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Elizabeth didn’t ask anything further about the Silent Lady or the other ghost.
Had the servants had a Maygame of her, playing the moaning ghost? Had they tried to set her up by mentioning a ghost on her first evening? Yet they’d too obviously claimed no ghost at the table this morning.
Nor did she ask about the ruined manor. Jessa had spoken of a grand manor. She’d seen the blackened ruins when the carter brought her from Widderby.
Were the ruins near the lake?
She had too many tasks for any exploration of former ruins.
Her Saturday she spent with Jessa, counting linens and cleaning goods, candles and lamp oil, and other miscellaneous stock, without which the house would function but not easily. She discovered that Jessa had long served at the Grange. She’d begun as Least Maid, tweenie after that. Those were the years when guests still came for weekends and fortnights and season-long stays. The former Lady Harcourt, the current baron’s grandmother, had ruled over the household then. His lordship’s parents had remained in London until their succumbed to one of the raging fevers, preceding the older Lord and Lady Harcourt.
The maid chattered so easily that Elizabeth formed a sketchy plan to discover more. A pot of tea in her office, cream and sugar and a plate of M’sieur Diderot’s shortbread, and within an hour she knew of the Grange’s former glory, which rooms were opened, which bedchambers allocated first and which last, how the house ran in the seasons and the holidays. Another hour stood her well for the practicals, where cold drafts were worse, where the rain forced its way inside, which shutters needed replacing, when the rugs were beaten and curtains shaken and upholstery brushed. Her mind spun with the information, but she had a direction for her next focus.
Her biggest battle came Saturday evening, and she fought it with tactful strategy. Hicks didn’t want to open the dining room for the baron’s dinner. When Elizabeth spied the tarnished silver, she guessed his reason. Jackman built a roaring fire that soon cast off the room’s chill. A cloth with insets of tatting lace set the lord’s place, and Jessa willingly gathered up a plate setting of bone china that Elizabeth had spotted on her tour. The newest kitchen maid exclaimed over the china and the crystal and silver that she washed in preparation, and M’sieur Diderot cheerfully plated his various dishes. Elizabeth set a candelabra near the table’s end to light the meal.
Although she had a hand in neither preparation nor service, she was proud of the meal sent in to Lord Harcourt. Hicks grumbled, but he also appeared satisfied when he returned from carrying in the port. He plumped himself on his chair at the servants’ table. “A fine dinner, his lordship says, and a fine service,” he shared with everyone, and they murmured happily. Then the old man fixed her with narrowed eyes. “He wants to see you in the morning before we drive to church.”
Elizabeth calmly sipped her tea. “Of course.”
“He’ll want to talk about this dinner.”
“It was excellent, M’sieur Diderot, wasn’t it, everyone? Excellent food becomes memorable with service on excellent tableware. On Monday, Jessa, I want to see the crockery store in its entirety. Surely we can find a set better than these chipped and cracked bowls used for our own evening meal.”
“Now, wait a minute,” Hicks protested.
“Nothing grand,” Elizabeth hastened to say, “but my plate had a crack straight through. I thought it would fall apart on the table. Surely we can find better, even if mismatched. And if we find very little, at least it shall be more than broken and nearly falling apart.”
Jessa seemed eager. Diderot nodded as he finished his wine. Jackman grinned openly. And Hicks subsided.
After retiring, Elizabeth wasn’t surprised when the moaning started.
She had tucked early into bed to write a letter to her brother. The moor wind skirled as it tore around the greystone building. She huddled under a warm shawl and tilted her writing board to the candlelight.
The first moan was faint. She stared into the shadows and waited. The second rose. Still faint, but clear and rising, only to fall off rapidly.
Not the wind.
Elizabeth slid from the bed and slipped her stockinged feet into knitted slippers. No sound did she make, but a third moan answered her actions. The cry sounded outside her door, much louder than the first two.
She carried the candle into her office. Again the moan came, reacting to her movement. She tried to light her lamp soundlessly, but the glass globe snicked against the metal holding bracket.
The moan rose, loud as the skirling wind. Then it broke off. Elizabeth grabbed the doorknob and turned—uselessly. She’d locked it.
She hurried to her desk and snatched up the chatelaine key ring. She fumbled to the right key. By then the moaning had retreated. She hesitated to follow.
Yet it came again, louder again, taunting her with closeness. Is it outside my door?
