The Dead of Haggard Hall

by Marie Treanor

  “Staid,” Emily repeated, as though stunned.

  “Staid,” I said firmly. “I thought I’d wear my own red silk, under a black silk fine enough to be gauze. Look.” I showed her.

  “The red is beautiful,” she said warmly. “Why don’t you wear it without the black?”

  “Because it has a tear in the left shoulder where I caught it on a nail,” I said frankly. “And besides, it’s a little old-fashioned now.”

  “Hmm. Will you at least let me dress your hair?”

  “Provided you don’t ‘sausage’ me. With sausage curls, I look like a wax doll imbued with the spirits of the insane.”

  Emily giggled. In the end, she didn’t attempt to curl it, but pinned it in a different way so that it wasn’t so severely scraped back from my face, but pushed forward to give me a slightly softer look. Its only decoration was the pearl clasp I’d worn at my wedding. I didn’t tell Emily that, but I rather liked it being there.

  I finally shooed her away to her own maids and finished my toilette, such as it was. The black silk looked rather pretty and mysterious with the red shining through, and I felt the more modest shape from several years ago better suited to my position here. After consideration, I added the fine gold pendant my mother had given me on my twenty-first birthday, which had coincided with a spell of good fortune for her. In all, gazing at myself in the slightly cloudy old mirror, I thought I looked good enough not to disgrace Emily, and quiet enough to please her husband’s disapproving family.

  And Patrick? Once the greatest enemy of my being here, he now promised to kiss me at the ball. My stomach dived provocatively just at the thought. My only strategy was to avoid being alone with him—surely not so difficult at a ball. Not that I didn’t want his kisses and a lot more besides, but the thinking part of me knew this place was too isolated and intense to make dangerous decisions in.

  Although my instincts were to trust him, there was so much of him, his past, and his emotions that I didn’t understand, and I couldn’t prevent my brain from recognising what was also possible. That he could have killed Rose in rage, or driven her to suicide by cruelty; he could have pulled over the bust that had nearly fallen on Arthur; he knew the house well enough to have sneaked in and pushed Martin, mistaking him for Arthur. Or he could have an accomplice within the house. At heart, despite Cartwright’s accusations, I didn’t really believe any of those possibilities, but I knew they were there. And the sentient emotions haunting this house unsettled me as, I suspected, they unsettled Emily, although she couldn’t recognize what they were.

  Although I was a little early, I took myself to the ballroom to ensconce myself in a discreet position from where I could be useful to Emily if so required. In fact, I found a very excited Irene already there with Miss Salton. Since Irene bounced up when I entered, much to Miss Salton’s annoyance, I went to join them.

  “What a pretty dress,” I approved.

  “So is yours,” Irene returned with more politeness than truth. “But you look different and very nice, doesn’t she, Miss Salton?”

  “Indeed,” the governess said frostily. She wore what she always did, with no concessions to the festivities. I didn’t know whether that was because she didn’t actually own anything else, or because she thought anything else would be inappropriate to her position. Certainly, when she looked at me, disapproval emanated from her in waves and never seemed to dissipate, while Irene and I discussed the ballroom decorations and planned to award points for the prettiest, ugliest, and most amusing costume of the evening.

  Emily and Arthur swirled into the room, dancing in play but inspiring the orchestra to strike up. Laughing, the couple halted by our little group, and a general fussing over Irene was taking place when her mother arrived. I caught a sudden outpouring of emotion from Irene—eagerness, resentment, love, all far more powerful than the outward demeanour of the girl suggested. It came to me that a lot of the negative feelings haunting this house could come not from an adult murderer but from a lonely and neglected child. I resolved to pay attention to her emotions this evening.

