Penmort Castle (46 page)

Abby Tells
Cash

At the sound of
her voice, Cash threw Suzanne away from him and Abby watched as she
flew several steps back, her hands going behind her, she collided
with the counter.

Her eyes went
to Abby and her expression could only be described as smug.

Then Abby heard
Cash ask bitingly, “Where the fuck have you been?”

Abby’s gaze
shot to Cash and he was standing, turned to her, hands on hips,
staring at Abby, looking angry.

Angry.

At Abby!

Cash
was
angry
at
Abby
.

Abby’s mouth
dropped open.

Her eyes slid
back to Suzanne whose smugness had hit the stratosphere.

Mindlessly,
Abby turned and ran up the steps taking them two at a time.

She got to the
upstairs banister and had her purse in her hands before strong
fingers closed around her upper arm in a vicelike grip and she was
yanked backwards.

Her eyes flew
to Cash’s.

“Let me go!”
she shouted, tugging at her arm in his grasp.

“What the fuck
are you doing?” he asked, eyes narrowed on her purse, fingers not
letting her go.

She stopped
struggling and yelled, “I’m leaving!”

“The hell you
are,” he snapped, wrenched her purse out of her hands and threw it
into the lounge.

Abby watched it
sail then land on the floor then she looked back at Cash and
screamed, “Would you stop throwing my stuff!”

He ignored her
demand and used her arm to pull her close. “You should have been
home an hour ago. Or, it would seem, you should have fucking
phoned
an hour ago to say you’d be home now.”

Abby saw
Suzanne join them at the top of the stairs, she was pulling on her
coat, flipping her hair over the collar and looking happy as a
clam.

Abby’s eyes
moved back to Cash and she drawled with saccharine sweetness, “I’m
so
sorry I didn’t give you plenty of head’s up to get rid of
your kissin’ cousin before I got home.”

She watched
Cash’s head jerk, his brows shot together and then his lip curled
in disgust.

“You think I’m
fucking around on you?” he asked, deep voice filled with
incredulity then he went on, “with
Suzanne
?” he uttered her
name like it tasted foul.

Abby looked
back at Suzanne and she’d lost her smug, happy look.

Abby’s eyes
clashed with Cash’s again when she accused, “I just saw you kissing
her.”

“No, you just
saw
her
kissing
me,
” Cash shot back instantly.

“I’ll leave you
to it,” Suzanne cut in, moving toward the door and Cash turned,
taking Abby with him, his hand still on her arm.

“I’ll deal with
you later,” Cash clipped to Suzanne.

“I’ll look
forward to that,” came Suzanne’s sultry purr.

Cash’s body
went solid and the air in the room, already thick, became
suffocating.

“Don’t mistake
me, Suzanne,” Cash’s voice was a low, menacing warning and Abby
watched as Suzanne paled.

Recovering
swiftly, she offered, “I’ll let myself out.”

“You do that,”
Cash stated then, dismissing Suzanne completely, he turned back to
Abby and started, “As for you –”

At that, with a
vicious tug Abby yanked her arm free and vaguely heard the door
close behind Suzanne. She was too deep in a tizzy at all she’d
experienced that night at the castle, and what she’d just seen, to
proceed with caution.

She stomped
around Cash and into the lounge, muttering angrily, “I cannot
believe
after all I went through tonight,” she bent down to
pick up her purse and looked up at Cash who had followed her, “for
you,
” she snapped, rising, “only to come home to see you
groping Suzanne.”

“Abby, I’ll
repeat, I was
not
groping Suzanne,” Cash returned.

“Whatever!”
Abby shouted, beside herself, experiencing a layering of freak outs
that she couldn’t quite overcome. “How would you feel if you came
home and saw me in the arms of another man?”

Cash’s eyes
narrowed and his hands went to his hips. “I wouldn’t fucking like
it but I would also give you the chance to fucking explain.”

“Right,” Abby
snorted with disbelief. “You’d
freak
.”

And he
would
.

“I would. Then
I’d give you the chance to fucking explain,” he fired back.

Abby shook her
head and walked to him with the intent to walk right by him and get
her coat. “I’m not talking about this. I’m going home.”

