It was empty.
She cautiously moved out of the bridal suite. She backed her way to the door to Kelsey and Logan’s suite and ducked her head in. Neither was there. Almost running, she made her way to Emil Roth’s suite. The outer door was open. Taking every precaution, she pushed the door inward and made her way into the room. Like the bridal suite, it had an outer foyer area with a grouping of chairs and a wet bar. Roth family plaques adorned the walls along with prints of medieval paintings. She made her way through to the bedroom, pushed the door open, and quickly flicked on the light, hoping to first blind anyone who might have attacked Emil in the night, or who might be lingering in the room.
To her astonishment, Emil Roth was there.
And he wasn’t alone.
She was awkwardly greeted by the sight of flesh. Way more of Emil Roth’s pale body than she had ever wanted to see and a pair of massive, gleaming breasts. Way too much of a skinny derrière. Emil’s flesh, a woman’s flesh—sweaty, writhing flesh—writhing until she turned the light on and they both stopped moving like deer suddenly blinded by headlights.
The woman screamed.
Emil Roth roared. “What the hell?”
Jane instantly turned the light off. “Sorry—sorry! Your door to the hallway was open. I was afraid that someone was hurting you.”
She heard the tinkle of the woman’s laughter. And then, in the darkness, she realized she knew who the woman was.
Scully Adair.
“I wasn’t hurting anyone, I swear!” Scully said. “But, please, don’t say anything! Please, don’t say anything to Mrs. Avery. I’ll wind up fired—”
Scully started to rise.
Jane lifted a hand to her. “I won’t say a word, I swear it. Please don’t get up on my account. I won’t tell Mrs. Avery a thing.”
“Hey, now, I own the place,” Emil said.
“Whatever!” Jane told them. “I will not say a word. It’s between you all. Forgive me. Sorry, I’m out of here. Pretend I was never here. Just do what you were doing, I mean, um, you just might want to lock your door.”
She flew back out of the room, shaking, slamming the door in her wake. The locks were automatic, she reminded herself. They’d been warned about that—step outside and it would catch behind you. For a moment, she leaned against the closed door. Visions stuck in her head that she prayed she could quickly clear.
She gave herself a mental shake.
If Emil Roth was fine, what was going on? Where the hell was Sloan? Where were Kelsey and Logan? She hurried to the stairway and gripped the banister tightly, looking behind and around her as she started down the stairs to the castle’s foyer. Still, she saw no one. The giant double front doors to the castle were ajar. She walked outside. A moon rode high, the air was still, and a low fog lay gentle on the ground. There was a night-light coming from Mr. Green’s cottage and a slightly lower light emitted from the guardhouse where Mrs. Avery was supposed to be sleeping. She wasn’t sure why, but she walked the distance around the grounds, on alert, ever ready to be surprised by someone lurking in the night or watching and waiting. But no one accosted her. Instead, she felt as if she was being beckoned toward the chapel. She wasn’t afraid of the dead. The dead had helped her many times. She made her way through the gate at the low stone wall that surrounded the chapel. She was afraid of the living. They were dangerous, in her mind.
But no one jumped up or slunk around from a gravestone or a tomb.
She reached the chapel door and pushed it inward. Someone was sitting in a pew, looking at the altar.
He rose.
She looked at John McCawley, tragically killed in a hunting accident the eve of his wedding.
He looked at her a long moment. “You see me? You see me clearly?”
“I do,” she told him.
He seemed incredulous, then he smiled, and she saw that he had been a truly handsome young man with a grace about him. “Forgive me. I see people pointing into the woods and saying that they see me when I’m standing next to them. And the ghost hunters! Lord save us all. A twig snaps and they scream, ‘What was that, oh my God!’”
“There are several of us here who see the—” She paused. She wasn’t sure why, but saying “dead” seemed very rude. “Who see those who have gone before us.”
“Really? Amazing and wonderful. I heard one of the maids whispering about it today. You do look like my love, like my Elizabeth. Are you a descendant?”
“I’m really not. I’m sorry,” she told him.
“Ah, well, no matter.” He studied her anxiously. “If you see Elizabeth—I know she’s here. I see her at the window. But you—you with this gift of yours, if you see her, tell her that I love her. I wait for her. I’ll never leave her. I love her in death as I loved her in life.”