Free The Strange Visitation at Wolffe Hall by Catherine Coulter Page B

relaxed, opened himself, and felt the warmth settle around him, felt it moving into him, slowly, as if exploring, uncertain. Then he was one with it. He heard the Great’s voice, heard Miranda yelling at him, even Suggs bellowed once. Grayson wished they’d all be quiet. He wasn’t afraid. And he made out one word— heir.
    The funnel whirled back outside. The curtains settled. The house was calm. The silence was deafening.
    Grayson looked down at Miranda. She’d run in front of him, to save him. He saw her face was white, her eyes dilated. She stared up at him and came up on her tiptoes, her warm breath feathering against his ear. “It is very odd, Grayson. You smell like lemons.”
    It wasn’t only Grayson—the lemon scent filled the dining room.
    The Great said suddenly, his voice far away, “There was an orchard of lemon trees off the battlefield. You could smell the lemons when the wind changed. It lessened the stench of blood and death. For a moment. You are wrong, Grayson, it is Major Houston’s spirit, it has to be, and he brought the smell with him.”
    “No, sir, it is an entirely different spirit, but the visitations are about Major Houston.” Grayson smiled. Finally, everything came together. Simple, really, but still, best to be sure. He said, “Sir, do you have genealogy records of the Wolffe family?”
    “Of course, but why?”
    “I believe they may reveal the answer.”
    Miranda looked at the smile, saw the gleam of knowledge in his eyes. “You know what this is all about, don’t you, Grayson?”
    “Yes, I think I do.”
    An hour later in the Great’s library, Grayson was slowly making his way through the faded, nearly indecipherable handwriting that stretched back to the sixteenth century.
    And there was a family tree, shown in full detail.
    “You’ve never studied this, sir?”
    The Great shook his head. “No, I have no interest in such things.”
    “A pity,” Grayson said.
    “Why?” Miranda was nearly hanging over his shoulder, and then she saw it. “Good heavens, sir, would you look at this!”
    “Yes,” Grayson said. “There, I believe, is our spirit. He visited you, told you to find Major Houston.”
    Miranda said, “But if Major Houston isn’t dead, then why didn’t the spirit contact him? Send him here?”
    “I hope that he has,” the Great said, “since we have no idea where to find him. Imagine, Charles Houston is alive, but what happened to him?”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
    Wolffe Hall
    Two weeks later
    When Grayson and Pip came into the Great’s study, he was grinning wildly, showing his six remaining teeth, waving a letter. “It’s from Charles—Major Houston. Grayson, he found me!” And the Great read:
    My dear Colonel Lord Wolffe:
    How the years fall away when I write your name, when I picture your face in my mind. So many years since that fateful day at Waterloo.
    Let me hasten to tell you that I never blamed you for wounding me. It was I who was at fault. Of course you would believe me an enemy the way I came up behind you. I lay there, the sword slice through my side, knocked unconscious because I evidently hit a rock when I fell. A young man from a nearby village, Jacco Hobbs, found me and pulled me to safety. I survived, but strangely, my brain was perfectly blank. Jacco nursed me back to health, but still I could remember nothing, who I was, who my family was, and poor Jacco had no idea either. So the two of us set sail to Boston, where we’ve lived for the past twenty-five years, Jacco as my valet.
    I married, went into my father-in-law’s shipping business, but still, I had no memory. My poor wife and my small daughter both died in a cholera outbreak that left many dead.
    The years passed, and still I had no memory until I took a fall from my horse, hit my head, and when I came awake, I remembered everything. This was about four months ago.
    Then something very strange happened. I hesitate to lay it down in writing for fear you will believe me