Black Rose Page 0,44

inconvenienced."

"What sort of memories did he have?"

"The same you've heard before. It hardly varies. Her singing to him, visiting him in his room, a maternal presence until he was about twelve."

"No disturbances?"

"Not that he told me, but my grandmother said he sometimes had nightmares as a boy. Just one or two a year, where he claimed to see a woman in white, with her eyes bulging, and he could hear her screaming in his head. Sometimes she was in his room, sometimes she was outside, and so was he - in the dream."

"Dreams would be another common thread, then. Have you had any?"

"No, not . . ."

"What?"

"I always thought it was nerves. In the weeks before John and I were married, I had dreams. Of storms. Black skies and thunder, cold winds. A hole in the garden, like a grave, with dead flowers inside it." She shivered once. "Horrible. But they stopped after I was married. I dismissed them."

"And since?"

"No. Never. My grandmother saw her more than anyone, at least more than anyone would admit to. In the house, in the garden, in my father's room when he was a boy. She never told me anything frightening. But maybe she wouldn't have. Of all my family, that I recall, she was the most sympathetic toward Amelia. But to be honest, it wasn't the primary topic of conversation in the house. It was simply accepted, or ignored."

"Let's talk about that blood kin, then." He pulled his glasses out of his shirt pocket to read his notes. "The furthest back you know, personally, of sightings starts with your grandmother Elizabeth McKinnon Harper."

"That's not completely accurate. She told me my grandfather, her husband, had seen the Bride when he was a child."

"That's her telling you what she'd been told, not what she claimed to have seen and experienced herself. But speaking to that, can you recall being told of any experiences that happened in the generation previous to your grandparents?"

"Ah . . . she said her mother-in-law, that would be my great-grandmother Harper, refused to go into certain rooms."

"Which rooms?"

"Ah . . . lord, let me think. The nursery, which was on the third floor in those days. The master bedroom. She moved herself out of it at some point, I'm assuming. The kitchen. And she wouldn't set foot in the carriage house. From my grandmother's description of her, she wasn't a fanciful woman. It was always thought she'd seen the Bride. If there was another prior to that, I don't know about it. But there shouldn't be. We've dated her to the 1890s."

"You've dated her based on a dress and a hairstyle," he said as he scribbled. "That's not quite enough."

"It certainly seems sensible, logical."

He looked up, smiling, his eyes distracted behind his glasses. "It may be. You may be right, but I like a little more data before I call something a fact. What about your great-aunts? Reginald Jr.'s older sisters?"

"I couldn't say. I didn't know any of them, or don't remember them. And they weren't close with my grandmother, or my father. There was some attempt, on my grandmother's part, to cement some familial relations between their children and my father, as cousins. I'm still in contact with some of their children."

"Will any of them talk to me?"

"Some will, some won't. Some are dead. I'll give you names and numbers."

"All," he said. "Except the dead ones. I can be persuasive. Again," he murmured as the singing came from the monitor across the room.

"Again. I want to go check on Lily."

"Do you mind if I come with you?"

"No. Come ahead." They started upstairs together. "Most likely it'll stop before we get there. That's the pattern."

"There were two nursemaids, three governesses, a housekeeper, an under-housekeeper, a total of twelve housemaids, a personal maid, three female kitchen staff between 1890 and 1895. I've dug up some of the names, but as ages aren't listed, I'm having to wade through a lot of records to try to pinpoint the right people. If and when, I'll start on death records, and tracking down descendants."

"You'll be busy."

"Gotta love the work. You're right. It's stopped."

But they continued down the hall to the nursery. "Cold still," Roz commented. "It doesn't last long, though." She moved to the crib, slid the blanket more neatly around the sleeping baby.

"Such a good baby," she said quietly. "Sleeps right through the night most of the time. None of mine did at this age. She's fine. We should leave her be."

She stepped out,