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Ghosts in the Night Excerpt
Prologue
“Come on, Andrew, you’re missin’ the party,” Jack called from inside.
Andrew Townsend only turned back to the darkness over London. Ragtime was playing loudly in the ballroom behind him. Women in shorter dresses than only a few years past toddled and twinkled their way around, the drinks never leaving their hands. The partying was killing him inside. It might have helped him ignore the war when he was awake, but it surely didn’t help rid his dreams of war. Jack clapped him on the back and handed him another glass of champagne.
“My uncle died last month, he left me a plantation in Ceylon,” Andrew murmured when Jack joined him. The letter had arrived days before, days he’d spent trying to decide how he wanted to die. An old drunk empty shell or a young used up empty shell. Those seemed to be the current options.
Jack’s face lit up. “Wonderful. Could always use a bit of excitement in the Orient. I’ll go with you, help out until you’ve sold it.”
Andrew shook his head. “Sell? No, I’m going to run it.”
“By Jove, Andrew, you ain’t worked a day in your life.”
Andrew straightened, good old Jack with his affected accent, he could say that, since Jack didn’t have it in school, only after he met a Lord if he remembered right. Jack Barlow was the wealthy one. Set to inherit a company and a fortune, Andrew had met him at boarding school. Andrew, as a diplomat’s son, had modest means, but no fortune. No mansion with servants. Andrew didn’t even mention he’d been working for the last three years, ever since he was well enough after returning from France. “No, I spent four years in a damn trench while you never worked a day in your life. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life drunk.” Maybe work would finally tire him out enough so the dreams would leave, work more demanding than paperwork in an office, anyway. Drinking sure hadn’t. Three years since he returned, and every night for three years, he’d woken screaming.
“You’ll miss the clubs, Andrew, you know it?”
“I can’t breathe with all the cigarette smoke after. . .” Andrew walked off without finishing. Weaving his way through the crowd of people, he stopped at the sight of himself in the mirror next to the cloakroom. He handed over his ticket without even looking at the coat check girl. All he could see was the ghost of a man staring back at him in the mirror. All of thirty-one, the man staring at him seemed to be fading away. He could have been a ghost, nothing more. Days doing paperwork, he couldn’t even tell of what, nights of getting drunk and not sleeping. Pale ghostly skin held brilliant blue eyes, the last bit of life he could find in his reflection. The boy he had been was gone, the man he became was lost. Was that all seven years of his life had given him?
****
It was ridiculously simple just to pick up letters from the bank, quit his job, sell everything else, hop on the Channel ferry, and via the Orient Express race to catch the P&O line ship headed for all ports east. If he had planned this lark better he would have waited till the next sailing and left via Liverpool. But once his mind was made up waiting seemed unthinkable. It was ridiculously sad that no one cared. The last remaining relative, a younger sister had married a Canadian and been buried in those wilds ever since. His circle had all gone to school together, but when Jack let it slip that he was leaving no one seemed to care. Time to party yet again. His colleagues hadn’t even cared to go have a drink after work. If anyone he knew from the trenches had survived, they might have cared, but that was long since past. His parents were gone, along with the aunt who lived with his mother after their father died. The others gone long before. Now his father’s brother had gone too, leaving him the plantation. How could he have survived four years in the trenches, treading over the dead, and everyone else, safe at home, had just disappeared?
“Andrew!”
Jack stood there with a bag in hand, as the Orient Express was called to board. Jack of all people. Jack Barlow, the rich, idle, blue-eyed blond and, if the women could be believed, devastating Jack of no trades stood there, ready to hop on board.
“What are you doing here?”
“Goin’ with you of course.”
Andrew grabbed his bag and stepped aboard the blue with gold railcar. “Long way for a week’s visit, don’t you think?” he said over his shoulder.
“I said I’d go and help. I keep my word,” Jack called after him.
Couldn’t Jack just go away? Andrew’s leg was starting to bother him, it always did when a storm was coming. The still brilliant blue sky would change soon, he was certain of that. “Your word was to help until I sold. I’m not selling, and you get bored easily.”
Jack grinned widely, his seducing a woman grin. “All right, so mother planned an engagement party for this weekend, one of the servants let it slip. If I show up, I’ll be saddled with Ella Wilcox for life. Ceylon sounds good right now. Lots of daughters of the Colonial fellows to lead down the garden path.”
“Ella’s a nice girl.”
“She’s in love with Matthew, has been for years. Her father, of course, thinks Matthew ain’t good enough for his little girl and he’s probably right, but still I have my standards.”
“You? Standards?”
Jack laughed as he hopped aboard the train. “Hard to believe, I know, but a woman in love with someone else, I draw the line. I don’t ask for much – wealthy, good connections, proper family background, maybe a title.”
“A title?” Andrew snorted as he made his way down the corridor to the compartment. “Maybe you should put an ad in Burke’s Peerage. One spoiled, good-for-nothing London prude looking for a mate. All takers considered, send pedigree.”
“You! You ! You’re callin’ me a prude!”
Hell, the man objects to prude, but not to spoiled good for nothing? “You’re the one refusing to marry over a little love, I thought you only wanted to marry to make your mother happy, so you could seduce all the flappers without her making you feel guilty you weren’t perpetuating the legitimate Barlow line.”
“I have never fathered a child, Andrew. Trust me, if I had, the woman would lose no time in makin’ me pay for it.”
“Well, I’ll give you that, and my compartment is here.”
“I’ve the next, let’s put our things up, and I’ll see you in the club car for a nightcap.”
Andrew nodded, but quickly entered the compartment and pulled the shades. He sank into the seat with a groan and gingerly put his leg up. For three years, he’d hidden that he’d almost lost his leg in one of the last offensives of the war. He’d spent the armistice in hospital. Andrew kept hidden the medals proving that wasn’t the only time he was wounded. Of those four years, he said nothing to anyone. The sky out the window, the very sky he had watched from the trenches held clouds dark and streaked. Then the sky truly held the dirt thrown up as shells bombarded the earth, now the clouds made the same patterns. The reflection in the window showed thick dark hair, strong square jaw, full bottom lip, narrow nose, a faint cleft in his chin – but still a ghost hovering over the land that had taken life from him. Closing his eyes for a moment was all Andrew could manage right then as the train whistle sounded more like the scream of shells just before they hit, Jack would be fine alone.
****
Andrew woke with a scream on his lips, but he’d woken before the entire train heard him. The storm he had felt coming battered the train, rain ran down the windows in a sheet. The flash of lightning illuminated the compartment despite the dark grey sky outside. He heard a knock on the door again. Andrew remembered hearing it faintly just before he woke.
“Andrew, they’re seatin’ us for breakfast.”
Hell, had he actually slept, he couldn’t quite remember the last time that had happened. “Where are we?”
“Lausanne, give or take. We get off shortly after breakfast to catch the train to Genoa. You’re damned lucky we could catch the ship there after we missed it sailin’ from Liverpool.”
****
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