Midnight in Your Arms Read Free Page A

was that the house has very much to do with you. You see, Miss Dearborn, Stonecross Hall is yours.”
    Laura’s mind raced, her thoughts forming unbidden. Of course it is. It always has been mine, and I its … She struggled to repress the rush of thoughts, her visage unmoved, her brow maintaining the shape of polite skepticism.
    “How is that possible?” she said evenly, taking a sip, and not even flinching as the boiling liquid scalded her tongue. She couldn’t feel a thing. She was utterly numb—whether with anticipation or with dread, she couldn’t tell. She was an automaton, a doll, dancing on invisible strings. Strings that tie me to Stonecross, she thought, absently. The whole thing was ridiculous.
    “This is absurd,” she said. “I’ve never owned anything in my life. I have no family, no connections. Just how is it that I’ve come to own a house?”
    “It was left to you by the last person ever to own the house, by the family name of Storm.”
    “And are they distant relations of mine? I’ve never heard of them until now.”
    “No, Miss Dearborn. In fact, no living member of the family has existed in quite some time.”
    “I don’t understand. Then who has made me the beneficiary of the house?”
    “A Mr. Alaric Storm the Third.”
    A ridiculous name, like something straight out of a penny novel . “I was not aware of having been known to a Mr. Alaric Storm, of any numeral.”
    “You aren’t. In fact, you could not possibly be known to Mr. Storm, Miss Dearborn, as the gentleman in question died thirty-five years ago.”
    “I am only twenty-eight.”
    “Just so.”
    “Therefore, Mr.—Storm, was it?—died nearly ten years before I was born!”
    “Precisely.”
    “I … I am at a loss. This makes no sense whatsoever.”
    “Indeed it does not. And yet, here we are.”
    “If Mr. Storm died thirty-five years ago and left his house to me in his will, why is it I am only hearing of it now?”
    “You mean, why were you not made aware of the bequest for so many years?”
    “Indeed. I should have been very glad of a house at many times in my life. How is it that I am being given one at precisely the time when I need it least?”
    Mr. Tisdale didn’t make any reference to the shabby state of their surroundings. He did not even seem to be thinking of it, and Laura was absurdly grateful to him. “The will stipulated that the house should not be bequeathed until the occasion of your twenty-eighth birthday. Which, I am sure you will recall, is in fact today. So here I am.”
    Laura was more than a little astounded. Was it really her birthday? Was she really only just twenty-eight? Twenty-eight might not be particularly young, but on her best days, she felt forty-five when her sessions were finished and she turned in for the night. If she was lucky, she would rise feeling only marginally younger—a sprightly thirty -eight, most days. At any rate, she hadn’t celebrated her birthday since before the war, when she had been an impossibly naïve young girl.
    Mr. Tisdale patted her hand kindly, bringing her back to herself. “Happy Birthday, Miss Dearborn,” he said with a grin. “You, my dear woman, are an heiress of no inconsiderable fortune and property. I must say, this has been a curious undertaking. It isn’t often one must wait for one’s client to be born before bestowing upon her a bequest.”
    Laura nodded absently, only half listening as he prattled on. It was a dream. It had to be a dream. She looked at the papers Mr. Tisdale laid before her without seeing them. She took up the pen he offered her without feeling the weight of it in her hand, and signed the places he indicated without consciously remembering her own name. In a trice, it was done. She was a rich woman. She owned a house in the country. She need never work for pay again, and more importantly, she need never speak to another ghost for as long as she lived.

 
C HAPTER T WO
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Stonecross Hall
    October 1866
    A decade had