“One would think. But apparently not. Colonel Chase’s will states that when Miss Chase reaches the age of twenty-one and provided she is still living in the town of Little Firkin, she will inherit the bulk of her father’s estate. Those who were residents of Little Firkin at the time of Colonel Chase’s death and are still residents upon Miss Chase reaching her majority will divide amongst them one hundred thousand pounds.”
“Dear Lord,” Hayden whispered.
“That’s quite an incentive to keep someone alive, wouldn’t you say?” Grey finished the last of his ale and set the tankard down on the table.
“And after getting this letter my father asked you to come and see what’s going on?” Hayden asked.
“Not at all. He told me about the situation, and I volunteered to come as his representative. How could I resist? Witchcraft, threats of dire doing, a positively Gothic will, and a beautiful young girl in need of protection. Or not.”
“But there’s no reason anyone would want to harm her,” Hayden protested. “As you just pointed out, quite the reverse is true.”
“Exactly,” Grey said, nodding. “A delicious little mystery, is it not? Unless it’s simply a prank.”
“And you asked me to accompany you because…?”
“As unlikely as it may be, I’m rather fond of your company. Besides, should anything happen to your father, you could inherit Miss Chase.”
“How old is she?” He bristled inwardly at the thought of anyone wanting to harm the maligned beauty.
“Eighteen or thereabouts.”
“Why doesn’t she just leave?”
“The terms of the will make it impossible, barring a few exceptions. For instance, she can leave under a husband’s care, but any husband would have to be approved by your father, and really, where is she to meet someone suitable? Or your father could remove her himself if he is willing to keep her under his direct supervision. Which means he would have to agree to let her travel with him, and we both know this is as likely to happen as pigs taking flight, which, by the way, a widow in Doncaster claims to have seen last week.”
It was true. Hayden’s father was constantly traveling throughout Great Britain and Europe. He wouldn’t consider for an instant curbing his wanderlust in order to make a home for an orphaned girl.
“Not that the girl hasn’t lately made the suggestion,” Grey added, looking amused.
Hayden tilted his head inquiringly.
“She has written letters hinting she would very much like to spend some time with her guardian. Needless to say, she has been disappointed in the answer.”
“How is it that this is the first I have heard of her?” Hayden asked.
“Your father probably just forgot to mention Miss Chase to you. It’s not like she’s had any reason to be forefront in his mind, and he does have rather a lot of things to occupy his thoughts,” Grey answered, stabbing the last bit of meat in his bowl and lifting it to his mouth.
“Colonel Chase succumbed to cancer five years ago,” he went on, “around the time your father became involved in the London dockworkers’ strike. I suspect Miss Chase simply got lost in the shuffle. It’s not as if she needed his immediate attention, in any case. And your father is always beginning some reform plan or other. Like the canal system on his estate. Or, for that matter, the pottery factory he meant to build here.”
“Excuse me?” Hayden said.
“He came up here soon after Colonel Chase died, you know,” Grey said, “to look in on the girl and to see if he could restore his hunting lodge. While he was mucking about, he discovered that Little Firkin’s riverbanks are composed of some sort of extremely rare, premium goop that makes the crockery makers swoon.
“So, what with the guild movement becoming so popular, he decided to build a pottery factory here and turn the townspeople into self-sustaining craftsmen. He even went so far as to have a spur line run up here to build the factory and export the pots. Didn’t you wonder why this little backwater was served by a twice-weekly train?”
Hayden hadn’t, but he wasn’t going to admit it. “Of course.”
“Hmm. Well, as you can see, there’s been more importing than exporting going on.”
“What do you mean?”
Grey looked at him sympathetically. “Gads, boy. Look around. Little Firkin is living on expectations.” Hayden looked back out onto the street. Grey was right. Neat, well-maintained shops lined both sides of the street, their glass display windows boasting stacks of pricey-looking goods being browsed by casual shoppers decked out in quality clothing, nary a patch to be seen. Even the dogs lurking about the back of the butcher shop looked well-fed and complacent.
