The Ghost and Jacob Moorhead Read Online Free PDF

into a hard line. “No. You don’t understand. You must not.”
    Mrs. Jennings looked at her niece through narrowed eyes. “Must not? You will tell me I must not?” She scowled. “And why must I not?”
    “You cannot tell him to go. This is his home. If anyone leaves, it must be me.” The panic she’d first felt as her first grief at the news of her family’s deaths faded once again snaked up her spine. Where would I go ? Where could I go ? she wondered. “Besides, he must live here. The will insists on that. You know he must.”
    “It will not contravene the will if he stops at the inn in the village for a few days. Just until we can contrive…something.”
    “I am your niece. I am a servant in his house. I do not need a chaperon.”
    “You are your father’s daughter and you do . I have told you, you are not to take on my duties, that Emma is well enough trained to do so.” But thinking of Emma, the ill housekeeper once again frowned.
    “Emma is all very well in her way but she has a very bad habit of dithering when she discovers a servant isn’t doing exactly as she’d like. She lacks…firmness.”
    Mrs. Jennings smiled a quickly disappearing grin at the understatement. “It is the one thing I have not been able to train out of her, that diffidence. She knows the work from the top of the house to the bottom. She knows the yearly schedule better than I do. She is someone I can depend on absolutely.”
    “But she is not housekeeper material, Aunt. Under-housekeeper, yes, but not housekeeper. What is more, she knows it. She isn’t happy when she must take on the mantle of authority you’ve had to lay down.”
    “For a time,” said Verity’s aunt, inserting the words quickly, before Verity could say others she didn’t want to hear. And then she sighed. “I do not,” she said crossly, “understand why I tire so easily.”
    “Will you not accept that you very nearly died, that you frightened us all to death? That it will take time for you to recover? That you must rest? And rest you will. I will leave you now and you will sleep. In an hour or so it will be time for a bit of luncheon and I will join you here for that.”
    “And in the meantime you will do all those things I have forbidden you to do.” Mrs. Jennings scowled at her niece but then yawned a huge gaping yawn. “Drat. I’ve not the energy to argue with you. Go then. Pretend you are not your grandfather’s granddaughter. You’ll make him angry, but why would you care for that?”
    She yawned again, her eyes closing. When she opened them sometime later, her niece was gone but sitting on the side of her bed was his lordship—or rather the ghost of his very dead lordship. “Ah. Mel, my love. There you are.” She brightened. “I wondered where you’d gotten to.”
    Did you think I ’ d left you alone to muddle through the mess I ’ ve left behind me ? he asked, both the tone of his voice and the look in his eyes that of tenderness. Ah , my love — my one and only love — I am not such a marplot as that . Never fear . I ’ ll not go from this plane of existence until you can go with me .
    “No one would believe me if I told them you visit me in this fashion.” Jenna smiled.
    Oh , I don ’ t know . It seems Jacob can hear me . He doesn ’ t believe it is me , of course , but he does hear me . It is quite humorous , that faint edge of fear it rouses in him — but that ’ s mostly because he thinks he ’ s on the verge of being taken off to Bedlam . Hearing voices , you know , is not a good sign . I think , he said, suppressing a smile, that just perhaps that will be all that is needed to take care of one of my grandnephew ’ s problems .
    “And that is?” The housekeeper edged her hand along the covers. Melton moved his closer to it.
    His drinking . He ’ s concluded he ’ s been drinking too much . Which , of course , he has , but not to the point he ’ s hearing things .
    They stared at their two hands, the one