Chapter 26 The Clippings #2
There was nothing in the journal for that date except a heavily written, large X.
My heart thumping, I went to the front of the book.
Inside the cover, in cursive so perfect the writer could teach it, it said, The Diary of Aileen Flannery.
I knew from the butler’s ledgers Aileen was lady’s maid to Unity…
And Harmony.
I dashed back to the dire date and read the passage before it.
Dear Diary,
Another house party starts tomorrow. Everyone belowstairs jokes that the duchess is making up for the lost time of the war. It seems like we have dinner parties every night and house parties every weekend.
I don’t find it funny. Dresses to iron, shoes to brush, stockings to wash, it’s all a bother.
And my Lady Harmony is in no mood.
Especially since that odious (as Lady Harmony refers to him, but her opinion is just) Arthur Hughes-Davies telephoned to say he was coming.
He wasn’t even invited!
Lady Harmony detests him. Even Lady Unity doesn’t like him, and she’s boy crazy.
I fear the duchess has her sights set on him to marry Lady Harmony. Which, frankly, is a slap in the face, disallowing my lady that lovely American man, and expecting her to bear the ring of that bellend (but in the end, Lady Harmony will get the last laugh).
The duchess will be sorely disappointed, considering Lord Bishop dislikes him almost as intensely as my lady does, and the duke can barely countenance him.
Why they had a room prepared for that man is the mystery, when only the duchess seems to care for him.
But a lot of what these people do is a mystery to me.
She didn’t sign the entry, or any of them.
Among many things that passage shared with me was an explanation of why The Downs had footmen far longer than other great houses did. If the duchess did that amount of entertaining, they’d need them.
I skipped past the ominous X to the next entry, which was dated several days later.
And this one wasn’t any less ominous.
Dear Diary,
Tenterhoooks, tenterhooks, tenterhooks.
I am sworn to secrecy.
And for my lady, who has lost everything, I will never breathe a word.
That was it for that entry, and the next wouldn’t be for over two weeks.
I read it, and it was studiously, even painfully, about the frustration of mending a tear in one of Lady Unity’s dresses in a way that wouldn’t show, and a flirtation escalating between the milkman and the cook.
I put the diary down and picked up a clipping that had another picture of the viscount. In this one, he was wearing a tuxedo with a white double-breasted dinner jacket that had serious shoulder pads. He was holding a coupé glass of champagne.
Mr. Smooth.
But it was all wrapping.
He wasn’t at all handsome and he had a receding hairline.
“By damn, whatever happened to you, it happened here. You crashed a party, told no one you were coming, and because of whatever happened to you, no one shared word one that you were at The Downs.”
What was it that Tempie said?
Outside of learning to hold our liquor, aristocrats are dab hands at holding our secrets.
“Fucking hell,” I whispered right as the lights went out in the studio.
Abruptly being plunged into the dark, I let out a little scream of surprise, then I felt like an idiot.
It had been raining all day. Not a surprise the electricity might go out.
On that thought, another one hit me.
“But no lightning,” I said out loud.
That was when the cats started hissing into the dark.
The hair on the back of my neck stood up.
And it was then I saw the blue, green and purple shades revolving through the space, coloring Snowball’s fur.
My gaze shot to the house, and I saw those lights shining brighter from there.
No.
Not from the house.
From the ballroom.
But even though that was happening, the lights Fitzy kept on to guide my way back were illuminated.
The electricity hadn’t gone out at the house.
Just at the studio.
Creeped out, coasting through anxious straight to alarmed, I reached to the house phone.
It was late. No one would pick up.
I still did it because I had to check.
I put it to my ear.
And what I feared was correct.
The line was dead.
At that point a shadow raced across the front windows.
I sped right through alarmed straight to scared shitless.
“Okay, shit. Okay, shit,” I whispered.
The door to the studio wasn’t locked.
I grabbed my phone, engaged the screen, looked at it and saw I had a red bar.
Not a surprise. I’d left it in the studio the night before. It hadn’t been charged for over a day.
But I had juice.
Though I didn’t know who to call.
Did I phone 999 and say, “Hey, listen, the ghosts are kicking up a fuss at The Downs. Can you come out and rescue me from the studio?”
I wasn’t sure they’d be all that motivated to race out here on a call like that.
I didn’t want to call Prue or Chassie. They’d be sleeping.
I didn’t want to wake Fitzy and Patsy either.
