With that he stood up and walked out to the sidewalk. Nigh hastily finished her drink and ran after him.
“Pick a store,” he said. “Go in, buy yourself a wardrobe, and I’ll meet you there in one hour and we’ll leave.”
“That one,” Nigh said, pointing to a high-end boutique that had Prada in the window. “But it looks expensive.”
“You snooped into my background, so you know I can afford it.”
“And I’m paying you back later, right?”
“Yes,” he said, then turned and walked away.
She didn’t know what she’d done to anger him, but she had. She couldn’t worry about it now. She had a lot to do and little time to do it. She went to the store and told the clerk that she had one hour to put together a wardrobe, then her boyfriend would pay for it.
An hour and a half later, they were back in Jace’s Rover and heading toward Tolben Hall. They were dressed in upscale English country, Jace in a jacket and tie with lightweight wool trousers, while Nigh was wearing a dress that looked rather plain but had actually cost a couple of thousand pounds. She couldn’t help running her hands down her sleeves.
“It will take me a while to pay you back,” she said, glancing at the two suitcases that Jace had brought with him when he’d picked her up. Empty when he’d arrived, they were now filled with new clothes, plus all the toiletries they’d purchased at Boots pharmacy.
“All right,” Jace said, “I want the truth. What is it you do for a living?”
“Journalist,” she said.
He glanced at her with a grimace on his face.
“No, what I wrote about you is not an example of my work. That was…”
“What was it?”
“Jet lag, maybe. And…horror. I’ve had a lot happen in my life in the last couple years and sometimes I have no perspective.”
“Tell me about it,” Jace said and there was such empathy in his voice that she wanted to tell him.
She told him her parents had died within a year of each other—first her father, then her mother—and it was as though Nigh had had the anchor in her life removed. She suddenly hated everything about her life, and she just wanted to leave Margate and all the memories. She wanted to get away.
“So you went to London,” Jace said.
She laughed. “Exactly. Where all Englishmen and -women go when they want to find themselves—or lose themselves. I got a job in a newsroom, mostly getting coffee for the bosses. I didn’t know what I wanted to do and they didn’t know what to do with me. But one night the news presenter didn’t show up. Later we found out she’d fallen down a flight of stairs in her house and knocked herself out. She lived alone, so there was no one to call in sick for her.”
Nigh told Jace how they’d looked around at the people who were in the studio and Nigh had been the only person there who, as they said, wouldn’t “frighten the viewers,” so they sent her to hair and makeup and put her on the air. The only instruction she was given was to read what she saw on the teleprompter.
No one knew it at the time, but it had been an audition. Nigh had done an excellent job in the reading and she photographed well. The next day she was given a real job.
It was a month later that she heard that a news team was being sent to Egypt to report on a tourist bus that had been shot at, and Nigh asked to be allowed to go.
“Foreign correspondent,” Jace said.
“Yes. For the last eight years I’ve never been in any one place for more than four days at a time. I live on airplanes and in hotels.” She looked out the window and said no more.
“But now you’ve come home. Is it for good?”
“I don’t know. I know that I’m tired. I know that I’ve seen too much bloodshed and too much horror in the world.” She took a deep breath. “Eleven months ago I was in Iraq and my cameraman, Steve, was blown up. He was standing three feet away, filming me talking to some women and children. I had a translator with me and I was asking them about the horror in their lives. I was near to tears as I heard what they had to say. In the next second, I heard a sound and suddenly there was blood and metal fragments everywhere. A mortar or a missile, something, I don’t know what, had directly hit my cameraman, a man I really liked, a man with a wife and three kids. His body exploded over us and the camera equipment blew into tiny pieces. Many of the children I was talking with were seriously injured. I was wounded too, but mostly I was in shock.”
Jace reached over, took her hand in his, and held it.
“I don’t remember too much after that. Medics came and the kids were treated.”
“And you?”
“Airlifted out, stitched up, given some pills, and told that if I wanted to talk to someone, they’d listen.”
“Did you?”
“No,” Nigh said softly. “I couldn’t talk because I didn’t know what I would say. I wanted to help the world, but I don’t think I’m cut out for death and destruction. I can’t seem to disconnect myself from what I see.”
Turning, she looked at him and smiled. “I thought I was someone who could fight, but I seem to be a coward.”
“You don’t sound like a coward to me,” Jace said. “What happened to you would traumatize anyone.”
“You don’t know the news world. The real news people have something like that happen to them, they have a couple of Scotches, then they go right back to it.”
“But you couldn’t,” Jace said.
“No. I’ve done some reporting since then, but not much, and I taper off more and more. I thought I might…”
“Might what?”
“Write about what I’ve seen. I thought I might write about the people I met, what I heard and what I saw. I came back home to be still and to listen to my own thoughts, and think about what I want to do with the rest of my life.”
“And you thought your little village was being invaded by a big, bad American.”
Nigh smiled. “’Fraid so. Sorry. I’m used to hearing two sentences of information and within six minutes changing it into a headline-grabbing story. I can’t tell you how many news reports I’ve written in helicopters.”
