The Haunting of Alcott Manor, page 11
part #1 of Alcott Manor Series
She could still feel the distant cadence of forever from the night before. Like a heartbeat, it pulsed from him, and though she wanted to trust it, she couldn’t. She needed Henry's help to get this job done, and she had to know as much as possible about the history of the house and how its energetic imprints were created so she could clear them. He alone had that information.
Henry kneeled at her side. "Don’t worry too much about the house, Gemma. It’s less eventful during the day, but be careful. As you've seen, it can be a frightening place.”
“How do you handle all the craziness in this house?”
He shrugged. “I guess I've learned what and who to avoid. Essentially, that's the trick around here."
She nodded and returned his goodbye kiss, melting into it and wishing they could spend the day tangled in the blankets that swirled beneath her. His appeal hadn't faded for her in the light of day. She'd thought that maybe, when the sun was high and the house was slightly less haunted, her feelings for him would have dimmed, as well.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.
When he closed the door behind him, she lowered her head to her hand. Yes, she was definitely in a frightening place. She'd just made the biggest mistake of her life.
Gemma's feet pounded the sand along the beach that stretched in front of Alcott Manor. She had foregone her usual seventies rock this time, choosing instead to run to the tempo of the crashing waves that carried out the tide.
She stopped and gazed at the sunrise that was lifting itself over the horizon. "What the hell have I done?” She breathed hard and pressed her fingers into the tense muscles on the back of her neck. Last night had been a complete aberration from her typical priorities. She'd need to make a clean break and hope that she didn't irritate the one client her father's future depended on.
In fact, this may just be all too soon to have anyone in her life. She probably needed time—time to heal from her divorce, to reinvent herself, to find her center. As her mother had told her not all that long ago, she needed to get back to trusting her instincts.
And she wanted to do that. She bent at the waist and leaned on her knees to catch her breath. Something was off, like her internal compass had lost its true north. She knew she had made the right choice by dropping everything with her business to help her father. Though, maybe the all of it, as she had suspected last night—her mother's passing, the divorce, the magazine press, the accident, her father’s inability to work this job, the haunted manor—was too much. Then Henry showed up at her most vulnerable moment, and she’d reached for him. It didn't take a psychiatrist to see that hadn't been a well thought-out decision. Let alone one that had been well guided by her intuition.
Henry's face flashed through her mind, glistening in perfection and hovering over her as he had the night before. God help her if she had just repeated the mistakes she'd made with Preston.
She rolled her eyes and ran toward the house again, not quite at top speed this time, but close to it. When she finally stepped from the beach onto the spring green lawn, she decided it was this damned house that had her feeling so off her center. She needed to get to work on clearing as much of its negative history as she could. The sooner she got back to her own world, the better she would feel and the smarter her decisions would be.
She walked toward the rose gardens that were distantly surrounded by tall, green hedges with white blooms. A blanket of soft ferns grew in their shade. Geometrically designed beds of red tulips and other flowers were arranged along the sides of the grass to soak up the sun.
The centrally placed rose gardens were quite large, fragrant, and filled with pink and red buds. They were varieties she couldn’t identify beyond the standard tea rose, but she knew her mother could have. Gardening had been one of her favorite hobbies.
She walked the dirt paths between the squares of roses that were organized by color, and she tried to organize her thoughts before she saw Henry again.
She dropped onto a cement bench, opened a bottle of water, and took a long drink. Unable to keep last night's memories at bay, she chose to indulge them one more time. It was, she knew, the first time that a man had given all of himself to her—unreservedly.
Not just physically, though he left no part of her unsung. It was more of an emotional yielding. He had been passionate, uncomplicated, loving. Giving.
The way her heart and soul had responded to his openness left her deeply changed. As though her world now tilted at a different angle, unsteady, yet with a renewed outlook. It was as if she had loved, been loved, and lost, all within the last twenty-four hours.
Ocean breezes twisted around her body and carried the roses' heavenly scent. The foretelling winds had been accurate from the first time they'd circled her just weeks before. She was being transformed, though the puzzle pieces of her life didn't yet fit together as neatly as they had a few weeks ago. In fact, they were a jumbled mess.
Her thoughts bounced around without the order she hoped her run would mandate. She wondered why her lawyer hadn't phoned to let her know that she had the executed divorce settlement. Maybe Preston hadn't really dropped the alimony issue. She hoped, seriously hoped, she hadn’t just screwed up this job. And what was with this together-forever tune her heart kept dancing to?
She shook her head. Normally, she was someone her father could trust, someone who always had her act together. Always. The wind definitely had the upheaval part of her fortune right.
Okay, she needed to be practical. For whatever they had shared, she ought to remember that relationships today weren’t like they were when her mother and father found each other. No one was interested in that sort of genuine, the kind of forever they had enjoyed. She’d kissed enough frogs to know that princes didn’t exist anymore.
She and Henry had shared one magical night together. He had been a gentleman who helped her find a safe and warm place to sleep and who comforted her on a frightening night. A night she wouldn't soon forget, and she would have to leave it at that.