Cash’s fingers
curled around her upper arm firmly, effectively halting her and
when she looked up at him, he stated, “You
are
home.”

“
My
home,” she snapped back.

“Yes, darling,”
he returned calmly, “
your
home,” then he jerked her purse
out of her hand again and threw it on a chair, making his
point.

She looked at
her purse and something came over her, something she couldn’t
control.

She had an
excuse, of course.

Her whole life,
within weeks, had been turned on its head. And that included living
with an impossibly rich, incredibly handsome, very famous
International Hot Guy. And that also included going head-to-head
with a
ghost
.

So, Abby
thought, it was really only a matter of time before she lost her
mind completely.

Which was
exactly what she did.

In slow motion,
her eyes moved from their perusal of her bag to Cash.

Then she
shrieked, “
Stop throwing my stuff!
”

Cash pulled her
close and his arm started to slide around her as he said, “Abby,
you need to calm down.”

“Calm?” she
asked. “
Calm!
” she screeched. “
You
be calm!” She
yanked out of his arms and took two steps back, he came for her but
she lifted her hand, pointed a finger at him and he stopped. “You
be calm in the face of what I’ve seen,
and
done, and then
seen
tonight. A ghost, Cash, I came face-to-face with a
fucking
ghost!
”

Distractedly
she noticed his whole body jerked as if he’d been punched in the
stomach but she just kept right on ranting.

“And let me
tell you ghosts are
scary!
” she shouted then started pacing.
“They scream and you… would not…
believe
how
awful
it
sounds. They melt through walls. They melt
back
through
walls. They
float
. And they
attack!
”

She stopped
ranting and glared at him.

Quietly,
looking like he was fighting the urge to check her temperature, he
said, “Abby, there are no such things as ghosts.”

“I would have
said the same thing a few weeks ago, but believe me, there
are
ghosts. They’re
mean
and they’re
nasty
and
this one particularly,” Abby returned as if she had any authority
on ghosts (although she felt, at that moment, she
did
).

“Maybe I should
get you a drink,” he suggested.

“I don’t want a
drink,” she retorted.

“Then maybe I
should call Tim,” he replied softly.

“You are
not
going to call
Tim!
” Abby shouted.

He took a step
toward her, saying, “Abby, you have to calm down.”

“Have you heard
of Vivianna Wainwright?” Abby asked suddenly and Cash halted and
watched her a moment

Then he
murmured, “I see. Fenella has been –”

Abby cut him
off. “No, Cash. Fenella has been nothing.”

“Darling –” he
started again and Abby interrupted again.

“I didn’t slip
in the bathroom,” she announced and watched as his body went still.
“Your hand doesn’t slam through a mirror when you slip. It slams
through a mirror when you’re
shoved
.”

Cash stared at
her a moment then said softly, “Darling, you’ve been going through
a lot lately.”

“Yes,” Abby
agreed on a toss of her hair, “I have, including becoming the
target of a ghost.”

“Abby –”

“Cash, listen
to me!” she yelled. “I’m not crazy. I know what I saw. I know what
I
felt
. I was standing at the sink, looking in the mirror
and there she was behind me. She came at me, shoved me between the
shoulders and I slammed forward, my hand going up to shield my
fall, it went through the mirror. Only then did I slip and hit my
head on the basin. And tonight, it was
worse
.”

His gaze was
locked on hers, his jaw clamped and she saw a muscle working in his
cheek.

Then his eyes
moved over her face then down to her sweater where they stopped and
narrowed.

“What happened
to your jumper?” he asked and Abby looked down to see there was a
burn mark on her sweater, just like the one on Vivianna’s dress,
where Cassandra’s amulet had sparked.

She hadn’t
noticed it until now.

“Cassandra’s
protection amulet,” Abby explained, “it kind of… exploded when
Vivianna and I clashed.”

Cash’s eyes
jerked to hers and he repeated, “Cassandra’s protection
amulet.”

“Yes.”

She watched as
something dawned on him and his mouth tightened as his eyes went to
the ceiling.

Finally he
muttered, “I don’t fucking believe this shit.”

