Someone to Love by Jude Deveraux Page A

outside. That had to be significant.
    Jace stood up. He knew he needed Ann Stuart. He needed what she’d seen happen in this house, and he felt that she needed him too. It was his guess that she’d been searching for…He calculated. Was it was possible that for a hundred and twenty-seven years she’d been searching for someone to help get her body into the sacred ground of the churchyard?
    “You help me and I’ll help you,” he said, but felt no response. The room, even the house, felt empty. It made Jace smile when he thought that twice now he’d frightened Ann: once in the garden and once in her own time. For all he knew, right now she was hiding in Barbara Caswell’s tower room and planning to never come out.
    He needed to talk to her and tell her of his problems with Stacy. He had to get her to come to him.
    A slow smile spread over his face. He was going to court her. Entice her. He was going to create a web, then draw her into it.
    Still smiling, Jace went into the big bedroom to pack his overnight case. It wasn’t going to be easy, but he knew he was going to have to trust some people.

5
    G ladys put down her paintbrush. “I need a rest.”
    “Sure, as soon as—” Jace looked at Mick and Gladys and saw the way they were looking at him. They were young and in love and they wanted some of the weekend to be alone. It was three o’clock on Sunday afternoon and he’d had them working since two on Friday.
    “Go on,” he said, “I’ll finish here. You two—” They were out of the room before he finished the sentence.
    “It looks good,” Gladys called back to him as she and Mick ran down the stairs.
    Jace had to control his feelings of jealousy as their laughter rang through the house. “This house needs some laughter,” he said, then stepped back to look at Ann’s room. It did look good.
    On Friday he’d told Mrs. Browne he was going to spend the weekend in London. He’d politely listened to her explain that in England one spent the week in London and the week end in the country. “But I’m not English, am I?” Jace said, knowing that, to her mind, “not being English” was worse than any crime.
    When he got to his car, as he hoped, Mick was nearby and Jace offered him a weekend job.
    “In London? With my girl?”
    “If you don’t mind staying at Claridge’s,” Jace said and thought Mick was going to faint with happiness. Even country folk knew Claridge’s was a world-renowned hotel.
    Since Jace didn’t want the village to know what he was doing, he met them in St. Albans, they left their car in a parking lot, and the three took Jace’s Range Rover into London. Mick drove, Gladys sat beside him, and Jace sat in the back and made sketches and wrote notes on the big pad of grid paper that Mrs. Parsons at the stationers had included in her box of supplies.
    Jace didn’t give the reason behind what he wanted to do and the young couple didn’t ask questions. He just said he planned to re-create the bedroom on the southwest corner of the house as it had been in 1878.
    “The chintz room,” Mick said, looking in the rearview mirror at Jace.
    “That room is the chintz room?” Jace asked, remembering that it had been Barbara Caswell’s room. “How do you know that?”
    “My mother used to clean at Priory House when I was a boy. I used to hide when we heard Mrs. Browne because we knew she’d fire Mum if she found out I was with her. She did and my mum was.”
    Jace opened his mouth, but Mick spoke first. “No, sir, I didn’t find the secret staircase. No one has found it.”
    No one alive, Jace thought as he looked back at his sketches. He wasn’t an artist but he’d sketched ornaments, china, furniture, fabrics, wallpaper, and the dresses of Catherine and Ann. “Mick?” Jace asked. “Does Mrs. Browne fire many people?”
    Spontaneously, Mick and Gladys burst into loud, raucous laughter. He had his answer.
    In London, they checked into two connecting rooms in the fabulously