His attention, however, did not stay long on the affluence of Little Firkin, because at that moment, across the street, the lovely Miss Amelie Chase had stopped. Sunlight spilled over her titian-colored hair and kissed an apricot blush on her smooth, round cheeks.
Hayden shoved his chair back from the table and stood up.
Grey looked up in surprise. “Where are you going?”
“Well, Uncle, you said that I might end up inheriting the care of Miss Chase someday. It only stands to reason that I ought to introduce myself.”
Chapter 6
“Are you feeling all right, Fanny?” Amelie asked, the impish smile fading from her face. “You’re quite pale.”
No, Fanny was not feeling all right. Her brief encounter with Vicar Oglethorpe had shaken her.
The man had snuck up behind her as she watched Amelie and Grammy Beadle. “Wickedness!” he’d spat close to her ear. She’d jerked around to find his bland face suffused with purple and his small frame shaking as he stared out into the street.
“It’s theater, Vicar,” she’d replied with characteristic coolness, though inwardly disturbed by what, even for Oglethorpe, seemed unusual vehemence.
That “disturbance” had accounted for the ravens’ reaction. Over the years, Fanny had learned to extinguish the communication she shared with animals by keeping careful control over her emotions. Only when she was overwhelmed by an unexpected reaction did she make an inadvertent connection. It had been nearly a year since the last such event.
“It’s blasphemy,” the vicar said. “I won’t stand for it.” He leaned down until he was nose-to-nose with her. His eyes burned. “This will end! Mark my words!”
He stabbed a finger at her before spinning on his heel and leaving. Her pulse pattered in alarm as she watched him go. She’d always thought of Vicar Oglethorpe as negligible, a pedant whose superstition and fear, rather than any religious values, drove his hostility. But he’d never been this openly antagonistic before. It frightened her. He frightened her. And the ravens had felt it.
Of course, she couldn’t tell Amelie this.
“Fanny?” she repeated, concerned.
“If I am pale,” Fanny said smoothly, “it is the result of shock. ‘Ipse dixit’ and ‘ad nauseam.’ You grow more incorrigible by the day.”
Her diversion worked; Amelie smiled.
“I was just having a spot of fun,” Amelie said. “Though perhaps I shouldn’t have spoken Latin. Suppose someone recognized one of the phrases and told Grammy? She’d be humiliated beyond speech.”
“Oh, I think you underestimate Grammy’s compulsion to speak,” Fanny replied dryly. “Besides, given that I’ve yet to meet a native Little Firkian with more than a rudimentary knowledge of the English language, I sincerely doubt you need worry about any one of them identifying Latin idioms.”
“What about Vicar Oglethorpe?” Amelie asked. “Didn’t I see him stop beside you? He knows Latin, and he abhors anything to do with spirits and such.”
“With the exception of the spirits that inhabit the bottle he keeps in his desk drawer.”
Amelie gasped in delighted horror. “Fanny! Even if they’re true, you oughtn’t say things like that.” She assumed a faux prim expression. “Please recall you are supposed to be my mentor.”
Fanny raised a brow
. “When one seeks to fill the post for a companion who must relocate to the Scottish hinterlands, one is bound to find the employment pool limited. As I’ve mentioned before, your father was forced to make do.”
Amelie laughed and linked her arm through Fanny’s. “Do not attempt to convince me you are anything but an aristocratic lady and entirely wonderful.”
“Far be it from me to disillusion you,” Fanny said, her alarm fading. Still, something was causing pinpricks of sensation, like kitten claws, to shiver up her spine and tickle the nape of her neck.
They continued down the sidewalk, unhailed by any of the other people on the streets. Not that anyone avoided looking at them or seemed in the least discomforted by their appearance. They simply paid no attention to them. Like we’re ghosts moving amongst the living, Fanny thought, and not for the first time.
A thin, low-heeled border collie darted out from beneath a lorry cart and raced up to them, ears back and tail wagging. Amelie smiled and leaned forward, holding out her hand. Fanny stiffened. The last thing she needed was some dog leaping into her arms. Especially this one, an ardently affectionate female she occasionally petted, but only when no one was around to witness.
