Page 13 of Love At First Fright

W ithin five minutes of setting foot in Hallowvale Manor proper, Rosemary knew without a doubt that it was haunted.

Maira, one of the location managers, and Mrs. Fairfax were giving Ellis, Rosemary, Lance, and Vincent a tour of the manor, this time focusing just on the rooms where they would be filming.

She sent up a silent thanks to Josephine, her film agent, for negotiating so hard for her to be included in every aspect of the production.

She saw Ellis’s surprise at her staying on location.

That was probably another reason Ellis wasn’t a fan of hers, she was too meddlesome.

Well, what did he know? His entire career wasn’t riding on this one movie being a hit.

In the main entrance hall, where two curving staircases looped around onto a mezzanine landing, all warm wood lit in a kaleidoscope of colour from the stained glass windows at their back, Rosemary saw different departments from the film setting up.

Set dressers and the camera team were passing back and forth from the main doors to different rooms off-shooting from the hall, carrying Peli cases, tripods, and other film equipment Rosemary didn’t know the names for.

One team appeared to be stacking Peli cases on top of one another, leaving the hard black boxes in a tower in the corner and heading back out to grab more equipment.

That’s when Rosemary noticed them; two women dressed entirely at odds with the slick, black, sporty clothing of the crew.

They were probably in their mid-twenties, though their clothing placed them in the Regency era.

Both were in half-dress, simple cotton day dresses dyed in pale pink and cream, and both had their hair pinned back in chignons, one with deep brown curls, the other with flaxen blond.

Even if for a split second she’d considered they could be extras, they both had that preternatural glow about their edges.

That and the fact that they were arguing at the top of their lungs and no one else seemed to bat an eyelid.

“How dare you!” the brunette ghost shouted at the other. “All this time and you never told me.”

“Don’t look at me like that, you would never have understood,” the other ghost shouted back with a pained cry.

Rosemary felt the emotional tumult radiating off them in waves, and perhaps it wasn’t just her, everyone around seemed to look a little grumpier, sadder, than they had a moment prior. But ghosts couldn’t infect the living with their emotions, could they?

The brunette ghost picked up some sort of script packet that was resting on top of a Peli case and threw it at the other ghost. A couple of people seemed to notice, but there were so many crew members milling around they probably assumed someone else had thrown it.

In Rosemary’s experience, people’s minds didn’t stray to ghosts the moment they saw something peculiar.

The script didn’t pass through the other ghost’s body as Rosemary had expected. She let out a strangled scream, more from frustration than pain, and stalked off, leaving the other ghost seething across the hall from her.

“Don’t ever speak to me again!” she called after her, before running headfirst through a nearby wall and disappearing.

Rosemary wasn’t entirely surprised that Hallowvale had ghosts.

It was an old house, after all. But she hadn’t expected to see a pair of ghosts that must have been around for hundreds of years who still retained the ability to manipulate matter.

They could hold things and throw things, but also move through solid walls as if they were made of air?

She would have to rethink her definition of what ghosts could do.

What disturbed her the most was the way the viciousness of their spat appeared to momentarily bleed through to the living.

Perhaps she’d just imagined it, though. Either way, Rosemary would have to keep her wits about her and use the ghost-repelling candle Dina had made her.

Tonight, and every night until they left Hallowvale, Rosemary would be lighting that candle and sprinkling her bedroom doorway with salt.

Realising that she’d dilly-dallied too long, Rosemary hurried to follow the recce tour, stepping into a shadowy corridor, portraits of stern men with their hunting dogs eyeing her from the walls.

She heard mumbled voices ahead of her and stopped short of entering one of the side parlours. She wasn’t sure what stopped her. The voices became clearer.

“…would be better as just RP,” Jeremy was saying, “that’s what the studio asked for.”

“Better for who?” Vincent shot back, in a half-whisper.

“American audiences, no doubt.” That was Ellis.

“Well, if this is something they’re going to kick up a fuss about, then I suppose we can make RP work.

Ellis?” Vincent said. Rosemary crept closer, hoping she didn’t step on a squeaky floorboard.

It was odd, listening to these men have what appeared to be a covert meeting without her.

She supposed she couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t have included her if she hadn’t lagged behind, but the way they were speaking in such low voices raised her suspicions.

“I think American audiences were fine with shows like Peaky Blinders, so they can handle a light Mancunian accent.”

“Does it really matter, though?” Jeremy whined.

“Yes. It matters. Alfred’s Northern accent feeds into his character. It means his uncle views him as having a lower social status. It will give the movie more nuance,” Ellis said. Was he…defending her book?

“Yes, yes. I agree with Ellis.” Vincent replied vehemently. “Sorry, Jeremy, you’ll have to give the bad news to the studios.”

“They won’t be happy,” Jeremy said.

Rosemary stepped back, slinking into a small alcove with an arched window.

Ellis had defended her script, argued on her behalf to make sure the movie stayed accurate, and she hadn’t even been in the same room when it happened.