Judging haste better than silence, she snatched up the lantern then jammed the key into the lock.
When she threw back the door, the hall was empty.
Light flickered, dancing shadows from a guttering candle. The moaning resumed, faint, fainter, breaking off at odd intervals.
Holding the lantern high, the keys jingling softly on their ring, Elizabeth followed the sound and the light, all the way to the entrance hall. There the sound ebbed. The light weakened.
The guttering light reflected off the ornate mirror on the balcony. She peered upward, but shadows defeated her. The ghost—if ghost it was, wanted a game of chase into the darkness. Elizabeth wouldn’t be caught by that.
She didn’t like that taunting moan, either. It called to her, rising, rising, then dropping off with the flickering candlelight as its lure.
She shivered, wishing that she had grabbed something warmer than a shawl. Cold inhabited the Grange. From now on, she decided, she would stay tucked in her bed.
She turned back to her room—and nearly collided with a figure. She cried her startlement, and too late muffled it with her hand. “Your pardon,” she said hoarsely then lifted her lamp higher to identify the person.
The figure glided away from the light, silent, graceful, floating on air. And foggy tendrils wafted from her grey gown, from her dark hair. Even in the amber lamplight, the woman looked waxy pearl, with sooty lashes and sunken cheeks, dark lips and hollows ringing her neck.
Cold crawled over Elizabeth. For a half-second she couldn’t breathe. The lamplight arced wildly, and the keys rattled. She clutched them tightly. The metal bite into her fingers hurt and broke her fright. She steadied the lantern, and the light returned to a warm glow that didn’t touch the ghost’s skin or her dark gown. Those dark eyes looked depthless deep.
Her heart pounded, drowning even the moor wind.
The Silent Lady looked up, at the balcony overhead. She began to glide to the stairs.
“F-forg—.”
The ghost stopped at her stammer and looked back.
Elizabeth remembered to curtsey. Whoever the woman was, the baron had claimed her as ancestress. “Forgive my rudeness, my lady.”
The lady studied her then looked again at the balcony.
“Whoever it was, they were loud, weren’t they?”
No reply, but Elizabeth hadn’t expected one.
The Silent Lady lifted a hand. Ghostly fingers curled around something in her palm. Then she drifted away, fading as she went. She paused at the staircase then continued on, angling to the drawing room doors. She had disappeared entirely by the time she faded into the painted oak doors.
The strength left Elizabeth’s limbs. The pedestal table that centered the entry caught her lamp. She managed to steady it before her knees gave out, and she sank to the floor.
She pressed cold fingers to her colder face. That was a ghost.
The other wasn’t. It was too corporeal.
A trick. By whom? To frighten her? To drive her away?
The flagstone’s ice began to penetrate her legs. She staggered to her feet.
If I can withstand the Silent Lady, I can surely withstand a prankster.
For she had to keep the former at the level of a trick. Foolish, cruel even, but still a trick.
If not a trick—? She dared not consider that. No one had reason to plan a vicious act against her.
When her heart no longer pounded in her breast, Elizabeth picked up the lantern and returned to her room on the back hall. Before she reached her door, a draft whooshed past her. Then it died, the moor wind no longer forcing its way into the house.
A chill prickled over her. She had to dare herself to look back the way she’d come. The blackness of night, the faintest gleams that caught her lamplight. No movement. No sound. Just dark and cold.
She shut the hall door and returned the lantern to her desk. The keys rattled loudly as she re-locked the door. She slid a chair back under the doorknob, an obstacle that wouldn’t stop the Silent Lady. Her door could be broken down, but the house would be alerted by that attempt.
And the trickster was a physical person, not an intangible wisp that walked through doors.
She blew out the lantern, picked up the faithful candle, and returned to her bedchamber. Another chairback under the doorknob, then she climbed into bed and huddled under the covers. The craven coward in her wanted to leave the candle burning. Practical Elizabeth recited all the reasons she was safe.
She blew out the candle and jerked the covers to her ears.
Only to hear a soft scratching.
Something landed on the bed beside her.
She screamed and jerked upright, her feet clearing the tangle of quilts.
Purring answered her.
“Kitty?” she ventured.
The cat moved, shifted position then crawled to her. Blindly, she put out her hand. “Here, Greymalkin.” A wet nose bumped her hand. She smoothed her fingers up and over the cat’s head, stroking the neck, along the jaw, under the chin. The purring deepened.
