Woman Without a Past by Whitney Phyllis A.;

Author:Whitney, Phyllis A.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media Romance
Published: 2017-07-19T16:52:11+00:00

10

The upstairs hall sitting room, on which several bedrooms opened, was illumined at this hour by a single table lamp. At the front it opened onto a small balcony two stories above the front door. I stood for a moment looking about, listening intently. I’d slept deeply for several hours, but I was wide awake now and both curious and uneasy. The other bedroom doors were closed and nothing stirred, so Amelia and her mother must not have heard what I had heard.

Since there was no sound now coming from anywhere, I stepped out on the balcony beneath the stars. On either side the splendid white houses of South Battery slept peacefully and regally in the glow of streetlights. The balconies of the houses in either direction repeated patterned white balustrades over and over. Along the near shore paths of yellow light floated across harbor waters. Somewhere behind me on another street someone was playing a jazz piano, clearly improvising.

For a few moments the night seemed to quiet me, and then the thumping sound began again. This time it didn’t stop when I returned to the sitting room, and I could tell that it did indeed come from the screened area of the dark storeroom.

I moved quietly in that direction and found a light switch. At once the wooden rocking horse ceased its vigorous movement, slowing gently to a stop. No one rode its back, and no one hid among the trunks and boxes, except for Miss Kitty. I might have suspected her of rocking the horse, but she stood poised on the lid of a trunk with her fur puffed to twice its size. Even her tail bristled in alarm. Yet out at Mountfort Hall she’d seemed happy playing with Nathanial’s “spirit.” So whatever presence moved the rocking horse must have seemed inimical to the cat.

I shook myself impatiently, dismissing such nervous and exaggerated imaginings. But when something touched my shoulder, I almost screamed. I swung around to find Valerie Mountfort behind me, smiling apologetically.

“I’m sorry, Cecelia. I didn’t mean to startle you. I heard the horse rocking so I came out—and here you were, ahead of me. But of course it stopped, as it always does when someone comes near it.”

In her long white nightgown, with ruffled lace at her wrists, she looked like a beautiful ghost herself. Fair hair curled about her forehead in short locks, while the rest hung in its long braid down her back. In this light she looked amazingly young—younger than Amelia. As though life had been arrested for her somewhere in the past. As illusion, of course, since I’d seen her sad, worn look by daylight.

She perched herself on the rounded top of a low old-fashioned trunk, her knees pulled up under her voluminous gown and her hands clasped about them. Nearby, Miss Kitty relaxed, her fur subsiding.

This strange woman who was supposed to be my mother regarded me calmly. “Don’t go back to bed right away, Cecelia. Stay a little while and talk to me.

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