The Perfect Mistress. Victoria Alexander

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СКАЧАТЬ do you suggest I do?”

      “I have no idea.” Julia shrugged. “Something ghostly, I suppose.”

      “I’m not going to vanish and reappear, change my appearance, float near the ceiling, that sort of thing. I don’t do parlor tricks.” She sniffed. “Besides, anything of a ghostly nature you will simply attribute to the idea that you are dreaming.” She heaved a heartfelt sigh. “I should have appeared to you during the day when there wasn’t a doubt in your mind as to your wakefulness. Perhaps tomorrow—”

      “No,” Julia said without thinking.

      “No?” Hermione raised a brow. “Then you do believe me.”

      Julia shook her head. “No, I don’t. I simply don’t want the idea that you may pop up at any minute haunting my thoughts all day.”

      “Haunting your thoughts?” Hermione grinned. “What a telling phrase.”

      Julia sighed. “I am now going to bury my head in my pillow and force everything from my mind, thus ending this dream.”

      “You can bury your head in the desert sands for all the difference it makes, I shall not go away,” Hermione said in a tone that was as pleasant as it was determined. “I have no idea how I shall prove my nature but prove it I shall. We shan’t accomplish anything until I do,” she added under her breath.

      “What do you wish to accomplish?” Julia said slowly.

      “Why, I am here to help, of course.”

      “At the moment you can help by allowing me to get some much-needed rest.”

      “If I’m a dream then you are asleep and already getting rest.”

      “I have scarcely had a decent night’s sleep since I began reading your memoirs.”

      Hermione cast her a satisfied grin. “They are stimulating, aren’t they?”

      “They are scandalous, disgraceful, and completely outrageous.”

      “They should sell very well then.”

      Julia smiled wryly. “Yes, they should.” She drew a deep breath. “And you have my thanks for writing them.”

      “It was entirely my pleasure.” Hermione smirked. “In so many ways.”

      Julia groaned. “Good Lord.”

      “I know. You have not reached page one forty-seven yet. What if I tell you what’s on that page? It’s not something you already know. That should prove I know things you don’t.”

      “My dear Hermione, I can very nearly guess the type of incident that will be recounted on page one forty-seven.”

      “Yes, well perhaps.” She thought for a moment, then smiled slowly in an entirely too wicked manner. “What if I told you a secret you couldn’t possibly know and would never suspect?”

      Julia narrowed her eyes. “What kind of secret?”

      “About your Lord Mountdale.”

      “He’s not my Lord Mountdale.”

      “It’s the reason why he, and his mother before him, are so concerned with scandal.”

      “How very interesting. Still …” Julia shook her head. “That sounds like gossip to me.”

      “And?”

      “And I try not to indulge in gossip.”

      “Gossip, my dear, serves a necessary purpose. Without gossip, how does one ever learn anything of interest?” Hermione rolled her gaze toward the ceiling. “Besides, you won’t be indulging in gossip, I will. You’ll just be listening. Although the point is moot as this isn’t gossip. This is something I know for a fact.”

      Without warning, Hermione vanished from the foot of the bed to reappear at once sitting beside Julia, close enough to speak low into her ear. Dream or not, it was most unnerving. Julia realized she felt Hermione’s presence although she had no sense of her substance. Even in a dream it was enough to make a shiver run up her spine and so disconcerting that it took a moment for Hermione’s words to sink into her mind.

      “Good Lord!” She stared. “I can’t believe I could ever come up with such a far-fetched idea.”

      “You didn’t.” Hermione huffed. “It’s the truth and something you would have no way of knowing.”

      “That is true, I suppose.” Julia thought for a moment. “However, I have no way of finding out if it’s true, I certainly can’t ask him.”

      “Oh, I don’t think he knows.”

      “Then how am I to know if this is indeed a fact and not something my sleeping mind has concocted?”

      “You are a clever woman, my dear. I’m sure you will think of a way.” Hermione slipped off the bed. “And then you will have to accept that I am precisely what I say I am.”

      Julia sighed. “I suppose I will. Although …” She shook her head. “The dreams of you were bad enough. The very idea that my great-grandmother’s ghost would be here, in the flesh—”

      “Not exactly,” Hermione murmured.

      “—speaking with me as if she were alive, revealing secrets—it’s hard to believe.”

      “No, dear. What is hard to believe is the time Lord Albemarle and Lady Ed—”

      “Enough!” Julia huffed. “I do not want to hear another scandalous story about people who are long dead and best forgotten.”

      “I’ll tell them you said so,” Hermione said in a wry tone.

      Julia groaned.

      “Try to remember, child, that while the dead do not mind being thought of as dead, we do hate to think we’ve been forgotten.”

      “You will never be forgotten.”

      “You are a dear girl and most thoughtful.” Hermione cast her a brilliant smile. “Now, go back to sleep or else you shall have nasty bags under your eyes in the morning and will not look anywhere near your best. You should always endeavor to look your best, you know. One never knows who one might run into unexpectedly.”

      “I am asleep,” Julia said firmly.

      “I shall return when you are prepared to accept the reality of my existence.”

      “I can scarcely wait.” Julia sighed and lay back down, pulling her covers up around her. She refused to look to see if Hermione was still standing by the bed. Not that it mattered. Her great-grandmother was not a ghost but simply part of a dream. As for this secret she had revealed about Lord Mountdale, it couldn’t possibly be true and was nothing more than the deepest recesses of Julia’s mind dwelling on what might take his lordship down a peg.

      Still, СКАЧАТЬ