Shades of Midnight Read Free

and cry and laugh in the dark. Unfortunately, he loved his ghosts more than he'd ever loved her.
    "Tea?" she didn't wait for an answer, but turned and headed for the kitchen. "We have a while to wait before the murder takes place."
    "Tea would be lovely," Lucien said. She heard him open one of the two cases he'd carried in and he began to remove his equipment.
    Eve sighed. She did not want to ask. More than that, she did not want to care. "Did you have supper?"
    There was a short pause before he answered. "No, I don't believe I did."
    Eve shook her head. The man needed a keeper! He couldn't even remember when he'd last eaten. And to think she'd almost volunteered for that position... Lucien Thorpe's keeper. His wife.
    Perhaps he had done her a favor by leaving her at the altar. Humiliating her in front of her friends and family. Leaving her there for hours to wonder if he was hurt or ill or simply didn't love her. Letting her sit there until midnight had come and gone, and everyone else had left, and she'd come to the realization—there in the dark—that she wasn't the kind of woman who would ever be on the receiving end of the powerful kind of love she was prepared to give.
    Lucien's explanation, delivered three days later, that he'd been on a very interesting case and the day had slipped past without notice, had only strengthened that realization. Men didn't fall madly in love with women like Eve Abernathy. She was too simple to incite passion, too plain to enflame undying love for life. Men like Lucien expected that women like her would wait forever. Well, she might be simple and plain, but she did have her pride. She would not abide being forgotten.
    If she had been able to think of any other solution to her problem, she never would have contacted Lucien Thorpe.
    As Eve boiled water for tea and viciously sliced ham and bread for a man who couldn't even remember to eat, Viola screamed and the house shuddered.
    Poor Viola. When Eve compared her own problems to those of the murdered woman, she actually felt grateful for her less than illustrious life. Viola Stamper had married a man who, from all accounts, had loved her madly. And she had loved him, too. To those who looked on, their marriage had been ideal.
    But things are not always what they appear to be. Somewhere along the way Alistair had begun to neglect Viola for his work. He had relegated her to second best, behind his business ventures. Eve knew how that felt. It was painful to be second best. It was excruciating to be forgotten.
    Viola had problems of her own. She had become restless when their three years of marriage did not produce a child. The lonely woman, neglected by her husband and without a child to lavish her attentions upon, had allegedly fallen into an affair with another man.
    Alistair had discovered his wife's infidelity, and from what Eve had learned—and judging by what she saw and heard every night—it appeared that he had forgiven her. But he hadn't forgiven, not really. He had only pretended to forgive her foolish mistake.
    On Halloween night, 1855, Alistair Stamper had thoroughly seduced and then coldly murdered his unfaithful wife.
    Eve shuddered. Perhaps she really was better off forever unmarried.

 
     
     
    Chapter 2

     
    While Eve prepared tea, Lucien unpacked his equipment and set it up, taking extra special care with the newly redesigned Thorpe Specter-o-Meter. When it was working properly, the device was able to measure the amount of ghostly energy in the air, which was indicated by the fluctuation of a red needle. Unfortunately, it didn't work properly as often as it worked improperly. Still, he had great hopes for the machine. It was a promising work in progress.
    The Thorpe Ectoplasm Harvester was simpler and more likely to function correctly. Unfortunately, one had to be directly upon the spirit for the apparatus to work. He imagined he could carry the harvester upstairs and lay it on the bed where the ghosts frolicked, but