Free The Ghost and Miss Demure by Melanie Jackson

it?”
    “As strong as possible,” she told him. “Make it an Italian two to one.”
    “Good Italians drink three to one.”
    “This is an emergency. Hit me hard.”
    He smiled the same attractive smile that she had seen last night and set the tiny cup in front of her. It was not an antique mug, just rather old. Pure Goodwill bargain basement crockery. Maybe he didn’t trust her with the good stuff.
    “Thank you,” she said as he turned away.
    “How do you feel this balmy a.m.?”
    “Aces. Not that I was feeling any pain last night,” she admitted ruefully. “I want to apologize for crashing in on you that way. I assure you that I don’t usually behave like that.”
    “Apologize? Whatever for?”
    “Well…” She looked at him, standing there bright-eyed and neat as wax, and felt more than ever that she had been unforgivably discourteous. “I think I recall being very rude. For one thing, I said that your house was hideous.”
    “It is hideous. And it’s not my house. It’s just the one I’ve been hired to turn into a tourist trap—and on an impoverished budget,” he said.
    Karo snorted into her coffee cup and tried not to laugh. Her other employers had been given to rather loftier goals and higher-flying forms of rhetoric when describing their jobs. Tristam seemed to have no intellectual pretensions about “preserving history” for future generations who couldn’t care less about what went on in the “good old days.”
    “You shouldn’t laugh at the truth,” he complained. “It’s an art, you know. Telling the truth and also turning the useless and hideous into tourist attractions. I belong to a very select guild of skilled craftsmen. We have only three members,and I’m the only one currently working in the States. I’m as rare as an original Holbein. Surely you’ve heard of my triumph at Lesser Warwick Hall? It contains the most complete display of modern Mediterranean fish skeletons in the United Kingdom, don’t you know?”
    Karo let herself smile at his claim and slightly exaggerated accent. She was feeling more cheerful now that she knew she wasn’t to be fired, and as an added fillip that she probably didn’t deserve, it seemed that she was going to be working for a man with a sense of humor. As a contrast to F. Christian, the gods of ironic situations couldn’t have done better. Perhaps life was worth living for one more day.
    “Okay. But let me get this off of my chest. At the very least I have to apologize for just wandering in and making myself at home in the library. I don’t know what to say except that I’m sorry.”
    “Pure mashed potatoes! I’m glad you did come in. It shows excellent sense that you knew to get out of the rain. Truly, you could have knocked all night and I wouldn’t have heard you up in the garret. That room was designed to be…private.”
    “But I chased you out of your bed, too,” she said, being thorough in her contrition. “You probably had to sleep in the dungeon, with rack and thumbscrews and giant rats.”
    Tristam gave her an odd look, then laughed silently. “Sorry, no traditional dungeon. Too much groundwater, I expect. And please, say no more,” he finally added, refusing to let her apologize further. “Doctor Monroe agreed that youwere wandering around in a daze because of the lightning strike. He says that you may feel some disorientation for the next few days. So, you can hardly blame yourself for anything that happened last night. And I certainly don’t blame you for not liking Vellacourt’s horror. It would take a certain type of person to appreciate this place’s dubious charm. It will be the greatest of feats if we can turn it into something tasteful, and for this I’ll need your help.”
    She had to ask, even though he was being extremely polite. “Um…did anything else happen last night while I was wandering in a daze?” Tristam cleared his throat, and Karo braced herself with another swallow of coffee. “Give it to