He doubted anything about this disclosure would be quick. It had been avoided until that moment. Mr. Lester could have said it earlier, but Charles guessed that something apart from the oddity of a local belief had held him back.
“Oh, yes, of course. How rude of me.” Mr. Lester looked around the front parlor that also served as an office. There was no one but Charles and Nigel inside. Outside, rain pelted to the ground, soaking the detritus and soil.
No other patrons were likely to arrive, thought Charles, as Mr. Lester showed him and Nigel to chairs by the fire and waited for him to sit before taking his own seat.
There was a small seascape on the wall opposite the door, and when Charles passed it, he saw a signature of Agnes in the lower left corner. It was no professional painting. Had he still been a betting man, he would have placed money on Agnes being Lester’s wife.
“If the place is haunted, is that why Mr. Long was not here to greet us?” Nigel asked. He smirked.
“Mr. Long resides in Inverness. It does not seem terribly strange that he would simply send you a ring of keys.”
“Doesn’t it?” Charles questioned.
“Mr. Mason was no laird. He only had a bit of property. The house,” said Mr. Lester. “No title. I do not suppose that his relationship with Mr. Long would be the same as an illustrious client’s, for example. His matters, I imagine, would be more straightforward.” Mr. Lester stretched his hands toward the fire. “And unlike someone of a higher station—pardon me for saying it—Mr. Mason has not left behind a queue of creditors.”
Charles exchanged a glance with Nigel, who knew more of the milieu. He’d remained in the country his entire life, unlike Charles, who had gone south at the first opportunity. With some schooling to his name, he’d struck out against Mother and Mr. Maclean’s advice, departing for London. He’d worked to lose his accent and did not pay much attention to the issues impacting his birthplace.
Nigel shrugged. “That is a blessing.”
“Quite so,” said Mr. Lester.
A young woman entered the room from a side door and asked Mr. Lester, “Papa, shall I bring you some tea?” She had Mr. Lester’s tall build and brown eyes full of curiosity.
Mr. Lester nodded. “Thank you, Harriet.” Harriet quit the room as quickly as she had appeared, and he said, “Forgive her. She should have come to take both of your hats and cloaks.” Charles tried not to look at Nigel for fear that they would laugh. They were huddled awkwardly in their chairs, arranged so that water would seep to the wood floor. It did not irk him, and Nigel was too affable to care. But it was a little comical. “She is very reserved. Her mama’s death changed her, for all that it was several years ago.”
“Not at all, Mr. Lester,” said Nigel.
With a smile, Charles said, “I don’t take offense easily.”
He left unsaid the way that his appearance could be unsettling if it were not expected. He had a larger, more muscular build than most men and stood over some of them by a considerable amount.
“I must confess that I am… surprised you and your father did not remain in touch…”
“My mother and my father did not… were not…” It was not something Charles wanted to discuss with a stranger. Most would consider it uncouth, even those who were not used to moving in the ton as he now was. “He did not claim me as a son, which leads me to believe they were always unmarried. I had no idea until I received a letter about the house that he was no longer alive.”
Nigel shifted in his seat but did not interject.
The clock on the chimneypiece ticked, impossibly loud. Mr. Lester sighed. “I do not know if it is for me to say, but your mother and father… so far as I knew, and the village knew… we assumed, perhaps, that you would return.”
Charles did not understand what he meant. “I beg your pardon?”
Mr. Lester flushed, the pink visible even in the storm’s gloom. “Did not the documents say?”
Thinking of his copy of the will and all the legal papers in with the explanatory letter, Charles stared at Mr. Lester. “What were they supposed to say?”
“Mr. Mason, you have been here before. I mean to say, you resided in Ullinn House with your mother. For a time.”
So, if his parents had not been married, they had at least cohabitated.
Neither was titled. Neither had much incentive to adhere to societal expectations. The suggestion that perhaps they hadn’t did not vex him, but he was struggling to comprehend the idea—so casually suggested—that his picture of his father was not accurate. That he perhaps had not simply left.
He did not realize he was still staring until Mr. Lester said, “Mr. Mason?”
“I am sorry. Perhaps we may speak about the so-called haunting?”
He would rather talk about any manner of ghosts than dwell on his father.
Chapter Three
Florence Brown struggled with the fire until she’d warmed herself in the struggle instead. “Don’t need flames if you’re sweating this much,” she said. The trouble was the chimney, she believed, but she dared not relocate to a different part of the house. The smoke from this fire might be visible enough as it was. She hoped the weather would conceal it.
At least while she stayed at the rear of the structure, she did not give away too much with lights or her own shadow against a window.
Ullinn House was not hers.
But it had the reputation of being haunted and Mr. Mason had been dead for months. A local girl who’d been told of the reclusive Mr. Mason and his errant brother, its lack of an owner was why she’d chosen it as a hiding place. She reasoned that people would stay away due to the rumors. If they did happen to see smoke or a light or hear an odd sound, then she could playact as a ghost and scare them even more.
