Chapter Eighteen

"She was here when I came down," Mrs. Danville whispered as Mason locked the door. "I saw her."

"Who, the Unhappy Bride?"

Mrs. Danville nodded. "She was standing outside your father's study."

Mason glanced along the hallway. She'd never liked passing that room and Ralph always growled when they approached the study door. Over the past week Mrs. Danville claimed to have seen the resident ghost more than once, the first time she'd had such encounters. Mason wasn't sure whether to attribute the sightings to stress or the supernatural. Mrs. Danville said the presence must be a sign.

"Did she say anything to you?" Mason asked.

Mrs. Danville flicked a cagey glance at her, as though suspecting she was being laughed at. "Ghosts don't generally converse, so I'm told."

"What do you think she wants?"

"She can't rest peacefully in her grave," Mrs. Danville said dolefully. "There can only be one reason for that. Mortal sin."

"Murder?"

"Or suicide, God save her soul."

They stood in silence, waiting and staring. When the ghost failed to appear, Mason said, "Maybe we should try the Ouija board sometime."

Lynden had insisted on performing this parlor trick whenever he brought an impressionable guest to the house. Sometimes he dragged Mason in to make up numbers. The Unhappy Bride had never appeared on any of those occasions, although there were episodes with flickering lights, and predictably the name "Estelle" had been spelled out a few times.

"Then there's the dog," Mrs. Danville said.

Mason looked around automatically, wondering where Ralph had got to. She'd left the door open when she followed Vienna downstairs. Normally he came after her. She gave a low whistle and a dark head poked out from between the banisters directly above. Mason signaled for him to come down, but he whined and retreated back into the gallery.

Mrs. Danville glanced up. "I was talking about the pale dog. You've seen it and so has Mr. Pettibone. It's her dog."

"You think the stray Saluki is also a ghost?" Mason suppressed a grin. "The Hound of Laudes Absalom...very catchy."

Mrs. Danville didn't seem to appreciate the humor. "Your mother saw the two of them, you know. She had a clairvoyant come out here once."

"Really?" Mason turned out the lights and started up the stairs. "To do an exorcism?"

"I don't think so. He was a peculiar individual. Fond of my roast goose with Armagnac. He walked around your father's study for a while, touching things and communing with the...other side."

"Did he discover anything?"

"Only the wine cellar."

Ralph greeted them at the landing with panting relief. Stroking him around his chin, Mason said, "I suppose we could try a psychic, since the Bride seems to be hanging around at the moment. Maybe a medium like the one on TV."

"She's just an actress." Mrs. Danville smoothed the white chiffon scarf firmly over her hair. "I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of finding a suitable person. I believe she'll be here later in the morning."

"You have a ghost hunter coming to the house today?"

"She won't bother you at all. I'll give her clear instructions." Mrs. Danville's tone was one of martyred distaste, as if they were discussing a cockroach exterminator she would be obliged to serve with refreshments. "She comes highly recommended."

Mason wondered how performance evaluation worked in the psychic business. "Where did you find her?"

"That private investigator of yours was very helpful," Mrs. Danville said. "When he was here going through Lynden's papers, I asked him if he knew of anyone. He used to be a police officer in New Hampshire and he said there was a psychic who had something to do with a serial killer case."

"I thought the police didn't use psychics."

"This one appears to be an exception. Your PI got in touch with his colleagues and I received a phone call from her on Friday. The odd thing is, she said she was expecting to hear from us."

Mason rolled her eyes. "I bet that's what they all say."

"Perhaps, but Miss Temple asked if the name Benedict meant anything to me."

"She probably did some homework on the Internet. There's been a lot written about the Cavender Curse and the shooting."

"Perhaps," Mrs. Danville agreed diplomatically. "Although I don't know what would make her believe Benedict was Estelle's father. I asked her, naturally."

"What?" Mason's head felt fuzzy. "Did you say Benedict was-"

"Yes. Estelle told her."

Mason felt like she had just stepped into quicksand. There had to be a logical explanation. Mrs. Danville stepped in to provide it.

"Miss Temple sees dead people."

Something rattled a windowpane below them and they both stood very still, their eyes trained on the shadowed recess near Henry's study. Beyond the tall windows, the sky was no longer black. It would be dawn soon.

"Well, thank you for handling this." As she moved toward the north stairs, Mason asked, "Do you think it's possible, Mrs. Danville?"

The housekeeper took her time answering. "My mother thought so." She paused. "That was servants' gossip, mind you."

"Which probably makes it reliable."

Mason didn't ask why she'd never heard the story before. None of the staff at Laudes Absalom or Penwraithe would openly contradict the official history of the two families. They had their jobs to think about. Mason went up to her room, stripped, and fell into bed. Sleep rushed up to her almost immediately and with it the half-formed thought that the truth could solve everything, if only she and Vienna could uncover it.

