Miranda opened her bedroom door a crack and looked out into the corridor. All was still. She slipped through and closed the door gently behind her. She had put on her heavy flannel nightdress and a warm wrapper and slippers, and she carried a large silver candlestick in one hand. Her green eyes were very large and dark in the dimness. She stood still, listening.
There were all sorts of noises—the intermittent creaks and groans of old timbers, the slither of tapestry and drapery in the incessant drafts, the occasional scratchings she was uneasily certain were mice, or worse. There was nothing she had not heard, and partly become accustomed to, during her visit so far. Slowly, she started along the hallway to the great staircase.
Her feet were cold. They always were in this house, for a constant cold wind seemed to run along the stone floors just at the level of one’s ankles. It did not do to wear fur-lined traveling boots indoors, though she rather wished she had put them on tonight, when it did not matter. But Alan Creighton had seemed to appreciate her pale kid slippers and her white muslin gown sprigged with green and trimmed with bunches of dark-green ribbon. If only one did not have to drape oneself in heavy shawls in this house, she thought. But the alternative was goosebumps and shivering visibly, which was not particularly attractive.
At the head of the great stair that swept down into the vaulted hall, Miranda paused. The lower regions seemed vast and echoing, and she found she did not at all want to descend. Anything might lurk in the corners of that huge room. Her branch of candles would light only a small circle, and she would be exposed on all sides. The thought made her shudder.
But then she remembered Rosalind and all her resolutions to help her, and she put one foot carefully on the first stair. As she moved downward, a current of air fluttered the candle flames, and made her heart beat even faster. What would she do, she wondered, if the candles went out? She was very much afraid that she would scream and bring the whole household down on her. Miranda raised her free hand to shield her precious light.
Reaching the flagstones of the hall, she crossed it quickly, looking neither right nor left, and scurried through the door that led to the west wing. Here lay Philip’s study and estate offices, below the long portrait gallery on the second floor. Miranda held her breath as she turned the knob on the study door and eased it open. All was dark within. She slipped inside.
There was a lingering odor of tobacco and the smell of fine leather. Her candles illumined most of the room; she could see the crowded bookshelves along the walls, the long blue curtains covering the French doors, and the great desk with its piles of papers. She went at once to these, setting her candlestick on the desktop and bending to read.
She found bills, a letter from Philip’s solicitor about water rights, one political journal, and a monograph on animal husbandry, but nothing sinister. Telling herself that of course he would not leave such things lying about, she turned to the desk drawers.
It was a difficult thing for Miranda to open the first drawer. That act seemed different, somehow, from simply looking over papers sitting on the desk—more like stealing. Her cheeks reddened a little in the darkness as she pulled on the top drawer. She would not engage in such low snooping, she told herself, if she were not so worried about her sister.
The top drawer held crested stationery and the middle drawer pen nibs and ink and blotting paper.
The bottom drawer was locked.
Miranda sat down in the desk chair and contemplated this problem. What she wanted must be there, of course. She should have realized that Philip would keep his secrets safe from prying eyes. But how was she to see them? She could not break the lock, even had she been able. That would cause an uproar. She would have to discover the keys and “borrow” them.
This idea made Miranda even unhappier. It did not seem much like the adventures of the heroines in the novels she read. In those, the villain was most often pursuing the heroine with some deadly purpose, which was very clear to see. She, on the other hand, was plagued with a nagging doubt that she might be mistaken, and by scruples that never seemed to arise in a novel. How pleasant it would be to forget her suspicions, go back to bed, and wake tomorrow refreshed and innocent.
Miranda sighed. Perhaps if she spoke to Rosalind and explained her fears, they could be dispelled once for all. But when she remembered her sister’s pale features and strained expression, she again doubted.
It was at that moment that footsteps sounded in the corridor outside.
Miranda froze, her heart pounding like a bass drum, her throat dry. She reached for the candlestick with trembling hands and listened. They were slow heavy steps, coming from the direction of the hall. Visions of Alice’s ghosts rose in her mind—awful headless forms in ancient dress, sobbing women in clinging white draperies, a child holding out bloody hands and wailing like a lost soul.