Especially if this was probably nothing but my fatigued but always overactive imagination.
Sadly, I didn’t have Harry’s or Scotty’s numbers in my phone.
“Just go to the house,” I started my peptalk, my attention fixed on those lights glowing and shifting color. “You’re tired. You just made a huge discovery. The cats aren’t fond of your mood. You need to chill out and sleep.”
I got up, went to the door, and when I opened it, all three cats darted out.
“Fuck,” I snapped and moved out after them.
Just get in the house, get in the house, get in the house.
I charged quickly toward The Downs, following after the three scampering shapes of the kitties.
“Sss,” I heard from behind me.
Not the wind.
It was a person.
Out after midnight with me, hissing at me while I was alone in the dark.
Oh fuck.
I took off running.
When the house came into view, particularly the ballroom, I lost the rest of the little shit I had hold of because I could see the ghostly apparitions drinking punch, gossiping and dancing.
I never went in that way.
Fitzy kept the doors to the terrace off the ladies’ lounge open for me.
I rounded the north wing, skidding on the wet flagstone. The rain, still coming down, was now only a drizzle, but it’d been falling all day so everything was drenched.
I nearly took a header into some shrubbery but kept my feet for once, raced up the steps to the terrace at the ladies’ lounge and moved to throw open the door.
It didn’t open.
“Sss,” the sound came again.
Closer.
Fuck!
I rattled the door.
Locked.
And nowhere near anyone who could hear me pounding on it.
I was not going back from where I came, either the studio or the ballroom.
And it was hell to the no on the ballroom, and not only because that was the direction the noise was coming from. The people in it were still dancing and the lights coming from it were now almost blinding.
I took off running again, down the steps, across the courtyard to the door opposite, which went off one of the salons to the terrace.
I tried it.
Locked.
“Sss, sss, SSSSSSSS.”
It was following me.
I was not going to look.
I raced down the terrace to the armory, trying all three sets of double French doors at that end.
Locked.
All of them.
Damn Fitzy and him taking his butler responsibilities so seriously!
I raced down the steps, onto the walkway, around the edge of the southern wing and skidded across the wet turf.
This time, I went down, hard, both hands and knees slipping over the wet lawn as well as the fine gravel of the path there, the pebbles cutting into the skin of my palms and knees.
I heard a low chuckle.
It was a man.
I was alone in the middle of the night with some strange stalking man!
Fuck!
I pushed up and kept running, the fine drizzle winning, soaking through my shirt, my jeans, into my hair.
I rounded the front (this huge fucking house!), sprinted across and bounded up the steps two at a time.
I heard running feet coming my way.
I yanked frantically at the bell pull and pounded on the door.
My heart felt like it exploded, and in my moment of panic, fortunately, my mind recalled what Prue had told me.
Fitzy and Patsy had their own entry into the house.
I bounded down the steps this time, three at a clip, getting a stitch in my side as I raced blindly along the front of the house, around the side, straight toward the shrubs that had been planted to give Fitzy and Patsy some privacy for their outdoor space.
I found the entry, practically jumped down all of the steps, ran across their patio, hit their door and pounded on it.
I did all of this terrified out of my skull.
Because I did it hearing the heavy footsteps following right behind me.
A hand landed on my shoulder.
I screamed and whirled, ready for anything.
And there was Christian.
Oh fuck.
Was Christian a creepy stalker?
“What’s going on?” he demanded.
“Were you following me?” I asked.
The door behind me opened.
Christian’s hazel eyes flicked there but returned immediately to me. “Were you with someone?”
“No.”
“Who was chasing after you?”
“You saw them?” I breathed.
His jaw got hard, he shoved me, I landed in someone’s arms, and he growled, “Call 999,” and then took off into the night.
“You’re trembling something fierce,” Fitzy said, pulling me inside. “What’s happening?”
“Terry, she’s bleeding!” Patsy cried.
Fitzy sat me in a chair and grabbed my hands.
While he was rotating them to look at my palms, I said, “Someone is out there.”
His gaze snapped to my eyes then he turned to his wife. “Call 999, luv. Now.”
She raced away.
“Lock the door,” I begged. “Please lock the door.”
“It’s locked. It’s on a latch, Miss Vivi.”
I nodded and couldn’t stop doing it.
“Breathe, luv, just breathe,” he urged. “I’ll be back.”
And then he disappeared.
I stared down at my hands.
They were a mess.
God, I went down harder than I thought.