Mason was aware of Vienna before she spoke. She charged the afternoon air somehow, lifting the hair on Mason's neck and stirring the dark garden of her desires. Turning slowly, she hid the painful thrill that surged through her.

"What can I do for you, Vienna?"

Mason wasn't used to hesitance in her adversary, but Vienna seemed to be fighting emotions she did not want witnessed. An uncertain smile fed her face and she stood with her hands clasped before her. A sunbeam burnished the fine, loose hairs that floated out around her head. She looked frail and easily bruised, hemmed in by the tortured trees and shrubs, their long predatory fingers plucking at her thin skirt.

"Mrs. Danville let me in," she said, moving farther along the path toward Mason. Her steps were gingerly taken, avoiding broken bricks, encroaching plants, and a finely wrought bird's nest still that still held the fragments of a blue egg. "Could we talk?"

Another step and Mason would be able to touch her. The thought made her hands tingle. "Please, go ahead."

As if she knew she was about to ask a strange question, Vienna covered her mouth for a split second before letting the words rush out. "Do you know why Hugo shot Benedict?"

Mason raised her eyebrows. She'd expected a different line of attack. A conversation about DNA samples from the night of the ball and what they would reveal. "You want us to compare notes a hundred and forty years after the fact."

Vienna's dreamy blue-green eyes met hers. "It's long overdue."

"Okay, so...why did he shoot him?"

"I can't say for sure, but Benedict was Estelle's father and I have the correspondence to prove it." Vienna seemed to be waiting for an explosive reaction, swaying forward a little on the balls of her feet.

Mason said calmly, "Strange, isn't it, how that changes things."

Vienna held her gaze. "You knew?"

"I've been doing my own research, and I had an expert in the house all morning. We went through my father's papers."

"What do you think happened back then?" Vienna asked.

"I think Estelle didn't know whose baby she was carrying." Mason heard a swift intake of breath.

"The baby... are you sure?"

Mason decided not to embark on the psychic angle immediately. She was still trying to absorb all she'd heard from Phoebe Temple and the discoveries she'd made in her father's office.

"Estelle drowned herself after her son was born because she couldn't live with her guilt," Mason said. "I found her suicide note."

Vienna cupped her hands to her face in horror. "She was having an affair with Truman? Even after they found out they were half-siblings?"

"No. Truman was her first love, but Hugo was her husband and it seems as though they were happy."

Vienna frowned. "Then what went wrong? What did her note say?"

"It was a letter to Hugo. She said that after their marriage she was raped by Benedict. He was in a rage over the diamonds. Truman had bought them without his permission, then they were sold at a loss when the engagement couldn't proceed. The old man thought he was entitled to recompense in kind and extracted it from Estelle."

"His own daughter?" Vienna gasped in disgust. "Oh, my God."

The story was hard to tell. Mason kept herself in check by pausing to take slow breaths. "When Estelle found she was pregnant she was terrified that she might be carrying Benedict's child. She was very depressed after he was born."

"And she took her own life," Vienna whispered.

"She blamed herself for the rape," Mason said. "In the letter she told Hugo what Benedict had done. A few days later Hugo went to Beacon Hill and shot him."

"What else could he do?" Vienna murmured. Her face was very pale. "Did Hugo tell Truman why he did it?"

"He must have, and I guess Truman didn't believe him."

Vienna seemed to be taking Mason's measure. Strange that for all her scheming, she could keep her regard so steady, drawing her close, exactly the way Mason drew a nervous horse. Holding open a door, but making no demand.

With quiet resignation, she said, "I wish I knew the truth about the night of the ball." She hugged herself and rocked slightly on her heels. "I'm not an idiot. They think they're protecting me by not talking about it."

"You've also been protecting them," Mason said with an edge of cynicism.

Vienna lowered her arms and turned her head away. Her tone hardened. "I'm not the only one. Mrs. Danville's been lying to protect the Cavender name all these years. Can you look me in the face and deny it?"

When Mason was silent, Vienna closed the few paces between them. Anger seemed to jolt her hands up to Mason's face, setting off a defensive tremor that made her muscles knot. Every nerve quickened. Mason heard a dry swallow and thought it was her own until she saw Vienna part her lips.

"Well?"

Somehow, despite the paralysis of throat and body, Mason's heart continued to beat and her lungs to inflate. "No, I can't deny it."

They stood very still. Vienna slid her hands from Mason's face to her shoulders, using her for balance. Her full, beautiful mouth was trembling. With every short, shallow breath, her breasts rose and fell sharply. She didn't shrink back when Mason put a steadying arm around her waist.

