“Just where do you think you’re going, Miss Drummond?”
The young woman spun on the street corner, clutching her shawl around her lace blouse. A cameo glittered in the moonlight.
For one eerie moment Rachel thought it was her. The woman on the cameo, her grandmother approaching, trailing a black veil after her. Somehow restored to her youth after death, mourning her life.
Yes, the face which gazed at her through a barrier of lace was like the cameo, like her own, yet the nose and mouth were a little different, even if she possessed the same rounded cheeks, the same haunted dark eyes.
“Back to Worthington School.” Rachel lifted a hand to her mouth. “He won’t let me go anywhere else. I can’t fight him.”
“Can’t fight the hold he has over you?” A mixture of mockery and tenderness was in the strange woman’s voice as she took a step closer to Rachel. “Can’t do anything because he has a power which renders you helpless?”
“I can’t let him have the children.” Rachel balled her hands into fists, only to release them, frightened at how quickly her fear would become anger if she let it. “How can I stop him, if I can’t even keep myself out of his grasp?”
“You must.” There was iron behind the hushed sweetness of your tone. “No matter how overwhelmed you feel, you owe it to your children. Jamison and Nora look to you for example. You must summon strength to fight for them even if I have none of your own. Draw it from your own conviction and conscience if it’s your only resource.”
“Jamison and Nora?” Rachel gazed at the approaching lady, took a timid step toward her. “Do you know them?”
“Once upon a time, I was their governess.” The lady threw back her veil, revealing a face that almost ghostly pale. Not as pale as Barnabas’s, yet life had been drawn from her complexion, tragedy leaving it a ghostly mask of its former vitality. “Love led me away from them into a sinister man’s sway. He took my love, my life.”
“I am sorry,” Rachel whispered, feeling the inadequacy of her words. Tears prickled at her eyes. She thought of Tim, drawn away by the Trasks. Barnabas, drawn to Angelique. Now even Jamison and Nora were being taken from her. If not by the Trasks, their mother. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, I am sorry.” The woman drew near her, took Rachel’s hands in her gloved ones. “I’d hoped to offer you a home, comfort, family connections which might give you something besides your position. I’d hoped to adopt you, freeing you from the Trasks.”
“Adopt me?” Rachel trembled, her fingers entwined with the other woman’s. “Who are you?”
“I was Lady Hampshire. Now I’m just Kitty Soames. An empty title with no money is all I possess.” The strange lady, Kitty gave her a wistful smile. “Would you believe it, Miss Drummond, if I told you that you and I were the descendents of a once wealthy and powerful family in Martinique? That a member of that family married a Collins, long ago, and lived at the Old House?”
“Josette DuPres.” Rachel breathed out the name of the first Barnabas Collins’s love. “Her portrait is still at the Old House. Her room is kept as it was.”
“I grew up alone, knowing I had family somewhere. I came to Collinwood, looking for it. Love took me away, but I’ve returned to find that family.” Kitty tightened her grip on Rachel’s fingers. “At last I’ve found her.”
“Me?” Rachel whispered, swaying on her feet. All she’d had was an aunt who couldn’t be bothered with her. Or the Trasks who wanted to improve her, change her.
No. She’d had the children. There had been a time when she’d had Tim as well. She liked to think she had Barnabas, even if it was for just a little while.
Rachel Drummond couldn’t help wanting more. A family. Someone who actually wanted her around with all her fears, all her hesitation, all the romantic fancies which she’d tried to hide from the world.
She'd hoped she'd found that person in Barnabas. A person who saw a connection to Josette in the kindness in her eyes.
Here was a woman the very likeness of Josette. What would Barnabas think of he was to meet her, if all it took was Rachel's eyes to conjure up her ghost?
A ghost who was appearing to Rachel herself. A ghost who'd come looking for her.
Only Kitty Soames wasn't a ghost. It couldn't be. It couldn't Rachel Drummond she was looking for. Rachel had always been the problem, the troublemaker. This lady couldn't be talking about her.
“Yes. I mean you, Rachel.” Kitty fixed her luminous dark gaze upon the other woman. “Jamison and Nora kept in touch with me after I left. Wrote to me about you. I knew you were the one. The family member I’d been trying to find.”
“How is this possible?” Rachel wondered out loud. “It’s like something out of a novel. Meeting you like this.”
“I’ve done everything in my power to make it so. Asking Edward to bring me back.” Kitty shivered this time. “I’m sorry I come to you without the fortune I’d hoped to share, but I have a plan. A plan which I hope will take care of us both.”
“I don’t care about that.” Rachel shook her head, tears stinging her eyes. “You’re here. Do you have any idea how much this means to me? Just that you’re here is enough.”
“I wish that was true, Rachel.” Kitty sighed. “Money is, alas, crucial to our survival. It’s crucial to getting you away from Trask. It may well be the reason the children are with Trask.”
“The children may be able free themselves from Trask, due to their mother. Even if their father doesn’t see the danger in him or Worthington School.” Rachel shivered again. “I’m not sure if you can get me free of either.”
“I can. I will.” Kitty raised her hands to her lips.
For a moment a flash of another woman at another time, yet a similar place flashed in her eyes.
Something warmed in Rachel, a force, a strength not her own. Looking back through her eyes at this woman, this woman she trusted and cared for.
It wasn’t her, Rachel Drummond, gazing into Kitty Soames’s eyes. At the same time it was.
Kitty tightened her grip. “Trust me. Be strong. Hold on. For the children’s sake. Don’t let Trask overwhelm you. You’re not alone.”
The strange, yet familiar lady released Rachel to back away into the mists.
Rachel watched her go, raising her hands to her lips.