“Believe it,”
Abby returned.

He looked at
her again. “Abby, no matter what these people are telling you, I
promise you, there are no such things as ghosts.”

“There are,”
Abby retorted.

“No, there
aren’t.”

“You felt it
yourself,” she told him.

“I felt what?”
he asked.

“The minute we
walked into the castle, the entry swayed. You were there, you said
you felt it!”

“That wasn’t a
ghost,” he said.

“Then what was
it?” Abby queried.

His face now
held a hint of soft concern. “I don’t know, darling, but it wasn’t
a fucking ghost.”

Abby stared at
him then she had an idea and asked, “Did you pick up the
diaries?”

At her swift
change of subject, Cash’s head cocked to the side. “Diaries?”

“Your
grandmother’s diaries,” Abby prompted.

He watched her
a moment then said, “Emma went to get them today.”

Immediately
Abby enquired, “Do you have them here at the house?”

“They’re in the
study,” he answered and Abby was on the move.

Walking around
him, she went to his study, flipped on the light and saw his
briefcase opened on his desk. A stack of several, slim, elegant,
leather-bound books sat beside it.

Abby walked up
to the desk, grabbed the first one off the stack and started
sifting through it, randomly picking pages and skimming. She found
nothing so she threw that diary down and picked up the next, doing
the same.

“Abby, what the
fuck?” Cash muttered but then Abby saw it.

She immediately
started reading, “
My favourite brooch is missing. The one
Richard gave me. I can’t find it anywhere and Richard is asking
where it is. I know she took it, she knows how much I love it. It’s
just the kind of thing she’d do. Especially since Richard is
getting annoyed that I haven’t been wearing it. I was searching for
it on my hands and knees beside the bed when I heard Vivianna
laugh.
”

Abby looked at
Cash and saw his eyes were on the diary and his jaw was again
clenched but he didn’t say anything so Abby persevered.

Using her thumb
against the edges, Abby flipped pages ahead skimming quickly then
she found another passage and started reading, “
I’m frightened.
She’s watching all the time. Everywhere I turn, if I’m alone, she’s
there. Hovering. And anytime Richard is out of the house, she
screams. And screams and screams and screams. We’ve lost three
servants this week alone. They can’t bear it. I don’t know how long
I can bear it either. I keep telling Richard about Vivianna but he
just won’t listen. He thinks I’m being silly, he finds me amusing.
He tells me it’s a legend, a myth, that I shouldn’t believe the
servants’ gossip and let them make me anxious. I can’t get him to
understand that she’s real. It’s getting worse, it feels different
now. I think she means to harm me.
”

Abby’s eyes
went to Cash’s face again and Cash remarked, “My grandmother Lorna
died of a stroke when I was seven years old. She wasn’t murdered by
a ghost.”

“She stopped
being a target,” Abby told him.

“And why is
that?” Cash asked.

Abby stared at
him, not wanting to get into the “love of their lives” business,
not again and definitely not with Cash.

Therefore, she
said, “She just did.”

Cash looked
into her eyes and stated quietly, “Darling, do you have any idea
how preposterous this sounds? Vivianna Wainwright is a ghost story
handed down generation to generation. She isn’t real.”

Abby stared at
him all of a sudden wondering why she’d told him. Of course he
wouldn’t believe her. If she was him, she wouldn’t believe her
either. It
did
sound preposterous, even though it was
true.

Abby closed the
diary and set it on his desk. She looked to the side to avoid his
eyes then lifted her hand to pull her hair off her face. Bunching
it at the back of her head for a moment, she decided to give up and
maybe lie and say she got a little crazy when she was on her
period. Men bought that kind of excuse all the time.

She sighed,
looked back at him, dropped her hand and he watched it fall as she
said, “You’re right, I –”

But Cash
interrupted her. “What’s happened to your hand?”

Abby’s chin
dipped, she lifted her hands, palms up and studied them. They were
dirty, smudged with black and there were angry red scrapes along
the heels of her palms. She hadn’t noticed it before, considering
her Layering of Freak Outs, but she knew how it happened. She’d
fallen hard on the stairs, landed on her hands then she’d used them
to crawl back up.