Relative Strangers (11 page)

“Your mother said Adrienne was responsible for installing tennis courts and a tenpin bowling alley and the golf course, and that she had a specially dug and stocked fishpond put in near the springhouse. Is that it just ahead?”

“Yes. It was originally dug as a fishpond, then expanded into a swimming hole.” They approached the ice-covered pond. “Adrienne made rowboats available for those who wanted to while away their vacation with a pole and a can of worms. Before people started to insist on heated and chlorinated water and pool filters, swimming in lakes and ponds, man-made or otherwise, was a popular sport.”

“You don’t sound too fond of modern swimming pools, and yet you have one.”

“A recent addition. Pop’s idea.” Lucas still found it astonishing that so many of their winter guests were fool enough to strip down to skimpy swimwear and frolic in water surrounded by snow. “Nuts,” he commented under his breath.

“If being crazy is the criteria for swimming outdoors in the dead of winter, then by rights I should be on my way to the hotel gift shop right this minute to buy myself a suit.”

Lucas enjoyed a brief, tantalizing image of Corrie in a bikini before he responded to the more telling part of her remark. “For the record, I don’t think you’re crazy.” Neither were the folks who used the Sinclair House pool. They slipped into heated water through an indoor tunnel, descending steps at one end of the locker room to swim out into the pool itself. As long as they stayed in the water while they were out of doors, they remained comfortably warm.

“It occurs to me that I may be having a nervous breakdown,” Corrie confessed.

Lucas felt a stab of concern. The idea of Corrie suffering was upsetting.

“What if there is no ghost?” she continued. “What if she’s a figment of my imagination? Let’s face it, paranormal experiences just don’t happen to ordinary people.”

He refrained from sharing his first response to that little speech, that she was far from ordinary. Instead he answered her question with one of his own. “Why would you be having a breakdown?”

“My mother died last year at Christmastime,” she said as they circled the pond. “Maybe I’m having a delayed reaction.” The explanation came so reluctantly that Lucas suspected she regretted broaching the subject.

“Is your father still living?” he asked.

“Oh, yes.” Now she sounded bitter. He’d wondered why she wasn’t spending the holiday with her family. He was still curious, but a close inspection of her closed expression made him decide to shift the conversation back to his own family.

“I’m curious about something,” he said. “A little while ago, when I asked if you’d seen Adrienne again, you said, ‘No, worse luck.’ If you were so anxious to encounter her, why did you avoid the hotel dining room last night?”

Unwilling to look at him, Corrie kept walking, eyes on the path ahead. By now they were going back the way they’d come and were once more passing the pine grove.

“Call it an approach/avoidance problem,” she said after a moment. “I did want to confront Adrienne after our sleigh ride, but as suppertime approached I realized that I didn’t want to risk a repeat performance of what happened Christmas night. I can take only so much public humiliation. No one else would have seen her if she’d appeared in the dining room a second time, but I’d have been desperately trying to find someone who could. I’d have ended up making a fool of myself, and I just couldn’t face having that happen.”

“Was
it simply that you didn’t want to be embarrassed,” Lucas asked, “or also that you preferred not to see me again just then?” He held his breath waiting for her answer.

“Maybe a little of both,” she admitted. “This is a very weird situation, Lucas. I don’t know what to think. About anything.”

Weird. She had that right. He didn’t like to think too carefully about why he was out there with her instead of in his office, working.

With a sigh and a shrug, she finally glanced up at him. “Maybe I
am
having a mental breakdown. Maybe there
is
no ghost.”

“But, Corrie,” he said, unable to resist, “if there is no Adrienne, wouldn’t that mean it was all your own idea to kiss me?”

Color flooded into her face as she came to an abrupt halt. She swallowed hard. “I guess if my imagination has run wild since I arrived at the Sinclair House, my libido could have too. But that’s not my usual style, believe me.”

He smiled and yielded to the impulse to lean down and gently kiss the healing gash on her forehead. Then he took her arm and resumed walking.

“Stress does do funny things to a person,” he said, “but I’d like to think what we feel for each other when we’re together isn’t the result of anything more mysterious than a strong mutual attraction. I like you, Corrie. In fact, I’d like to—”

He broke off, perplexed, when he realized her gaze was fixed on the hotel ahead.

