by Ava Stone
“Why not, Braden?” Quent asked. “Everyone dressed in costume, girls without drawers. I’m certainly game for that.”
“Oh, here, here.” Thorn lifted his glass once more. “Count me in.”
There was a chorus of voices all in agreement for that. So Braden heaved a sigh and shrugged. Who was he to spoil everyone’s fun? “Marisdùn may be standing, but we’ll want to make certain the structure is sound.”
“Why don’t you all come with us when we head for Cumberland?” Quent tossed in. “More eyes to look the place over.”
“I’m game,” Chetwey said.
“Why not?” Thorn sighed.
“Sounds like fun,” Wolf added.
“Well—” Garrick shrugged “—if everyone else is going…”
Just outside Ravenglass, Cumberland – October 1815
Blake Chetwey pulled his greatcoat close around him and clenched his jaw to keep his teeth from rattling together. With each bump in the road, his body protested in pain. Bloody hell! Now was not the time for another episode. Not that there was ever a good time, but he had been looking forward to the coming weeks and the party his hosts were planning. What healthy gentleman did not look forward to a celebration where young ladies might not wear undergarments?
He groaned. He was far from healthy at the moment and could only pray that this episode was of a short duration. Malaria! That is what the doctor in Barbados had called it, and warned him that he would most likely have recurrent attacks, without warning and for no apparent reason, in the coming years before the disease had purged itself from his body.
Blake turned his head to look out the window at the passing scenery. He should have had the driver take the road to Tolbright a few miles back. Beyond the small town was Torrington Abbey, his home for a good portion of his life, and the estate he would one day inherit from his uncle, the Earl of Torrington.
He preferred to suffer through this episode in his own bed instead of the haunted Marisdùn Castle. Not that the abbey wasn’t haunted. Well, at least it was for a short time, but Blake never saw evidence of the rumored ghost to be roaming the halls either. And could he really consider the last haunting to be an actual haunting?
“Do you really believe Marisdùn Castle to be haunted?” David Thorn asked from across the carriage.
Had the man been reading his mind? Blake assumed Thorn was thinking about ladies without drawers. It was a favorite pastime of his. Blake simply shrugged. Who was he to decide if a place was haunted or not? A year ago he would have scoffed at the idea. Not any longer.
“And, is it true that Patrick Delaney once haunted Torrington Abbey?” Thorn continued. “Or did you invent the entire story?”
Blake groaned and glanced at his friend from the corner of his eye. He should never have told Thorn or the others about what Delaney and his sister, Laura believed. If he hadn’t been in his cups following the races, he would never have breathed a word of their story. He didn’t understand it all, he doubted that he ever would. He certainly didn’t trust Brighid’s version of the events – that Patrick left his body and hovered near life and death.
He snorted and returned his gaze out the window. Brighid Glace is a charming yet odd young woman. If Patrick had haunted Torrington for a bit, then Brighid truly was a witch, as he always accused her of being. It was well and good he didn’t truly believe in ghosts or witches. There was a reasonable explanation for all the oddities. He simply hadn’t discovered them yet.
“Well, did you?”
Oh yes, he had forgotten to answer Thorn. Why was he having such a difficult time concentrating? Could it be because he was so cold or maybe it was the headache he could no longer ignore? “You’ll have to ask Delaney.”
“I’ll make sure Braden sends an invitation so I can find out for myself.” Thorn glanced out the window as the carriage began to slow. “I believe we are here.”
Blake didn’t rise to see for himself. He knew what Marisdùn Castle looked like. As long as it had a warm room and soft bed he didn’t care if it was haunted by two dozen ghosts. They just needed to leave him alone so he could rest until this episode passed.
The carriage rolled to a stop and a moment later the driver opened the door. Blake jerked away from the bright light that flooded the interior of the carriage.
“You don’t look so well,” Thorn observed.
Blake waved him away. “I just need rest.” He pushed himself to the end of the seat and tried to stand. His legs protested and his body screamed in pain.
