Relative Strangers (6 page)

“My grandfather made that,” Lucas said as he came up behind them.

A somewhat stilted conversation about Christmas decorations followed, continuing until Lucas had seated them at a cozy table in a window alcove. Finally, he excused himself to tend to hotel business. Corrie watched him leave the dining room and told herself that her sigh was one of relief.

Rachel gave a snort of disgust. “You’re missing a golden opportunity here, kiddo. Handsome. Obviously well-off if he owns this place.” She gestured toward the Santa and sleigh. “And the whole family appears to be disgustingly talented. What did he say? His grandfather built that?”

“Mmmm.” That must have been Adrienne’s grandson, Corrie mused as she picked up the menu. She stared unseeing at the selections, suddenly reminded that she’d dreamed about Adrienne Sinclair the previous night, an Adrienne who’d been to a ball and was in the process of taking off that same dress she had on in her portrait.

In Corrie’s dream, Adrienne had slipped a lacy nightgown over her head, then climbed into a four-poster to snuggle next to a dark-haired, hazel-eyed man. The bed had been exactly like the one in Corrie’s room. The man had been a dead ringer for Lucas Sinclair.

Think about something else, she warned herself.

“That light golden brown stuff is called bengaline,” she said. “It’s a heavy-ribbed silk, which gives it a corded look. And the panels with the cream ground are of lampas, another sort of silk.”

Rachel gave her an odd look. “What on earth are you talking about, Corrie?”

“Adrienne Sinclair’s gown. The one in the portrait”

“Oh.” Rachel still looked confused.

No wonder, Corrie thought. Rachel hadn’t been there when Lucas “introduced” Corrie to his ancestor.

She tried to shake off the feeling that something very weird was happening to her, but she wasn’t entirely successful. She knew she hadn’t gotten her knowledge of turn-of-the-century fabrics out of any book. It was as if she’d been there, with Adrienne. As if she suddenly understood what a woman who’d been dead for a hundred years had thought and felt.

Impossible.

But Corrie’s sense of disorientation continued as she and Rachel ordered their meal and were served. Then, when they were halfway through the main course, Corrie looked up and saw her again—the woman dressed as Adrienne Sinclair. She was seated at the next table with a man who looked enough like Lucas to be his older brother.

Corrie blinked.

This couldn’t be right. Both people were dressed in the style of the last century, but this time Adrienne wore less formal attire. The table was different from those in the rest of the dining room too. Larger. Covered with a lace tablecloth instead of linen. And bright sunlight illuminated the couple. Corrie blinked again, harder, but they were still there. And everyone else around them seemed blurry.

Adrienne smiled at her husband.

Then they were all alone in the grand dining room.

It normally seated two hundred and twenty-five. Corrie felt a hint of Adrienne’s pride as she surveyed her surroundings. Each heavy table was flanked by ten high-backed armchairs. The best tables had a view through the picture window at one end of the hundred-and-fifty-foot-long room.

“Tell me your new scheme,” the man said.

No. Not just any man, Corrie thought. Lucas Sinclair. An older Lucas, beginning to go gray.

“I think we should have an artesian well put in,” Adrienne answered. “The water tank can be concealed in the woods above the hotel. Out of sight. The same way he hide the laundry room in the barn.” What guests could not see, they did not have to think about.

“The spring provides plenty of water for all the hotel’s needs. Why do we need a well?”

“Needing one isn’t the point. Having two separate sources of water will emphasize the uniqueness of that which comes from the spring. We can bottle it. Sell it. Increase our income.”

“Why go to so much trouble to convince people that Sinclair Spring Water is special? Your pamphlets have already accomplished that. We can commence bottling it any time you like.”

Adrienne gave him a severe look. “I am serious about this, Lucas.”

“Put in a well when we have no need to? Why, the next thing you know, you’ll be trying to convince me to keep the hotel open all year round.”

Genuinely appalled by the thought, Adrienne jerked her hand away and put both fists on her hips. “Never! What kind of fool do you take me for?”

Behind them, a door slammed against the wall as it was flung open. Horatio Mead stormed into the dining room.

Adrienne gaped at her brother. He had not set foot inside the Sinclair House for over twenty-five years.

