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face with a lurking spectre.
    Nothing like that happened.
    She asked Lamb about the ghosts one night at dinner. He wasn’t much help.
    “Old houses like this have had many lives come and go through its doors,” he evaded. “It would no’ be a far stretch to imagine that they’ve all left their mark on the place in one way or another.”
    “True enough. That’s why I do what I do, I suppose.” She forked a green bean and crunched it thoughtfully.
    It was hardly the answer she’d been looking for, and he knew it. Emmie stared at Lamb. There was something he wasn’t saying. He studied his plate like he would be tested on its contents, and chose his next pan-fried mushroom with deliberate care. She let the matter drop.
    That night, before she crawled under the covers, she stood in front of the dresser, kissed her forefinger, and planted it on the glass over her mother’s photo.
    “Ghosts, Mom,” she whispered to the smiling face. “I’m not sure if I’m frightened or not. You’ll protect me, right?”
    The face smiled back at her. That silent smile, frozen in time, meant different things at different times to Emmie. This time, she took it for reassurance.
    As she became accustomed to life at Tullybrae, Emmie found that she was able to put the thoughts of spirits out of her mind most of the time. Her work kept her busy, and she enjoyed slipping into the routine of research.
    There were three stages to the process of cataloguing. Once she’d written down as much as she could about an object by sight, and had taken photos, she then retreated to her laptop to see if she could identify her finds through reputable websites. Those items to which she could not assign a manufacturer and year, she tagged with the frustratingly simple, moniker TU : Temporarily Unidentified. Originally, Professor McCall had instructed her to use just a “U,” but Emmie was never comfortable with the permanence it conveyed. Thus, she began adding the “T” early on in her career.
    For these “TU” items, she could forward what details she had to the university archives at Edinburgh or Cambridge, which would do a trace on them—for a fee. But as yet, she had not taken this step. Emmie had not discussed it with Lady Rotherham. She had no doubt the lady would approve. But, as Lady Rotherham openly admitted, it was her husband who would be paying the fee, and he might not consider a positive identification worth the cost.
    So, Emmie’s “TU” pile grew.
    Mid-week found her moving from the sitting room to the library. By then, her days had fallen into a comfortable rhythm. Mornings she would spend doing the grunt work of cataloguing, and afternoons she would spend researching. For this part of the job, she’d set up an office of sorts in a room which had once been the nursery.
    Emmie liked this room the best. Being at the east corner of the house, its hexagonal shape was a result of the manor’s turreted architecture. High, bright windows which faced both east and west flooded the room with light through most of the day. The children’s items had been moved out and stored in the attic over a quarter of a century ago, Lamb informed her when she asked. In their place, the late earl’s personal documents and records had been moved in. Brown, crumbling banker’s boxes were stacked willy-nilly around the room. Some were so old that they threatened to collapse, which would send almost fifty years’ worth of yellowing paper spilling out onto the threadbare carpet.
    It was a simple matter to restack the boxes against a wall, only an hour’s heavy lifting. Emmie wasn’t too pleased that it had to be a window wall, but the walls on the inside of the house were unsuitable. One had a small, old-fashioned radiator which, like the one in her room, was still operational in the winter months. Beside that was the wall with the door, and the wall beside that was the fireplace wall.
    By the time the weekend limped in, she was satisfied with the