Elizabeth gave one last scratch then slid back under the covers.
The cat climbed along her body, looking for its spot. It settled by her hip, a warm bundle of purring.
Several deep breaths finally calmed her heartbeat.
. ~ . ~ . ~ .
She opened her eyes to darkness.
Movement on the bed, then the cat meowed.
And Elizabeth remembered last night’s trickster and ghost.
Who wanted her gone from the Grange? She’d barely had a fortnight here. One ghost was false. The Silent Lady was the only true ghost. And why was she walking?
Jessa had mentioned whispers, scratching, knocking. Two people must be involved. But who? And why?
When she appeared for the early morning conference that Lord Harcourt had requested, he looked distracted and ill at ease. Dark circles under his eyes gave witness that his night had been sleepless. Had he heard the trickster ghost?
Was he the trickster?
That didn’t make sense. Nothing did.
Lord Harcourt said only that opening the dining room for him alone was unnecessary.
“I do not like you eating at your desk,” Elizabeth retorted. When he did not react to that provocation, a servant telling preferences to her employer, she quickly added, “The morning room then? We can serve your dinner there with little difficulty.”
Rather than look at her, he studied the steaming coffee on his blotter, as yet untouched. Their dance during yesterday’s tea might have been her imagination. “That will suit.”
The cat sprang onto the desk and butted her head against Lord Harcourt’s hand. “There you are. I wondered where you were last night.”
“The cat stayed with me, my lord.”
His hand paused midstroke, but his gaze didn’t lift to her. “With you?” Greymalkin bumped with her nose, and he stroked the cat, which began a loud purring.
“The cat was a warm little bundle. I didn’t know she would be missed. She seems to go wherever she wants. I should not have penned her with me, though. Cats like to roam.”
“She stayed with you willingly. You were worthy of her attention.”
“She was hardly willing. I had the door shut.”
“You sport no deep scratches, Miss Fortescue. If she wanted out, she would have convinced you.”
“I haven’t seen her in the kitchen.”
“No, Hicks tells me that Cook doesn’t like the cat’s presents.”
“She’s a mouser then?” Elizabeth didn’t want dead mice for presents. “If she comes tonight, I’ll send her away.”
“No, let Scritcher choose where she will. She doesn’t take kindly to rules.”
The cat had crawled up to cradle in his arms, rubbing her head on his chin. He closed his eyes and leaned his head against the chair’s back.
Elizabeth hesitated longer, but he brought nothing else to the fore. With no excuse to linger, she dropped a quick curtsey and left. The grey cat stayed with him.
And her heart ached at leaving him alone.
His solitude called to her, that was all. She had a natural curiosity about her employer, nothing more. She wasn’t infatuated. She couldn’t be. She’d barely been employed a fortnight.
She reached the wagon that took them to the church service in Widderby with time to spare. She responded to any chatter directed her way, but she remembered none of it nor the service itself. Ghosts had taken residence in her mind. She resolved not to pursue the moaning trickster, and that would prevent another encounter with the Silent Lady.
She mentioned neither ghost to her fellow servants, and they had no reason to bring up the topic.
Sunday was half-day for the staff. By custom they staggered another half-day in the week. That pinned another ribbon to her view of Lord Harcourt as a benevolent employer. She tried not to dwell on him or on his dark eyes, their dance at teatime or their easy conversation. At one time, her station had been on level with the gentry. They’d occupied a similar rank, although she stood rungs below him. Once she became his employee, she fell far below, no longer his equal.
That didn’t prevent her admiration. For most new employees, cautiously finding their positions, thinking of their employer was a simple matter of serving invisibly. As his housekeeper, though, Elizabeth had to consider Lord Harcourt constantly, his comfort, his convenience, his wishes and preferences, in everything to do with management of the Grange. She would be in trouble if she dwelt longer on his present relationships and past involvements.
She had asked no questions of her fellows that were not related to house management. Hearing the servants tease and gossip with their fellows, she realized how easily the wrong impression could arise. Hicks limited his gossip, but she thought he would be first to condemn any action that overstepped. She must give them no reason to add her to their gossip.
Except that she intended traveling with his lordship to Thirsk.
An open wagon, she’d claimed boldly, would prevent gossip.
How naïvely she’d said that.