Penmort Castle (Ghosts and Reincarnation #1)(8)
Knowing her day would be full, the night before Abby had gone rooting through her grandmother’s things to find something “not casual”.
Abby’s grandmother kept everything. There were four bedrooms in the house and when Gram died and Abby moved in, the wardrobes in all four, as well as boxes stuffed full in the loft, were filled with clothes from the many decades of her grandmother’s, and her mother’s (and her great grandmother’s), lives.
It was a veritable clothing museum and definitely any clotheshorse, girlie-girl’s dream.
Tonight Abby was wearing a dress she’d carefully unpacked, hand washed and allowed to drip dry overnight then that day she’d steam pressed it.
It was vintage ‘40’s, made of aubergine, silk crepe. It had a bloused, boat-neck bodice that fell gracefully to a slim, body-hugging waist that had a three inch band of intricately-designed black beading. The straight skirt came to just below the knee and had a slit up the back. It had short, loose sleeves and an elegant drape that exposed Abby’s back to just above her bra strap.
Abby kept her hair down but blew it sleek to frame her face and she’d done her makeup in what she referred to in her wide array of makeup looks (an array she’d once enumerated to Ben while he nearly choked himself laughing even though she was not being funny) as “Smoky Evening”.
She wore the antique dress with a pair of sheer, black stockings with a seam up the back and her own black velvet, high-heeled shoes that had a rounded, closed toe, bare sides and an intricately designed heel made of a multitude of slender, velvet bands leading up and into a delicate ankle strap.
The shoes were designer and expensive and Abby had owned them for six years.
They were bought in the days of Ben. When he was, obviously, alive. When they’d both had good jobs (but Ben’s was better and higher paid). When they’d lived in a two-bedroom townhouse in the Georgetown area of Washington DC. When Ben had managed their money, setting aside a modest amount for their retirement, with two savings accounts he carefully monitored – a small one for a rainy day, a larger one for the extravagant vacations they liked to take.
Ben didn’t mind that more than occasionally Abby bought expensive shoes or designer clothes or exclusive pieces of jewellery. Back then, they were only just beginning to talk about starting a family. It was still just the two of them. They were young. They had all the time in the world to think about the future.
On that heartbreaking thought, Abby swung her grandmother’s heavy, black velvet cape around her shoulders, shoved her arms through the holes and fastened the silk frog at her throat.
She had to stop thinking about Ben.
At least for tonight.
“Be good, Zee,” she told her cat who meowed in return and performed a downward-facing kitty-cat stretch as Abby grabbed her grandmother’s velvet evening bag and her own black, leather gloves.
She allowed herself a moment to bend and scratch her cat’s behind, her newly-manicured, pearlescent-pink-tipped nails sifting through the fine, soft, black fur just above her cat’s tail right where Zee liked best to be scratched. When she did, as usual, Abby heard him start to purr.
After she gave Zee his customary good-bye, Abby positioned herself strategically at the door so she could push through before Cash got any ideas about coming inside. She opened the door only as far as it needed to go watching the ground so she could step out without tripping then shoving her body through. She came very close to Cash, who for some reason didn’t move out of her way.
She immediately smelled his cologne, not because it was overpowering, but because she was that close to him.
She’d smelled his cologne when she’d met him. It was subtle, slightly woodsy, slightly spicy, very male.
It entirely suited him.
Abby ignored her brain registering she very much liked his scent.
She pulled the door until she heard the latch catch and twisted, tilting her head questioningly to see that, although his body was facing her and the door, Cash’s head was turned to the side.
Abby looked in the same direction to see what caught his attention.
Then her stomach did a nosedive of dismay.
Mrs. Truman from next door was on her front doorstep, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders to protect her against the damp, bitter, late-January cold. The light from the vestibule illuminated her (and her short, tightly-set, blue hair) and two of her three King Charles Spaniels were dancing around her ankles and yapping noisily at Cash.
I don’t need this, Abby thought and opened her mouth to say something before Mrs. Truman could do something. Something crazy or snooping or irritating or all three, but as usual Mrs. Truman got there first.
“Who are you?” she snapped at Cash, as if she was entitled to know and also as if she knew beyond all doubt that whatever his answer, it was going to cause her great misery.
Abby again started to respond but it was Cash who spoke first, his deep, throaty Scottish brogue sounding through the dark night. “Cash Fraser.”
Mrs. Truman leaned forward, giving Cash a sharp look both of them could see even across Abby’s stoop, drive and hedge and Mrs. Truman’s hedge, drive and stoop.
“So you are. Thought I recognised you, seen you in the papers. What are you doing with Abigail?” Mrs. Truman asked tartly, clearly feeling that she was owed this information as a privilege of her very existence, when she most definitely was not.