  Emily, of course, was gorgeous in her sunshine-yellow ball gown. Flowers and sapphires ornamented her hair, her ears, and her breast. She looked dazzling, and Irene and I were in total agreement that she got ten points for beauty. So did Susan, resplendent in a dark burgundy silk with black trimmings which made her look positively regal. In fact, an outside observer might have imagined her to be the lady of the house and Emily an indulged daughter. I wondered if it seemed fair to her. Susan was undoubtedly an unhappy woman capable of lashing out. What I couldn’t imagine was her creeping through the house to frighten the young woman who’d taken her place.

  Of course, the whisperer didn’t have to be the same person who’d tried to kill Arthur. The house was heaving with ill nature and suppressed violence. Suppressed for now. I shivered as it washed over me and pushed the emotions away.

  Emily and Arthur took up their positions by the door to welcome their guests, who arrived in a dazzling display of colour and glinting jewels. Every family from miles around, with any pretensions to gentility, had been invited, along with those who’d travelled farther and were staying the night.

  Naturally, I observed the arrivals, since I was watching for any need Emily might have of me—none so far—so I saw Bela and Henry come in, and the Jordans, with Caroline pushing his chair. Patrick was with neither group. For some reason, his absence made me nervous. I wished he would just arrive so that I could get used to his being in the room.

  Even as I thought it, I knew it to be a ridiculous and unlikely reason for my disturbance. Even absent, he confused me.

  As Emily and Arthur opened the ball with the first formal dance, Patrick strolled in alone, surely unobserved by most, since all eyes were on the stunning, happy couple in the centre of the floor, now being joined by other dancers.

  At the time, I was repinning a swathe of scarlet silk that had fallen at one corner where it had been rubbed by a chair being pushed back too far, so I caught the movement from the corner of my eye and couldn’t resist a fuller glance.

  In formal evening wear, he looked more handsome and distinguished. Perhaps he’d opted for a closer fit, or perhaps the darker coat suited his angular, saturnine appearance. Whatever, the butterflies in my stomach soared up in swarms. But before I could even try and calm them, someone else’s emotions hit me like a sudden bucket of warm water: fierce, violent love, so forceful that it shocked me, and I couldn’t even tell where it came from.

  And yet it seemed oddly familiar, like…almost like Irene’s feelings for her mother which I’d sensed earlier. Did she regard Patrick as a surrogate father? Perhaps a more desirable one than her own, who’d most probably bullied her? There might have been an element of that, a consciousness of inferiority mixed with the love. Or it could have been the precocious, confused infatuation of a girl battered a little early by the uncontrollable changes in her body. It felt a little more like that.

  When my gaze found Irene, she was sitting forward beside Miss Salton, waving through the dancers at her uncle, who at once swerved towards her. A greater surge of excitement, swiftly calmed.

  Of course she was excited by witnessing her first ball. I knew I would be stupid to read too much into this and yet…

  “Mrs. Darke, is it not?” The light male voice dragged me out of my speculations, and I gave the pin an extra shove into the wall before turning with a polite smile to face Hugh Cartwright.

  “It is,” I replied. “Mr. Cartwright.”

  “Might I hope your dance card is not yet full?”

  “You might, though be warned I might drop you without warning to attend Lady Haggard.”

  His pale eyes lit with surprised amusement. “For such a worthy cause, I could not complain. So, perhaps I should seize my moment and ask for the next dance?”

  “Alas, I am promised to another for the
quadrille,” I said lightly.

  “My loss,” he mourned. “Then with your permission, let us sit and talk until the fortunate gentleman arrives to claim you.”

  I assented, through curiosity, and he found an empty alcove close by, with a view of the main dancing area.

  “Ah. Your next partner isn’t Patrick Haggard, is it?”

  “No, why should you think so?” I asked calmly, although my heart had begun to beat too fast.

  He shrugged. “Merely, you appeared to have been walking with him when we arrived at the Hall. I assumed you were on friendly terms.”

  “I’m on friendly terms with most people,” I replied. Which didn’t mean, of course, that they regarded me in the same light.

  “You’ll forgive a stranger advising you,” he said, his eyes so steady and serious that a faint frown had formed between them. “But I understand you are a vicar’s widow with no friends but the Haggards to look out for you.”

