Нора Робертс - Midnight Bayou

"Yeah, that'll happen.”

"You come on into town once you're settled in, Effie and I'll take you out to dinner. I want you to meet her.”

Remy had pulled off his tie, shucked his suit jacket, rolled up the sleeves of his lawyerly blue shirt. Except for the hair, Declan thought, he didn't look that different than he did when they'd been at Harvard sucking down pizza and bourbon.

"You're really doing it? Getting married.”

Remy let out a sigh. "Twelfth of May, come hell or high water. I'm settling my bad ass down, Dec. She's just what I want.”

"A librarian." It was a wonder to Declan. "You and a librarian.”

"Research specialist," Remy corrected and hooted out a laugh. "Damn prettiest bookworm I ever did see. She's a smart one, too. I'm crazy in love with her, Dec. Out of my mind crazy for her.”

"I'm happy for you.”

"You still got the guilts over … what was her name? Jennifer?”

"Jessica." Wincing, Declan took another swig to cut the taste her name brought to his tongue. "Calling off a wedding three weeks before you're due to walk down the aisle ought to give you the guilts."

Remy acknowledged this with a quick shrug. "Maybe so. Feel worse if you'd gone through with it.”

"Tell me." Still, his gray eyes remained broody as he stared at the bottle. "But I think she'd have handled it better if we'd done the thing, then gone for a divorce the next day." It still gave him a twinge. "Couldn't have handled it any worse, anyway. She's seeing my cousin James now.”

"James … James … That the one who squeals like a girl or the one with the Dracula hair?”

"Neither." Declan's lips twitched. Jesus, he'd missed this. "James is the perfect one. Plastic surgeon, polo player, collects stamps.”

"Short guy, receding chin, broad Yankee accent.”

"That's him, but the chin doesn't recede anymore. Implant. According to my sister, it's starting to look serious between them, which just serves me right, I'm told.”

"Well, hell, let your sister marry Jennifer.”

"Jessica, and that's what I told her," he said, gesturing with the bottle for emphasis. "She didn't speak to me for two weeks. Which was a relief. I'm not very popular with the Fitzgeralds right now.”

"Well, you know, Dec, I'd have to say, given the circumstances and such … screw 'em.”

With a laugh, Declan handed Remy the bottle. "Let's drink to it.”

He took another slice of pizza from the box. "Let me ask you something else, about this place. I've researched the history, did a chunk of it way back after we came here the first time.”

"Stumbling around like drunken fools.”

"Yeah, which we may do again if we keep hitting this bourbon. Anyway, I know it was built in 1879-after the original structure burned down in an unexplained fire, which was very likely set due to politics, Reconstruction and other post– Civil War messiness.”

"That's the War of Northern Aggression, son." Remy pointed a warning finger. "Remember which side of the Mason-Dixon Line you're plopping your Yankee ass down on now.”

"Right. Sorry. Anyway. The Manets scooped up the land, cheap, according to the old records, and built the current structure. They farmed sugar and cotton primarily and divvied off plots to sharecroppers. Lived well for about twenty years. There were two sons, both died young. Then the old man died and the wife held on until she apparently stroked out in her sleep. No heirs. There was a granddaughter on record, but she was cut out of the will. Place went to auction and has passed from hand to hand ever since. Sitting empty more than not.”

"And?”

Declan leaned forward. "Do you believe it's haunted?”

Remy pursed his lips, copped the last piece of pizza. "That whole history lesson was your way of working around to asking that one question? Boy, you got the makings for a fine southern lawyer. Sure it's haunted." His eyes danced as he bit into the pizza. "House been here this long and isn't, it'd have no self– respect whatsoever. The granddaughter you mentioned. She was a Rouse on her mama's side. I know that, as I'm fourth or fifth cousins with the Simones, and the Simones come down from that line. Girl was raised, I believe, by her maternal grandparents after her mama took off with some man-so it's said. Don't know if I recollect what happened to her daddy, but others will if you want to know. I do know that Henri Manet, his wife, Josephine, and the one son-damned if I know what his name was –all died in this house. One of them doesn't have the gumption to haunt it, that's a crying shame.”

"Natural causes? The people who died here?”

Curious, Remy frowned. "Far as I know. Why?”

"I don't know." Declan had to fight off a shudder. "Vibes.”

"You want someone to come through here? Little gris-gris, little voodoo, chase off your ghost, or maybe summon the spirit for a little conversation? You can find yourself a witch or psychic every second corner in town.”

"No, thanks.”

"You let me know if you decide different." Remy winked. "I'll put you onto somebody who'll give you a fine show.”

He didn't want a show, Declan decided later. But he did want that shower, and bed. With Jim Beam buzzing pleasantly in his blood, he hauled in boxes, pawed through them to find sheets and towels. He carted what he figured he'd need for the night upstairs.

It was good old Catholic guilt rather than any need for order that had him making the bed. He treated himself to a ten-minute shower, then climbed into the fresh sheets to the sound of the incessant rain.

He was asleep in thirty seconds.

There was a baby crying. It didn't strike him as odd at all. Babies tended to cry in the middle of the night, or whenever they damn well pleased. It sounded fretful and annoyed more than alarmed.

Someone ought to go pick it up … do whatever people did with crying babies. Feed it. Change it. Rock it.

When he'd waked from nightmares as a child, his mother or his nanny, sometimes his father, had come in to stroke his head and sit with him until the fear faded away again.

The baby wasn't frightened. The baby was hungry.

It didn't strike him as odd that he thought that. That he knew that.

But it did strike him as odd, very odd, to wake, bathed in sweat, and find himself standing outside the door with the dull brass knob on the third floor.

Sleepwalking. That was something he hadn't done since childhood. But in the watery light of day it was simple enough to see how it had happened. Jim Beam, pepperoni pizza and talk of ghosts.

A little harder to accept was the gut-clenching terror he'd felt when he'd surfaced and found himself outside that third-level door. He'd snapped out of the fugue and into a nightmare of panic-one where he'd been certain he'd heard the fading echoes of a baby's restless crying.

He'd run. He couldn't have opened that door if he'd had a gun to his head. So he'd run, with his own bright fear chasing him, to lock himself back in the bedroom. Like a mental patient, he thought now over a lukewarm cup of instant coffee.

At least there'd been no one around to see it.

But if you thought about it, it was a rather auspicious first night. Cold spots, baby ghosts, fugues. It sure beat sitting in his empty town house in Boston, sucking on a beer and watching ESPN.

Maybe he would spend some time digging deeper into the history of the house. His house, he corrected, and with his coffee, he leaned on the damp iron rail of the gallery outside his bedroom.

His view. And it was a beaut once you skimmed over the wreck of the gardens.

Leaves dripped from the rain in steady, musical plops, and the air shimmered with the weight the storm had left behind. Mists crawled over the ground, smoky fingers that trailed and curled around the trees to turn them into romantic and mysterious silhouettes.