Florence did not believe in them. The world could be horrifying enough on its own without any preternatural interference. They had been the subject of fun tales to tell her young charges, nothing more.
A nursemaid had to have eerie stories up her sleeve. Disgraced nursemaid, she thought.
She confirmed whose Ullinn House was from the bookplates in the books she pilfered from the library and a few old letters she’d seen in the study. Mr. Roderick Mason. So at least parts of the stories were true.
As to whether he really had killed his own brother in a duel over his wife’s honor—for that was how the stories went—she did not know. Nothing readily available in his study told her. Anyway, it would not be the sort of thing one cheerfully jotted down in a ledger. She would not have jotted down something of the kind.
She reasoned since Mr. Mason was dead and his house had been left empty, it would do well as a hiding place for her. Her cursory investigations did not reveal any family or legal obligations that would lead people to the home. She concluded she should be safe here. For a while.
Until she decided what to do.
Florence was running from an employer who was not only a philanderer but also a violent man. She could perhaps forgive one, but not the other. Put another way: she was sure there might be men who philandered and were not terrible, exactly. But no man who gave into brutality could be any good.
Mr. Danvers had proven one afternoon in the empty nursery that he was not to be trusted.
She had so been looking forward to Christmas and Hogmanay with the children, but it was not to be. Mrs. Danvers was from York and her husband was from Inverness. Their respective origins made for a busy time of the year, but the little girls were beside themselves with joy.
Now Florence’s lot was to spend the season in a reputedly haunted home.
To her mind, she was hiding here temporarily until she came up with a plan to hide permanently. It should not be impossible to come up with an assumed name and disappear somewhere. Florence chewed at her lower lip, refusing to think too much about such a tangled thing. She’d been running for two weeks.
She should be thinking about happier matters, like her freedom.
The freedom came at a hig
h cost, but it was freedom, nonetheless.
After twenty minutes of trying to build flames without smoke billowing into the drawing room, she was successful to a point. She was satisfied that she would not suffocate herself.
She tore a piece off the loaf she’d bought from the village baker before any news of her leaving respectable employment could have traveled the area. She studied it before popping it into her mouth. Soon she would be out of provisions.
She had what little money she’d saved, but it would do no good when she could not purchase anything for fear of being caught. If that was even a realistic fear. It did not have to be for it to make her cautious.
There were mice. But the number she’d need to catch to feel satisfied was probably vast, and she did not know how to skin something so small.
Florence sat on the chaise that still puffed dust under her weight despite having been covered in a white cloth when she arrived. She had cried often in the last fortnight. She refused to begin again this very moment, although her stubbornness was most taxed.
She had always wanted her own family. As nursemaid to the Danvers’ girls, she could pretend and practice. It seemed that now that she had stopped running, things felt more desperate. It could have been the house. It was falling apart slowly in the way once-decent places would if they were left alone.
More than the lonely house putting her in a dark frame of mind, she had to admit how dire her circumstances were. She did not know how, unless she rebuilt herself from the ground up, she would find the ability to live normally. Marry. Mother her own children. It seemed foolhardy now, in the dreich, howling twilight, not to have put up with a little brutality in exchange for security. She wondered about Mrs. Danvers and her three little girls. She had not noticed any signs of violence and prayed there hadn’t ever been any. None of the other servants had mumbled anything of the kind, either.
Florence had been in the household for six months and considered herself perceptive.
With perverse luck, it was only something about her that had turned Mr. Danvers’ head and hand.
Once tea was brought, Mr. Lester spoke more readily.
“It started before your father passed, Mr. Mason.”
“Rumors of a haunting?”
“Yes.” Mr. Lester did not elaborate.
“And yet… Mr. Mason lived there?” said Nigel. He leaned forward in his chair, his hat balanced precariously on its arm.
“He did. But I must confess that the rumors redoubled after he passed.”
Charles swallowed and let the tea warm him. He thought of what he’d seen of Ullinn House through the rain and past the closed gate. It certainly loomed like a haunted thing. Though not enormous by the ton’s measure—Lord Valencourt’s townhouse was far larger—it signified some means.
“I think,” said Charles, “that I can see how they might have taken hold.” He did not say that the smaller the village, the more likely it was that someone would begin saying something ludicrous. The rest would follow.
He was still trying to reconcile with the thought that he’d apparently been there already.
“But,” said Mr. Lester, “the most troubling thing is the crying.”
“The crying?” Mason’s skin bristled with goosebumps. As much as he tried to tell himself that ghost stories were for the gullible, he almost always believed them. He would rather take his chances with men than wraiths. Nigel was less apt to believe but had a history of becoming engrossed in stories.
“I would not believe it if I had not heard it myself.”
“Crying comes from within the house,” said Nigel. It was half-question, half-statement.
“I do not think you would hear it on a night like tonight, but within the last fortnight, there have been…” Mr. Lester searched for a word. “Sobs. Faint ones, but unmistakable on the wind.”
“Perhaps it is just the wind,” said Charles.
“Perhaps.”
“Is there anything else underfoot?” Nigel said.
