Whispers at Midnight Read online

  Praise for WHISPERS AT MIDNIGHT:

  “The perfect blend of anticipation and apprehension . . . seductive tale by a superb writer of romantic suspense.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Takes romance, mystery and intrigue and weaves them into a good story.”

  —Rendezvous

  Also by Andrea Parnell from Trove Books

  DARK SPLENDOR

  “This is an entertaining blend of eerie shadows and romantic interludes. An excellent gothic romance.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A beautifully written, lyrical—almost poetic in the narrative—book! . . . If you appreciate a great story and the true beauty of words that are put together the way they should be, you will love DARK SPLENDOR.

  —Rendezvous

  “The grand Gothic Romance could never be better represented than in DARK SPLENDOR.”

  —Affaire de Coeur

  “A tantalizing blend of suspense and sensuality, with all the thrills and chills that lovers of the Gothic enjoy.”

  — Romantic Times Rave Reviews

  Delilah’s Flame*

  Wild Glory*

  My Only Desire*

  Devil Moon*

  Small Town Secrets*

  *coming soon

  Whispers at Midnight

  Andrea Parnell

  Whispers at Midnight

  Copyright © 1987, 2011 by Andrea Parnell. All rights reserved

  Published 2011 by Trove Books

  TroveBooks.com

  Smashwords edition 1.1, May 2011

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Publisher’s Note

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A previous print edition was published by NAL/Signet in 1987.

  Cover by Frauke Spanuth, Croco Designs www.crocodesigns.com

  To my children,

  Dan and Kyla.

  And to my sister Genia

  for all the help

  and all the shared hope.

  One moment in annihilation’s waste,

  One moment, of the well of life to taste—

  The stars are setting and the caravan

  Starts for the dawn of nothing— oh, make haste!

  —The Rubáiyát

  of Omar Khayyám, XXXVIII

  Prologue

  Virginia

  July 1730

  THE NIGHT WAS hot and still. More so than any Evelyn Wicklow could ever remember. She held tightly to her husband’s arm, so that her steps would not falter and reveal the tug of fear at her heart. Not a sound rose up in the cloying heat, not the chirp of a cricket, not the song of a bird. It seemed both time and the movement of the elements had come to a halt as an omen of the evil she sensed.

  “He’s a heartless man, Jubal,” her lovely, sad voice petitioned Jubal Wicklow. “If only there were another way.” Her soft gray eyes, rimmed with worry, pleaded silently with him. At sunrise Jubal would fight a duel on the riverbank near Wicklow House. Knowing he had been one of the best shots in England failed to ease Evelyn’s mind, for deep in her soul she already knew the outcome of this senseless contest.

  A dark wave of apprehension swept through her as hazy images clouded her thoughts. Her head ached violently, yet her hands clung lovingly to those of her husband. Since childhood she had borne the peculiar gift of foretelling the future. Evelyn had often thought that ability was more of a burden than an advantage. Sometimes, as now, when the vision involved those to whom she was closest, what would happen could only be viewed through a deep, murky mist and not clearly enough to see one’s way. And yet she had read disaster in the dark warning clouds long before she knew John Mott had come to Virginia.

  “Aye, but there will be no reasoning with John,” Jubal Wicklow responded calmly as he clasped Evelyn’s hands between his own. “Four years at sea with the man and I learned to know him well.” He did not try to make light of her words; instead he marked the depth of anguish in her voice and eyes. She was so lovely to him, with her fair hair and eyes which at times were as luminous and mysterious as silver moonlight. He never tired of looking at her, his Evelyn, the sweetest treasure a man could ever possess.

  Jubal Wicklow smiled reassuringly. As always, Evelyn aroused his protective instinct. He did not ask what she saw. He knew the effort would only heighten her pain. He understood his wife’s power and the toll it required of her delicate body. For even though she possessed great spiritual strength, she was as fragile and beautiful as an orchid. Above all things in life, he swore to himself, he loved Evelyn and their young daughter, Elise. Nay, more than that, he loved nothing or no one else on earth.

  Evelyn lifted her pretty chin. “I prayed, Jubal, you could settle this debt with John Mott without bloodshed.” Still, she did not believe prayers could help and would send Elise to a trusted friend in Williamsburg.

  Jubal led his wife into the newly finished maze of hedges, her single request for the grounds of Wicklow.

  “Bloody bastard,” he said, and nodded. “Begging your pardon, my love, but it boils my blood that he should come here making his challenge after a full decade. As for the debt he claims, there is but what he invents. John holds no right to the gold or the ruby. The full bounty we took on our last voyage we divided before returning to England. I take no blame that John Mott’s share rests on the ocean floor. He sailed into weather no sane man would have faced.” Jubal halted his steps at a turn in the hedges and glanced about until his puzzlement brought the wanted smile from Evelyn. She pointed out the correct path. “The blighter lost his crew to the last man,” he said. “It should be enough he has his life.”

