Free Someone to Love by Jude Deveraux Page B

carpet—
    Jace ran his hand over his eyes, sat up, and looked at his watch. He’d been asleep only ten minutes.
    As he came more fully awake, he began to remember what he’d heard. Names. Danny Longstreet. Ann, Catherine, Peregrine.
    He grabbed the thick paperback, The History of Margate, and looked in the index. Hubert and Daniel Longstreet were under the chapter about Priory House.
    Hubert “Hugh” Longstreet was the father of Daniel, who had been engaged to Ann Stuart, daughter of the owner of Priory House. But when the marriage didn’t take place, Hugh and his son left Margate and were never heard from again.
    “But what about Ann?” Jace asked aloud. “Why didn’t she marry Danny Longstreet?”
    As Jace flipped the pages, he thought of all the diseases Victorians had. What awful thing had happened to Ann so she didn’t get to marry Danny Longstreet?
    Two pages on, there was an essay written by N. A. Smythe titled “The Tragedy of the Priory House Stuarts.”
    Quickly, Jace read the story, then slowed down and read it again. Smythe wrote that Arthur Stuart, beloved son and owner of Priory House, had eschewed the rich young woman he could have married and had, instead, married for love. He married the sweet and lovely daughter of a vicar of a rural parish, and took her back to Priory House. Alas, she and his beloved father died the next year. But Arthur wasn’t left alone as he had his beloved daughter, Ann, to comfort him.
    “Beloved,” Jace said. “Everyone is beloved of everyone else.”
    In 1877, it was found that the house needed massive repairs, but Arthur Stuart, a renowned scholar, didn’t have the money to pay for them. Hubert Longstreet, a rich American, wanted to buy the house, but he also wanted his son to marry into what he considered the aristocracy, the Stuart family. Although there was no longer any title, it was believed that there had once been a connection to the royal Stuarts, and even a connection to the British throne. Longstreet wanted to elevate his status above his lowly American roots, and Arthur Stuart was desperate to preserve the home of his ancestors.
    The two men struck a bargain. They agreed that their children would marry and they’d all live together in the big house. But it was a devil’s bargain. Danny Longstreet was an uneducated lout who drank and gambled and frequented houses of ill repute. Ann Stuart was a lady of the highest reputation, quiet and scholarly, beloved by everyone.
    “Ann tried to obey her father,” N. A. Smythe wrote, “but when it came down to it, she couldn’t go through with the marriage. Two hours before her wedding, she drank a bottle of poison. She killed herself rather than marry a good-for-nothing like Danny Longstreet.
    “Ann was buried in her wedding dress, but unfortunately, she had to be buried outside the sanctity of the churchyard because of her suicide.
    “A few weeks after the marriage was supposed to have taken place, a local Margate girl revealed that the father of her illegitimate child was Danny Longstreet.
    “Poor Ann, may she rest in peace.”
    Jace closed the book. No, Ann Stuart didn’t rest in peace. In fact, she didn’t rest at all. She was doomed to wander about Priory House for…How long? he wondered. Until someone found out she had been murdered and hadn’t commited suicide?
    He sat up straighter. Murder. When Jace first heard that the woman he loved had committed suicide, he’d said she’d been murdered, but no one would listen to him. Stacy had been an insomniac, so she’d always had sleeping pills. But in the years they’d known each other, she’d gradually come to stop using the pills. He hadn’t even known she still had a prescription. After her death, a doctor he’d never heard of had called to apologize for giving Stacy a new prescription. “I heard about her death,” the doctor had said. “She was a new patient and I had no idea she was an addict or a manic-depressive.” “She was no such