The Willful Wife. Suzanne Simms

images might have faded, but not her memories ... never her memories.

      

      “I’m afraid of the dark, Great-Grandpapa,” she confessed one night as she was being tucked into bed.

      “But only when it’s dark can we gaze up at the sky and see all the stars,” he pointed out to her.

      Desiree had never thought of that.

      “How many stars are there in the sky?” she asked, excited as only an eight-year-old can be excited.

      “Thousands. Millions, ” her great-grandfather answered from his leather wing chair, the same leather wing chair that had always stood alongside the guest bed

      “Can I count them?”

      “Of course you can. You can do anything you put your mind to. Anything at all. Don’t ever forget that, Desiree.”

      She gazed up at the painted mural. “But there are so very many stars, Great-Grandpapa.”

      “Don’t worry, child. We’ll count them together.”

      

      So she and her great-grandfather had counted aloud, her little girl’s half-whisper in unison with his great, booming baritone, until she couldn’t keep her eyes open no matter how hard she tried. Night after night she would fall asleep to the sound of his voice and dream about places she had never been and things she had never seen.

      The decor of the guest room had been something out of a dream, as well. In fact, it still was. It had remained essentially unchanged over the years.

      The furniture was delicately carved and inlaid with rare woods from the Jodhpur region of India. Above the bombe bureau were framed pictures of elephants with their trunks majestically raised skyward, mischievous monkeys at play, colorfully plumed birds perched on tree branches and king cobras, hooded, coiled, sinuous, deadly, yet worshiped by a segment of the Indian population as gods.

      A large painting hung over the fireplace. It depicted a fierce Bengal tiger with a royal hunting party in pursuit On the opposite wall was a seventeenth-century embroidered tapestry, stitched with silk thread and illustrating the life of a maharajah, the beautiful ladies of his court, his grand palace and riches beyond imagination.

      The family’s living quarters had always been filled with personal mementos, keepsakes and souvenirs of the Raj in India. For Desiree they had been a glimpse into her great-grandfather’s world, into a world that was gone and would not come again. Oh, how he had enjoyed telling her stories of his days on the Indian subcontinent and of the times when the sun had never set on the British Empire.

      There had been a splendor and grandeur about the Hotel Stratford in those days, although if she hadn’t been an impressionable child infatuated with the place perhaps she would have noticed even back then that it was beginning to fade.

      But as an eight-year-old she had seen only what she wanted to see. She had loved the hotel’s elegantly appointed lobby, its highly polished brass adornments, its marble floors underfoot and its crystal chandeliers high overhead, its sweeping staircase and claret-colored carpeting, its uniformed doorman and imposing majordomo.

      Most of all Desiree had loved her great-grandfather, resplendent in a perfectly pressed Savile Row suit, starched white collar and old school tie. In a manner of speaking, the Colonel, as his staff had referred to him, had worn a kind of uniform, too. His closet had been filled with identical suits, collars and ties.

      It had been her love for her great-grandfather, and for the Stratford with its rich history and traditions, that had eventually led Desiree to make preserving the past her life’s work. She believed that without the past there was no understanding of the present and precious little insight for the future.

      She exhaled on a long, drawn-out sigh.

      Unfortunately, sentimentality had cost her another good night’s sleep. It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t be the last. Not if she went ahead with her plans for renovating the hotel from the ground up.

      In truth, the Stratford was a dowdy dowager duchess, a bit threadbare, a bit tattered, a bit—well, perhaps more than a bit—past her prime, but not beyond restoration, not beyond redemption. She could be saved. Desiree was certain of it.

      But was she certain in her mind ... or only in her heart?

      Desiree punched at the pillows behind her head—there were half a dozen of every size and shape, covered with the finest Egyptian cotton pillow slips—and stretched out, arms flung to either side, in the antique iron-frame bed.

      She gazed up at the stars twinkling overhead on the ceiling and began to count in a whisper, “One. Two. Three. Four.” After some time she wetted her lips with her tongue and continued. “Ninety-seven. Ninety-eight. Ninety-nine. One hundred.” She persisted. “One hundred and one. One hundred and two.”

      Enough was enough.

      “There’s no sense in pretending any longer,” Desiree muttered as she propped herself up against the mound of pillows. “You aren’t going back-to sleep any time soon.”

      She was reaching for the lamp on the bedside table when she thought she heard something.

      Her hand froze in midair.

      She slowly took in her breath and held it. She wasn’t sure which came next: the odd, tingling sensation that raised the small hairs on the back of her neck or the soft pad of footsteps outside in the corridor.

      There was no one else staying in this wing, no one else with a reason for being here.

      Desiree gave herself a good shake. It was the dead of night. The Stratford was an old building. Old buildings went hand in hand with strange noises.

      Or maybe it was no more than an overactive imagination on her part. Not that she was a woman prone to an overactive anything, but she was living alone in this section of the hotel.

      Truth to tell, there had been more than one unexplained occurrence since her arrival at the Stratford several weeks ago. Furniture had been found mysteriously moved from one room to another. Everyone swore their innocence in the matter, and no one seemed to have any idea of who or why or when or even how this feat could have been accomplished.

      Then there had been the glimpses of something—someone—just at the edge of Desiree’s peripheral vision, but nothing—and no one—was ever there.

      Lastly were the inexplicable noises, always at night, always when she was alone.

      Perhaps it was someone up to no good. Perhaps it was someone trying to frighten her. No doubt that’s what it was. That’s what it had to be.

      Shenanigans.

      Monkeyshines.

      Tasteless practical jokes, in Desiree’s opinion.

      There were stories, naturally. There were always stories about historic old buildings. She had heard the outlandish ghost stories about the Stratford her very first night back in Chicago. Her resident guests had seen to that.

      One account; relayed with particular relish by Miss Molly Mays, had concerned the ill-fated workman who had fallen asleep during the renovation of the hotel. He had accidentally been buried alive inside a foot-thick brick wall. The poor devil had suffocated to death, of course, before his absence had been noted by his fellow workmen and the wall could be frantically torn down again.

      Then there was the tale of the mobster and his moll, related with equal enthusiasm by Miss Maggie Mays. During the era of Prohibition, the couple had apparently been Chicago’s version of Bonnie and Clyde. The pair had come to an inglorious, although perhaps deserved, end when they were killed in a barrage of police bullets. Ever since, according to the elder Miss Mays, it had been rumored that the lovers’ spirits still roamed the corridors of the Stratford, phantom guns blazing.

      Balderdash.

      Poppycock.

      Pure