Free The Medium (Emily Chambers Spirit Medium Trilogy #1) by C.J. Archer Page A

nothing about his death?"
    More head
shaking from George. "He simply vanished from his Oxford rooms one night
apparently. His body was never found."
    "Never
found! Good lord, how awful." Perhaps that was why Jacob was so
solid and could wander where he pleased. His earthly body had not found a final
resting place where his family could honor and remember him properly. It made
quite a bit of sense to me.
    "Terrible,"
George agreed. "My mother may be a lot of things, but she is certainly a
voracious collector of gossip. If she says Lady Preston is still grieving, then
most likely she is. And for Lady Preston to show her emotions in public, she
must be very distressed indeed."
    Tears pricked
the backs of my eyes. Losing a child must be the worst thing that could happen
to a mother, but to not have found his body, to be left wondering if he was alive
somewhere but unable to contact his family...it was too awful to contemplate.
    I forced the
tears away. There was no point in getting upset for Lady Preston because I
alone knew Jacob was not going to be found safe and sound. He was most
definitely dead.
    "Tell me
about his family," I said. "His father is a lord?"
    George nodded. "Viscount.
Beaufort is the family name, Preston the title. I don't know them well. As I
said, Jacob and I went to Eton together but our families have never mixed
socially even though they only live around the corner in Belgrave Square. My
father was considered a bit of an eccentric, you see, much to Mother's disappointment.
Despite her attempts to further our standing in Society, we were never really
accepted, particularly by a family like Jacob's."
    "Oh? Are
they terribly upright?"
    "Very. The
family is old, has buckets of money and owns a great deal of land in Essex. They
spend most of their time there except when Parliament is open in spring and
summer and they come to London together. Lord Preston has a lot of political
influence in the House of Lords but he's a Tory—very conservative. Could you
imagine a man who doesn't want to give farmers the right to vote associating
with a demonologist?"
    He laughed and I
laughed too. But I couldn't imagine it. I wondered what Lord Preston would
think of his dead son communicating with a spirit medium.
    "What's so
funny?" asked Jacob, suddenly appearing beside me.
    I put a hand to
my rapidly pounding heart. "You scared me."
    "My
apologies. If there was another way to come and go without alarming you I'd
employ it." He gave me that smile I'd become so used to, the crooked one
that made his lips curve in just the right way. It would seem he was no longer
upset by what Mrs. Culvert had said.
    "Is he
here?" George asked, glancing around the room.
    "He is,"
I said.
    "Oh. Good."
He cleared his throat. "Hello, Beaufort, how are you?"
    Jacob sighed and
shook his head in disbelief at the polite but inappropriate question. "I
see you told him about me. Was that wise?"
    "He
guessed." To George I said, "He's well thank you, and asks how are
you?"
    "Very well,"
George said. "Fit as a fiddle." He pushed his glasses up his nose and
grinned at me. He was enjoying this. I suppose he'd never had a conversation
with a ghost before. Although to be technically accurate, he wasn't having one
now, I was.
    "Since he
knows about me, I want to ask him something," Jacob said.
    "He wants
to ask you something," I said to George. "He's standing right beside
me."
    George's gaze
settled on my right.
    Jacob, on my
left side, sighed again and picked up a book. George's gaze shifted. "Ask
him to introduce us to the maid he suspects of stealing the book."
    ***
    The girl, known
by her surname of Finch, said she was sixteen but she looked older. Dark
circles underscored eyes that drooped at the corners as if they were too tired
to open properly. Red blotches on her cheeks and chin marked her otherwise
sallow skin and she seemed to have far more teeth than could fit in her small
mouth.
    "Finch,"
George said, towering over the girl, "this lady wants to