  I blinked. “Not entirely true as regards friends, but go on.”

  He tugged at his cuff in a slightly flustered gesture. “I just mean that your good opinion of Patrick Haggard comes, of necessity, from his own family, who’ve been under his thumb for years. Your own position in the world will have kept you isolated from gossip—”

  “That is how I prefer it,” I interrupted, but he chose to ignore my warning.

  “Mrs. Darke, he is not safe to be around,” he said urgently. “You must not walk alone with him and you must not be taken in by his attentions. He means you no good. Perhaps you have not heard of Lady Jordan—”

  “I have met Lady Jordan,” I interrupted again. “Be assured I entertain no one’s gossip, and I am, besides, an excellent judge of character. Excuse me, but I see my partner searching for me.”

  My partner, the widower with the twinkling eyes, was a sprightly dance partner and entertaining enough company to keep me smiling while we danced. But all the same, Hugh Cartwright had unsettled me. Although he’d said nothing I hadn’t already heard or imagined, Cartwright’s odd mixture of sincerity and spite bothered me. Almost worse, I saw Patrick himself watching me from the wall close to the orchestra where he leaned one shoulder as he talked with a group of gentlemen I didn’t know. I could tell nothing from his expression, little more from my own pointless excitement in his attention.

  The infatuation, I thought ruefully, was mine, not Irene’s or anyone else’s.

  “I have to tell you, you’re dashed good company, Mrs. Darke,” my widower said as we strolled together after the dance. “Do you come to London much?”

  “That would depend on Lady Haggard,” I said demurely.

  “Of course. Well, I hope we meet again.”

  “So do I,” I returned with cordiality. He seemed to be just what I needed after Cartwright’s little chat.

  Unfortunately, I turned away from him to discover Patrick in my path. Big, tall, and disturbingly, overwhelmingly physical.

  “There you are,” he observed. “My dance, I think…and my kiss.”

  Chapter Twelve

  I flushed, casting a quick glance around to see who might have overheard. No one, I doubted, who didn’t have ears like a collie. Before I could decide whether to treat him to contemptuous silence or a lecture on the ease with which women lost their reputations, his arm came around my waist and his other hand took mine. The orchestra’s brief introduction gave me a clue.

  “Viennese waltz,” Patrick said. “How fortunate.”

  “You planned this,” I accused.

  “Well, it’s so hard to kiss someone standing in a line two feet apart.”

  I tried a new tack. “It’s hard to dance with someone who’s never waltzed before.”

  “Who would that be?” he enquired. The other dancers had begun, spinning and whirling around us while we stood close together, unmoving, bringing upon us the sort of attention I wished to avoid.

  I could have pulled free—inviting more attention. I chose the path of discretion and placed my hand on his shoulder. A smile flickered in his eyes, but a hint of relief there told me he hadn’t been sure which way I would go. I liked that. It seemed to be my only hold over him.

  Equally surprising, he turned out to be an excellent dancer. I’d imagined he would be a somewhat careless partner, but though his movements were natural and a little too…abandoned for polite society, his steps were perfectly timed, and he carried me spinning and whirling across the floor with exhilarating speed. After a few moments of trying to remain stiff in his arms, I gave in and simply enjoyed the experience.

  “You dance delightfully. I knew you would. You must have been a truly excellent vicar’s wife,” he observed.

  “I was much in demand for funerals,” I agreed, and delighted in the intake of laughter that vibrated through him. His thigh, his whole body moved against mine turning me, spinning us backwards. “You’re standing too close,” I breathed.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Hugh Cartwright told me I should stay away from you for my own safety.”

  Patrick didn’t miss a beat. “He tells everyone that. Although, in your case, he’s probably right.”

  “Why does he dislike you so much?”

  “I stopped finding him amusing. I don’t amuse him either.”

  “Are you enemies?” I asked.

  “Yes, I suppose we are.”

