Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Mostly, it’s that everyone knows Duncroft House is haunted by the ghost of a 1920s film star who died there. Deemed an accident, for nearly a century, people are sure it was murder.
Daphne doesn’t like scary things, say…haunted houses. She likes it less when strange things start happening to her when she arrives.
But she finds she has a surprising ally.
Ian Alcott, the heir to the earldom, is rich, gorgeous and just as concerned about the frightening things that keep befalling Daphne at his ancestral family home. As he moves to protect her, Daphne finds he’s also funny, kind and sexy as hell.
Indeed, he just might be too good to be true.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
One
DUNCROFT
“This makes me nervous,” Lou declared.
I didn’t know how to reply because I found what she said odd.
Though, thinking about it, perhaps not too odd.
Portia wasn’t Lou’s biggest fan, she hadn’t been since the very beginning. Even I was surprised my little sister asked Lou to spend this week in the country at the family home of Portia’s boyfriend.
Me? Yes.
The older sister. The only sibling. It made sense.
Portia and I had our times of strife (a lot of them), but like she always had her father’s devotion, she always wanted her big sister’s approval.
When Lou came along, she took some of the former, which was why Portia had never accepted Lou as part of our family. Dad had spoiled Portia, and when he took some attention from his youngest in order to shower Lou with his brand of love, Portia wasn’t happy.
As for my approval, it wasn’t often forthcoming, mainly because Portia didn’t often make decisions I approved of.
I wasn’t the stuffy older sister.
Portia was the mischievous younger one.
According to me.
Also according to me, that description was being nice.
In other words, Portia could often be a pain in my ass.
Lou’s invitation to this week in the countryside? The much-younger third wife of our now deceased father? A wife Portia had butted heads with for the last decade?
That made no sense at all.
Due to this, Lou feeling nervous wasn’t odd…as such.
However, she’d been a member of our family for a long time. She’d sat vigil at Dad’s deathbed right alongside Portia and me. And Portia knew I wouldn’t be thrilled if she cut Lou out of something as important as a meet-the-family with a man who Portia had been seeing for some months now, her longest-ever boyfriend.
So, Lou’s assertion was also odd.
I glanced from navigating the narrow, winding road edged in thick hedgerows to the passenger seat where Lou was sitting, and I saw she wasn’t just nervous. And it was important to note, former supermodel Louella Fernsby-Ryan didn’t often get nervous, or if she did, she knew how to hide it.
No, now she looked—there was no other way to put it—terrified.
Any normal person might be, considering all we were heading into.
That said, Lou wasn’t a normal person. She’d been hobnobbing with the rich and famous for the last twenty plus years. She was beautiful. She was confident. She’d been incredibly successful in her chosen career.
But we were to spend the next ten days at Duncroft House, the country seat of the Alcotts. That being Earl Alcott, Richard, his wife, the Countess, Jane, and Daniel, their youngest son, Portia’s new beau.
Then there was Ian, their oldest, the heir to the title, who Portia told me promised to make several appearances that week, but she and Daniel were hoping he’d spend the whole week and make it a real family affair.
Yes.
And then there was Ian Alcott.
Hmm.
These folks were old-school aristocracy, and unlike many of their ilk who had lost no status but a lot of capital and assets across the centuries, they were old-school, big-time money.
New American big-time money didn’t rub against old aristocratic money very well. It never had. And I had quite a bit of experience knowing that our progressive age hadn’t changed that.
This all didn’t include Duncroft House itself.
A well-known jewel in England’s heritage crown. Perhaps not Buckingham, Windsor, Sandringham or Kensington caliber, but not far off.
It was supposed to be extraordinary.
And it had a notorious past.
“It’s going to be okay,” I told Lou.
“I don’t think so,” she mumbled to the window.
“Portia’s grown up a lot since Dad died,” I pointed out.
“Mm,” Lou hummed noncommittally. As she would.
Yes, Portia had matured.
This might have had something to do with the fact that Lou and I both managed her trust. Although Portia had (even I had to admit) an insulting monthly allowance of two thousand pounds neither Lou nor I could touch, the rest of her substantial inheritance was doled out at our discretion.
Though, that discretion had instruction from Dad, and if Portia didn’t stay gainfully employed, she didn’t get a penny above that two grand until she managed that feat. Further, if Portia remained in a job for less than twelve months, there were strict limits set on what money was forthcoming, again, until she’d accomplished what Dad demanded. Last, if Portia got into trouble with the police, with drugs or alcohol, or with unsavory characters or dubious projects, that money was frozen.
And if this behavior didn’t cease by the time Portia hit age thirty-five, Lou’s and my trusts were each augmented by half of Portia’s, and she received no more. Not even the two thousand.
However, if she managed to keep her shit together for five straight years, the entire trust would be at her disposal without oversight.
At first, Portia took this not as Dad intended, his way to prompt her to shape up, but instead as Dad’s beyond-the-grave assertion that he loved Lou more than her.