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I was flustered at having been taken by surprise while sharing a quiet moment with Atticus, but Sybil Ingram’s astonished exclamation made me smile. Despite the passage of time since last I had seen her, she was the same as I remembered: warm, impetuous, forthright—and definitely theatrical.
I said, “Why don’t you call me Clara.” After all, I had been practicing calling her “Sybil” instead of “Miss Ingram” ever since their telegram had arrived, announcing their impending arrival. When I reached for her hand, she stepped forward and embraced me instead, and I returned the greeting gladly.
“So you’ve guessed our good news already,” Atticus said, beaming. He was so delighted about our forthcoming child that he would happily have submitted an announcement to the Times had I permitted it. “Clara and I are overjoyed.”
“I can well imagine!” Sybil was wearing a fashionable violet twilled wool traveling dress that spoke of French dressmaking in every dart and seam. She was as pretty as ever, with her blonde ringlets and blue eyes—perhaps even prettier, in some indefinable way, and it might have had something to do with the dashingly handsome man at her side.
He and Atticus were much of a height, but where my husband was very English in coloring with his fair complexion, blue eyes, and auburn hair, Sybil’s husband looked as though he had a touch of Italian or Greek in his makeup, with olive skin and a wild mop of dark curls. He was not at all how I had envisioned an American hotel magnate, and I was forced to revise my opinion of Miss Ingram’s impetuous marriage. Now I could understand why she had been willing to uproot her life in England and travel to another continent.
“Atticus,” I said, “allow me to present my old and dear friend Sybil Ingram, and her husband, from America. You did keep your stage name, I believe?” I added.
My husband clasped Sybil’s hand. “Miss Ingram, a pleasure,” he said, and his husky voice was warm with welcome. “Clara has told me so much about you, and I’m delighted to meet you at last.” Then he reached for her husband’s hand. “Mr. Lammle, Clara and I are so pleased you’ve come.”
Mr. Lammle shook my husband’s hand a bit like an automaton. “Thank you for your kind courtesy, Lord Telford,” he said, but he had a peculiar expression on his face. Then I realized it was suppressed laughter. “I must tell you, though, that I’m not Alcott Lammle.”
“Oh?”
“He is no longer in the picture, so to speak.” The dark-haired man slanted a grin at Sybil. There was something a touch dangerous about him, and for a second he appeared the sort of man who could lead a woman to the devil. “Shall we confess the truth, my dear? I’m sure our kind host and hostess are broadminded enough to accept your infamous lover beneath their roof.”
I tried not to let my shock show, but Sybil made a face at him. “Pay him no mind, Gr—Clara. Roderick is my husband. My second husband. Mr. Lammle, I am sad to say, departed this earth before we had been married twenty-four hours.”
That was startling. “I had no idea. The newspaper item announcing your presence in London only referred to your American husband, so I assumed...and how did you meet Mr.—er—”
“Brooke,” supplied that gentleman, bowing over my hand. “How we met is an interesting story, isn’t it, my dear?”
“I shouldn’t wish to bore our host and hostess,” Sybil said primly. “It is enough to say that my first husband brought us together, in a sense.”
Mr. Brooke laughed outright. “In the sense that he was my stepfather,” he said, and again I tried to hide my astonishment. I must not have succeeded, for he explained to me with a straight face, “I can only suppose that Sybil’s brief experience of married life impressed her favorably, for she scarcely hesitated before proposing to me.”
The look she bestowed upon him was supposed to be outraged, I guessed, but affection won out. This must not have been unusual behavior for her husband. “Lord Telford, Clara, do forgive him if you can. His Bohemian streak sometimes gets the better of him—not to mention his questionable sense of humor.”
This chaffing was evidently customary with them, and Atticus took no notice of it except to say, “With Clara’s friends, I’m Atticus, not Lord Telford. Please sit down and make yourselves comfortable.”
Dinner was a lively affair, though there were only the four of us; Atticus’s niece Vivi would be arriving the next day with her husband, George Bertram, Atticus’s estate agent. There was so much to catch up on. Sybil and Roderick interrupted each other a great deal, and he teased her mercilessly, but looking at her sparkling eyes and animated gestures as she fended off his verbal sallies, I could not deny that it agreed with her.
This was the companionship Sybil Ingram had always needed: a man who would never bore her. Although she had always said she never had love affairs because they were risky and she cherished her independence, I had always privately thought that she had simply never met a man who captured her interest sufficiently. Mr. Brooke was nothing if not interesting.