  “Because of your wife?”

  His eyelids came down like hoods. We seemed to spin too long without changing directions, then he turned me backwards again. “Don’t ask me questions I don’t want to answer. I have so many ways I’d like to stop your mouth.” His smile was wolfish. “Did you miss a step, Mrs. Darke?”

  “I’m dizzy,” I said frankly and not quite steadily.

  “Perhaps you need some air.” Perversely, his steps seemed to lengthen, speeding us through the other dancers, and then abruptly he drove me straight at the curtain and whirled me through it into fresh, cool air.

  Of course, it was the side door to the ballroom.

  “That door is supposed to be bolted,” I said breathlessly. Emily had wanted only the main French windows to be open onto the front terrace and the formal gardens, where tiny lights guided the way to the summer house.

  “I unbolted it in advance. I thought you’d prefer to be kissed in private.”

  In private and in darkness, save for the faint glow of light seeping around from the front terrace, we stood still, breathing heavily, still in the embrace of the dance, but he was much too close. I could make out his gleaming eyes, the outlines of his face. Even through the layers of my gowns and petticoats, I could feel his warmth. And his high-handedness.

  I lifted my chin—a mistake since it only brought my face closer to his. “What if I don’t wish to be kissed at all?”

  “What if?” he agreed.

  “You’re very sure of yourself, Mr. Haggard.”

  “Patrick,” he said, his breath hissing against my cheek in something that was almost laughter. “And the damnable thing is I’m not sure of anything, least of all you. If I was a gentleman, I’d let you go and leave you in peace. I’m not a good man to be around.”

  “Why not?”

  “I come with too much…baggage. It makes me poor company and a bad friend.”

  “You’re not exactly promoting your interests here.”

  “I’m trying to be honest.”

  “It’s a novel approach to kissing.”

  His lips curved. “Was that an invitation?”

  “No. I’m not a good woman to be around either. I know you don’t believe a word, but the dead speak to me, invade me, haunt me. If you come any closer, those things will affect you.”

  Slowly, his hand drifted up my back to my shoulder, and up to my cheek. “Is that your honesty, Barbara? Or your madness? It doesn’t matter. It’s what makes you d
ifferent, makes you you.” Although we were standing still, his breathing hadn’t evened; neither had mine. “I wish you didn’t fascinate me so much. This would be so much easier.”

  “What would?” I asked, baffled.

  “To seduce you and forget about you.”

  “Is that your normal approach to women like me?”

  “I’ve never met any women like you. I doubt there are any.” There was a strange anguish in his quiet, yet almost harsh voice. His burning eyes dropped to the region of my mouth, and his breath caught while his thumb brushed my lips, parting them. “God, Barbara, tell me to go, and I swear I will.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to find the courage and the will to do just that. It would be better for both of us. But before I could say a word, his mouth seized mine in the fiercest kiss I’d ever known.

  He held my head, his fingers tangling in my beautifully dressed hair, so that he could angle me for his purpose, and devoured me like a starving man, all hard, almost bruising lips and teeth, his tongue avid as it swept around my mouth. The shocking force of his kiss overwhelmed me, as did his powerful arms holding me to his big, strong body.

  “Don’t say it,” he whispered into my mouth. “Please don’t say it.”

  Had I ever had any intention of resisting this? Had I not spent the entire day anticipating this moment? My hand glided up from his shoulder to his neck and clung. I opened my mouth wider and kissed him back.

  A stifled groan vibrated through him into me, but strangely, my response seemed to soothe his ferocity if not his passion. There was tenderness now in the caresses of his lips and tongue, a sensual coaxing that completed my undoing. He danced me backward, ever farther into the darkness, still kissing, until my back pressed against the wall by the tree-shaded corner where the ballroom extension met the main part of the house. His hips imprisoned me while his open mouth glided over my cheek to my neck. His lips pressed against the galloping pulse at the base of my throat and then glided to the side to my clavicle until he found silk in the way.