| |
Elizabeth plucked nervously at the cream satin skirt of her gown, five years out of fashion and designed for an ingenue. She hoped her shawl, a paisley of celadon and rich pink, would hide the style. Anyone familiar with London fashion would know the gown wasn’t of the first stare. That mattered less to her than the gown’s pale pink ribbons that sweetened the sleeves and the hem. She dressed her hair in a softer chignon. With her grandmother’s pearls, she should pass all but the most censorious eye.
She drew the shawl higher on her shoulders then ventured from her office, locking the door and dropping the key into a moiré cream reticule embellished with a variety of ribbons.
In severe black, Hicks stood in the entrance hall. He swayed a little, evidence that he’d waited for many minutes. When she appeared from the back hall, he swept a quick gaze then gave a brief nod.
She doubted the butler had a fine appreciation of tonnish style, yet at his approval her worries for the evening did lift from the bog-mire they’d descended to.
He opened the door under the stairs to a small salon never opened in Elizabeth’s time as housekeeper. She’d merely peeked into the room when Hicks gave her a tour of the Grange.
Lord Harcourt and his visitors had claimed the seats before the fire, the men in Kent-gilded chairs and Mrs. Harcourt on the courting settee from the same period. Elizabeth remembered that the blue upholstery matched the heavy brocade curtains, closed against the night. The room lacked a rug to center the seating. Light came mostly from the blazing fire.
When Elizabeth entered, Lord Harcourt stood. “A glass of cordial?”
“Yes, thank you.”
As he stepped to the lowboy where a candelabrum lighted the drinks tray, she surveyed his choice of attire for this evening. He wore a blue tailcoat, a starched collar penned with a sparkling ring brooch of sapphires and brilliants, dark grey breeches and stockings that revealed the muscular length of his leg, and leather shoes with shiny buckles. His formal garb surprised her, used as she was to his common attire of heathered wool jacket and buckskins with tall boots.
As he poured the sherry, she glanced at their visitors.
Mrs. Harcourt’s shoulder-baring gown was Turkish red, a strong contrast to her pale skin. With her green-chip eyes and dark hair, styled in loose curls to her swan neck, she would attract admiring attention in any London salon. She wore a three-strand trellis necklace of diamonds. Her ear drops also sparkled. Her white gloves reached to her elbows. She wore no bracelet.
Her husband’s stiff coat was of deep green brocade, an odd choice for a gentleman’s tailcoat. His waistcoat was Turkish red velvet, a color better suited to his wife. He also wore knee breeches. His stockings matched his coat, and his leather slip-on shoes had a heel that did not help him attain the baron’s height.
Lord Harcourt offered her the cordial. “Lovely,” he murmured, then to include the others, he turned to the seating. “Now our evening may begin.” With an unexpected proprietary air, he drew her to the hearth and his abandoned seat.
Mrs. Harcourt straightened and smiled, lifting her glass a little before she sipped.
But the baron didn’t take the empty seat on the courting bench. He stayed beside Elizabeth’s chair, bracing a hand on the mantel as he sipped his drink. “What were you saying, cousin?”
“Ruffians.”
“What about them?”
“On the road, watching from the rocks. Could have sworn I saw them.”
“What did your coachman say?”
“I didn’t consult him.”
“On the box, he would have had a better view. Did you see anything, Mrs. Harcourt?”
She sniffed and stopped fingering her necklace. “We are family, Harcourt. Surely you can bring yourself to call me Letitia, as you once did.” She touched her eardrops then returned to sliding her fingertips over the trellis necklace. Elizabeth wished she would stop. The action made her very conscious of her grandmother’s single-strand pearls.
“Did you see anyone watching the road?”
“I remember Geoffrey pointing someone out, but I was tired of our journey.”
“Where did you say it occurred? Which rocks?”
“Lud, how should I know?”
“You should know because you spent many summers and holidays here at the Grange, Geoff.”
“Paid more attention to the riding and the hunting than the roads, old man.”
The door fortuitously opened. Hicks came in, stiff and dour. “My lord, dinner is served.”
“Excellent,” the cousin exclaimed. “My stomach’s a cave.”
Mrs. Harcourt stood and fluffed her skirt, a sheath that needed no fluffing, then she lifted a hand to the baron, obviously expecting an escort.
Elizabeth had returned her barely-sipped cordial to the lowboy. She turned and stepped back quickly, for Lord Harcourt had appeared at her side and offered his arm.
“Shall we lead the way?” Then he bent closer. “Paste,” he whispered. “I doubt she knows, but I know my cousin.”
“I hear the chef is French,” that cousin said from behind him. “When did you hire him?”