The footsteps stopped outside the study door. Miranda gasped, then blew out her candles and crouched beneath the desk, her arms wrapped around her knees, her face buried in her sleeve to stifle the sound of her breathing.
The door opened, and light returned. There was a pause, and then Miranda heard, with horror, a quiet sniffing. She gripped her knees even tighter and curled farther under the desk. The steps approached the front of the desk and hesitated. Miranda heard the scrape of her candlestick across the leather surface. The thing, whatever it was, was taking her only source of light!
This loss gave Miranda the courage to move. As the footsteps retreated to the far side of the room, she uncurled and lifted her eyes just above the desktop. She saw Forbes, trying the French doors to make certain they were locked. He held a lighted branch of candles in one hand, and he had set her candlestick on a small table nearby. Miranda fell in a silent heap beneath the desk, relief tinged with annoyance at her own silliness and at Forbes for prowling the house at this late hour. He would take her candles and leave her in the dark, and it was all too maddening.
The butler sniffed again, clearly puzzled about the scent of fresh wax in the room. He pushed the door latch as if wanting to be doubly certain it held, then opened the curtain slightly and peered out, his craggy face set in harsh lines that would have terrified Miranda had she dared to peek. At last, still unsatisfied, he turned to go, picking up her candlestick as he went. Miranda listened to his steps cross the rug and pause at the door. It opened and closed, leaving her in blackness.
She crawled out at once and groped her way across the carpet, bruising her shin painfully on a footstool she didn’t remember seeing. She listened, then crept out into the corridor. Forbes was just at the entrance to the great hall. He shut that door behind him, bringing darkness down again.
Heedless now of discovery, Miranda ran along the corridor, hands outstretched in front to cushion any impact. She hit the closed door with a thump and waited for a terrified moment to be confronted. But there was no light, no sound. The darkness seemed to press in on her from all sides, mocking and ominous.
She plunged through the door and into the great hall, where whispers of air nearly drew a scream. Then she realized that she could see a little. Her eyes were adjusting, and there was a faint dusting of moonlight through the high windows. She could make out the carved oak balusters of the stair and the long trestle table in the middle of the room. She ran, and stumbled up the stairs as fast as she could.
Once upstairs, she felt better, though there was less light. She could more easily explain her presence in this upper corridor, should anyone find her, and she was near the refuge of her own room, which, at this moment, she never wanted to leave again. Taking a deep breath, she crept on, sliding one foot forward, then the other, so as to make the least noise. She kept her right hand on the wall, for she could tell her own room, she knew, by a niche with a bust of Cicero that came just before.
She felt the first doorway, and noted it. Two more, and she would be safe. Then she heard the groaning, coming from beyond the wooden panels.
It was too much. She couldn’t move. The moans rose and fell like the protests of a creature in agony. They were not loud enough to be heard except so close, but they held more fear and pain than Miranda had ever imagined. This had to be one of Alice’s phantoms, the one who left its victims raving mad and gibbering when dawn came. Miranda’s feet would not move. She dug her nails into the oak of the door frame and stared like a bird before a snake.
The moaning paused. There was a brief silence, and then the door was flung open and light dazzled her eyes. Miranda cringed and threw up her arm with a gurgling scream. The figure in the doorway lurched in surprise and gasped.
Miranda and Alan Creighton gazed at one another with wide eyes and open mouths, each stunned to find the other there.
After a long moment, Alan raised the single candle he held higher and contemplated her. “What the dev…deuce are you doing here?”
“I…I…” Miranda couldn’t seem to make her mouth work. Alan continued to look at her, and she became very aware of her nightclothes, her blond hair falling in disarray over her shoulders, her bare ankles. Her face grew warm, and her hands even colder. “I heard you groaning,” she claimed. “And I came to see what was the matter.”
For an instant, he looked taken aback, then his penetrating blue eyes narrowed. “Without a light?” he asked.
Miranda looked at the carpet.
“And I expressly asked for a room well away from any others. You cannot have heard anything from your bedchamber.”
“I was…I woke up, and I…”
“Yes?”
“And I came out into the corridor. It is no business of yours!”
