The Strange Visitation at Wolffe Hall by Catherine Coulter Read Free Book Online Page A

could bring. I must protect P.C.” She gave him a dispassionate look. “I have always resented the Great’s dismissal of my brain. But for you, a man, he will doubtless come around and spill his secrets.”
    “I know it must be galling, ma’am, but what’s important here, what you must keep your eye on, is getting him to tell us what is happening. If he will only speak to me, a man, well, so be it. You and P.C. and I will solve the problem once he tells me what it is.”
    “Nicely said, sir. You are a great sopper.”
    “Sopper?”
    She nodded. “Yes, as in placating me quite nicely.”
    Grayson was charmed. She took off her glasses and cleaned them on her sleeve. He saw her eyes were indeed as blue as her daughter’s, beautiful, clear, and yes, brimming with intelligence. But her face was too thin. Understandable with a huge swirling black hole in the middle of the entrance hall. “Thank you, ma’am. Since I am here, you might as well make use of me. I smell roses. Won’t you show them to me? And your vegetable patch where Barnaby got the carrots for Albert?”
    Miranda nodded as she eyed her daughter. P.C. had doubtless knocked on the poor man’s door and invited herself and her problems in. “I have always admired Belhaven House, Mr. Sherbrooke.”
    “Please call him Mr. Straithmore, Mama,” P.C. said, crowding in. “His other name isn’t the one that will help us.”
    “Very well, then. Mr. Straithmore, come and admire my roses and carrots.”
    “Mama, please call him Thomas. And he can call you Miranda since you’re grown-ups.”
    “Grown-ups don’t immediately leap to familiar names, P.C., they are more careful, more formal. Isn’t that right, Mr. Sherbrooke—Mr. Straithmore?”
    “In some dire, possibly dangerous situations, I’d have to say that formality tends to fall by the wayside.”
    “What does that mean?” Barnaby asked.
    “It means, bacon-brain, that he wants Mama to call him Thomas. Now, be quiet and watch out for Bickle.”
    Miranda chewed on her lower lip. “Why did you move to Belhaven House, Mr. Sher—Mr. Straithmore?”
    He shrugged. “I fell in love at first sight. I moved myself and Pip here from London four months ago.”
    “His wife didn’t come with him,” P.C. said. “She’s in heaven, but he has Pip. Mama, I feel it, the Great is on the edge. He’s afraid, and not just for us. Mr. Straithmore will make him pop right open. We only have fifteen minutes before he goes back into the hall and wrings out the Great.” She patted her mother’s arm. “It’s all right that he’s a man, Mama. Like he said, we can make use of him.”
    “Actually, twelve and a half minutes,” Grayson said.
    Miranda was fingering a velvet rose petal, a particularly vibrant shade of pink. She straightened. “P.C., you have told everything to Mr. Sher—ah, Mr. Straithmore?”
    “Yes’m, she did that,” Barnaby said, “but ma’am, don’t lock her up with bread and water. She didn’t know what to do and she doesn’t want to leave, so she asked me and I agreed, so I’ll take the bread and water. She wants his smartness to save us all from the abyss. Not that yer not smart yerself, ma’am, but he’s an extra smartness with lots of experience with strange sorts of otherworldly things.”
    “That is an interesting way of explaining it, Barnaby.” Grayson turned to Miranda. “What or who do you think this voice is, Mrs. Wolffe?”
    “I don’t like melodrama, sir, but it seems to me the voice has to be a malignant spirit, but as P.C. told you, we can’t understand what it’s saying. Well, P.C. said she clearly heard hoos , but it does sound more like whooss . When we got downstairs, there was this giant maw, black and deep, swirling around and around, trying to suck us in, and I know there was no bottom. The abyss.”
    She should write novels.

CHAPTER NINE
    There was a moment of stark silence, then Pip said with no hesitation, “This sounds very scary, ma’am, but my