  “It is more than gold and jewels he has come for,” Evelyn said softly. She had not thought John would follow them to the colonies. With an ocean and the passage of time between them it seemed that her dreadful destiny with the man could be overcome.

  Once she had been betrothed to John, a prosperous sea captain and a widower with a young child. As a girl of seventeen she might have been enthralled with the handsome Mott and even delighted in accepting the marriage her parents arranged. But there was always something about the man that his smooth words and elegant manners could not overcome. He frightened her.

  A fortnight before the date of the wedding, John Mott introduced her to a seafaring companion, the exuberant and red-haired Jubal Wicklow. One week later Evelyn and Jubal eloped and in so doing made a fierce enemy of John Mott. Having seen in her vision what John meant to do, Evelyn convinced Jubal that they should leave immediately for the colonies. A month following their departure, John wed another young woman.

  For once Evelyn believed the visions had been wrong. John had forgotten them. But now, on the tenth anniversary of her marriage to Jubal Wicklow, a duel would be fought. She did not enjoy seeing John Mott’s face so plainly in her mind. Indeed she could not shut it out as she prayed that once again what was destined would be postponed.

  Jubal Wicklow embraced her. “You must not worry, love. No harm will come to me. Not to any of us. I promise you.”

  “Jubal, my darling,” she whispered, wishing she could be reassured. “If it shou
ld, you must remember this: we will find one another again. That I can promise you.” Her soft, liquid eyes gazed deeply into his and then she kissed him long and lovingly. “For time, my darling, is only a moment after death.” Her voice softened. “I will wait for you, Jubal.”

  Hours later Evelyn sat quietly in the master bedchamber, having sent for young Jedaiah Long, the stable boy, to take Elise to the house in Williamsburg. She wore the ruby necklace Jubal had fastened around her neck. Heart-shaped, the deep pink stone bore an intricately carved peacock in the center. John had wanted the stone but accepted grudgingly that Jubal found it first. Called the Heart of Happiness, the ruby was stolen from the treasure stores of a Persian shah and was valued at many times the rest of her husband’s wealth.

  The jewel, Jubal’s wedding gift to her, had been their enchantment, the symbol of their happiness. At sunrise Evelyn held the glowing ruby against her breast, knowing that through all time its beauty would remain to attest the love she had shared with her husband. She did not go to the window to watch what would happen by the river. There was no need. She could see it all in the shadowy depths of her mind. She could hear the voices.

  “John Mott, the devil take you!” Jubal Wicklow shouted.

  “Not before he welcomes a thief, man.” The early morning fog spewed up from the river and wrapped around his legs.

  “You have no claim to the gold or the jewel.”

  “I claim it all. And Evelyn,” John answered. “You stole her from me.”

  “Are you a madman? You have a wife.”

  “Dead a year ago. Now I’ve come for what is rightfully mine—Evelyn.”

  No more words were spoken. As the rising sun appeared and spread crimson rays across the James River, the men paced apart and turned. Evelyn felt an eerie shiver run along her spine as the first shot was fired.

  Jubal Wicklow staggered back as the bullet tore through his side. He was wounded but not downed. Razed with pain, he aimed his pistol and fired. His shot struck John Mott in the chest, knocking him to the ground.

  Weak from his own injury, Jubal muttered a curse and turned away. He was glad the deed was done and anxious to get back to Evelyn. He did not have the chance to wonder that John Mott was still alive. If he had, he might have realized his aim was less true due to his injury. But before Jubal Wicklow had walked ten paces, the other man slid a hidden pistol from his pocket and fired a shot at the back of his enemy. Jubal Wicklow crumpled to the ground.

  John pulled loose his cravat and packed the silk cloth against the hole in his chest. Minutes later he found Evelyn in her sitting room, hands folded and eyes closed, her face blanched white as paper. With Jubal dead and her heart broken she no longer cared what would happen.

  “Now, my love,” John told her as he drew her from the chair, “you see that no man cheats John Mott—and lives.”

  Evelyn neither spoke nor offered resistance as he led her down the stone stairs to the cellars where he was certain Jubal Wicklow had hidden the gold.

  John Mott gloated and felt a sudden surge of overpowering excitement despite his pain. He had the ruby and he had Evelyn. He wanted the gold as badly. In ten years he had not rested knowing Jubal Wicklow had taken what was his. After his second wife died—a pity he had needed to help her along in that—he determined to reclaim Evelyn and to take all Jubal Wicklow owned.

  John moaned as he reached the bottom of the stairs. His wound throbbed and his head was growing dizzy, his thoughts wandering. But the bleeding had stopped and he was determined to search the cellars. Somewhat weakly, he leaned his weight against the heavy stone door of a secret cellar room and pushed it open. Gently he thrust Evelyn inside.

  “You’ll keep here, my love, until I’ve found the gold.” Evelyn did not answer but he did not mind. Soon she would welcome him into her arms.

  For hours John wandered the black, cavernous rooms and tunnels beneath Wicklow, making his search. Increasingly he felt a strange lightness in his body but was drawn on by his mania and the belief that with the next step he would find the gold.