“So have you made any decisions?” Jace asked.
“Turn here,” she said. “So far, not a one. My idea of spending my days alone and taking long, thoughtful walks has been superseded by ghost hunting with an American who keeps more secrets than all the Middle East.”
“Small secrets. Personal ones. Not important except to me. Not earth-moving like your secrets, or your life.”
“There it is,” Nigh said, pointing to a sign that said Tolben Hall.
Jace pulled into the long driveway and the house came into view through the trees. It was lovely, a huge Victorian house with a turret on one end, and a pointed roof. There was a deep porch with a swing and several round windows.
“I can see why Longstreet bought this instead of Priory House.”
“There it is again,” Nigh said. “You hate your house. You think it’s dreadful, but you paid an enormous amount for it. Why?”
“Didn’t I tell you that I’m a masochist?”
“Great! I brought my dominatrix gear. We’ll tie you up later.”
Jace was laughing as he got out of the car and opened the trunk to get the suitcases.
“I’ll check in,” she said, then ran up the steps to the front door.
A few minutes later, Jace entered carrying the two suitcases. Nigh was talking to a short, thin, gray-haired woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Fenney. “I was just telling Miss Smythe,” she said, “that you’ll have the whole house to yourselves. We’re usually full on the weekends but not so busy during the week. And you’ll be staying how long?” She looked at Jace.
“Three days,” he said quickly.
“Oh, that’s fine then. Let me show you your rooms.”
They followed her up the stairs to a long corridor with several doors along it. She opened one to reveal a large, pretty room done in pink and green chintz. There was a r
ound sitting area at one end. “Mine!” Nigh said.
“Yes, it is our prettiest room,” Mrs. Fenney said with pride. “And now you, sir,” she said and Jace followed her.
Nigh walked to the window and looked out. Below her she could see the surrounding acres of trees that the hotel owned and she looked forward to walking among them. In fact, she wanted to explore the town and every shop of the little village.
She leaned her head against the cool glass and thought about what she’d told Jace in the car. When she’d returned from that nightmare, from when she’d seen death at such close range, she’d been a brilliant actress, telling no one how traumatized she’d been. She’d walked out of the hospital with nearly a hundred stitches in her, but other than wincing a few times, she’d let no one see her pain.
She’d even gone to Steve’s wife and talked to her. The woman had cried, but Nigh didn’t. She thought that if she began crying, she’d never stop. Steve had been a great guy, funny, always able to look on the bright side of life. He was never pessimistic; he never lost hope. He was sure that he was doing something good in the world and he never let other people forget that.
Nigh didn’t cry for seven months, but then, one day, she couldn’t seem to stop. TV commercials made her cry, children laughing, old couples who looked at each other with love. Whatever she did or said or thought or heard made her cry.
Her editor, a man in his sixties, was the only one who saw Nigh’s deterioration. “I wondered when you’d start coming apart. I want you to take some time off and think about this job. Some people are made for it and some aren’t. Based on forty years in this business, I’d say that you should get out of it. But that’s just my opinion.”
“I have some assignments.”
“Yeah, get them done, then go home to that place where all of you come from. Some village or other where everybody knows you.”
“Margate,” Nigh whispered.
“Right. Marwell or whatever. Go there and think about what you want to do with the years you have left. Call me when you decide.”
Nigh nodded and turned to leave, but he stopped her.
“Smythe?” She turned back to him. “You’re lucky. You have heart and you feel things. But best of all, you can write. Use it.”
Now there was a knock on the bedroom door. “Come in,” she called, and turned to see Jace standing there.
He looked at her sharply. “You okay?”
“Perfectly. Just a bit of the blues. So how’s your room?”
“Dark blue, mahogany bed. A gentleman’s room. I asked her about the Longstreets and she has a couple boxes of old papers. She’s going to dig them out of the attic and we can look at them tomorrow.”
“That’s great,” Nigh said, moving away from the window and wiping a tear away.
“Hey,” Jace said as he put his hands on her shoulders. “You don’t look so good.”
She looked up at him. “I’m fine. Just thinking too much. It’s better if I stay busy and don’t think.”
“You and me both. How about dinner? I was told there’s a great restaurant in town.”
“No, I think I’ll…”
Jace moved his hand to under her chin, then lifted her face to his as his eyes searched hers. “I know how you feel,” he said softly. “I know what it is to lose someone close to you, and I know how it feels to be eaten alive with the question of ‘why?’ Why did it happen? What was the sense of it? I know—”
He broke off as he bent and put his mouth on hers for a long, sweet kiss, a gentle kiss, but one of such longing that chills went down Nigh’s spine.
Abruptly, Jace broke away and stepped back from her. “I didn’t mean to do that.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s fine to kiss someone. I’m fine with—”
“No,” Jace said. “I meant that I didn’t mean to do that.”
Nigh was confused. “You said that.”