They disclosed how they had met: when both staked a claim on a house in the Hudson River Valley. “The house had belonged to my late mother,” Roderick said, “but there was confusion over my stepfather’s assets, and Sybil, in her adorably audacious way, thought she would try to establish herself as a resident.” That wicked grin again. “She had no idea that the little stepson she expected would turn out to be me.”
“Everything about Brooke House was a surprise,” Sybil said. “I certainly never expected to learn there that I could communicate with ghosts.”
Atticus and I exchanged a look of confusion. “I don’t think I quite understand,” he said.
“I am able to channel spirits,” she said, as calmly as if she were saying she had learned to knit. “Now I use my gift to help people rid themselves of troublesome ghosts.”
“You’re a spirit medium?” I said.
“It isn’t something I do for money,” she said, perhaps hearing disapproval in my tone. “And it isn’t something I sought. The gift just seemed to find me.”
I cast about for an explanation that would make sense. “Is it...a kind of performance?”
“No, I assure you. I never aim to mislead anyone or make any kind of pretense.”
I stared at her uncertainly. During my years with her she had seemed to take superstition seriously, as did so many actors, but I had always assumed that she knew deep down that there was no such thing as the supernatural. She was too intelligent, I thought, to believe in spooks. Had she lost some of her mental sharpness?
That thought was scarcely worse than the alternative: that I was wrong to be skeptical, and that supernatural events truly did occur. It was true that in the not too distant past I had been much less certain, but developments over the time since my marriage had shown me that the most frightening creatures to roam the earth were human beings.
Atticus stepped in to change the subject, for which I was grateful. “You may not know it,” he told our guests, “but this is the last time Gravesend will appear in all its splendor. Clara and I are in the process of converting the manor into a school.”
“A school?” Roderick echoed. “What sort?”
“For orphans and children whose parents—or parent—cannot keep them. The idea came about because of my pet project, the Blackwood Homes for Women in Distress.”
“This will actually be our last Christmas in the manor,” I added. “Well, first and last for me. I hope you’ll pardon the house being in a slightly unsettled state. We’ve already begun to move a great many of the furnishings into storage.”
“In all honesty, no one could pay me enough to fill my home with small boys,” Sybil said. “Where will you live, if not here?”
“The lodge is quite spacious enough for us,” Atticus said.
She fell silent then, looking thoughtful. The rest of the meal flew by, and it seemed only moments had passed before it was time for Sybil and me to withdraw to the parlor so that our husbands could enjoy their port in masculine privacy.
I showed her through to the formal drawing room, since it, too, would soon be emptied of its valuable pieces. As it was, many paintings had already been taken down and propped against the walls.
“I think I’ve heard about the Blackwood Homes,” Sybil mused. “They sound like a most worthy undertaking, providing refuge for fallen women who desire to reform and learn a trade. What are the women like? Have you met any of them?”
“Oh, yes. You’ll be able to form your own impressions, since you will be meeting them tomorrow when they come to share our Christmas festivities. We’ve also invited our tenants, of course.”
“Of course,” she repeated, shaking her head in wonder. “I declare, Gr—Clara, I would scarcely have recognized you.”
“Well, trading widows’ weeds for such fine feathers is a great change.” When I worked for Sybil, I had assumed the identity of a widow to discourage attentions from bachelor actors.
“You know that isn’t what I meant—although, while we’re on the subject, I can’t help noticing how cleverly your gown is designed to make your state of expectancy less obvious. It must be one of your making.”
I was relieved that she had let me change the subject, for it made me uncomfortable to be the subject of scrutiny. “I find it difficult to get close enough to the machine these days, so I hired a seamstress and gave her a great deal of guidance.”
“That is exactly what I meant,” Sybil exclaimed. “How beautifully you have stepped into the role of lady of the manor. You have everything in hand. And now you’re about to make another great change, and it doesn’t faze you.”
“If anything, I shall be much more comfortable when I’m no longer the lady of the manor, as you put it.” I nodded toward a full-length painting propped against the opposite wall, near the door leading to the entrance hall. “That was my predecessor, the late Lady Telford, and I’ve no wish to have anything in common with her, even the title. I was never meant to be mistress of an estate—as she would be quick to say if she were still alive.”
