ТОП просматриваемых книг сайта:
The Uninvited. Heather Graham
Читать онлайн.Название The Uninvited
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781408997574
Автор произведения Heather Graham
Жанр Современная зарубежная литература
Издательство HarperCollins
Still, he had a plan. He’d wait until the last group had gone through, and Jason and Allison had finished for the day. He winced; he realized Annette wasn’t at work. She’d made an appointment for a root canal. But he knew his fellow docents as well as they knew him. Jason would leave before Ally. Julian just had to wait until Jason had left and Allison was alone, checking as she always did that the doors were locked and the alarm system was on. She would come down to Angus’s study—ye olde study, where that poor bastard Angus Tarleton had died, supposedly of a broken heart—to make sure no kids were hiding under the desk to spend the night in the “haunted” house. He’d wait for her there. When Ally showed up, he would beg and plead and he could honestly tell her they’d probably get the gig, and he’d do anything to compensate for the time he’d missed. And he’d promise her backstage passes to the first concert.
He tiptoed to the front door and listened. Once Jason’s tour had moved into the social rooms to the left, he hurried up the stairs. But when he reached the second-floor landing, he heard conversation and footsteps coming down from the attic. He dodged into Lucy Tarleton’s room. He’d forgotten the board was meeting at the house that day. He’d have to wait until they were gone.
At last, they were. He heard the foursome going down the main stairway. As usual, they were bickering among themselves.
“Cherry, you may be a descendent of the family, but this place is owned by Old Philly History now. We’re only the board.” She started to speak, but Ethan Oxford interrupted her. “Yes, it’s privately owned and operated, but there’s a charter. The house was donated for the preservation of history.”
Old Ethan Oxford was the senior member of the board. Cherry’s mother had been the last of the Dandridge family. Cherry would probably have eschewed her own father’s name to take on Dandridge, Julian was certain, except that her husband, George Addison, was becoming a very well-known artist, and she liked the prestige that came with being Mrs. Addison.
“No one knows this house like I do,” Cherry insisted.
“Really? You never lived in it. It was handed over to Old Philly History long before you were born.”
Julian smiled. That voice belonged to Nathan Pierson, who loved to listen sweetly to Cherry and then zing her.
“Hush!” Sarah Vining said. “There are tour groups in here!”
A moment later, even their voices faded away as they left the house.
Julian started toward the attic but paused. For some reason, he had the odd sensation of being held in the room and he turned around, curious. He saw nothing there. Nothing except the painting of Beast Bradley. The nice painting of Bradley. “They say you were a brutal bastard. Glad someone saw the good in you!” Julian said. Giving himself a mental shake, he dashed up to the attic to hide. He sat at the desk there, glancing at the piles of paper around the computer and the countless file folders. Some of the information here was pure business—schedules, events planned at the estate, programs planned, money collected. But most of the piles belonged to Ally. Professor Allison Leigh. “You would have to be a brainiac!” he said aloud. He was a year or two younger than Ally, but he’d had a crush on her since he’d taken his position here. And she wasn’t all work and no play. He knew because she’d dated another musician for a while, an acquaintance of his.
“You may have brains, Ally, but your taste in men isn’t so great.” It was one thing to have a casual friendship with a drug addict; it was another to date one. Ally’s romance had ended when she realized she couldn’t compete with his cocaine habit.
Ah, well, history seemed to be her true love. He picked up the nearest folder and began to read. “Huh!” he murmured. Apparently, she’d found a new lead on an old subject.
To his own surprise, he became interested in her notes. Ally definitely seemed to be on to something. He set down the folder and listened carefully. It was safe to go down to the second floor, he decided, since Jason’s tour group had departed.
Julian hurried back to Lucy’s bedroom. There was a beautiful rendering of a young Lucy on one wall. She was dressed in white and had a look of open excitement in her eyes, as if she loved life, and the whole world. It had been an eighteenth-birthday gift to Lucy from Levy Perry, an artist killed at Brandywine. Naturally, it was painted before either of them had learned about the horrors of war.
He turned from the image of Lucy and stared at the painting of Beast Bradley again.
“Charmer, were you?” He laughed softly. “Well, that’s not what history says.”
As soon as he could, he’d go down to Angus’s study and wait for Ally. If she gave him any grief, he could tell her he’d read her notes about Bradley and Lucy, and they were brilliant, just brilliant.
Interesting that the painting of Beast Bradley in the study was nothing like this one.
He smiled. He’d have the chance to stare at that one for a while. Because he wanted to be in Angus’s chair when Ally found him. He was dressed as Beast Bradley—why not play the part completely as he begged her to forgive him? It was the perfect way to convince her that he was serious about his job here. At least until his music career was well and truly launched…
Leaving Lucy’s bedroom, he reached the door and thought he heard a noise behind him. But that was impossible.
Unless it was good old Beast Bradley himself, roused from the dead to rummage through the research papers?
Tiptoeing down the stairs he laughed. He opened the hall closet on the first floor to pick up the reproduction muzzle-loading musket and bayonet that went with his uniform.
He heard a noise again and frowned. It couldn’t be coming from the attic. No, he told himself, the rustling was probably outside.
“‘I ain’t afraid of no ghosts!’” he muttered.
And yet, it was with great unease that he waited.
He felt he was being watched.
And followed.
1
“Are you Dolley Madison? Or, like, Martha Washington or something?” one of the boys edging toward the front of Allison Leigh’s tour asked. He was about nine or ten, still awkward, but obviously determined to create some havoc—no doubt to avoid embarrassing himself in front of the few other teens and preteens on the tour.
A taller, older boy, maybe twelve, who might have been his brother, nudged him. “You idiot, they’re both dead, and she’s alive. And she’s hot, buddy. She’s way too hot even in that getup to be one of those old ladies.” The second boy tried to look mature. He reminded Allison of a very young Adam Sandler. The boys were part of her tour, which included a mix of ages. Summer was just drawing to a close and families were still on vacation.
She heard someone behind her choke back laughter; it was Nathan Pierson, longtime board member for the nonprofit organization that now owned the Tarleton-Dandridge House. They’d had a meeting in the attic, where a small office was located. Cherry Addison, the remaining descendent of the Dandridge clan, had already moved on, spike heels clicking. Ethan Oxford, their eldest member, had politely made his way through the crowd. Nathan and Sarah Vining were the last of the four board members to leave the house.
Nathan grinned and winked at Allison as he approached. Sarah hurried to catch up with him. She was a wisp of a woman who had given herself frown lines worrying about the board’s every move, while Nathan was the opposite, always certain things would work out. He was a slim and stately man in his forties, not exactly a father figure, more like a cool-uncle figure. And he was amused.
Ally shot him a warning glance, but he kept grinning as he stepped past her. When he looked back and winked again, she forced a smile to her lips and turned her attention back to the group.
“Well,