She shrieked. When nothing happened, she shrieked again, lifted the neat stack of completed pages that she’d set aside, and hurled it at the figure in the middle of her room.

He leaped aside nimbly, but not nimbly enough. The manuscript struck him and exploded into a white cloud of paper.

Lucie reached toward the lamp on her desk. In the sudden illumination she saw him clearly: black hair, as pin-straight as her brother’s was wild and untidy. Green eyes looked out at her beneath dark lashes.

“So this is what people mean when they say the pages just flew by,” said Jesse dryly, as the last of the papers settled to his feet. “Was that necessary?”

“Was it necessary to invade my bedroom?” Lucie demanded, her hands on her hips. She could feel her heart pounding, and was a little surprised at herself. It wasn’t as if seeing ghosts was that rare an occurrence for her. Jessamine drifted in and out of Lucie’s bedroom frequently: she loved to look at Lucie’s clothes when she took them out of the wardrobe and to give her unwanted fashion advice. Lucie had been almost ten years old before she’d realized—when Rosamund and Piers Wentworth had laughed at her—that most girls didn’t have a pestering ghost friend.

Jesse had picked up a page and was looking at it critically. “Too many uses of the word ‘radiant,’ ” he said. “At least three times on the same page. Also ‘golden’ and ‘shining.’ ”

“I don’t recall asking your advice,” Lucie said, rising to her feet. Thank goodness she had changed for dinner and wasn’t still sitting about in her dressing gown. She did sometimes forget to get dressed when deep into a story, the words flying from her fingers. “What was the last book you read?”

“Great Expectations,” he said promptly. “I told you, I read a great deal.”

He sat down on the edge of Lucie’s bed—and immediately leaped back up, blushing. Lucie took her hands off her hips, amused.

“A ghost with a sense of propriety. That is funny.”

He looked at her darkly. He really did have a most arresting face, she thought. His black hair and green eyes made a wintry contrast against his pale skin. As a writer, one had to pay attention to these things. Descriptions were very important.

“There is actually a purpose in my coming here,” he said.

“Other than mocking and humiliating me? I’m so glad!”

Jesse ignored this. “My sister and your brother have arranged a secret rendezvous tonight—”

“Oh, by the Angel.” It was Lucie’s turn to sit down heavily on the edge of her bed. “That’s dreadfully awkward.”

Before Jesse could say another word, the bedroom door jerked open and Lucie’s father stood on the threshold, looking alarmed.

“Lucie?” he said. “Did you call out? I thought I heard you.”