers for that.”

Chelsea nodded. “Thank you.”

After Bentley died, the house was empty for a few years. There were claims that it was haunted. A city slicker named Hartnett had bought the Bentley house in 1922, and stayed there for three days before putting the house up on the market again. So it went, in story after story. The house would be bought, but never by a local, and the owners would own it for a very short time before trying to sell it. In the opinion of the
Selby Herald
’s reporters, that the house was haunted was an established fact.

In 1963 it was bought by Joann Warden, a local girl, and Pat Palmer, from Baltimore. “‘
These two young women think they can turn a profit on the old Bentley house, which they might well do
,’” said the paper. “‘
As they bought it for a bargain price. Now they just need to find some skeptical out-of-towner who doesn’t believe in Selby’s ghost
.’ But they never did sell it,” said Chelsea.

“Well, I’m not sure they could have admitted they intended to live there together for the rest of their lives. It might have raised some eyebrows around these parts.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Chelsea said with a smile.

“People around here accepted Pat because she and Joann never stuck it in people’s faces. If folks wanted to remain ignorant, they could and just think there were two old maids livin’ in an old house. I guess people kind of respected their bravery too, after all the other folks who’d tried to live there over the years. Eventually, not much of anyone believed the house was haunted anymore, although Pat never denied it when she was asked. She just didn’t make a big deal out of it.”

Chelsea frowned. She couldn’t imagine being in love with someone—strongly enough to spend your whole life with them—and not being able to talk about it to anyone.

“Yeah,” said Trent, putting his hand on her shoulder. “It’s not the way the world should be, is it? But Pat and Joann were happy people when I knew them, and I don’t think they’d want you feelin’ sorry for them.”

“The papers I found—some of them are letters to Minerva.” She poked at the obituary. “You know anything more about her?”

“Not much. We looked because from the article about James we know just when she died, but there’s not even so much as a death notice in the paper. Maybe she moved away and died elsewhere?”

“Maybe. I have letters to her and books that I think were hers, one of them dated as late as 1905. I can’t be sure, but it all fits with the letters and so forth. If she was here in 1905, she would have been more than forty already, which would make her pretty old to get married, especially in those days. And if you were a woman and didn’t get married, you probably didn’t move by yourself either.”

Trent nodded.

Chelsea’s stomach rumbled. She looked at her watch. She’d been so lost in the papers she’d lost track of time, and Dalton would be there soon. So much for whiling away the time kissing Trent. “I didn’t eat breakfast, and it’s lunchtime already. Let’s get some lunch and then get the second chest down from the attic and see if we can get it open.”

“I won’t turn down food.” Trent grinned. “Or you.” He looked her up and down, and Chelsea felt herself getting hotter just from his gaze.

She looked at her watch again, but it hadn’t moved backward. Dalton would be over any minute, and while a part of her didn’t care whether she got caught in flagrante with Trent, a bigger part of her did. She’d best keep the topic on lunch. “Just sandwiches, I’m afraid. I don’t have anything fancy.”

She expected to be serving, but Trent helped her make sandwiches from roast beef and cheese. Since the dining room table was covered with old newspaper clippings, they ate standing at the kitchen counter. Neither of them said much, and he matched the hurried pace with which she ate her food. Apparently he was as eager to get at the house’s mysteries as she was.

They went back upstairs. Trent pulled down the ladder and climbed up. This time Chelsea stayed below; she’d brave the spiders and whatever else scampered up there if she had to, but as long as Trent was willing, she was staying put.

There was a knock on the door. “Shit,” said Chelsea. “That’s probably Dalton.” She sort of felt like she should remain in case he needed help.

“Go ahead and get the door,” Trent called down, his voice distorted by the attic’s acoustics. “I can get the chest by myself.”

She ran downstairs.

“Hello, pretty lady,” said Dalton when she opened the door.

She wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so she just backed up and beckoned him in.

He walked in, glanced around for a moment, and noticed the papers on the dining room table. “Are those the papers you were talking about?”

“Not really, those are just newspaper clippings and such from the historical society.”

Dalton nodded. “Ah yes. Mrs. Gray.” He wandered into the dining room and took a look. “The legends of the haunted house, huh? Has more been happening than just that scream?”

Chelsea hesitated before talking. “Yes. There are moans at night. The doorway to my office once slammed shut of its own accord. There’s a strange whistling sometimes, coming from the attic. And stuff—well, it appears in places I didn’t leave it.”