He considered her averted eyes and guilty stance. “No, I don’t suppose it is.” Alan had been dreaming of the field hospital at Salamanca, where he had taken his first serious wound of the war. He had felt again the bone-jarring jolting of the cart, the burning agony in his leg. He had seen the tangle of amputated limbs outside the surgeons’ workroom and felt the bitter terror of being carried there himself. It was all he could do to keep his hands from shaking, and just now he welcomed any company, even this silly girl he scarcely knew. “I am going to the kitchen, to see what may be found in the larder. Come along.”
“No, thank you. I will just…”
“Unless you want me to rouse Philip and Rosalind, you will come.” He couldn’t bear the idea of walking about this strange house alone just now.
The threat, and the easy command in Creighton’s voice, drew Miranda after him along the corridor she had just traversed, down the wide stair, and into the east wing, where the kitchen lay. He ignored her and went directly to the closed larder. “Ah, not locked. That’s lucky. And we have half a game pie, bread and cheese, and most of a ham. Riches.”
“I’m not hungry,” said Miranda, in the coldest voice she could muster. As soon as she said it, she realized it was a lie.
“Well, I am,” he replied. Food often helped dispel the nightmares, he had found. The only thing better was drink, which drowned them out. He came to the kitchen table laden with booty. “Do you happen to know where I might find a plate and cutlery?”
Miranda’s visits here had shown her this much. “In that cupboard.” She pointed.
“Splendid. Get them, will you? I’ll be right back.” He turned away as Miranda stiffened with outrage, then paused. “Ah, a lamp.” Taking it up from the table, he lit it with the candle flame. “There. You have light. I won’t be a moment.”
When he was gone, Miranda stood seething in the middle of the stone floor. She would not be ordered about as if she were one of his lieutenants. He could get his own plate. She was only sorry she had told him where they were! If she did not believe he really would wake Rosalind, she would go back to her own room immediately and bolt the door.
This made her think. If she was safe in her room, innocently in bed, surely he would not rouse the house. What could he tell them? She rushed toward the kitchen door, only to have it swing open in her face revealing Alan Creighton carrying a decanter of brandy.
“Here we are. One useful thing I learned in the Peninsula—foraging.”
Miranda tried to slip past him, but he stepped in front of her· “No. We are going to talk a little.”
“You can’t keep me here!”
“Probably not. But I can chase you up the stairs shouting, ‘Stop, thief,’ at the top of my lungs. The army is fine training for the voice.”
“You are the most odious man I have ever met.”
“And you have such a wide experience of men.”
“Well, no, but…”
Alan nodded and went to fetch a plate. “You’re sure you won’t join me?”
“No! I mean, yes!”
He nevertheless brought two plates to the table, then added knives and forks. When he tried to slice the ham, he held his left arm stiffly along his side. “Sit down,” he suggested.
“No, thank you.”
He put down the knife. “Look, Miss…Miranda. This is your sister’s house, and you have a right to do as you please in it. Perhaps I was in the army too long and grew over suspicious. If you want to wander about in the dark, it’s all the same to me. I…suppose I was just looking for company after waking so…suddenly. Go upstairs. Take the candle. I’ll find another.”
Miranda picked it up and turned to go. But now that she was free to do so, perversely, she wanted to stay. “Are you in great pain from your wound?” she asked.
Alan looked up from slicing the game pie, a bit surprised at the question. “No, not particularly. It is mostly stiffness unless I try it too hard.”
“I thought…you were moaning so.”
“Ah.” He looked down at his plate. “I was dreaming,” he said crisply.
“A nightmare.” Somehow, Miranda found herself sitting opposite him at the kitchen table and cutting herself some bread and cheese. “Was it dreadful? Did it have ghosts and monsters? Alice the kitchenmaid says this house is full of ghosts.”
“Does she?” There was a smile in his voice, though it did not reach his features. “I wager they’re quiet, well-mannered ghosts in Philip’s house. He’s a high stickler.”
“Is he indeed?”
“Don’t you care for Philip?” He poured a glass of brandy and took a sip, savoring it on his tongue. He did not offer this part of the feast to Miranda.
“I…I scarcely know him,” replied Miranda.