“Before Easter.”
“How does he manage in this remote location?” Mrs. Harcourt asked.
Elizabeth was more concerned with how Lord Harcourt knew the diamonds were paste. Why tell me? Is he implying something about his cousin? And why is he leading me into dinner when etiquette requires the host to escort the most-honored lady?
She hadn’t figured out any reasonable answers before they reached the morning room. She had a petty answer or two. Surely those weren’t true answers. The baron had his moods, dancing with her on one day and on the next warning her sternly against any exploration of the moor. The latter had more logical sense. Dancing with her—even requiring their daily meeting at teatime had more sense than dancing with her.
She would almost think he was slowly courting her—but that couldn’t be any kind of answer.
Hicks withdrew her chair when Harcourt led her to the hostess’ seat.
In two scant hours, the servants had worked miracles. No flowers decorated the table, but an Indian copper epergne centered the table and reflected the warm tones of the fire and the candlelight. Two branched candelabra balanced either side of the epergne. She would have to look through the lit tapers to see the baron. The bold gold-rimmed blue Aynsley service and heavy silverplate had created a glittering table.
The footman Rodger began filling the glasses, and Hicks stood at the sideboard, ladling a clear broth into bowls.
Elizabeth didn’t quite remember the dinner. She knew the dishes would be excellent; M’sieur Diderot would not contemplate offering any poor dish to his lordship. She remembered fits and starts of the conversation but couldn’t recall her own contributions. Her only clear memory was looking downtable at Harcourt. The candleflames glittered in his dark eyes.
Just as Sebilla had said.
What exactly had Sebilla’s other pronoucements meant?
When she retired with Mrs. Harcourt to the small salon, that lady immediately remarked that they should use the withdrawing room, “which one would hope a housekeeper knows. Yet you obviously do not. Where did Erik find you? Under a rock? Certainly you have never served any of the better ranks.”
Elizabeth paused as she resumed her former seat. “I believe Lady Millingrove and Sir Henry and Lady Tremaine would disagree.” She lowered herself to the cushion.
Mrs. Harcourt blinked. “You were with them?”
“Briefly. While Lady Millingrove lived a retired life, the Tremaines hosted several dinners and a soirée during my time with them. They credited all of those evenings a success, ma’am.” Did the woman attempt to irritate any woman that she met?
“Hmph.” She extended her hands to rest them on both arms of the courting settee. “How old are you? You must have entered service when you were a child.”
“I was very young, but I had managed our family’s home for many years, in London and in Portugal.”
“Yet you make this mistake with the withdrawing room. And my husband and I were forced to remove to different chambers.”
“We were not previously informed of your intention to visit, ma’am. Surely, as someone who manages her own household, you know that disused rooms cannot be freshened and prepared so quickly.”
“That’s the flaw in your statement, Miss Fortescue,” Lord Harcourt said. He and his cousin had quietly entered, not taking as long as she had anticipated to chase the port. The best port, too, Hicks had once said. He had brought in his goblet, as had his cousin. Geoffrey Harcourt veered around the settee to take up position at the hearth, kicking the fender. Lord Harcourt had returned to his side of the hearth. He met Elizabeth’s eyes. She couldn’t quite decipher the gleam in them. “You have the false belief, Miss Fortescue, that my cousin’s wife has anything to do with the management of her own household.”
“Do not tease me so, Harcourt!”
“Hardly teasing when I speak the truth. Your inclination—do correct me if in this respect your wife has changed, cousin—your inclination is to require others to make all the decisions then freely cast blame when events fall awry.”
“Harcourt! I cannot be both sloth and harpy in a single breath.” She chuckled and shook her head. “Now you say that I force others to make decisions then cast all blame upon them? Am I so monstrous?” Her head tilted as she examined him. “This is a petty revenge, Harcourt. You have thought ill of me since I asked you to break our engagement. Do support me, Geoffrey. He has called me a harpy! And an indolent sloth! All because he believes I became evil when I married you, Geoffrey. You must support me.”
“See here, old man, you have insulted my wife.”
Harcourt shrugged. “You know this, cousin. When you advised me not to marry her, you gave that deficiency of her character as a prime reason.”
“Geoffrey, you advised him not to marry me? Oh, I do not believe this.”
Elizabeth wished to sink into her chair, to disappear like the Silent Lady, vanishing through the walls. The pigeons were being slaughtered.
“Geoffrey! Explain this.”
When Harcourt’s gaze crossed Elizabeth, he had that impish gleam in his eyes. She didn’t understand the reason he’d started this not-so-subtle attack on his sister-in-law. She would never have thought he would stoop to such behavior.