Dalton chuckled. “Huh. I mislay stuff some—er, how strange. Moans, you say? And stuff.” She wasn’t sure whether he was paying more attention to the clippings or what he was saying. “What kind of stuff?” he asked.

There was no way she was going to tell him about the dildo appearing in her bed. “Little things. Come upstairs, I’ll show you the chests.”

“Sure.”

Trent had the chest down already when they got there and had hauled it into the office. She’d moved her laptop and the scanner back there as well. It probably was a better place to work than her bedroom. They’d go through the new chest if it was interesting enough; the chests were heavy, and even with the books taken out of the one, she hadn’t felt like moving one. She was also a little worried that the stack of papers would fall over, causing damage to them, if she tried to move it. Besides, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be reading Amelia’s adventures in front of the two men.

With both men watching, she slipped the key in the lock. They might only have the one to work with anyway, if this one needed a different key. The two looked the same, but that didn’t mean the locks were the same. She jiggled the key in the lock before she managed to get it to click open.

Like the first chest, this one contained two stacks, with books on the one side stacked either next to one another or on top to allow the maximum number to fit. There were papers on the other side, and slightly farther down envelopes that were a bit larger than the individual sheets.

On the top page the words THE END were written in script even more flowery than usual in large letters. Another novel? The handwriting of the few lines written above the end were in the same script as the one she had presumed written by Minerva, although they were tame by comparison, describing a wealthy and happily married woman. Chelsea chuckled to herself. She’d read them actually hoping for a touch of the erotic and was strangely disappointed. On the other hand, it could make it a lot easier to work with Dalton and Trent if the material wasn’t too salacious.

“Here’s the procedure, gentlemen,” she said. “We all need to have clean and dry hands, so we’ll wash up first. One of you takes a page from the box and slides it into a plastic sleeve, then takes it to the scanner and presses the button. The other sits at the scanner and flips it over when it’s ready, pushes the button to scan that side, and then stacks it up neatly in this box here.” The box had contained clothes she’d brought from Falls Church, but it was about the right size to hold two stacks of sleeved sheets. “I’ll be watching the scans on the computer to make sure they’re coming out legibly; we may have to do some over.”

“Sounds good,” said Dalton. “I’ll do the sleeving.”

Trent shrugged. “Sure. I can stack.”

She noticed neither of them looked at each other. What was the bad blood between these two?

“We’ll switch after a while. If one of you ends up waiting for the other because the tasks don’t take up quite the same amount of time, take the books out, and check for the title, author, publisher, and date of the edition, and record them on this sheet of paper. Then put them on the shelves, carefully.”

It wasn’t perfect, but the assembly line worked. The papers held together remarkably well considering they were about a century old and had been kept in a hot attic.

“Quite the tale of moral uplift,” said Dalton.

At first Chelsea thought that Dalton was being sarcastic, but as she scanned the pages, she concluded he was right. The heroine described at the end of the book, an American woman named Frances, was as proper as proper could be, having settled down to a dutiful life with her husband, a far cry from the heroine of the book in the chest in the bedroom. If she hadn’t seen that that two were written in the same handwriting, she wouldn’t have believed that they were by the same person. Had Minerva, if she was indeed the writer, turned to mainstream fiction after getting frustrated writing erotica, or was it the other way around? Without dates, it was very hard to tell.

“The reading material, on the other hand.” Dalton shook his head. “
The Lustful Turk
?
My Lustful Adventures
?
The Autobiography of a Flea
? Doesn’t look like suitable reading for a young lady.” He was putting the books on the shelves, as requested.

“Why do you think they’re Minerva’s?” asked Chelsea.

“Minerva? Who’s Minerva?” Dalton asked.

“The young lady—woman—who wrote the novel, if I’m right. Who died in this house in 1919. She was mentioned in the obituary.”

“Oh, I doubt very much they belonged to a young lady,” said Dalton. “Especially in that era. I just meant that I don’t think that they’re suitable reading for you.” He made a face. “Or anyone else, really. Still, I suppose it would be a waste not to get some money from them. There are probably people who collect old smut.”

Trent chuckled. “Yeah. There probably are.”

She blinked. It had been a long time since someone had decided what reading material was suitable for her, and she hadn’t missed it one bit. She felt like telling Dalton exactly what she thought of it using some very unladylike words. He was obviously completely oblivious.

Dalton glared at Trent. “You’d probably know.” He turned toward Chelsea again. “I really don’t think the person who had those books wrote this novel. But do you think this Minerva—that she might be haunting the house?”