Alan Creighton nodded. “I’ve only met him a few times myself, when I was home on leave. I must say he’s always been civil. Though just lately…” He broke off, and a sad, strained expression passed across his face.
Miranda leaned forward. “What?” she asked.
“Nothing. Will you have some ham?”
Absentmindedly, she held out her plate. “I…I have a reason for asking,” she said. “I am not just being odiously inquisitive.”
Alan raised one dark eyebrow and waited.
“You see.” Miranda hesitated, then threw caution to the winds. “I have been worried about Rosalind. She used to be so gay and lively, and now she is often ill and tired and so unlike herself. I have been wondering…”
“If it is Philip’s fault?” he finished.
His skeptical tone made Miranda bridle. “He brought her to this forsaken place and practically imprisoned her. They never go out. And he is so brusque and rude. He rides out alone every day, for hours and hours, and he looks like Lord Byron!”
Alan Creighton’s lips quivered. “Does he indeed? I have never seen Lord Byron.”
“Well, neither have I, but my father says so. And you know all the wicked things he has been up to.”
“Your father?” She glared at him, and he added, “No, Lord Byron, of course. I did hear something. What sort of wicked things are they?”
Miranda tried to look knowing and sophisticated. “He treated his wife very badly.”
“Did he? Beat her, perhaps?”
“I…I don’t think so.” Miranda was shocked at the idea.
“And you think Philip is up to something similar?”
“Well, not…that, but… He is not at all the fashionable person we thought him!”
Alan watched her frown and bite her full lower lip, more amused than he had been in some time. The boredom and emptiness that he had felt since being shipped home from Belgium lightened a touch. “He does seem to have some black moods,” he offered.
Miranda leaned forward. “Yes? I am not the least surprised.”
“Of course, your sister looks very well to me.”
“But you did not meet her when she was in London. She was so happy, so full of jokes and stories. Now she is hardly able to stay awake through an evening. I find that very suspicious. And I am sure she would like to go out more. She has told me so, in a way. So you must see that I have to find out what is wrong.”
“That’s what you were doing tonight,” concluded Creighton.
Miranda sat up straight. “What if I was?”
He took in her stiff spine and raised chin, her defiant expression. He ought, he knew, to discourage her. Philip and his wife seemed no more unhappy than a dozen married couples he could name, and happier than many. If her sister felt confined at Clairvon Abbey and bored, that was scarcely persecution. And his knowledge of his cousin, though mostly secondhand, did not suggest anything sinister.
But it was a wonderful joke, and his life had been short of levity for too long. Alan Creighton succumbed to temptation. “Might not be a bad notion,” he answered. “You can never tell about these things. Philip does seem a trifle grim.”
Miranda nodded, clasping her hands on the table. She was at once glad not to be mocked and a bit daunted by his agreement. She hadn’t really believed her own theories.
“I might be able to help,” he added. “I have a good deal of experience in reconnaissance.”
“Oh. Oh, yes.”
Seeing her reluctance, Creighton felt a pang. He pushed his plate away. “I’d better put all this back in the larder. It is late.”
Miranda jumped up. “I’ll wash the plates.”
“No need. I’m quite used to that sort of thing. You should be going upstairs.”
She nodded. She felt that herself, very strongly. She was suddenly scandalized by her situation—alone, in her nightclothes, with a near stranger in the middle of the night. “Will you wipe the plates and put them away? And…and clean off the table?”
He smiled at her, and Miranda’s heart speeded up. “A careful housekeeper, are you?”
“No, it is just…I’d rather no one knew that I…was here with you. It is not…proper.” She gripped her hands together, feeling young and awkward.
Alan Creighton looked much struck. “I don’t suppose it is. You must pardon me. I’ve forgotten all the proprieties I ever knew in the war.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“On the contrary. Take the candle. I will make sure all is tidy here.”
Miranda nodded and snatched up the candlestick. She nearly ran to her own bedchamber, candle flames streaming out behind. Once there, she bolted the door and leaned on it, breathing rapidly. This was a real adventure, and, since she wasn’t in the least sleepy now, she went to the bureau and got out her diary.