Was he trying to drive them to leave in the morning? But this was his cousin and his heir. Surely he would not deliberately cause an estrangement?
She must have missed Geoffrey Harcourt’s comment, for Harcourt was saying, “I knew, cousin, that you would make a match with her a fortnight before she returned my ring.”
“Here now, that long ahead? I wasn’t courting her before she returned the ring. We didn’t announce our engagement until the end of the season.”
Harcourt swirled his port then drank. “You shouldn’t have waited, cousin. She was certain of you before she returned my ring. With my face, no one was surprised. She threw me over for you.”
Elizabeth made a noise of protest.
He looked down at her, pressed back into the chair. “For all my sins, I am gladdened that not all women judge solely on appearance.”
A blush heated her cheeks. Her rising color deepened his smile.
His cousin cleared his throat. “Here, now, I always wondered what you did with the ring? D’ya still have it?”
“Please tell me that you will never give my ring to another,” Letitia Harcourt demanded. “I hoped you threw it into the Thames.”
“I think, ma’am, that you never knew me very well.”
Elizabeth shivered, her embarrassment chilled by that dangerous growl.
“Do you still have it then?”
“No, but I did not throw it in the Thames, as you advised me. Any ring I give in the future will not be tarnished. I will give an entirely new ring.”
“Where’s Letitia’s ring, old man?”
“Hardly hers now, Geoff, since she returned it so that she could wear yours.”
“But where is it?”
“I sold it back to the jeweler and gave the money to charity.”
“You sold my ring? My ring?”
“How can you claim it, ma’am? You rejected it.”
“But it’s my ring! Anyone could be wearing it.”
“No doubt it’s on the fat finger of a merchant’s wife.”
“How could you?”
He grinned, that mischievous quirk, and Elizabeth knew that he was trying to drive them away. “Easily enough,” he said and quaffed his wine.
“Good god,” the cousin said. He stared into his goblet then set it on the mantel.
When the silence became unbearable, Elizabeth asked the only thing she could think of. “Did you have plans for the ring?”
Letitia Harcourt’s expression became blanched marble. Her husband was not so agile. “Well, it’s Letty’s ring. She wanted it.”
“To wear?” Lord Harcourt gave a rough laugh. “Her husband’s ring on one hand; her rejected fiancé’s ring on the other. That’s ripe.”
“They will say,” Elizabeth ventured, her voice soft, “that she holds both the Harcourt men.”
“She doesn’t,” he said firmly. “Far from it. Since the day I saw Geoff kissing her in the garden.”
His cousin began coughing.
Mrs. Harcourt gaped at him. “But—that was long before I returned your ring. Are you saying that you expected me to break off our engagement?” She rose in a flurry of silk. “I will not stay and continue to be insulted.”
“One can hardly insult with the truth.”
“Geoffrey! I am retiring.” She started for the door then abruptly stopped when her husband didn’t move from his braced stance at the heart. “Geoffrey, I demand you come with me.”
His mouth twisted. “My love, I cannot. I came to visit my cousin. I intend to visit him.”
“Well! Hmph!” She tossed her head then flounced from the room.
After a minute’s silence, when Elizabeth dared not speak and Lord Harcourt clearly did not intend to, Geoffrey Harcourt headed for the sideboard to refill his goblet. “I’m in for a few awkward days,” he opined, “until someone else earns her ire. What do you say to whist? We’ll have to play with a dummy.”
. ~ . ~ . ~ .
The hour had struck the half-hour past two when Elizabeth shut herself into her rooms.
Geoffrey Harcourt had demanded one round after another. Spleen apparently over, his cousin obliged. She’d tried to leave twice, once obviously, the second less so. Both times Lord Harcourt asked her to remain. He hadn’t wheedled, he hadn’t demanded; he gave a solemn request. After that uncomfortable hour, she acceded rather than defy him. When the great clock struck two, she pleaded an early morning and refused to remain. Her leaving forced the end of the game. Geoffrey Harcourt had remained, though, pouring himself “one more cup.”
He'd drunk steadily all evening, his play becoming looser, his words gradually slurring. Elizabeth might have thought him dipping deep in remorse for not entirely supporting his wife—but she did not think him really drunk. Twice she caught his quick action that tossed his goblet’s contents down his sleeve, his dark coat not showing the growing wine stain. After spotting the trick in Bruges, her father had taught her brother the trick, and what Alexander learned, Elizabeth learned.
Why did Geoffrey Harcourt want to appear sloshed?
She’d had no chance to confer with Lord Harcourt, but she thought he, too, had seen the trick.
He had instigated that horrible hour after dinner. To drive this couple away? He must not wish to deal with whatever had brought them to the Grange.
