Read Online Whispers at Midnight by Andrea Parnell - Free Book Online

like those on the houses in
town—brick walls, and wide stone steps would last another century.
Somehow that thought of permanence lifted her spirits again, and by
the time the carriage reached the house she was once more eager to
get inside.
    The driver halted his horses and climbed
down to assist Amanda in alighting from the carriage. She paid the
man and thanked him, watching contemplatively as he drove away.
From the branches of a great oak a bird warbled the sweet, clear
song of summer. Amanda lifted her eyes to the treetops and smiled,
feeling the last of her apprehension fly away. She would not let an
embarrassing meeting with Ryne Sullivan, nor a nightmare sprung
from fatigue, dim her happiness at owning Wicklow.
    Adding her own happy tune to that of the
bird, Amanda whirled lightly and started up the steps. Above, a
movement in a window caught her eye. She thought first that Ryne
might have come back to the house. But a second glance assured her
the silhouette belonged to a woman moving about in Aunt Elise’s
bedroom.
    Angered, Amanda flew up the steps, spurred
on by the indignity of Ryne Sullivan’s having brought another of
his doxies to her house. Finding the door unlocked, another affront
to her ownership, she rushed inside, skirts flying out behind her,
and raced to the stairs. The very thought of him made her
choke.
    “Who’s there?” came a cry from a plump old
dragon of a woman standing in the parlor door.
    Bewildered, Amanda turned from the stairs
and hurried toward the woman. She could not believe anyone could
have come down the stairs and reached the parlor before she herself
opened the front door. It seemed doubly unlikely that this woman,
old and weighty, could have moved with such speed.
    “Who are you?” Amanda asked angrily,
withstanding a scorching look from a pair of dark eyes. “What are
you doing in my house?”
    The woman had a long, sharp nose that was
out of sorts on a plump face, and wiry white hair knotted on the
top of her head.
    “If you’re looking for Miss Fairfax, she’s
not here,” she said loudly, waddling toward Amanda. “Don’t know
when she’ll be back. Don’t know nothing about her except she’s got
this house what ought to belong to Mr. Gardner or Mr. Ryne.”
    “I am Miss Fairfax,” Amanda said hotly.
“Who’s upstairs?” She waited impatiently for an answer, but the old
woman either didn’t hear or ignored her words. She simply frowned
and shook her grizzled head from side to side.
    “Some English girl, they say. Don’t know
what got into Miss Elise, giving the house up to some stranger.”
She stopped and laughed. “She won’t stay long, though. Old Jubal’ll
see to that. Won’t have a stranger owning Wicklow. No he
won’t.”
    Amanda’s chin went up stubbornly. “Stop your
prattling and tell me who is upstairs.”
    “What’s that, miss?” The old woman cupped a
hand to her ear. “I said Miss Fairfax isn’t here.”
    The woman was intolerable. “Oh, forget you!”
Amanda shouted, and spun around. She’d find out for herself who was
in Aunt Elise’s bedroom. Out of breath, she arrived at the top of
the stairs and dashed down the hall to the corner room where she
had seen the woman in the window. “Hello, who’s there?” she asked,
thrusting the door open and searching the dim rose bedroom with her
eyes.
    She saw no one. The room was as she had left
it. The bed unmade, the dustcovers in a heap in one corner. The
chair she had pulled close to the bed sat as she remembered. Had
anyone been in the room other than she and Elizabeth, there was
nothing to show it. And yet she couldn’t rid herself of the
conviction that she had seen someone.
    Almost in a panic, she shut the door and
hurried through the other rooms, searching them all. There was no
evidence of anyone else in the house. Not Ryne. Not another woman.
At last she was left with the uncomfortable suspicion that once
again her imagination had tricked her. But there was still