“Lights,” said Mr. Lester.
“Lights?” said Nigel, after a blink.
He nodded. “Fleeting, like foxfire or marsh lights. They are there one moment, then gone, flaring in the windows.”
Charles said, “The crying… is it a woman’s?”
Mr. Lester nodded again. “I would say so, but it is very faint.”
Had they been in London, Charles was sure someone would have demanded they be allowed to inspect the house.
“And no one… no one has been inside to see?”
“There are few of us left here, Mr. Mason. Most of us are getting on in years, and we have better things to do than break into an empty house.” Mr. Lester drank his black tea. “Besides, it would be disrespectful were anyone but you to do it.” It seemed that he did not wish to admit how deeply the villagers might have wanted to avoid a ghost. His hands trembled enough to belie nerves.
Charles said, “But you said—well, insinuated—that the reason why no one has gone in is that Ullinn House is haunted. Not that people respected my father.”
A gale juddered the windows. Mr. Lester tongued his upper teeth. “It seems you really know little of your father’s people.”
“I know nothing of them, except for he left my mother with a young boy. Were it not for Mr. Maclean’s father…” he trailed off.
Nigel sighed.
“It is both reasons,” said Mr. Lester. “We did respect Mr. Mason. He kept to himself. However, as I said, some of us also believe the house has been haunted.”
Grappling for patience, which was not often a state he found himself in, Charles said, “Then… please tell me… more.” It was not the most effective request.
He just dearly wished to know more of what this stranger knew about his past.
Or if not his past, then that of the man who’d shaped it.
“Your father, you see, managed to kill your uncle in a duel. Years ago, just before Christmas.”
Chapter Four
A bath had seemed like a good idea at the time.
Now, covered in Ullinn House’s dust with nothing to show for it but aching muscles and a tub of frigid water, Florence regretted it. Drawing a bath seemed so simple. It was early in the morning. She had determined from the state of the overgrowth that no one would see her pumping water should anyone be out before dawn.
Plagued by nightmares, she found she could not sleep anyway. Hands in the dark snatched at her and flames engulfed her makeshift bed on the drawing room chaise.
It was better to be awake and haunted by her own thoughts.
More than once as she’d tried to sleep, she’d thought she heard voices—the flutter of shuffling cards, an argument, two men bickering back and forth. Because she was a sensible woman who’d never been raised to entertain the thought of spirits lingering where they shouldn’t, she’d dismissed them as the result of lack of sleep.
Her encounter with Mr. Danvers had rattled her more than she thought.
Then, she should have known that. People who were all right did not run away from their places of work, where they lived, and those they knew.
It had been such a usual day, and Mr. Danvers had never given her a reason to be on her guard that afternoon or on any other. When he’d cornered her in the nursery, it had been an utter surprise. Somehow, she’d managed to flee. He had not compromised her, but he did manage to lay hands upon her while exposing himself. She knew that he’d wanted to take her: it was in his eyes and his insistent, invasive touch.
Florence shuddered and stared at the water in the old tub.
It was in the kitchen, a place that, more than the rest of the house, seemed stuck in time. There was no reason why it should not have been—there was nothing that anyone needed to do in a dead man’s kitchen after he’d passed. Everything was left as it was the day Mr. Mason died, or so she imagined.
She let her hand dip into the water.
It was not as cold outside as she remembered some Christmases. A few in her c
hildhood had been harsh. But it was still frigid enough now to make bathing without warm water or a fire daunting.
The daughter of a fisherman and a mother who taught local children their letters, Florence was not accustomed to having every luxury under the sun. She was usually resilient enough to stomach discomfort.
Yet when she looked at the water in the pale candlelight and saw her breath coming in puffs, she could not help but cry. The tears came and were relentless.
How she wanted things to be all right. She wanted her father, her mother, and people she could not even name. The ones that might be in her future—a husband, children. A family.
This was not how Christmas should be.
It is not fair, she thought.
After all, her affinity for the very idea of family was what prompted her to seek work as a governess. But when she realized that even families of the middling classes wished for their governesses to be educated and from a similar background as them, she’d settled for being a nursemaid. There was also the matter of governesses having to leave their positions if they wished to marry.
A nursemaid was lower in the household hierarchy, so the position was more attainable.
In fact, the older two girls’ governess, a woman called Miss Philips, looked down her nose at Florence. She believed Florence had the wrong accent, vocabulary, and looks to be allowed into the Danvers’ home. Much less to help raise the children.
How long was she supposed to wait, she wondered. She did not know how long she could withstand loneliness, hunger, and uncertainty. She wiped her hand on her soiled dress and found that once her tears began, they would not stop.
Perhaps in a few minutes or an hour, she would be better, but she could not escape the feeling of being lost.
Nigel rose early and shook him awake with a gentle but insistent hand. “Charles.”
“What do you want?”
“I could not sleep. I wondered whether you might want to return to Ullinn House.”
O Night Divine: A Holiday Collection of Spirited Christmas Tales Page 80