“Don’t encourage it, Amelie,” she said. “It’s probably riddled with fleas and filth.”
Amelie ignored her, reaching down to pat the dog’s head. “I will never understand,” she said, “how it is that the most kindhearted of women has an aversion to animals.”
Of course, she didn’t. But again, Amelie would never know this. For six years Fanny had lived as a forthright but unremarkable woman and still had fulfilled her duty to Amelie and Colonel Chase. As far as her situation had allowed, Amelie had grown from an exuberant girl to a charming (albeit guileless), uninhibited, and happy young woman. Even better, one free of any poltergeist association.
The phenomena had stopped shortly after Colonel Chase’s death. Unfortunately, not before several Little Firkians had witnessed episodes, cementing the girl in the town’s imagination as a witch.
“I’m not sure where you have come up with this notion that I am kindhearted, but as I hate to disillusion you, I shall forbear comment,” Fanny replied.
Amelie laughed. “I know you. Beneath your self-contained facade you are most compassionate. You simply are not given to demonstrativeness. Like petting dogs.”
Gads, she hoped not. Demonstrativeness for Fanny had potentially dire ramifications.
The mention of dogs brought Amelie’s thoughts back to Grammy Beadle. “I don’t believe I would regret it even if I did alarm the old witch today,” she said.
“A deluded old woman,” Fanny corrected her. “Not a witch. You should pity her.”
“She claimed to have used mouse feet in one of her spells!” Amelie said, regarding Fanny with righteous indignation.
“She only made that claim to shock and discomfort you,” Fanny said.
“Well, it worked,” Amelie muttered darkly. “I say she deserved a taste of her own medicine.”
Fanny stopped Amelie with a hand on her wrist. “To what exact medicine are you referring?”
“There were ravens in the sky. She thinks I sent them.”
Fanny felt her pulse quicken. “Dear Amelie,” she said, “it’s all fine and good to tweak Little Firkin’s nose a bit now and again. But someday you will leave here. You can’t go about play-acting in London.”
“What if it wasn’t all play-acting?” Amelie said, glancing sideways.
Fanny started. She hadn’t paid much attention to what was going on in the street between Amelie and Grammy Beadle; all her attention had been on Oglethorpe. Now she realized that Amelie had not only seen the ravens, but felt that she’d somehow been responsible for them.
Fanny had spent years trying to convince Amelie that her childhood brush with the paranormal had been nothing but an unfortunate anomaly, a phase she’d gone through. She’d thought she’d succeeded. But she’d always suspected that Amelie had felt a little let down when the “magic” ended.
“Oh, don’t look like that, Fanny. All pinched and disapproving.”
“How else am I to look when you make such absurd statements?”
“They’re not absurd.” Amelie could not keep the excitement out of her voice. “Why do you always insist anything magical must act as a barrier separating me from the rest of the world?”
“Because, Amelie, your view of the world is skewed by having spent your early childhood in a part of India where magic is the norm and the inexplicable is acceptable.” It was an old conversation. “But magic is not acceptable here. Just see how people treat us. If it weren’t for the promise of your father’s fortune, we would be complete pariahs.”
“This is Little Firkin,” Amelie said. “The only way I would not be set apart is if I had been born here.”
“But not to the same degree,” Fanny insisted.
“I know!” Amelie said, uncharacteristically sharp. “Don’t you think I know this? I am quite as aware as you of our segregation. And I am sure the people in London are not so prejudiced.”
“My dear,” Fanny said gently, “you know better. London’s prejudice is precisely why your father came here with you.”
Amelie shook her head, not about to be persuaded. “He was sick at the time. Mentally overwrought. He saw bogeys and threats around every corner. His illness made him paranoid.”
Fanny thought so, too, but there was no use discussing it. They’d been here before. And they were in Little Firkin for another two and a half years, like it or not. “It is a moot point, anyway,” Fanny said. “You have no special abilities and we are not in London.”
