A Haunted Romance by Sindra van Yssel Page B

and didn’t need to be rescanned, and that required taking a good look at each one. Experiencing a novel backward was certainly strange. Perhaps Minerva had placed each page into the chest as she’d finished it, but that hardly made sense. It was well written, and the sort of thing she could have tried to have published without embarrassment.
    She had a thought. “What was the date on those books, Dalton?”
    “I don’t remember exactly. 1908, 1911, 1916, thereabouts.” Dalton was busy laying out pages for Trent to scan. She could have gone and looked at the notepad he’d written the information down on, but she didn’t need to. This chest had been filled after the other one, and the last thing put in it was the manuscript they were working on. Minerva probably kept her secrets in the chests to stop her father from prying. If that was true, this manuscript might have been the last thing written before her death.
    The next ten pages described Frances’s conversion at a revival. Frances apparently had been known as Fanny before that, by the author as well as her friends, but upon being told that it was something of an obscene word in Britain, she dropped the name entirely, “intending on a wholly new and proper life.”
    The next set of pages revealed anything but a proper life. She glanced over at Dalton, but he didn’t seem to be reading the pages anymore, his mind apparently somewhere else. It would be easy enough to ignore the words if one wanted to, given Minerva’s handwriting. Fanny’s life in New York City involved graphically described sex with men, women, and multiple partners.
    Trent grinned at her. He was still reading bits and pieces obviously.
    Twenty pages later, feeling a bit guilty for letting Dalton help with a project she was no longer sure he’d approve of, she asked him, “Are you reading this stuff?”
    “Hmm? I’m trying not to. I’d be interested in reading this in the right order, once you get it all straight, though.”
    “Oh.” She felt a little guilty for not saying anything more and glanced over at Trent, expecting another smirk. To her surprise, he was frowning.
    “The early part is pretty sexy,” he said, finally.
    Dalton read a page and then glared at Trent, as if the offending page was Trent’s fault. For a long moment, the two men just stared at each other.
    Something clicked in Chelsea’s brain. Minerva may have known she was dying. She’d written the sudden conversion and end of Frances’s life knowing that it was the last thing she’d write, possibly looking for some sense of repentance and salvation herself. If it was really Minerva doing the haunting, she hadn’t found it. Although she hadn’t gone to hell either, which was perhaps what she was afraid of. Chelsea hadn’t been brought up very religious herself, but rural communities tended to be pretty traditional. That sort of thing had to weigh on one’s mind, if one heard it often enough.
    “Do you really think, Chelsea,” said Dalton, “that it’s this Minerva haunting your house? The one who wrote this filth and owned all these books?”
    “It might be.” It fit, in a way, with the dildo appearing in her bed. Minerva had a playful attitude about sex that came across in her work, even if she’d never experienced it in person. The author of the first part of both the book they were scanning and the one in the other room was just the sort of person who’d do something like that.
    “I wouldn’t spend another night here if I were you. Take the offer to sell—I’ll take it too—and get the heck out of here before you get hurt.”
    “Is that a threat, Dalton?” Trent’s voice was as hard as steel.
    “You know it’s not, Trenton. Quit trying to play the white knight in shining armor when you know you’re the furthest thing from it.” Dalton turned back to Chelsea. “Seriously.”
    The image of Trent as a knight in shining armor made Chelsea smile. And the image of him naked and covered with