The collar of Horatio’s shirt was askew. His eyes were wild. When he spoke, the words came out in a bellow of rage. “What have you done with my daughter?”

Corrie Ballantyne recoiled from the violence of the man’s emotions.

Before her eyes, the scene dissolved until only Adrienne remained. Her shimmering shape floated for a moment in midair, then flashed Corrie a triumphant grin . . . just before fading into nothingness.

Gulping audibly, Corrie continued to stare. How had she just been able to see and hear a scene from more than a hundred years in the past?

Very faintly, as if from far away, Corrie heard Rachel calling her name.

Then Lucas Sinclair, the current one, spoke sharply. “What is it?” he demanded. “What’s wrong?”

Corrie was painfully aware that neither of them had seen anything out of the ordinary in the dining room. Just as neither of them had seen the woman wearing the dress from Adrienne’s portrait the night before.

“No,” she whispered. “Not possible.”

But there was no other explanation.

“Corrie? Are you all right?” Lucas had taken the empty chair at their table to sit next to her, all sympathy and concern as he leaned close and placed gentle hands on her shoulders. He peered worriedly into her eyes.

She forced herself to look at him. This was not going to go over well, but he had to be told.

“Lucas,” she said. “I do believe I just saw your great-great-grandmother’s ghost.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Lucas’s first thought was that she’d taken a harder blow to the head than any of them had imagined.

“I saw Adrienne talking to a man,” Corrie went on. She had an earnest look on her face as she tried to explain her outrageous statement. “It was probably your great-great-grandfather, since you look just like him. They were sitting at a table right over there. And then a second man, a very angry man, came charging in and interrupted them.” She paused, looking puzzled. “For a moment there I thought I knew who he was, too, but it’s gone now.” She touched her fingers to her forehead near the bandage and briefly closed her eyes.

“The doctor wanted her to stay overnight at the hospital,” Lucas told Rachel. At the same time he reached across the table and took Corrie’s wineglass away from her.

“Hey!” she objected.

“Just a precaution. If you’re hallucinating—”

“I’m not hallucinating. I know what I saw.”

“A ghost?” Skepticism laced his voice.

“Yes. A ghost. And this wasn’t the first time I’ve seen her. There were two other occasions, both last night at the party.”

“When you were drinking spiked eggnog.”

“When I was drinking
plain
eggnog.”

She bristled like an affronted feline, convincing Lucas that she believed what she was saying. He, however, was not so credulous. A ghost? Not likely.

The way Lucas saw things, other explanations were easier to accept, even if they were equally unpalatable. The bump on the head could be causing delusions. Or Corrie Ballantyne had come to the Sinclair House with some preexisting problem. A tendency to drink too much. Or a mental illness.

He sure knew how to pick them! In spite of the wild claim she was making, he still felt the stir of attraction just sitting this close to her in the deliberately romantic lighting of the hotel dining room.

Yet another explanation occurred to Lucas. She got points for originality if this was a pickup line, but if it was, she’d miscalculated. He’d accepted that a freak accident right in front of his place had thrown them together, but it was too much to expect him to believe she just happened to see
his
ancestor’s ghost.

What irony, he thought. If she’d kept on playing hard to get, he probably would have come around. He’d already been reconsidering, contemplating asking her out. Especially after that devastating kiss they’d shared.

“Look,” she said, “I know this sounds impossible, but I’m quite sure of what I saw. If you don’t want to hear more about it, then fine. Go away. No one’s forcing you to stay and listen.” She caught a waiter’s attention and asked for coffee.

Lucas kept silent until they’d been served and Corrie had downed half a cup of the steaming brew. “If you are going to talk about what you think you saw,” he said in a low voice, aware of the number of people, guests and staff, who might overhear their conversation, “then I’m staying. After all, that’s my great-great-grandmother you claim to have seen.”

“Did
see.” She glared at him.

He glared back.
“Thought
you saw.”

Rachel broke the tension. “So what did this alleged ghost look like already?”

