“The closest I came was setting fire to Cornelia Thayer’s collection of miniskirts in 1969,” Wimsey reflected with a fond smile of remembrance that faded into a look of disgust. “The woman possessed thighs to rival the trunks of the great redwoods, don’t you know. Unfortunately, eradicating an affront to refined sartorial tastes was not deemed sufficient to get me out of my spiritual exile, To make matters worse, Cornelia took to wearing hot pants.” He shuddered in revulsion at the memory. “Confined myself to the attic over that ghastly turn of events. Finally drove the Thayer’s to sell by pouring buckets of ooze down the walls of their bedroom. Don’t reckon that garnered me any brownie points in the great beyond,” he added thoughtfully, rubbing his long chin.
“I don’t imagine,” Bryan agreed, rolling his eyes. “What landed you here in the first place?”
Wimsey gave him a shrewd look. “I think you’ve figured that one out, chum. You tell me.”
“All right. While your pal Ducky was quietly robbing everyone blind, you let people think you were the gentleman bandit because the ladies thought it was romantic. Unfortunately, the ladies weren’t the only ones who believed it. Pig Porchind believed you stole his gold and he-”
Wimsey made a face and held up an insubstantial hand to cut him off. “Don’t let’s relive the truly unpleasant past.”
“You didn’t know where the gold was, did you?”
“You think I’d be here now if I had?” he asked incredulously, straightening away from the armoire and hovering near the bed. Frowning darkly, he shook out one of Bryan’s dress shirts and refolded it to his own satisfaction. “I’d have bloody well told old Pig where it was and what he could do with it. Ducky had it hidden someplace until it was already too late for me, then he apparently brought the stuff in already disguised as bricks. I hadn’t the vaguest idea where it was.”
He directed his frown at Bryan again. “If I’d figured it out ahead of you and revealed the stuff to Addie or the girl, perhaps I wouldn’t still be here.”
“Sorry.”
“Sorry?” Wimsey snorted. “After fifty-nine years of dead boredom I finally get a shot at redeeming myself. You pinch it, and the best you can do is tell me you’re sorry? I say, that’s really frightfully inadequate.”
Bryan shrugged helplessly. “Well, what would you have me do?”
Wimsey smiled brightly and patted Bryan’s shoulder. “Do kiss and make up with the girl. There’s a good chap.”
“Rachel?”
“Of course Rachel,” he said irritably. “Who do you think I mean? I’ve been playing cupid for you all along, you ungrateful swine. The least you can do is marry her.”
Bryan sighed. “I’m afraid that’s up to her.”
“Bloody hell,” the ghost murmured, crossing his arms cover his chest. He shook his head. “I’m not cut out for this humanitarian work. Never been comfortable with charitable behavior.” He waved a hand as if to ward off a denial that wasn’t forthcoming. “Oh, yes, I gave the odd quid to Oxfam in my day, but all this-this-personal stuff.” He shuddered again, his distaste for his task more than apparent. “All that selflessness goes quite against my grain, I don’t mind saying.”
“Probably has something to do with why you’re here,” Bryan suggested dryly.
“Don’t be glib, Hennessy. It’s really quite irritating.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t tell me, tell Rachel,” he insisted. “Getting the two of you together is my last hope of getting out of here. I did what I could to help her reconcile with Addie, and that didn’t solve my dilemma. You’ve got to be the key. So stop slacking off and do your duty. I’m fed up with being subtle, holding the doors shut and shoving the two of you together. By the way, I was not amused by your little jujitsu demonstration downstairs.”
“Tae kwon do,” Bryan corrected him with a bland smile.
“Don’t split hairs,” Wimsey snapped. “This facetious manner of yours is damned annoying. “Pon my soul, if I were alive, you’d be giving me a roaring headache. Do make up with the girl and get on with it.”
Bryan arched a brow. “Does coercion count in the good-deeds category these days?”
Wimsey screwed up his mouth in annoyance. “You really are too flip by half. Just wait until you get stuck in an alternate plane of existence. We’ll see how amusing you are then.”
Bryan sighed and put on his most contrite look. He wasn’t in the mood for jocularity. Encountering Wimsey had lifted his spirits, but the fact remained, he was losing Rachel. Their difference of philosophy was a wedge between them, and he could see no way over, under, or around it. The next move had to be hers.
“I’m truly sorry, Wimsey. I’ve done all I can. The rest is up to no one but Rachel.”
“That’s what you think,” the ghost muttered darkly.
A knock sounded at the door. Rachel’s voice floated through. “Bryan? Can I come in?”
“Yes.” At least he would get the satisfaction of seeing her face when he introduced her to Wimsey, he thought with a wry smile. He went on folding clothes as she swung the door open and stepped inside the room.
“Who were you talking to?”
He opened his mouth to tell her as he straightened. His gaze went to Rachel’s reflection in the mirror, then his own, then-Wimsey was gone. A black scowl pulled his brows together. He pushed his glasses up on his nose and grumbled, “Myself.”
“Oh.” Rachel looked confused. “That’s funny. I thought I heard another voice.”
“I do that when I’m talking to myself,” he said irritably. “I make up another voice. It makes the conversation seem so much more realistic.”
“That’s kind of odd.”
“I’m an odd person,” he said curtly, snapping his suitcase shut and reaching for another. “What do you expect?”
“I expect you to give me a straight answer,” Rachel said, more than a little irritated by his nasty mood. She’d come there in contrition, after all. The least he could be was polite.
“Fine,” Bryan said, abandoning his packing. “You want a straight answer? I was talking to a ghost. I was talking to a man who was killed in this house fifty-nine years ago. Archibald Wimsey. He was here, but now you can’t see him, so, as we all know, he must not really exist. He’s just a figment of my overactive, irresponsible imagination.”
Rachel winced. “I’m sorry I called you irresponsible. We have different ways of looking at things, you and I. We have different ways of dealing with problems.”
“But I do deal with them, Rachel. I don’t just brush them off and expect you to clean up the mess.”
“I know,” she mumbled, head down.
“Do you?” he asked sharply.
She looked up at him, nibbling the corner of her lip. “I’m willing to learn,” she said sincerely. “Are you willing to show me?”
Bryan sighed wearily, his wide shoulders sagging in defeat. “I’ve been trying to show you all along.”
Rachel thought back across the memories she had stored up in the past weeks, memories of Bryan intervening when things had been going badly between herself and Addie, of his silly diversionary tactics that had kept her from dwelling on her problems. She thought of the way he had come back to find the gold for her and to trap Porchind and Rasmussen. If it hadn’t been for him, she probably would have sold Drake House to the pair and been glad to get what little she could for the place.
Bryan had looked out for her all along. He was simply so unorthodox in his methods, she hadn’t realized what he was up to. Still, she had fallen in love with him in spite of his eccentricities, in spite of thinking he was just another hopeless dreamer. Now she loved him even more.
She put her hands on his solid forearms and looked up at him with her heart in her eyes. “I love you, Bryan. You said you needed me to believe in magic. I believe I love you. I believed that even when I was sure you were the last thing I needed in my life. Isn’t that a kind of magic-believing in something even when you think you shouldn’t?”