She rose from the bench and headed toward Anna's winter garden. Henry had brought her suitcase down from the guest room earlier, and she needed to get ready for the day. Like an orchestrated crescendo, the sound of a woman crying echoed in the gardens. She turned around to find its source, though she was the only person in the expanse of the back lawn.
“Hello?" The sound seemed to originate from all around her. She backed away from the flowers. The cries faded.
“Did you know that Empress Josephine is credited with introducing the stand-alone rose garden?”
She spun to find Henry standing behind her with two mugs in his hands. One corner of his white shirt was untucked from his black pants, and his hair was slightly mussed from the morning. “Oh.”
He offered her one of the mugs and a smile.
“Thank you. Did you hear that?”
Henry didn't answer but appeared to listen for whatever noise she had mentioned.
“Someone was crying. A woman. I— It sounded like she was right here.”
“I don't doubt it,” Henry said. “Anna Alcott spent a lot of time out here. That might have been a memory of her crying.”
An imprint. She'd clear it this morning. She drank from the mug. "The roses are beautiful."
“They’re also original to the house.” He gestured to the gardens.
“Really?” Gemma turned to the roses as if she’d missed their ancient lineage the first time she'd seen them.
Henry sipped his coffee. “Anna Alcott planted them. I think only the Queen of England and I have the oldest rose gardens in the world.”
“Anna planted them,” she echoed. Her eyes stayed glued to the beauty of the roses, and she thought about the woman's fading cries. “She spent a lot of time in the garden?”
He nodded. "She was known to read out here when the weather wasn't too hot. She also painted. Flowers mostly, I believe."
"Is this where she liked to be alone?" she asked.
"Not sure. I guess those are fairly solitary hobbies, though. Painting, reading, gardening.” He stopped next to a rose bush and pulled a curling petal from the bottom of one of the delicate blooms.
He studied the flowers one by one, and she thought he might know their needs just by looking at them, as if they spoke to him. Loved him. She wondered why this beautiful, sensitive, intelligent man wasn’t married.
Of course, why she thought there was someone for everyone except her, she wasn't sure.
“Just before the accident, my dad and I saw a woman in a wide-brimmed straw hat in the side rose garden cutting them.”
“Hmmm. That may have been one of the ladies from the auxiliary. They've helped us with various gardening projects over the years.”
“She waved at us.” Gemma remembered that strange moment of peace she'd felt before the truck hit them. She wondered if the woman had been one of the manor's memories cast up at an ill-timed moment. Then she wondered if it had been intentional.
This house made things happen. She shook off the thought. The idea was too mad.
Henry took a pair of cutters from his tool belt and cut a long-stemmed, deep red rose and handed it to Gemma. Its fragrance seduced her senses, lifted her heart, and removed the concern that had made her frown.
“Thank you. My middle name is Rose.”
“Gemma Rose. I like the sound of that.”
His gaze went too deep for her comfort, and she cleared her throat. "Henry, about last night… I have a lot of people depending on me to get this restoration work completed before the judge's deadline, and I may have jumped the gun—”
"I hope this isn't where you tell me you have regrets." The gentleness of his Southern accent painted his words slow and certain. His measure of confidence breathed in perfect sync with the century-old property around them—strong, solid, seemingly indestructible. The touch of the back of his fingers down her cheek unraveled her heart into a soft, jangled mess where her rehearsed speech rested unspoken and with a forgotten need to be heard. "Because I surely don’t."
He could not have said anything more perfect at precisely the right time. She found herself, uncharacteristically so, without an ounce of insight as to where he was going next.
He led them to the garden bench. The delicate scent of the roses swirled around her like a gentleman’s gift, like an enchanted offering, like a gallant token designed to make her feel cherished. She could have sworn he guided her to experience that bouquet intentionally.
“Gemma.” He held her hand in his. “I know things are uncertain. I know this job is important to you. It's important to me, too. We both have so very much riding on this restoration.” He ran his thumb over the top of her hand with all the strength of the waves that crashed in the near distance. In the pause of his words, she heard the melody between them again. The one she'd heard yesterday in the most unexpected moment, and for the first time since she'd dreamed of it as a little girl.
“But I don't want to lose what we found with each other last night.”
Her lips parted and words she didn't know she was going to say slipped out. "I don't, either.”
His smile broadened with genuine, boyish happiness. “Good.” He nodded. “Good.”
“I just can't do anything here that messes up this job.”
“I don't want you to do that, either.”
One car door slammed, and then another. The workers were arriving. Henry kissed her knuckles and stood. "Are you ready?”
She felt like she ought to have something brilliant to say. But instead, all she did was nod.
“All right.” He took several steps toward the manor. “Let's go, then.”
Chapter 14
Gemma, Tom, and Henry stood among the broken planks of wood that surrounded the grand staircase. A makeshift table of plywood atop four metal chairs was set up with architectural plans, and several paper cups filled with coffee laid before them. The pungent scent of their brew drifted through the air and she inhaled it. She never drank it, but she did love the smell of coffee. Reminded her of home.