Amelie wet her lips with the tip of her tongue. “Did you see the ravens? I…I think I did call them.”
Fanny turned shocked eyes upon her, but before she could speak, Amelie rushed on. “And remember last fall, when Donnie MacKee’s draft team bolted and they were heading for us? Your eyes were shut, but mine weren’t. I was staring at them. I couldn’t look away, and at the last instant they turned. I think…I think I turned them!”
Oh, dear God. She had no idea the girl had thought anything of that incident other than that they’d had a near escape.
“They most likely shied away from your costume. You were wearing a shocking shade of crimson that day,” she clipped out in a succinct, brook-no-argument tone. “And as for the ravens, I saw a flock of birds. Hardly a rare sight in the spring. In the sky. In Scotland.”
“But they were silent,” Amelie said meaningfully.
Damn it. A few slips in the course of all these years and Amelie would have to have witnessed them. How was she to come up with an explanation? And then abruptly she realized she wouldn’t have to. She pointed behind Amelie. “You mean like those?”
Amelie spun. Scores of ravens were wheeling through the bright sky, congregating on the ancient oak tree that marked the end of the high street. They did not make a sound.
“Oh.” Amelie sounded disappointed.
“If you waste your life trying to find mystical meanings in odd occurrences, at the end of your days you will find you’ve learned nothing and missed a great deal,” Fanny said.
Abrupt as it was unexpected, Amelie’s good humor returned. “Oh, Fanny. You’re not yet thirty years of age and have spent the last six here in Little Firkin with me, so how is it you know so much about what one will and won’t regret at the end of their days?”
The girl’s amusement nonplussed Fanny. At some point during the last year or so, Amelie had gone from being Fanny’s charge to being her peer, and the transition still startled Fanny.
Amelie regarded Fanny assessingly. “Sometimes I am reminded how little I know about you. You never speak of the past, Fanny. You’re something of a mystery.”
“Nonsense,” Fanny replied shortly. “You are romanticizing. I had an unexceptional childhood and was married young and widowed almost at once. Which you already know. I see no point in dwelling on the past when there is so much f
uture to be had. For both of us.”
Amelie sighed. “If it ever gets here.”
Fanny laughed, glad to have the conversation turned. It always made her uncomfortable to evade Amelie’s questions. If only Amelie were a child again, content to accept things for what they seemed, willing to live in the present. But over the last few months, as Amelie grew more restless with the constraints of life in Little Firkin, her questions regarding Fanny, her mentor’s life before Little Firkin, and the great cities of Scotland and England had grown in number and frequency.
“Well,” Fanny said, “I can’t hasten the future, but I might be able to make the time pass more enjoyably.”
Amelie looked over at her, interested.
“Mr. McGowan has returned from Edinburgh and sent word this morning that he has brought with him some newly published books. Should we stop at the bank now, or would you rather he send them over?”
“Oh. Let’s stop now,” Amelie replied excitedly. Amelie had recently developed a crush on Bernard McGowan, sole proprietor of the sole bank in Little Firkin, even though he had been in Little Firkin nearly as long as they had. Another sign that Amelie had reached womanhood.
McGowan had once been attached to Colonel Chase’s command, and after leaving the military he contacted the colonel soon after the colonel and his daughter had arrived in Little Firkin. In his letter, McGowan mentioned that he was looking to invest a small inheritance in the banking industry. Perhaps even open one himself, as his family had once owned a bank and he had some knowledge of them. Seeing a chance to keep his money near and help a former soldier, the colonel had suggested that McGowan consider opening a bank in the town. McGowan had not hesitated to do so.
By all appearances, the endeavor had been profitable, for it had not only allowed Bernard to buy Colonel Chase’s old hunting lodge for his own, but to pursue his passion for stamp collecting. It was apparently a very expensive pastime. Bernard had once let slip how much he’d paid for a particular stamp—an ugly little pinkish mauve square—and it had been what Fanny considered a staggering sum.
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