Why would he do that? Rosemary remembered the heavily annotated book and script Ellis had brought to the meeting at the Cloverwood Hotel.

Maybe he cares, she thought. There was something about the decisive way he’d spoken, too.

Not an order, no. But just the barest hint of a command in his voice.

That meant what he was saying was final.

It was, Rosemary had to admit, hot. Their interaction from last night came back to her, the feel of Ellis’s warm breath on her collarbone as he’d told her she was blocking his way.

Okay, so it was really hot. There was something about him that made her think he’d be like that in bed.

Commanding. Kind. Not that that was ever going to happen because (A) Rosemary, as much as she was proud of the way she looked, did not have the physique of what men of this century believed to be attractive, and (B) Ellis was dating Jenna Dunn, and they seemed, if a little mismatched, happy enough.

Rosemary wasn’t a home-wrecker. But, she could let herself imagine certain things, couldn’t she?

There was no harm there. Maybe Ellis wasn’t as terrible for Alfred as she had thought him to be.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” Ellis’s rumbling voice came from beside her, and Rosemary realised that she’d fallen so deeply into her sexy little daydream that she hadn’t heard him approaching.

“What?” she babbled. Could he see what she’d just been thinking? Was it written in her flaring pupils and the flush in her cheeks?

“I said, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.” He stepped closer. The familiar scent of cedar and soap filled her senses. Shit, when had Ellis’s smell become familiar to her?

“Oh yeah, two of them actually. Out in the hall.” She winked, hoping that humour would conceal the swarm of butterflies in her belly. Ellis let out a dry chuckle.

“Come on, then. Mrs. Fairfax is going to show us the creepy tower.”

Rosemary nodded, and followed him out of the alcove. They soon caught up with the group, and as they moved further into the bowels of the manor, Rosemary grew more excited.

She could so easily envision her characters walking through these rooms, sitting at their desks by candlelight. She could picture the ghouls and demons she’d created lurking in ice-cold corners, waiting to attack. It was perfect.

“And just up here is a room called the Belltower. It’s the highest bedroom in the house, and we believe it used to function as an amateur astronomer’s lab.”

“This will be dressed up as Alfred’s room,” Vincent called back to them, as they began making their way up a narrow winding staircase cut from stone.

There was only room for one person at a time up the flagstone steps and Ellis indicated that Rosemary should go on ahead of him.

As she climbed, Rosemary noticed a set of thin stained glass windows letting in light.

But these were unlike the ones in the main hall.

Each pane joined together to show a gathering of fairies, dancing around red cap mushrooms in a forest glade.

“Who made these?” she asked Mrs. Fairfax, who was behind Ellis on the stairs.

“The windows? Strangely enough, we don’t know. They must have been commissioned when the house was built, but there’s no trace of them in the records.”

“It’s odd to see fairies on a window like this, I thought you’d normally expect to see something religious,” Ellis added.

“Indeed. Though it’s said that the woods between Hallowvale and Osprey House—the other smaller Georgian mansion nearby—used to be teeming with the fair folk.

So perhaps it’s not that strange at all,” Mrs. Fairfax said in a wistful tone.

Rosemary stepped forwards to peer closer at the glass when her foot slipped on a weathered groove in the stairs.

She immediately lost her balance, fell backwards, and twisted to the side, expecting to feel the cool stone slam against her back.

Instead, Rosemary felt two warm hands grab her waist from either side, holding her steady.

Ellis had caught her before she’d slipped, so she’d ended up only pivoting on the spot.

Facing him. Her hands pressed against the hard planes of his chest, feeling the rise and fall of his breath.

His heartbeat was thrumming fast beneath her fingers.

Rosemary looked up at him, ready to apologise, to say thank you, anything…

“Got you,” Ellis huffed. His words sent a shock wave of heat up her spine.

As he was catching her, Ellis’s hands must have accidentally slipped into the space between her sweater and jeans. His fingers pressed into the small of her back. On her bare skin.

Rosemary nearly gasped at the sheer, immediate intimacy of it, his warm skin against hers. Ellis must have realised at the same moment, but his hands stayed where they were, holding her upright as she found her footing. The world peeled away, leaving just the two of them.

“The stairs are old,” Rosemary whispered.

“Yeah.”

“I slipped.”

Ellis stared down at her, and she swore that for a split second, his thumb caressed her skin, back and forth.

“I caught you.”

“Thank you.” Her voice turned breathy.

“Anytime,” Ellis said, the grey of his eyes appearing darker and deeper than before.

It wasn’t until Mrs. Fairfax cleared her throat that Rosemary realised they had just been standing on the steps and the others were already up in the Belltower room.

Rosemary spun around, taking the rest of the stairs two at a time to get away from Ellis as fast as possible.

At least before she had hated him. He was grumpy, rude, and callous and had ruined her book.

But now…what? Rosemary could no longer say she was indifferent to Ellis Finch.

The place where his hand had touched her waist burned.