"Tell me, Mason." The plea was raw.

There was no going back. Mason had the sense that she was balanced on the edge of a precipice between two worlds. The leap from past to future was impossibly far and she was filled with dread at the risk she would have to take, yet she was weary of her lonely exile. Even that banishment she could have endured indefinitely, if it meant sparing Vienna sorrow. But she could see her silence had produced the opposite effect.

"It's not my father she's been protecting," she said finally. "It's me."

"You?"

She heard the wounded sigh a split second before she felt the air leave Vienna's body. Her red hair swung forward and she seemed to fold at the waist. Mason caught her as her legs gave way, and then held her tightly, outlasting her ineffectual struggles. Vienna threw her head back and the wild green of the garden seemed to wash into her eyes, enlarging them before coursing into her lashes and down her cheeks. One of her fists few free, landing a glancing blow to Mason's jaw.

Mason caught the wrist and locked it behind Vienna, forcing her in, trapping her. Their bodies were crushed so tightly, she could feel Vienna's heart slamming against her own.

"Stop fighting me and listen," she said next to Vienna's ear. "It's not what you think."

Vienna turned her head away and twisted helplessly. "Let me go."

"Not a chance. We should have had this conversation a long time ago."

Vienna kept up her struggles for a few more seconds, then drooped against her. "I don't believe it." She almost seemed to be talking to herself. "You would never do that."

Mason let her lips brush the gossamer skin where Vienna's cheekbone protruded. "No. You're right. I would never hurt you."

"I was raped." Vienna's voice caught on a sob. "Everyone thinks they can hide it from me, but I know."

Mason shook her head. "Do you really think I'd allow that to happen?"

Vienna's eyes narrowed. "What are you saying?"

"I was too late to stop him from knocking you unconscious, but I stopped him before he could do anything else."

"You were there?" Vienna's mouth trembled. "You saw him?"

"I dragged him off you and we slugged it out."

Why didn't you say so?" Vienna halted, a hand at her throat. "Oh, no...no. You were protecting your father."

"No," Mason said starkly, breaking the promise she'd made to hold up the Cavender end of the bargain. "Your family was protecting Andy Rossiter." She paused, trying to fight off her self-disgust. "I should have turned that disgusting creep over to the cops the night it happened."

"Andy?" Vienna whispered, her eyes wide and dark with disbelief.

Mason tightened her embrace. "I beat him up pretty badly. Your family could have had me charged with attempted murder."

From the dawning realization on Vienna's face, it was clear that she could see where this was going. "The meeting..."

"Yes, your father and mine came up with a deal. My silence in exchange for theirs."

Tears rolled down Vienna's cheeks. "My parents let him get away with attacking me...they blackmailed you to be silent. They blamed your father..."

"There was something else, too." Mason took a small pouch from her pocket and emptied the contents into Vienna's hand.

"Le Fantôme?" Vienna asked in bewilderment.

"It must have come off your necklace during the struggle. Your father gave it to mine. His payment for allowing himself to be blamed. I found it in Dad's desk with the agreement they signed."

"And my father made up that story about the replica stone having to be replaced. God, I've been so...gullible."

Mason lowered her head. "Vienna, please forgive me. Letting your aunt drive off with Andy was the worst mistake of my life."

"No." Vienna shrugged helplessly. "You're not the criminal. He is. I can't believe they covered this up."

The garden seemed to ebb, leaving them stranded alone on an island. The air was so heavy they could almost swim in it. Mason eased her grip and they floated out, each still anchored by the other.

"I love you," she said. "I've always loved you, Vienna."

She heard Vienna whisper her name, then say it again more slowly, as if its syllables dripped a mysterious favor on her tongue. Her fingers fluttered in Mason's hand. She moved closer until their faces met, then begged, "Kiss me."

Mason's body leapt. Blood rushed like butterfly wings in her ears. Her nipples were so painful she held back a gasp as her shirt scraped across them. She let her cheek rest against Vienna's while she subdued the part of her that hungered and craved. She kissed Vienna carefully, her body burning for more. A hand caressed her neck. Vienna drew her deeper. Buried in the moist bliss of her mouth, Mason closed her eyes and let herself fall.

Vienna's voice summoned her back. "I love you."

Unsure if she'd really heard the words or just wished them into being, Mason gazed at the face upturned to hers. Was this really happening? Or had she conjured this moment, as she often did? She'd kept her heart intact for this day, for those three words, and she wanted to hear them again. As if Vienna knew, she lifted Mason's hand to her lips, tenderly kissing the fingers. Then she cradled it to her cheek. "I love you, Mason. Please let me stay."