“Are you having an episode?” Thorn’s brow was marred with concern.
He could only give a slow nod before letting his head rest against the squabs.
Alastair Darrington, Viscount Wolverly, most commonly known as “Wolf” to his compatriots, peered out the window of his carriage as they approached the supposedly haunted estate known as Marisdùn Castle. It had taken them several days to travel from Newmarket, and it had not been the most pleasant of trips, what with his friend Sidney Garrick snoring most of the way. Good God, the man would sleep away his life if he wasn’t careful. His excuse being that the motion of the carriage made him sleepy, but Alastair knew his friend slept an inordinate amount even outside the carriage. The lazy ne’er-do-well.
Nonetheless, they were pulling up to their destination, so Alastair gave Sidney a swift kick to the shin with his boot. Sidney’s eyes shot open as he reached down to rub his leg.
“What the bloody hell was that for?” he asked, wide-awake now.
“We’re here,” Alastair replied without any hint of remorse in his tone. He knew what it took to get his friend out of a deep sleep quickly. There was no sense making an apology for doing what had to be done.
With a smile pulling at his lips, Alastair turned to Sidney. “I see no ghosts floating about.”
Sidney scowled. “You don’t see ghosts.”
“Then how will you prove to me they exist?”
“I won’t prove it,” Sidney snapped. “They will.”
Alastair rolled his eyes and then hopped down from the conveyance, eager to stretch his legs after being cooped up inside for so long. The sun was bright on this crisp, fall day, and he lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the light. Before him stood the Castle, grand but not at all haunted looking. Alastair didn’t believe in any of this nonsense, but his curious nature had forced him to come. Well, that and his insistent friends. Besides, what would he do in London without his cohorts to keep him company?
A low whistle came from behind him as Sidney stepped onto the drive. “Certainly lives up to its reputation, doesn’t it?”
Alastair shrugged. “It’s just an old, medieval castle, like any other. Moss covered walls are hardly an indication of ghosts.” But even as he voiced his skepticism, an errant shiver ran up his spine, damn it all.
“Absolutely not!” Braden grumbled as the coach hit a bump in the road. Honestly, had his brother lost his mind? “In the first place, the three of them are entirely too young for such an event.”
“They’re eighteen,” Quent reminded him, swaying slightly against the squabs as the carriage took a turn.
But they might as well be eight, for that’s as old as they still seemed to Braden. They probably always would, but that was hardly the main point in his objection.
The last season nearly killed him, trying to keep track of the triplets, trying to make certain each of them was out of trouble in any given moment. He was nine and twenty and hadn’t spotted one single grey hair on his head until the day their younger sisters had come out in society that spring. He’d had to pull at least five grey hairs since, and each one was preceded by some harrowing event or another that one or more of them had gotten themselves involved in. “Did you hear Thorn that night? Girls with no drawers at that Lypston Abbey party?” Braden’s brow lifted in meaning. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to have our little sisters at a masquerade with men like David Thorn about?”
Quent snorted. “He’d never touch them. They’re our
sisters, for God’s sake.”
Perhaps Quent had missed the part about it being a masquerade. How would Thorn or anyone else know which girls were Ladies Hope, Patience or Grace Post, or anyone else for that matter? Braden leaned back against the squabs and folded his arms across his chest. “I’m not having them there and that is it.”
Quent heaved a beleaguered sigh, as though he’d personally faced the trials of Job. “They’re going to be quite put out with you.”
“They’re always put out with me. Having them safe and put out with me is preferable to having them happily in danger.”
“Please,” Quent complained. “They’re perfectly fine, Braden. You make it sound as though they’re thrill seekers or running around Town with their hair on fire or some other such nonsense.”
Braden narrowed his eyes on his younger brother. “It wouldn’t matter if you could convince me or not, Quent. Lady Bradenham would never agree.” Their step-mother was hardly the carefree sort who would let her daughters participate in a masquerade Samhain party, after all, and discussing it any further was a waste of time and breathable air.