As he looked into her stricken face, he saw her close her eyes, then open them again. At once she drew in a sharp breath. Then she jerked away from him and began to run toward the hotel.

He caught up with her just as she was climbing the wide stairs to the veranda. “Corrie?” He grabbed her by the forearms, turning her to face him and giving her a little shake to get her attention.

When her expression remained as blank as a clean slate, Lucas didn’t hesitate. Heedless of curious stares, he picked Corrie up and carried her into the hotel.

As soon as the warm air in the lobby hit her, she snapped out of her trance. Docility vanished as she started to struggle. “What are you doing? Put me down.”

He ignored her rancorous words and strode toward the bank of elevators. “Did you know,” he said, maintaining a conversational tone and pausing to smile politely at passing hotel guests, “that this elevator operates in the same shaft used by the first one ever installed in the hotel, way back in Adrienne’s day?”

“Do tell.” Nettled, Corrie fixed her gaze on the panel, watching the slow-moving floor indicator drift toward the
L.

“It was considered quite innovative back in 1883. Advertised as very safe, being hydraulic. A cable opened a valve that allowed water to enter the shaft and that forced the elevator to ascend. To descend, the water was slowly released to lower the elevator. The only problem came when they wanted to hold it steady at one floor. It tended to drift.”

The elevator stopped on the second floor.

“It could do with a little drift right now.” Corrie sounded miffed. “And you can put me down anytime.”

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. He’d been babbling like some fool tour guide in an absurd attempt to make it seem that carrying a woman through the lobby was a normal, everyday thing to do.

For the first time in his life, Lucas Sinclair of the Sinclair House wished all the hotel’s paying guests would simply disappear. He wanted to be alone with Corrie. He wanted to tell her he cared about her, that he was worried about her.

And he wanted to find out what on earth, or off it, had caused her to behave as she had just now. But he had the feeling he already knew the answer to that question.

Maybe babbling wasn’t such a bad way to go.

“Electric communicators were installed at about the same time,” he said brightly as another couple passed by and gave them a curious look. “Those were the first intercoms. We also had an electric light plant in use by 1881. Electric lights were installed in all the public rooms and in the bathrooms.”

“I’ve read the literature,” Corrie informed him, and paraphrased Adrienne’s text to prove it: “Standard furnishings included sitz baths, showers, pink marble washbasins, and vases of peacock feathers. The baths were vented with electric exhaust fans guaranteed to eliminate ‘noxious fumes.’“

At last the elevator door opened. Lucas stepped inside, still carrying Corrie. Only when they were safely enclosed by the cage did he let her go. As her legs slid languidly down his body, he shifted the arm that had been supporting her lower back and curved it around her shoulders. He wasn’t about to let go of her completely, not until they were safe in her room.

Corrie continued to look a trifle dazed, and she offered no word of protest when he ushered her out of the elevator on the third floor and steered her down the hall toward her door. Rachel came out of her room across the hail as he was using his master key to unlock Corrie’s door. One look at her friend’s pale face had her rushing to join them.

Inside, Corrie discarded her coat, revealing a pale blue sweater that matched her eyes, and drifted to the window. Lucas knew she was staring down at the roof of the veranda.

“Have you seen Adrienne again?” Rachel demanded.

Lucas started to say yes, but Corrie spoke before he could get the word out. “It wasn’t even the same century.”

“What the hell?” He’d been prepared, more or less, to cope with another Adrienne sighting. This unexpected announcement threw him a curve.

“There was a peculiar smell in the air,” Corrie said. “Smoke, I think. In fact, I’m pretty sure it must have been, and the year had to be 1947.” Her voice started to shake. “During the wildfires.”

Lucas almost lost his temper then. What kind of credulous fool did she take him for?

“Start at the beginning,” Rachel cut in. “What exactly did you see?”

Corrie shook her head, as if to clear her thoughts, and set a cloud of soft brown hair swirling. Lucas swallowed hard. He didn’t like this one bit, but he might as well let her talk. He braced himself for more unwelcome revelations.

