Sommersgate House (Ghosts and Reincarnation #2)(33)
Author: Kristen Ashley

The courteous thing to do was hold her tongue and have a word with Monique during a private moment but Julia was too incensed for courtesy.

“Monique, you may be under the ludicrous impression that those Hollywood lollipop girls with their stick-thin bodies and enormous heads are attractive but they… are… not. They look like aliens from another planet! Lizzie needs to put on weight, not take it off.”

Monique had stared at her with murder in her eyes and, with no other option, Julia simply stared back. All three children watched in stunned silence but finally Julia broke the staring contest and carried on serving dessert like nothing happened while Monique left the table in icy silence.

After that episode, she wanted to call Douglas again, which she knew was an irrational idea. She was saved from doing that by Charlie calling her.

She told her friend about the lollipop girl comment and Charlie hooted with laughter.

“Forget coming here, I’m coming to visit you. This I have to see.”

Julia laughed with her but no matter how fun Charlie was making it seem, it was anything but fun and the next day, it became worse.

When she asked Carter to take her to the grocery store, he declined saying that Lady Ashton told him that he could only take Julia somewhere if she approved it, personally.

“I see,” Julia replied quietly as Carter wrung the cap in his hands either nervously or angrily, she couldn’t tell as his face was carefully blank but his lips were thinned. “That’s okay, Carter, it’s a beautiful day. I’ll walk!”

It was not a beautiful day. It was chilly and grey and threatening rain. But that wasn’t going to stop her. Nothing was going to stop her.

There were footpaths crisscrossing all over the United Kingdom, Gavin had introduced her to them. She found a walking map in the library, plotted her course, grabbed a couple of umbrellas and she and Ruby went on an expedition. It was more than two miles there and back and both of them were exhausted and drenched by the rain that came in the last half mile but it didn’t matter. Ruby loved it and Julia was determined that woman was not going to beat her. Monique was not going to use the staff against her and Julia was not going to allow the servants’ already unhappy existence to suffer for anything Julia did.

Luckily, the next day, her driving license came in the mail.

“Relief!” she shouted as she opened her mail and Veronika, who was clearing away the breakfast dishes jumped. Julia walked straight to her and grabbed both her cheeks and kissed the girl on her forehead. “Freedom!” she crowed to Mrs. K who had just walked in to witness her exuberance and Julia waved the license at them and strode away to e-mail her mother and call Charlie and Sam.

That evening, just when she thought things would start swinging her way, she saw the man behind the window. He was looking at her imploringly and trying to reach through the glass toward her. The minute his hands tried to push through the glass, he disappeared, the vision of him shimmering and melting until he was gone.

Julia had stifled a scream upon seeing him, stood staring at the space he was in for moments after he was gone and then she slapped the draperies shut. She spent the rest of the night trying (and failing) to talk herself out of believing what she saw.

There were no such things as ghosts.

Were there?

The next day, Monique thankfully left for a spa visit in London with no word on when she would return and no good-byes.

With the vision of the man still foremost in her mind (and seeing a ghost was not a relief from having Monique or Douglas’s bizarrely passionate kiss good-bye (he’d never kissed her, passionately or otherwise) being the things foremost in her mind), Julia approached Mrs. K and Veronika in the afternoon while they were in the kitchen.

Without leading into it gently, she simply announced, “I saw a man outside my window last night.”

Veronika, who had spent the last week desperately attempting to be neither seen nor heard, especially when Lady Ashton was around, let out a little scream.

Mrs. K turned from the stove where she was making a delicious-smelling stew, taking advantage of Monique’s absence to fatten up the children.

“Oh dear,” she muttered.

“Oh dear is right,” Julia replied even though she felt oh dear was an understatement. “And Ruby sees him too. She waves at him and I even saw her talking to him the other day.”

Ruby was off with Carter picking up Lizzie and Willie. Mrs. K looked at Veronika who looked back at her, the young girl’s face pale and frightened.

“All right, there’s nothing for it. You two, yes, Veronika, the both of you, sit down,” Mrs. K ordered, dipping her head to the kitchen table.

Without further coaxing, Veronika and Julia sat together at the big, wooden kitchen table with its friendly yellow oil cloth. Mrs. K put the lid on the stew and was about to turn to them when Mr. Kilpatrick walked through the door.

Julia had only met Roderick Kilpatrick a couple of times. According to Mrs. K, her husband took care of the grounds, oversaw the gardeners, allowed or disallowed hunters as the case may be and also maintained and oversaw several other properties and farms that Douglas owned in the vicinity. He had a wealth of coarse grey hair, a big, droopy moustache and ruddy cheeks.

“Miss Julia. Veronika,” he touched his cap to them and looked at his wife, “I’ll come back later.”

“You’ll stay, Roddy, she’s seen The Master.”

That brought Roddy up short and he swung his head toward Julia and then looked like he’d try to make good an escape before he saw the severe look his wife gave him. Upon seeing her look, he reluctantly entered the room.

“Veronika, have you seen him?” Mrs. K asked, her voice losing its wifely authority and turning kind.

Veronika nodded, her eyes wide.

“Nothing for it, Rod,” Mrs. K said decisively, her eyes swinging back to him.

Mr. Kilpatrick sighed and both the Kilpatricks sat across from Julia and Veronika.

“There’s nothing to fear, lasses. Really there ain’t. He’s been around, and so has his missus, for as long as this house has been standin’,” Roddy Kilpatrick announced.

Julia glanced at Veronika who returned her look, her dark eyes frightened.

“No one knows the real story,” Mrs. K began. “Some say he killed her, some say someone else killed them both. The truth is, they found his body outside, dead from exposure and looking like he’d been trying to get in. They found The Mistress in the house and she’d been strangled.”