Quent winced just a bit, the first silent acknowledgment that Braden had a point. “She’d let them if you talked her into it.”
That might be true, not that Braden had any intention of doing so. “And yet I won’t.”
“Fine.” Quent turned his attention to the waning mountainous landscape passing out their window. “You’ll have to deal with their wailing and resentment, not me.”
And that was how it had always been. Quent would champion the girls for something wholly inappropriate and Braden would have to end the merriment. Being the oldest and responsible brother was quite tiring a lot of the time.
“Oh!” The tone in Quent’s voice had changed from disappointment to one of awe. “There it is, I think.”
Braden shifted on his bench to glance out the window and spotted a massive medieval castle against the dark blue horizon. That would, indeed, appear to be Marisdùn Castle, the childhood home of their maternal grandfather, the place that had haunted the old man until his death the year before.
“It doesn’t look haunted,” Quent mused.
“And what does something that’s haunted look like?”
Quent shrugged. “Darker, I suppose.”
It looked plenty dark to Braden, but immaculately kept up. “Well, Great-Uncle Cornelius lived there until his death last month. I’m certain he wanted the place kept up.”
“I guess.” Quent sounded so dejected, like a boy whose plaything had been taken away.
“Perhaps you just want it to be haunted,” Braden suggested.
“I remember the stories grandfather told us when we were boys about Marisdùn. Sounds and wailing he’d hear in the dead of the night, candles moving by themselves up and down the corridors, his mother disappearing all together.”
Braden remembered the stories too. They’d been something to enthrall a young boy’s imagination, but as a grown man, in the light of day… Well, such musings seemed rather childish these days.
The coach slowed and the road became less bumpy as they crossed through the ancient battlements and entered the castle grounds. When the carriage finally came to a stop and the coachman opened the door, Braden stepped outside and stared up at the magnificent medieval castle before them. Marisdùn was exceedingly large, nearly double in size of any other property he owned. The main building sported twelve rows of windows on the front and seemed to stretch on forever.
Behind him, two more carriages entered the courtyard and then stopped next to his. Wolf and Garrick were the first to exit their coach. The two fellows glanced about the place with skeptical eyes. Then Thorn stumbled from the last carriage in apparent haste, a severe expression on his face as he approached the others.
“Everything all right, Thorn?” Wolf asked. “Where’s Chetwey?”
“In the carriage,” Thorn replied, his tone rather grave. “He is not well.”
“Damn.” Braden’s hands went to his hips as he turned towards the last carriage that still contained his friend. God help him if he should ever contract malaria. “Someone ought to go for a doctor then. None of us is equipped to handle an episode.”
“I’ll go,” Wolf said quickly, before anyone else could reply.
At that moment, servants began emerging from the castle and were making their way towards Braden and the others. A tall, thin man led the group of servants, followed closely by a plump older woman just behind him.
“I’m Bradenham. You must be Bendle.” Braden stepped towards the leader whom he took to be Marisdùn’s butler.
“Aye.” The man nodded quickly and then introduced the rest of the staff.
Braden acknowledged the servants with a tight smile. They’d probably think him the most unfriendly fellow in all of Cumberland, but right now, Chetwey’s condition was of the upmost importance. “I don’t mean to be short, Bendle, but we are in need of a doctor right away.”
“Dr. Alcott is just in town, my lord. You’ll find his lodgings off the main street, directly adjacent to the Pennington Arms. There’s a sign just above his door.”
Wolf glanced back at his driver who had just finished unloading the trunks. The fellow climbed back up to the seat without a word. Wolf joined him in the coachman’s box and then they were off.
Braden helped Thorn carry Chetwey into the castle and then followed Bendle down a maze of corridors and staircases until they reached a set of rooms for the sick man.
“And now,” Thorn said as Chetwey moaned from the four-poster, “we wait.”
