that’s why we’re trying to accommodate you. Normally you’d have to book at least a year ahead. If not two. Because your fiancé’s uncle made a special request, we will do everything we can. But we can’t squeeze out someone who’s already reserved the space. I’m sure you understand.”
“I’m not sure I want to get married here, anyway,” the bride said with a frown. “Retro-Victorian kitsch is so yesterday. The whole place just reeks of Nothing Special to me.”
“Oh, it’s very special.” As Beth led her charge into the hallway, Rosebud ignored the locked door and lazily passed through the thick wood to join them. “We don’t really advertise it, but the Inn has a unique reputation.”
The bride-to-be looked a bit more interested. “I heard that Daphne Remington got married here, but I never thought she was all that. What level are you talking? Jennifer and Brad? Gwyneth and Chris? Or real royalty?”
“Although our clientele includes some very fine names, it’s not about that,” Beth said quickly. “It’s more the atmosphere.”
Vanessa lifted her narrow shoulders in a shrug. “I’m not feeling any atmosphere.”
“Well, you see…”
“Yes? What?”
“Around the turn of the century, it was a bordello,” the wedding coordinator confided. “A fancy bordello. There’s this theory that the women who worked here are still here, sort of, um, hanging around the rafters, if you get my drift.”
“Like, ghosts?” There was that eyebrow again. “Ghosts of old hookers? Is that what you’re saying?”
“In so many words, yes.” Beth smiled as they neared the elevator. “Let’s just say that everyone seems to have a really good time when they stay here, and we think it may be because there are some lusty spirits giving them a little boost. I’ve seen and heard some things—”
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” Vanessa said flatly. “It all sounds ridiculous to me. And obscene. Ghost hookers. Yechhh.”
Obscene? Rosebud took issue with that. She had never done anything obscene in her entire life, and none of the others, not even the Countess, fell to that level. What was wrong with helping honeymooners have more fun?
“Just between you and me,” the bride-to-be went on, “I’m only considering it because of the family connection. But I don’t know…”
“We have a lot of happy brides and grooms,” Beth put in.
“Yes, but we’re no ordinary bride and groom. We’re very choosy.”
Which did not come as a surprise to Rosebud.
“Well, not every property is right for every couple,” the wedding planner noted. “Maybe you’d be happier choosing a different location.”
Good for you, Beth! Give her the boot! But Vanessa didn’t seem to have noticed the message behind Beth’s tactfully phrased words.
Frowning, the bride-to-be muttered, “Ned seems to think this place is our only option with so little time to plan.”
Ned. So that was the name of the poor bridegroom shackled to the Wicked Witch.
“If time is the problem, maybe you should consider pushing back the date,” Beth said helpfully. “A year, even two, would open things up. You might even want to pick your date based on when you can get your first choice of location.”
“Wait another year? Not a chance,” Vanessa declared. “I’ve been waiting for Ned to propose for two years. I know him. If I don’t pounce, he’ll back out. So I’m pouncing. If that means getting married in this dump, so be it.”
Dump? As the elevator arrived, Rosebud briefly contemplated letting Vanessa get stuck in it for a good, long time. But she wasn’t that good with elevators, plus that would trap Beth, too, and that hardly seemed fair.
Perhaps a small slip and fall…But there were no raw materials hanging around in the hallway to create any interesting tricks, so she had to let it go. For now.
“Let’s go down to my office and look at what exactly we have available in August,” Beth said soothingly as she pulled back the brass door to usher Vanessa into the elevator. “Once everything is set, I know you’ll love having your wedding here at the Inn.”
As those two rode the elevator down, Rosebud took her own route, sliding smoothly through the floors and showing up ahead of them at the sales office. As she dawdled by the door to Beth’s office, she mused, “What to do? What to do?”
There were so many dirty tricks it would be fun to pull on Vanessa when she came back for her wedding in August. “Floods and blizzards and all that good stuff were really more Sunshine’s thing, but I might be able to screw up a little plumbing and generate a nice-size flood.”
“Don’t even think it,” Miss Arlotta’s voice admonished her sternly. “Remember the Bedpost Book, with all those black marks and no gold stars and only that one little notch? If you do anything to monkey with this bride’s happy honeymoon, you are going to be one sorry sister. Count on it.”
“Yes, but she’s extremely unpleasant,” Rosebud argued. “It shouldn’t be my job to sentence some poor man to a life sentence with that. She’ll eat him alive before their first anniversary.”
Miss Arlotta’s head popped up in front of her, fully visible. Just her head. This was not only highly unusual, but it was downright frightening!
“We don’t get to pick ’em. We just have to make ’em happy. Shape up, Rosebud,” she barked. “You’re skating on thin ice.”
At that, the head popped out of sight, just before Beth and the bride turned the corner and headed that way. Trying to forget the disturbing image of Miss A’s disembodied head hanging in the air, Rosebud focused on the task at hand. She was going to have to swallow her dislike and make this work, because the boss had made it crystal clear she didn’t have any other choice. And even Rosebud was afraid of Miss Arlotta’s powers, murky as they were.
“How hard can it be?” she asked. “I’ll make sure stupid Vanessa enjoys a torrid honeymoon, and then…”
But wait a second. Vanessa and Beth weren’t alone. There was a man with them. A handsome man. Rosebud stared. Dark hair, dark suit. The man from the window. And yet…
If she’d had a jaw at that moment, it would’ve dropped to the floor. She knew him.
“Ned, I’m so glad you decided to join us.” Vanessa swiped her thumb across his cheek to remove a smear of red lipstick. “Now that you’re here, darling, you can tell me all the reasons you like this place, and maybe I can be persuaded to like it, too.”
Rosebud was absolutely thunderstruck. Miss Arlotta’s warning echoed in her mind. You’re skating on thin ice…
She didn’t care if she was skating on icebergs. She knew him! The clothes and the cut of his hair might be different, but his eyes and his smile and the way he carried himself, exuding confidence and charm, were exactly the same, the same as Edmund Mulgrew, the man who had turned her from an innocent girl into a fallen maiden so long ago.
