Someone to Love Read online

  A young man wearing riding clothes was walking past her, obviously trying to be quiet, but he’d stepped on a twig. “I was trying to be quiet,” he said, “but I didn’t make it.” He looked at her in speculation. “Do I know you?”

  “No,” she said, looking at him. He looked a bit like Jerry Longstreet, only more handsome, more refined, not so…oh dear, her class system was intact. This young man looked to be of a higher class than Jerry. “Your name isn’t by chance Longstreet, is it?”

  His eyes widened. “You’re either a soothsayer or a distant cousin. I do hope it’s the latter and not the former.”

  She smiled. “Neither. I’m a research assistant to a man who bought a house in the village of Margate. It’s—”

  “Priory House,” he said.

  “Yes. Do you know of it?”

  “Only where it concerns my relatives. In the 1870s a man named Hugh Longstreet wanted to buy it.”

  “So much so that he tried to force a marriage between his son and the daughter of the owner of Priory House,” she said, testing him to see how much he knew.

  “What I was told was that ‘force’ isn’t the right word. I heard it was a love match.”

  Nigh sat up straighter on the bench. “That’s what I heard too, but what was your source?” She couldn’t very well tell him her source was a couple of ghosts.

  He smiled at her in a way that made her smile back. “That would be revealing family secrets, wouldn’t it?”

  Nigh looked toward the front of the church, but there was no sign of Jace. “Are you busy right now? I’d love to ask you a few questions.”

  “You sound like a reporter,” he said as he sat down beside her.

  “Guilty.” She turned to face him, her back to the front of the church. “I’d love to hear everything you know about Danny Longstreet and his father and Priory House, and anything else you can tell me. Oh, by the way, my name is Nigh Smythe.”

  “And ‘Nigh’ is short for…?”

  “Nightingale,” she said, and as always felt a bit embarrassed by the name.

  “Like Ann Nightingale Stuart?” he asked softly. “Are you related to her?”

  “My mother said we were, but I don’t know how we could be. My mother came from Yorkshire.”

  “But that’s very possible. Didn’t you know that Ann’s father sold Priory House after Ann…died, and he moved north and remarried? I think it may have been Yorkshire where he went, but I’m not sure of it. I think he had more children as his second wife was quite young.”

  Nigh blinked at him for a moment. She’d never been much interested in genealogy and so hadn’t asked her mother much about her grandparents. They were dead by the time Nigh was three, so she didn’t remember seeing them. It was interesting to find out that it could be true that she was related to the Stuarts.

  “I think it would be too much of a coincidence that a descendant of Arthur Stuart’s second marriage would end up in tiny Margate,” she said.

  “Unless she went there on purpose,” he said. “Was your mother interested in family history? Maybe she went to Margate to do some family research.”

  “That’s highly likely,” Nigh said and felt a wave of guilt wash over her. Her mother had been very interested in family history, but her daughter hadn’t been. In fact, Nigh remembered groaning and being a pest when her mother got out her “box of the old ones,” as Nigh and her father called it.

  She turned her attention back to the man. A reporter learned to focus on the person he was interviewing rather than himself. “I’m staying at Tolben Hall.”

  “Beautiful, isn’t it? Hugh bought it after Ann’s death, but he didn’t live long enough to enjoy it.”

  “Why did Hugh Longstreet want Priory House so much?”

  “It was his life’s dream. Actually, it’s what fueled his life. His wanting Priory House was what drove him into becoming a millionaire.” He paused and smiled at her. “I think I’m boring you.”

  “Not at all,” she said honestly.

  “Is that your young man?”

  Turning, she saw Jace standing at the corner of the church, talking to the vicar. She raised her hand to him and he nodded, then she turned back to her new friend. “Why was the house Hugh’s lifelong dream?”

  “His mother had been a housekeeper there. It was said that…no, I’ll bore you.”

  “I promise you won’t.”

  “It’s just a silly story, a bit like Dickens. When Hugh was a young man, it was said that he found out that his mother was much more than just a housekeeper to the owner of Priory House. It was possible, even probable, that the owner was his father. It was also said that on the day he found out, Hugh stole half the Stuart family silver and ran away to America. I was told that Hugh dedicated his entire life to one thing, and that was to owning Priory House.”

  “But Arthur wouldn’t sell it to him,” Nigh said.

  “Correct. Arthur had been a little boy when Hugh lived there and Hugh had…shall we say, been unkind to him.”

  “Tortured him mercilessly, did he?”

  “Without letup,” he said, smiling. “So Arthur wanted to get him back. Besides, Arthur was an angry, bitter man. His father had told him to marry for money, but Arthur had married for love, to a penniless daughter of a vicar. She died less than a year later.”

  “Giving birth to Ann,” Nigh said.

  “Yes. Arthur could hardly stand the sight of his daughter.”

  “He kept her so imprisoned when she was a child that the villagers thought she was deformed,” Nigh said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Then Hugh Longstreet and his handsome son came along and they made a deal.”

  “Yes. It was a deal that took months to negotiate. Arthur was going to continue to live at Priory House after the sale, but Hugh didn’t care who lived there. He just wanted to own that house that should have been his by birth because he was Arthur’s older brother.”

  “What about Ann and Danny?”

  “Ah,” the man said, smiling brighter. “There are sometimes true wonders in this world. On the surface, there were no more mismatched people in the world than Ann Stuart and Danny Longstreet. She was all refinement and quiet graces, while he was—”

  “Wild and devil-may-care. A descendant of his lives in Margate and I know him well.”

  “Does he?” the young man said with interest. “He must be descended from…”

  “Danny’s illegitimate child.”

  “Ah, yes, that,” he said, ducking his head for a moment. “Danny was rich and handsome, and women old and young adored him.”

  Nigh laughed. “Sounds like Jerry, but maybe Danny was a bit brighter.”

  “He wasn’t stupid, if that’s what you mean,” he snapped.

  “Sorry,” Nigh said. “I meant no offense.”

  “I am the one to apologize. Danny’s mother was from an impoverished but upper-crust Boston family, and his father was half aristocracy with a working-class mother. Danny had a lot of different blood in his veins, and Ann brought out the best in him. While their fathers spent months haggling over who owned what furniture, Danny and Ann were free to be together. Their knowledge of the world overlapped on no points, so there was no competition between them. She taught him poetry and flowers, and he taught her…” For a moment, he closed his eyes as he thought.

  “Raw, rough sex,” Nigh said, laughing.

  The man turned to her with a face full of anger. “Don’t say that! Danny respected Ann. He never touched her except for a few chaste kisses.”

  Nigh sat up straighter, moving away from the young man a bit. She was glad it was daylight and that she was in public and that Jace was nearby. She glanced over her shoulder. He was no longer with the vicar but standing by the corner of the church, leaning against the wall and watching her. She thought of motioning for him to come over, but she feared that the young man would quit telling her about Ann and Danny. But she was glad Jace was close.

  She turned back t