The cousin needed something. What could it be?
Money was the obvious answer. That trellis necklace would have paid all sorts of debts. Yet women didn’t freely give up their jewelry to pay their husband’s debts. And Harcourt had claimed it was paste.
If not money, what did they want?
She heard the scratch at the door as she climbed into her bed. She pattered barefoot to the door. Scritcher shot through the opened door. As Elizabeth closed it, she heard something. She opened it again, listened—but heard nothing.
Then the sound came again. A low moan. Long and repeated. Not drifting down from above.
She poked her head further into the hall—and caught a glimpse of a dull grey gliding on the other hall, near Harcourt’s office.
The figure turned to her. Its arms lifted. Grey tatters swayed from an unfelt wind. Then the breeze reached Elizabeth, chilling her face. And the ghost came toward her.
She was too tired to deal with it—her morning would start all too soon.
Elizabeth shut the door and locked it. After ensuring the grey cat was curled on the bed, she also shut the door to her bedroom and jammed a chair under the doorknob.
Closed doors wouldn’t stop the Silent Lady.
But this ghost was not the Silent Lady. Not anything like her. She drew out her pistol, a gift from her father to her mother, and saw to its cleaning, loading, and priming.
. ~ . ~ . ~ .
Friday was as miserable as Thursday evening. Letitia Harcourt became more direct with her snide remarks and insulting rejoinders to simple statements. She moderated her comments around the men, but too often throughout the day and evening, she took advantage of their absence. Lord Harcourt no longer baited them. He began the day with monosyllabic responses. Geoffrey Harcourt was quick to take anything not a definite no as approval.
Whatever had brought him and his wife to the Grange remained unspoken.
The pretend ghost repeated its haunting that night.
When the moans began outside her door, Elizabeth lit a lamp and carried it into the hall. As soon as she turned the doorknob, the ghost had retreated to the cross hall. It gestured for her to follow. When she only lifted the lamp to cast its light farther, it shrank into deeper shadow. The gesturing continued. The moans increased. Pistol heavy in her robe pocket, she walked toward it. The ghost stayed back from the light. It glided to the stairs and motioned for her.
But Elizabeth refused to leave the back hall. The door to her rooms stood open. She’d neglected to shut and lock it.
The ghost returned down the steps. Its arms lifted, offering a creepy embrace.
And she felt a cold draft.
Elizabeth backed her way to her door. The ghost followed, moaning beseechingly, reaching for her. She hurried slipped into her room as it came closer. She locked the door as the moans came near.
The doorknob jiggled—then stopped when it met the lock’s tumblers.
And the moaning abruptly cut off.
Who is working with this fake ghost?
She waited until she heard footsteps leaving her door.
She wasn’t foolish enough to dash out. Only one set of footsteps had left, and the fear icing her wasn’t from the ghost but from fear of whoever lurked, intent on doing harm.
On Saturday the staff banded together against the visitors, even Meg Tilney. Elizabeth’s duties offered a day-long respite from tart tongues. She no longer doubted Sebilla calling Harcourt’s former fiancée a green-eyed viper.
After the failures on Thursday and Friday nights, Elizabeth didn’t expect the ghost to return on Saturday, yet she stood ready. She shielded the lamp to prevent its light streaming under her door and into the hall, alerting the ghost that she waited. The pistol dragged in her pocket. She held her key ready, tied to a ribbon to go over her head and keep her hands free.
The first moan brought her head up.
On the second, close outside, she lifted the shielded lantern and glided to the door. The lantern cast enough light from around its metal plates to see the lock. The key fitted with the softest scrape.
The third moan sound as if the ghost were right outside.
Turning the key created noise. Elizabeth jerked open the door. In the next breath, she jerked up the shielding plates, spilling light into the hallway.
To nothing.
But she heard footsteps hastening away.
She peeked around the doorjamb.
There was her ghost, hurrying to the cross hall. She stepped out and wasted valuable time locking the door. Then she dropped the key over her head and pursued the ghost, hoping those long garments impeded it. Were it a man, he would not be used to skirts. That might slow him enough.
No cold draft wafted along the hall.
When she reached the cross hall, the ghost was climbing the stairs. It didn’t gesture for her to follow but hasted away. She paused long enough to ensure no one lurked near, then she sped to the stairway.
The ghost tripped on a step. It scrambled up the last steps as she raced up. “Stop there,” she cried and tugged on her pistol.
It disappeared into the darkness of the first floor hall.
Elizabeth yanked the pistol free then ran the last few steps. It couldn’t escape. It couldn’t.
At the top she paused to catch her breath.
And the ghost darted from the main hall, arms outstretched.