The Ghost and Jacob Moorhead by Jeanne Savery Page A

his expression. Or the odd little double nod of his head as if he’d finally accepted something he’d not yet understood—or not wished to understand.
    But she heard him depart by way of the house and almost, but not quite, wished he’d not gone.
    * * * * *
     
    “Nowhere. She can’t be nowhere.”
    The voice had risen with each word and was shrill enough at the last to hurt the slave’s ears. He winced—then hoped his master had not noticed. Not that the man noticed much of anything these days. “She isn’t where we’ve looked so far. I have handed out the second list. That will be checked in less than a week.”
    “We have lost her. She is nowhere. Nowhere.” The emaciated opium-eater bent his head into his hands and rocked from one side to the other, repeating the word over and over as he did so.
    “We will find her.”
    “She is nowhere. Oh me, oh my. I am lost. Lost. He will have my head. He will cut off my fingers one by one. He will—” A sob launched another series of the litany. “Nowhere. She is nowhere…”
    The slave backed from the room, moving slowly, carefully, silently. It didn’t do to attract attention. Not these days. Not when the master was somnolent under the influence of the drug or, if not drowsing in a drugged dream, then too easily irritated and irrational with it.
    The slave frowned, staring through the narrowing crack of the door he closed as carefully and slowly as he could manage.
    “Nowhere…nowhere…”
    He shook his head. It couldn’t be much longer before death claimed his master. Then what? What could he do? What should he do? Worry fretted him as he returned to the tiny room he used as an office and stared around it. There was no heat and it was cold.
    He shuddered. “Will I never be warm again? I want to go home ,” he said softly, sadly.

Chapter Seven
     
    Verity looked up. She felt a sudden warmth welling up inside her at the sight of Jacob standing in the doorway and—automatically denying it was caused by his unexpected appearance—she frowned. “What do you want?”
    “You have worked long enough. Cousin Mary wishes you to join her in a nuncheon.”
    “I’ve work to do.”
    “There is nothing you have to do. Or there are others who will do it if you tell them what is to be done. Besides, isn’t there an under-housekeeper whose duty it is to see to things if the housekeeper is incapacitated? Allow the woman to do her job.”
    “She cannot deal with the accounts. Not if you want them to balance. And that must be done if you do not want chaos. Nor can she deal with servant problems. She knows the work and she can tell the maids what to do and when, but any sort of crisis and she is lost. And why do I bother to explain?”
    “You are cross. One becomes cross when hungry. Come to the small dining room and keep your aunt company. She has things she wishes to discuss with you.” He held open the door and, after another moment’s hesitation, Verity threw down her pen. Ink spattered over the page and, quietly, she cursed.
    Jacob chuckled. “You truly did receive a rather interesting education, did you not?” he asked, referring to what she’d told him a few days previously in the rose garden. “I doubt very much your mother, or even your father, would approve that vocabulary if they could know of it.”
    Verity closed her mouth into a tight line. She glared at Jacob as she rose from her chair and rounded the end of the huge desk her aunt had had brought into her office next to the housekeeper’s rooms. “My education is not your business.”
    “No. But I like it that you’ve had a rather eclectic upbringing. You are not boring. Ever.”
    “It is not ,” she said, “my purpose to entertain you.” At some level, she knew she lied and that knowledge made Verity still angrier. She hadn’t a notion why she should find this particular man, of all men, far more attractive than any other. That she did irked her. She’d no business wishing for his