Making a point of ignoring him and speaking to her friend, Corrie answered. “The woman I saw last night looked exactly like the portrait in the Fireside Room. Right down to the gloves on her hands. Then, and again this evening, she seemed as solid as a real flesh-and-blood person.” Corrie took another long swallow of coffee and looked thoughtful. “I always imagined ghosts would be more ethereal. Transparent. Kind of floaty in their movements. If there were ghosts, that is.”

“Second thoughts?” Lucas asked. Her claims were absurd. What a pity if such an attractive, otherwise rational woman chose to believe in the supernatural.

“Let’s say I’m open to any other interpretation of the facts,” Corrie said to him in a bleak voice. “I just can’t think of one.”

“There has to be a logical explanation for what you saw,” Rachel said. “Maybe someone was wearing that dress last night. I mean, I didn’t see her, but perhaps I just didn’t look quickly enough.”

“She was hard to miss. The bustle alone stuck out at least a foot.”

Lucas started to interrupt, to say that no one at the party had been dressed as Adrienne, but he thought better of it. Corrie hadn’t believed him last night. She wasn’t likely to now.

To his surprise, she turned to him. Her hand trembled as she set her empty cup down in its saucer. “Convince me I’m mistaken. Please. The idea I’ve been singled out to be haunted does not appeal to me.”

“You did hit your head,” he reminded her.

She sighed. “That won’t account for last night.”

He felt as if they were going around in circles.

“So what we have here is a woman with a fabulous dressmaker.” Rachel had steepled her fingers in the best Sherlock Holmes fashion, but she ended up sounding more like Sigmund Freud. “Hallucinations last night? The aftereffects of concussion today?”

Corrie shivered in spite of the warmth of the room. “But she seemed so real.” She reached for her coffee cup and, finding it empty, signaled for a refill. “In a way it’s spookier to remember what I saw than it was to witness it.”

Rachel glanced at Lucas, deep concern for Corrie in her dark eyes. He didn’t know what to say, to her or to Corrie.

“You two
should
have seen her last night,” Corrie said. “‘Why didn’t you if she was there?” Her voice caught. “That brings us back to ghosts.”

“You really do believe you saw something, don’t you?”

“Of course I saw something, Lucas. I wouldn’t make such an outrageous claim if I hadn’t. Trust me, I’m not the sort of person who wants to get her name in some supermarket tabloid.” She made a face at the thought.

Lucas realized he believed her.

“Let’s try being logical then,” he suggested. “Have you ever been tested for ESP?”

“Previous sightings?” Rachel asked. “Unexplained phenomena? Things that go bump in the night?”

“No, and I haven’t been exorcised lately, either.”

“Don’t go getting all huffy on me, kiddo. You did ask for help.”

“Sorry.” The waiter refilled their cups. Corrie all but inhaled this one.

“She always did have an active imagination,” Rachel said to Lucas. “I can still remember her brothers teasing her because she watched a silly old adventure film on television and spent the next week looking over her shoulder for the Cyclops.”

“The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad,”
Corrie clarified. She shrugged, looking embarrassed. “Even now, knowing how special effects are created, that monster still gives me the willies.”

“Too much imagination,” Rachel declared.

“Perhaps that’s all there is to it.” Lucas made the comment without much hope it would prove true. Life was never that simple.

“Nice theory,” she said, “but it doesn’t explain why my vocabulary suddenly includes words like bengaline and lampas. Those are two nineteenth-century fabrics, Lucas, but I shouldn’t know that.”

“Interesting,” Rachel mused. “I never thought about this before. Do you suppose ghosts get to pick the outfit they do their haunting in? I mean, was that her favorite dress? Or did she die wearing it?”

“This is not helping, Rachel.”

Rachel seemed uncertain whether to take her friend seriously or not, and Lucas sympathized. He was certainly having trouble buying Corrie’s wild tale. She seemed perfectly sane otherwise, but there was no way he could believe her.

The waiter noticed Corrie’s cup was empty again and returned with the coffeepot. As his boss, Lucas was glad the young man, a college student working on his vacation, was doing his job, but the constant interruptions were jarring, an unwanted reminder that they were in a very public place.

“The last thing you need is more caffeine,” he told Corrie.

“He’s right,” Rachel said. “Another sip or two and you could go from just a little crazy all the way to meshuggenah.”

“Fine. Gang up on me!” She stood.