Sybil approached the portrait, whose cold, painted blue eyes were almost on a level with her gaze. The artist had portrayed the late baroness, Atticus’s mother, in a white organdy dress and with her light blonde hair arranged in ringlets at each side of her face that touched her shoulders. The hairstyle and demure dress did nothing to mitigate the coldness of her gaze or her rigid, unbending posture—both of which signified the character of the subject.
“What a gorgon,” Sybil said cheerfully. She would not have been intimidated by such a mother-in-law. “How is it that you came to succeed her, anyway? You never told me how your marriage came about, other than that you and the baron were friends when you were children.”
Even after all these years, it was difficult to reveal this part of my past to her. “‘Friends’ is rather an overstatement,” I said slowly. “I was a servant here. My mother was housekeeper, and Lady Telford there in the painting was our employer. She sent me away when I was seventeen, so I went to London—”
“Sent you away? Why?”
This part was even harder to reveal. “She learned that I had been meeting in secret with Atticus’s twin brother, Richard. He was a scoundrel, I later learned, but I loved him.”
“A brother! Where is he now?”
“Dead.” As much as I trusted her, I could tell only a portion of the truth. “He was in the Crimea. I—I mourned him for a long time.” Poor lovesick child that I had been, I had believed the man worth mourning, but there was no need to go into that. “In fact, the name I took when I entered your service was another way of reminding myself of my past here.”
“Graves for Gravesend? I had no idea! But how did your marriage come about?”
“Atticus remembered me after I went away, and when he was able, he came for me.” The fact that I had neither desired nor deserved his love at that time still reproached me, and rather than go into further explanations I simply said, “He was, and is, the best and dearest of men.”
Her face was a study in emotions: shock, delight, incredulity, curiosity. She was a most satisfying confidante. “So your husband is the twin brother of the man you loved and lost?” she exclaimed. “Isn’t that...well...odd?”
“No odder than marrying one’s stepson,” I said dryly, and she laughed.
“You’re right, that’s none of my affair. It’s plain that you are wildly devoted to each other, and that is what matters. Only...why did you never tell me all of this, Gr—Clara?”
“Well, it was painful, and not easy to talk about. And...”
“And I never asked,” she said in a wondering tone. “I considered you a close friend, yet I knew nothing of this.”
“Because that is how I wished it to be,” I said firmly. “But now I can tell you—and you can see why I shall find it most satisfying when Lady Telford is boxed up and put into storage. She was a hard-hearted woman, not only in her treatment of me, but in her treatment of Atticus as well.”
An impish smile brought out Sybil’s dimples. “I imagine she would be utterly furious to know that you, a servant she cast off, is now mistress here.”
“Indeed she would!” And equally furious, though I did not say so, to know that her despised, “deformed” son had become a beloved husband and soon to be father, and moreover a landlord who was taking pleasure in undoing his parents’ harsher dictates as regarded his tenants. “Though I know paintings have no emotions, it will be a relief to shut her away so that she isn’t glaring at us any longer. The house won’t be hers anymore.”
For the first time she seemed to hesitate. Then she asked in a different voice, “Are you happy here, Clara?”
Startled, I could only ask, “Don’t I seem happy?”
“Happier than I have ever seen you. Perhaps that’s why I’m worried.” She seemed undecided about whether to continue, but then took a breath and plunged onward. “I have learned over the years to trust my intuition,” she said, “and I fear that there is danger here for you.”
I almost laughed at the absurdity of the idea, but her serious tone urged a serious response. And when I thought back over the past year, I had to admit that there were times when she would have been right.
“There was danger,” I said slowly, “and not just for me. Quite serious danger, in fact. But that is over now.” She looked unconvinced, so I added, “Completely over. Truly, you have no reason to worry on my behalf.”
“I am so relieved to hear you say that. Does that mean—forgive me, but I shall keep worrying if I don’t ask—does that mean Gravesend is no longer cursed?”
I felt my face go stiff. It was the question I had been dreading. As she regarded me with concern, I struggled to find the words to respond.
Then came my husband’s voice merrily calling, “Ladies! Where are you?” and we heard his footsteps, and those of Roderick Brooke, approaching the door behind us.
Sybil laid her hand on my wrist and looked searchingly into my eyes. “Clara?”
I shook off my numbness. “Please don’t speak of it again,” I said, and then our husbands joined us, and the time for serious subjects was over.