Shades of Midnight (7 page)

"You must be Mrs. Markham," Lucien said brightly.

"Yes," she said, taken aback by his sudden appearance. "Good heavens," she muttered, shaking off her obvious surprise. "You gave me a bit of a start. You look very much like Alistair. Same hair and height, same... nose, I believe."

"I'm Lucien Thorpe," he said, extending his hand as he reached the bottom of the stairs.

"The medium," a delighted Justina said as the two of them shook hands as if they were conducting a business deal. "I've heard about you. I believe I read an article in the Savannah newspaper a few years back. Something about a hidden box of jewels and the ghost of the woman who had hidden them from her sister. Fascinating reading."

Lucien's smile faded. He positively hated being called a medium! He said the designation lumped him in with tricksters and overly sensitive women who wailed and spoke nonsense and called it a power. He didn't care much for being recognized, either. He considered his work and unusual gifts unworthy of the attention he sometimes received. Most of all, it just annoyed him.

"Actually," he said, "I'm a scientist specializing in studies of the spiritual world."

"He's an exorcist, too," Eve added spitefully, knowing how much he hated
that
label.

Lucien cast a quick, cutting glance Eve's way. "I do occasionally assist unhappy spirits in finding their way to the next plane, but that hardly makes me an exorcist."

Mrs. Markham looked puzzled. "Mr. Thorpe, what are you doing here in Plummerville?" After a moment's consideration, her eyes widened and her face paled. "Dear God, the stories must be true. Viola and Alistair haunt this house!"

"Well..." Eve began, as she tried to quickly formulate a reasoning for Lucien's presence that wouldn't give away her secret.

"Oh yes," he said brightly. "They're definitely in residence."

After a moment of silence, Mrs. Markham fainted. Lucien, sometimes alert and occasionally handy to have around, caught her.

* * *

Mrs. Markham came to after a few moments, found her own two feet, and bid Eve a hasty and garbled farewell. After extricating herself from Lucien's grasp, she all but ran for her horse and buggy, skirt in hand and eyes unerringly ahead.

Lucien sighed. For some reason, Eve was angry with him. Again.

"Why did you tell her Viola and Alistair haunt this house?" Eve asked sharply.

Looking out the parlor window, Lucien kept his eyes on Mrs. Markham's retreating buggy. "Because it's the truth. If you wanted to lie and tell her otherwise, you should have informed me of your ruse."

"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 astonish 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.