Someone to Love Read Online Free PDF Page A

man to do?”
    Jace thought about asking Mr. Hatch if planting daffodils was a manly occupation but thought better of it.
    When they reached a brick shed, Mr. Hatch stepped into the dark interior and returned with a blue glass bottle and two stained ceramic mugs. “Over here, under her tree,” he said. “We’ll have a bit of rest and I’ll tell you all that you want to hear.”
    I’m going to regret this, Jace thought as he took the cup of wine. It was made from raspberries and was delicious, but it was even more lethal than the beer. Mr. Hatch downed two cups full for every half a cup that Jace drank, but even so, after forty-five minutes, Jace wanted to curl up under the tree and go to sleep.
    But for all Jace’s questions, Mr. Hatch didn’t tell him anything about the ghost. He talked at length about putting in a bed of dahlias, but he didn’t mention the ghost—and he evaded Jace when he tried to ask. Jace got the impression that Mr. Hatch was so sure that Jace, an American, would stay at Priory House for so short a time that he wanted to do as much to the garden as possible before the house was put up for sale again. And he didn’t want to hasten the end by talking about the ghost that had scared so many other people away.
    Maybe it was a feeling that two could play at this game, but Jace didn’t mention that the ghost had spoken to him, and that she didn’t sound like anyone’s idea of a lady highwayman.
    “Ah, here he is now,” Mr. Hatch said, emptying his glass for the fourth time. “I’ll get him to help you up to your room.”
    “I’m fine,” Jace said as he put his hand on the tree and tried to stand up. Legs that were once numb but functioning had now turned to rubber. “I’ll be fine. I want to hear about the ghost and about—”
    That’s the last thing Jace remembered before he awoke in a strange room with his tongue feeling like it had turned into a caterpillar. Surprisingly, his head didn’t hurt, but his mind was fuzzy. Eventually, he remembered the two soft comments by an unknown voice.
    “Are you here?” he whispered, but there was no sound. He lay still, listening and thinking about what he’d heard. Yesterday, in between two drunken sessions, he thought he’d heard a woman’s voice. She’d even made a joke to him. Could that have happened, or was it just the byproduct of some outrageously potent booze that he’d been given?
    “Please answer me,” he said. “If you’re here, please talk to me. I want to contact someone.” Until he said the words out loud, he hadn’t realized he’d thought them. He’d told his uncle Frank that a ghost in the house didn’t bother him, but now he was seeing that he liked the idea of a ghost. Maybe she could contact Stacy for him. He wanted to ask her what had been so terrible in her life that she couldn’t bear to go on living.
    When there was no answer to his questions, Jace began to feel silly. He had no idea where he was in the house. He remembered that the master bedroom had an enormous four-poster bed in it. The man who had remodeled the house back in the 1850s had bought the bed from an auction of the furnishings of a bankrupt duke. The bed was made of heavily carved, age-blackened oak, and the mattress was eight feet square. To make sure the bed stayed in the house, the remodeler had had the room built around it. The only way to get the bed out was to cut it into pieces. Over the years, the bed had come to be included in the sale, like the windows and the sinks.
    But now Jace was in another room. It was half the size of the master bedroom and much prettier. There were windows on two sides, one set forming a pretty alcove where a deep window seat had been built. He could imagine Stacy curled up there with a book while the rain lashed against the windows. She’d always loved the rain.
    For the first time since Stacy’s death, Jace felt at peace. He closed his eyes, wanting to go back to sleep, but he knew he couldn’t. How