With two full crews on staff, Gemma had spent most of her morning refiguring the work plans and getting everyone appropriately task-centric. Henry was right about the house being less eventful during the day. It might have been the sheer number of workers inhabiting the house, but the darker energies that ran free the night before were now subdued—not gone, however. She could sense their undercurrent coursing through the house. She glanced toward the upstairs guest room. At least the crowds and the lighter vibe meant that she had more freedom to get her work done.
The three of them approached one of the largest repairs left on the list, the grand staircase.
"Considering the amount of time we have left, I want to double-team the staircase job," she said to Tom. "I realize we already have two groups in place for the general work, but these stairs were specifically on the judge's list. I want it completely done well before the deadline."
Tom rested his chin in his hand and squinted at the plans.
"It's not really an additional expense if the time is cut in half. I think ‘better safe than sorry’ is the right direction with this one. And here's a little twist I'm thinking of, given Benjamin’s penchant for destruction…"
Gemma walked over to the flat wall just under the decimated stairs. "We need to add a door. Here." She outlined a section on the wall. "So, if he or whoever, gets curious again as to what might lie in the unseen, maybe they'll just open the door instead of…doing all this." She waved her arm at the crumbled stairs. “Silly, I know. Maybe I’m catering a little to Benjamin, but we're down to the wire here, so we ought to go with whatever works."
Paisley walked by in the distance with an iPad and a phone in her hands. Before their meeting had begun, Gemma watched Tom give Paisley a long list of marching orders for the day. For the first time, Gemma was glad the young gal was there because whatever Paisley got done helped the project move forward more quickly.
"Excellent idea," Henry said with a grin that she thought held shades of the smile she'd seen him wear outside. The excited one that promised nothing but seemed to believe that they had discovered something worth seeing through. “We should probably install secret doors all over the house."
"By the way, were any handwritten notes found among the rubble?" She still doubted that the suicide note existed, but she thought she would check, just in case she was wrong.
Henry shook his head, disappointment shadowing his smile. "I searched. Nothing."
"Too bad.” She knocked a few small pieces of broken wood with the toe of her shoe and wondered where Benjamin went to during the day and if he was watching them from someplace just beyond their view.
Tom took a pencil from behind his ear and sketched a door onto the drawings.
"Just like my dad.” She tightened her ponytail. "Typical army guy, processes everything internally." She ran her hand along the French-inspired iron railing that ran along the wide staircase and up to the second-story balcony. “Was this original to the house?”
Henry smiled like a proud father. “It is, and produced by an ironworks company over in Florence—South Carolina, that is. Not Italy.”
“Extraordinary. Tom, I want these reinstalled. There's no damage in here, and, well, this is where they belong.” She looked at Tom, who hand wrote notes in the margin of the drawings.
"All right, he's got this." A ray of early morning sun reflected on a glint of gold, like a signal that called her into the next room. "Look at the stenciling on the wall there. Is that—”
“Gold. Yes, 24 karat leaf. Anna Alcott did it all by hand in 1880.”
She gazed at the beauty left by the woman whose unresolved death still marred the home. Intricate floral patterns climbed the wall and repeated every fourth flower, and she could still make out several gentle strokes of purple in the pansies. Gold leaf defined the edges of the petals, as well as certain leaves and vines that reached vertically. Drafts of soft pink graced the roses, and the outline of a tulip remained.
“There’s script on here.” She tried to make out the words, but several letters had faded completely and the thumbprint-smeared plexiglass that covered it made it difficult to read details.
“You’ll have to pardon the plexiglass. Paisley almost had this painted over, so we put this up to keep that from happening,” he said.
She squinted her eyes to stem the stress that bloomed in her chest. “And here I was thinking she was actually helpful today.” She finally tugged her phone from her jeans pocket, snapped a photo, and enlarged it on the screen. “It says Henry, I think. Age 7. This is a growth chart, isn’t it?” Once again, she found Henry closer to her than she realized. A flutter of unexpected excitement ran through her body. She tightened her stomach muscles as well as her focus.
“Yes.” Henry examined the vine over her shoulder. “Each of their children is represented by a particular flower. You can see how the pattern repeats with each new measurement.”
Gemma realized the reason the vine had stopped, and a wave of sadness rode through her. She placed her fingertips next to the final flowers, a white bloom entwined with a tulip with the scripted letters that spelled out Liz next to it.
“That’s, um…” Gemma hoped for an interruption this time.
“The vine stopped when Anna died,” he said.
She dropped her hand from the vine that was once filled with life and hope for the future. “What happened to the children after their parents…were gone?”
“Benjamin’s parents moved back into the house. They tried to take care of the children, along with a couple of nannies. But they were fairly up in age for that time, so it wasn’t easy. Ultimately, the children went in different directions for guardianship. The older two went to Benjamin's brother, the younger two went to Anna's sister. A few members of the community helped out, as well. If I'm remembering correctly, I think one of the local businessmen even offered to adopt the youngest daughter."
