Black Rose Page 0,46

their flaws and grievances, they mattered to him more than any job or project could matter.

He could lose hours paging through Elizabeth Harper's gardening notes, or the baby book she'd kept on Roz's father. How else would he know the man who'd sired Roz had suffered from celiac at three months, or had taken his first steps ten months later?

It was the details, the small bits, that made the past full, and immediate.

And in the wedding photo of Elizabeth and Reginald Junior, he could see Rosalind in her grandfather. The dark hair, the long eyes, the strong facial bones.

What else had he passed to her, and through her to her children, this man she barely remembered?

Business acumen for one, Mitch concluded. From other details, those small bits, found in clippings, in household records, he gained a picture of a man who'd had a sharp skill for making money, who'd avoided the fate of many of his contemporaries in the stock market crash. A careful man, and one who'd preserved the family home and holdings.

Yet wasn't there a coolness about him? Mitch thought as he studied the photographs on his board. A remoteness that showed in his eyes. More than just the photographic style of the day.

Perhaps it came from being born wealthy - the only son on whose shoulders the responsibilities fell.

"What," Mitch wondered aloud, "did you know about Amelia? Did you ever meet her, in the flesh? Or was she already dead, already just a spirit in this house when your time came around?"

Someone knew her, he thought. Someone spoke to her, touched her, knew her face, her voice.

And someone who did lived or worked in Harper House.

Mitch moved to a search of the servants he had by full names.

It took time, and didn't include the myriad other possibilities. Amelia had been a guest, a servant whose name was not included - or had been expunged from family records - a relative's relative, a friend of the family.

He could speculate, of course, that if a guest, a friend, a distant relation had died in the house, the information would have trickled down, and her identity would be known.

Then again, that was speculation, and didn't factor in the possibility of scandal, and the tendency to hush such matters up.

Or the fact that she'd been no one important to the Harpers, had died in her sleep, and no one considered it worth discussing.

And it was just another paradox, he supposed as he leaned back from his work, that he, a rational, fairly logical-thinking man, was spending considerable time and effort to research and identify a ghost.

The trick was not to think of her that way, but to think of her as a living, breathing woman, a woman who had been born, lived a life, dressed, ate, laughed, cried, walked, and talked.

She had existed. She had a name. It was his job to findwho ,what ,when .Why was just the bonus question.

He dug the sketch out of his file, studied the image Roz had created of a young, thin woman with a mass of curly hair and eyes full of misery. And this is how they'd dated her, he thought with a shake of his head. By a dress and a hairstyle.

Not that it wasn't a good sketch. He'd only seen Amelia once, and she hadn't looked calm and sad like this, but wild and mad.

The dress could have been ten, even twenty years old. Or brand-new. The hairstyle a personal choice or a fashion statement. It was impossible to pinpoint age or era on such, well, sketchy information.

And yet, from his research so far, he tended to think they were close to the mark.

The talk of dreams, the bits of information, the lore itself appeared to have its roots during Reginald Harper's reign.

Reginald Harper, he thought, kicking back in his chair to stare at the ceiling. Reginald Edward Harper, born 1851, the youngest of four children born to Charles Daniel Harper and Christabel Westley Harper. Second and only surviving son. Older brother, Nathanial died July 1864, at age eighteen, during the Battle of Bloody Bridge in Charlestown.

"Married Beatrice . . ." He rummaged through his notes again. Yes, there it is, 1880. Five children. Charlotte, born 1881, Edith Anne, 1883, Katherine, 1885, Victoria, 1886, and Reginald Junior, 1892."

Big gap between the last two kids, considering the pattern beforehand, he thought, and noted down possibilities of miscarriages and/or stillbirths.

Strong possibilities with the factors of unreliable birth control, and the natural assumption that