“Lucas and I were taking a walk and I had just glanced toward the hotel,” Corrie said, “when suddenly the daylight seemed to dim. Then the snow-covered ground and the bare branches faded away. In their place was a rolling lawn just beginning to turn brown. Trees still had the last colorful leaves of autumn clinging to their branches. I was standing on a gravel path, not flagstones.” She frowned, trying to recall details. “It was bordered by a low-growing plant. Hyssop, I think.”

Startled, Lucas almost spoke. How could she possibly know that? He only knew because the alterations had been made when he was a teenager and he remembered the gardener complaining. Old Ernest hadn’t liked change.

Corrie continued to stare out the window. Lucas couldn’t make out her expression, but the timbre of her voice told him she believed every word she said. “I saw three people posed on the veranda, waiting while a photographer took their picture.”

Of course, Lucas thought. That explained it. She’d seen a picture of the old path to the pond. That’s how she knew about the hyssop and the gravel.

“They were on vacation,” Corrie continued, “but they were going to cut their stay short because of the increasing fire danger in the area.”

“Who were these people?” Lucas asked.

“A girl and her parents.”

“Girl? The girl who supposedly saw Adrienne’s ghost?”

“I think so.” Corrie finally turned and met his eyes. Her face was ashen, her expression fearful. “Lucas, I recognized her. I’ve seen the photograph they had taken that day.”

He knew in advance he wouldn’t like her reply, but he asked anyway. “Who was she?”

Corrie drew in a deep, strengthening breath before blurting out her answer. “That girl was my mother.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Lucas didn’t believe her.

Corrie could see it in his eyes the moment she made her startling announcement.

To his credit, he didn’t immediately turn his back and stalk out of her room, though she thought he might secretly want to. He seemed too concerned about her emotional state to follow through on the impulse. The realization that he cared warmed her heart even as it complicated her feelings.

“Don’t humor me,” she warned as he started to speak. “I know it sounds preposterous. I wouldn’t believe me if I told myself such a story.”

“Corrie, I . . .” His voice trailed off, and he raked his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know what to say. Or what to believe.”

“Just don’t suggest a shrink. This time I
know
what I saw.”

Rachel cleared her throat. “Y’know, you’re overlooking something here. Remember when I first suggested we come to the Sinclair House? You got an odd look on your face and then you agreed without a bit of argument. Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe the name had a familiar ring to it.” A positive one, she remembered. She’d jumped at the invitation because it felt
right. She’d thought at the time that she was simply glad of any excuse to be hundreds of miles away from her father and brothers at Christmas, but what if
it had been more than that?

“Could your mother have stayed here and talked about the place?” Rachel went on. “Maybe even mentioned the portrait of Adrienne? Kids tuck the most amazing things away in their subconscious, and you always did have a wild imagination.”

“You’re saying I dreamed all this up from stories I heard about my mother’s visit to the Sinclair House when she was a child? But I don’t remember being told any!”

Relief plain in his voice, Lucas spoke. “We have old registers. I can check for her name.”

“Alice Todd. Her parents were Mary and David Todd.”

Corrie worried her lower lip with her teeth. Something wasn’t right about this explanation. Oh, she’d like it to be true, but it wouldn’t account for everything. It didn’t account for Horatio.

“I’d like to be alone now,” she said abruptly. “I need to think.”

As soon as Lucas and Rachel had left, Corrie headed for the phone. On Christmas Day, when she had called to tell her father where she was spending the holidays, he’d said he’d heard of the Sinclair House.

Now she needed to know where and when.

That it probably had something to do with her mother made phoning him awkward. Since her death they’d both avoided mention of Alice Ballantyne. The pain of losing her still ran deep. So did Corrie’s resentment. And her sense of guilt.

With a troubled mind, she dialed the number. She nearly hung up before it rang.

Ten minutes later she was no less troubled, but she did have a few answers. Her mother had stayed at the Sinclair House when she was barely in her teens. That fit the date 1947. She hadn’t spoken of the visit often, Corrie’s father had said, but she had told him that it had been a “unique” experience. She’d suggested spending a vacation there once, hut they’d decided it would be too expensive.