Daphne Alcott was just putting the last lid on the last jar of rum butter for today’s deliveries when a frantic knock came at the front door.
“Oh, blast,” she muttered to herself with a quick glance down. Sticky, sugary butter covered her ugly, brown work dress. She ran a smoothing hand down the fabric, only to get the goo in her fingers. Well, there was no hope for her dress, but her hair on the other hand―
She paused with her hand hovering near her head. The cloth covering her hair would undoubtedly look better than revealing the mess underneath. With a disgruntled sigh, she glanced at the door. Not typically the way she preferred to receive visitors, but the knocking grew more and more frantic the longer she stood there.
She ran to the front door and flung it open, not at all expecting to find a handsome buck on the other side. As she drank her fill of his wavy, dark hair, strong jaw, and piercing brown eyes, her mouth hung open like that of a panting puppy trying to catch its breath. And truly, she was trying to catch her breath. Whether she’d lost it on account of her mad run to answer the door or because of the enigmatic man who stood on her doorstep, she couldn’t exactly say.
“You’re not the doctor,” the man said, scanning her up and down with the faintest air of disgust.
Daphne wished she could crawl into a hole, but there was nothing she could do about it now. “No,” she replied. “I’m not.”
“Then who is?”
“My brother, actually.”
There was another long pause, and then the man lifted his dark eyebrows and said, very slowly, as if she were daft, “And is he in?”
“Oh!” Of course, now Daphne felt daft. “Um. No, he isn’t. He’s delivering a baby. Mrs. Conner’s, in the next township. I haven’t any idea when he’ll be back. Those babes, you know…they’ve got minds of their own.” Daphne laughed at her own joke, and a tiny snort escaped her.
The sharp look the man gave her was sobering, and she covered her mouth with her hand to stop any more snorts from making their way out.
“Is there no one else in this village who can help me?” he asked, his handsome brow furrowing with worry. He scanned the bustling street, as if another doctor might appear there before him.
“I can,” Daphne said quietly, though she wasn’t at all sure she actually could. But he seemed so concerned, and she did have some experience helping Graham from time to time. Of course, she had
customers waiting on their rum butters today, but a medical emergency was rather more important. She only hoped she’d be able to keep her wits about her.
The man whirled on her, his dark eyes wide. “You? But you’re…”
“A woman?” she supplied.
He nodded. “I’m afraid it wouldn’t be proper of me to bring you back to a houseful of men.”
A houseful of men? Daphne couldn’t help but be intrigued by this idea. Were they all as handsome and worldly as this one seemed in his brown, long-tailed coat and that blue and yellow waistcoat? Were they eligible? And what on earth were they doing all the way up here in Ravenglass? Clearly this one was a Londoner, if his refined manner and accent were any indication, and Cumberland was a long way from home. All these questions were burning holes in Daphne’s gut. She had to convince him to take her with him so she could have them answered for herself.
“If you don’t mind, what exactly is the problem?” she ventured.
The man tugged at the lapel of his coat and then met her eyes. “Malaria. I’m afraid my friend is having an episode. None of us is skilled with handling it. We need a doctor.”
“It just so happens that I know a thing or two about the disease,” she said, and while that particular turn of phrase was meant to indicate she knew a lot, she actually only did know a thing or two. Still, it was better than someone who knew nothing, wasn’t it? “Please let me help. I’m certain the gossipmongers will overlook the impropriety when they realize a man’s life was a stake.”
He hesitated for a long moment, and Daphne was tempted to ramble on again, but something told her to hold her silence. At long last, the man sighed and gave a slight shake of his head. “I will probably regret this, but fine. Gather your things and come with me.”
Daphne was already halfway to her room by the time he finished that sentence. She changed quickly into a less sticky dress, but there wasn’t time to fix her hair, so it would have to stay hidden beneath her handkerchief. She darted next to the desk to leave a note for her brother of her whereabouts, but then it occurred to her she had no idea where she was going.