  With his guttering torch John stumbled along in a stupor into the last of the tunnels. Behind him a stone door ground shut. Eyes dulled, feet dragging in the dirt, John was not really conscious of dropping his torch or of sliding to the floor, just as he had not been conscious that the hours of exertion had opened his wound and that for a long time blood had dripped down his arm and off his fingers.

  A coolness moved suddenly through his body. Ahead he saw a bright golden glow through half-open eyes, and crawled toward it.

  “At last,” he whispered, believing he had found the gold as he reached into the torch flame. But John Mott did not feel the searing heat on his hand. He was dead.

  ***

  Evelyn Wicklow walked to one corner of the damp, dark cell where John Mott had imprisoned her. She pressed the ruby heart to her lips, then let it fall softly against her breast. Calmly she sank to the cold stone floor. She did not know or care if the passing moments grew into hours or days. In time, Jubal would find her. But she had no wish to live any longer while she tarried.

  “I will wait for you, Jubal,” she whispered as her spirit gathered itself for flight. A moment later a pale shadow passed through the door of darkness and Evelyn Wicklow died.

  Chapter 1

  July 1770

  The darkness was damp and oppressive and hung round the neglected grounds of Wicklow House like a shroud. Only a few beams of moonlight illuminated the path as Amanda Fairfax jumped down from the mud-spattered carriage that had brought her and her companion on the twelve-mile trek from Williamsburg, Virginia. The heavy blackness gave her the feeling of being at the bottom of a dark pool with all the world up above. Nevertheless, in an odd way it seemed exciting to arrive at this old house in the dead of night when its bleak, wet surroundings seemed so unnatural.

  Was it her imagination that a nebulous glow momentarily shone from the spires of the twin towers of Wicklow as she turned about? If so, then there was no accounting for the nervous movements of the horses, which by right should have been too tired for the restlessness they suddenly displayed.

  The house was no ordinary one, to be sure, not stately, and lacking the grace of many of the homes she had seen in Virginia since the vessel Devon Gate brought them up the James River. Wicklow had a style that drew threads of terror through the mind, the way it sprawled possessively over the hilltop and sometimes looked as if it would swallow up any who came near. Perhaps it was exactly that which made Wicklow repellent—that it looked as if it were a house that owned its inhabitants rather than the other way around.

  Amanda’s lids fluttered over her green eyes for a moment. Rumors abounded concerning Wicklow, and seeing it at night—unlit and untended—she did not wonder at them. One claimed a treasure of gold and other riches had been hidden and lost nearly half a century ago when the first owner had been killed in a duel. Another claimed Jubal Wicklow’s ghost haunted the house, guarding the gold and warning away any who sought it. Others said the house bore a curse and that no owner would live out a full life. That was the rumor Amanda most wished she had not heard, for she sensed there was some truth to it.

  Jubal Wicklow, thin and tall, treads the shadows of Wicklow’s halls. The words brought her a degree of apprehension and she wished the silly rhyme would not stick in her mind like a tiny thorn. She hadn’t been able to forget the ditty since a fellow traveler on the ship from England had recited it to her. She laughed lightly. Jubal Wicklow must have been a frightful character to have inspired such remembrances.

  Pressing her lips together so that she wouldn’t speak the rhyme aloud, Amanda lifted her skirts to avoid a puddle and turned to help Elizabeth Slater from the carriage. She knew from the expression on Elizabeth’s face that the rhyme was running through her head as well.

  The old woman sat placidly as her eyes darted over the front of Wicklow, finally fastening on the big oaken front doors crossed by black iron bands and with sharp studs protr
uding from the heavy wood.

  “It’s ugly and it’s evil.” Elizabeth’s wrinkled old face bent into a frown. Reluctantly she allowed herself to be helped down. Once out of the carriage, she shuddered and drew a heavy shawl over her stooped shoulders. “Amanda, we can’t stay here.” Her faded gray eyes looked pleadingly at the bright-faced young woman standing impatiently beside her.

  “Nonsense, Elizabeth, it’s my home now,” Amanda said somewhat sharply, surprised that Elizabeth’s words had suddenly stirred her sense of pride. And yet she was pleased that they had, for despite the house’s look of inelegance, from the moment she had set her feet to the ground she had become a part of Wicklow and it of her. The feeling was a good one, and new. She found herself growing anxious to step through the front doors and into the shelter of her home.

  Amanda signaled the driver to set the trunk and baggage beside the sheltered front door as she gave only a passing glance to the timid Elizabeth.

  The sight of Wicklow had raked all the fatigue from her body and now she was fairly bursting with excitement. She knew Elizabeth had been in a constant state of terror since they left London and she had long since given up trying to reassure the old woman. Dear old Elizabeth had been her mother’s companion for years, had stayed with Sarah Fairfax out of loyalty long after she should have put aside the strenuous demands of attending a famous but temperamental actress.