The Ghost Who Loved Me Read Online Free PDF

the title.” Elizabeth got up and allowed her maid to help her slide on a silk robe. “There will be no more talk of ghostly seducers in the night or neither of us will sleep a wink, is that clear? Are you all packed?” The girl shook her head. “I suggest you see to that. I rang Elsie to attend to my bath. You are free to go to see to your own packing and make your final farewells to the rest of the staff.”
    “There is something more, my lady,” the maid ventured timidly. “Poor Miss Weathers was denied a proper reference from His Lordship. She has no place to go when the house is closed. Without a decent reference she won’t find another position. Can ye do nothing for her at all?”
    Elizabeth grimaced, forgetting all about her paid companion getting sacked in her own present sorrow. “Tell her I shall write her a glowing reference before she leaves. She can stay on until she finds other employment. Tell her I think it best she seek a position out of the city so His Lordship doesn’t learn of it.”
    Annie looked relieved. “The woman has been fearfully low since His Lordship dismissed her. She has no family but her poor sick mother, my lady. Ye might not have cared for her overmuch when ye thought she was in His Lordship’s pocket, but she was good to us all just the same.”
    Elizabeth refused to mention her spinster companion Miss Weathers was a spy hired by her husband years ago to keep tabs upon his estranged wife. Miss Weathers was hardly blameless in her own demise. She was the one who mentioned her mistress was seeing Anthony Wakefield these last few months to Edward in exchange for extra wages.
    Elizabeth discovered her companion’s betrayal upon accident, seeing Miss Weathers on the walkway in front of Carlisle Place as she passed by in a friend’s carriage on their way to a teahouse. She saw Mr. Phipps hand the woman an envelope before she hastened away.
    Later that day while Miss Weathers was sent to the market on some bogus errand, Elizabeth stole into her companion’s room and found the envelope in her bureau drawer. It was filled with more money than the woman could have ever made in one year’s time.
    Elizabeth owed Miss Weathers nothing but decided to be generous, knowing her servant had an ailing mother in the city. It was likely that alone which tempted her to betray her.
    Annie left her and she sat at her vanity table, gazing at her own puffy, reddened complexion in the mirror, shivering by all her maid said of Westerleigh. She heard the tales and laughed them off over the years when it came up at parties or a friend added more fodder to the illustrious ghost’s misdeeds.
    Elizabeth didn’t believe in such things but it dismayed her to be sent there just the same, in the middle of nowhere. The closest town was Tregaron, a tiny village really, surrounded by mines and sheep farms. The thought of being at Edward and Simon’s mercy come spring made her shudder with distaste.
    Edward hadn’t stepped foot inside the castle since he was a young man, shortly after his father died and it was expected that he toured his holdings. He never went back, she recalled him saying, seeing a strange look on his face when he courted her at Camden Downs.
    Her mother asked of the place during dinner. Edward refused to speak of what transpired at Westerleigh, saying all of the tales over the years of the ghost’s antics exaggerated and disappointing her mother to no end.
    Was it true?
    Was the place truly haunted by the ghost of James Carlisle?
    Fear curdled in her middle at the thought. She pushed away her silly thoughts, telling herself she let her maid’s absurd tales get to her unduly. She sighed in disgust and regarded her long tangled sable hair in dismay.
    Ghosts! Really? There was no such thing as ghosts!

Chapter Two
     
    Simon stood back and admired the periwinkle suit coat in the full-length dressing mirror, turning this way and that under Edward’s indulgent smile. He lounged nearby on a