He ran his hand over his face. “Look, you and I both know that we’re attracted to each other. From the moment I first saw you my palms have been sweating. I should have been furious with you for what you wrote about me. I could have sued you, but what did I do but sit down and have a cup of tea with you? And since then I haven’t spent more than ten waking minutes away from you—and don’t want to. It isn’t a question of whether or not I want to kiss you, snog you, or shag you, as you English say, but I’m telling you that I didn’t mean to do that.”
He had given her so much information that all Nigh could do was blink at him. From his attitude toward her she’d begun to think that he actually was gay, but…
“So who kissed me?” she asked, swallowing. “Sweaty palms,” he said. “And how do you know the difference?”
Jace started to say something, but instead he pulled her into his arms and kissed her with the passion he’d been feeling since he met her. His hands ran over her back, up her neck, through her hair, then back down again, while his mouth overtook hers, his tongue touching hers, invading her mouth.
He released her as abruptly as he’d taken her, and when he broke away, for a moment, they both stood there panting, staring at each other with heaving chests.
“Did you mean that one?” Nigh managed to say.
“Oh yeah.” He took a step toward her, but then stopped. The next moment he was at the door to her bedroom. “Look, Nigh, I have things—”
“Don’t say it again,” she said. “You have issues in your life. Me too. Right now I want to take a bath. I’ll meet you downstairs in an hour. We’ll have dinner with no liquor, or none for me anyway.”
Jace nodded but said nothing, then left the room.
Alone in the room, Nigh thought that she should be angry at him. She should tell him what she thought of him and his on again/off again, hot and cold attitude toward her, but she didn’t feel that way. Instead, she started waltzing about the room humming the words to “I Could Have Danced All Night.”
She spent nearly a half hour soaking in the tub, smiling the whole time, then she spent a long, leisurely half hour applying makeup and dressing in a black silk cocktail dress, black hose, and high black heels.
When she went downstairs, she also had a letter ready to fax to Ralph, who owned the newspaper that had caused so many problems. She asked him to print a retraction saying that there would be no Ghost Center, that everything had been a mistake. There would be no jobs. Priory House was a private residence and would remain so.
She showed it to Jace, and he practically ran to find Mrs. Fenney and a fax machine. Ten minutes later, he returned, took Nigh’s arm, and said, “It’s done.”
They laughed together in relief.
13
Jace and Nigh drove into the village and went straight to the restaurant. By silent mutual agreement, they didn’t talk about the Longstreets or the Stuarts, but only about themselves. Jace wanted to hear more about what Nigh had done in her life and where she’d been. She wanted to know about him. She quickly saw that he’d talk and answer questions as long as it didn’t involve recent history. She could get him to tell anything about himself until about six years ago. After that, he grew silent.
True to her word, Nigh drank only half a glass of wine. After dinner, they went back to the hotel and separated to go to their own rooms. There was no kissing, no hand-holding, no awkwardness. But when Nigh closed the door to her room, she leaned against it for a while, her eyes closed. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes you met a man you could talk to, laugh with, tease, and…well, maybe you could love.
She went to bed smiling.
The next morning, she met Jace for breakfast at 8:00 a.m. and wasn’t surprised to see him chowing down on a “fry-up.”
“Not many people want these anymore,” Mrs. Fenney said, sliding fried tomatoes onto Jace’s heaping plate. “I think it’s a shame. My husband had a fry-up every morning for forty years and it never hurt him.”
Nigh leaned across the table and whispered, “But he’s not here now, is he? That stu
ff is going to kill you.”
“Can’t help it,” Jace said. “Mrs. Browne spoiled me.” He bit into a blood sausage.
After breakfast, they walked into the town. “I like this village,” she said. “I like it better than Margate.”
“I got the idea you loved Margate.”
“They know too much about me there.”
“Like where your birthmarks are?”
“Like when my parents died and what I’ve seen and done and who I know. I think it would be nice to move somewhere else and start over. Clean, fresh.”
“What about your job?”
“Maybe I’ll write murder mysteries and sell them to Americans and make millions.”
Smiling, Jace said, “There’s the church, and I think that’s the vicar going in. Come on, let’s catch him.”
“You go on. The day’s too pretty to be inside. I think I’ll stay out here.”
“I’ll meet you…”
She waved her hand. “Go. You’re not going to lose me. I’ll be around.”
He smiled at her, then hurried off to the church. She followed him at a slower pace, looking about her as she walked. What she’d said to Jace about starting over, clean and fresh, had just come out of her mouth, but she liked the idea. It wasn’t as though she’d grown up having a burning ambition to be a journalist. It was something that had just happened to her. On the other hand, she’d been told she was good at it, so maybe she had wanted to do it. The question was, could her being a journalist make a difference in the world?
The church was enclosed by an iron fence, old and rusty in spots, but intact and kept in good repair. To the left was the cemetery, and Nigh knew she should go there and look for Danny Longstreet’s grave, but she didn’t want to see any tomb-stones. Right now, she didn’t want to think of death.
To the right of the church was a lovely border of flowers and a pretty wooden bench. She sat down on it and looked at the stonework of the church. For a moment she closed her eyes and almost went to sleep. A sound startled her.