Last Night's Scandal

by Loretta Chase

  “I’m not sure.” Olivia climbed down from the bed. In the light of the dying fire, she saw the poker. She snatched it up. “But whoever’s causing it will be very sorry.”

  Oooowwwoooeeeyowwwoooooooyowwwooooeeeewooyowooooooo.

  Lisle woke and leapt from his bed in one movement and grabbed the knife from under his pillow.

  “Sir? What is it?”

  “Horrible. The most horrible sound on earth. The sound of death and torture and the agonies of a burning hell,” Lisle said. “Damn them. It’s bagpipes.”

  “Quick,” Roy said. “They’re coming.”

  He and Jock ran across the long second-floor room and through the door into the north-tower stairwell and hurried down. The stairwell was black as pitch but they’d been up and down it hundreds of times, and night and day was the same to them.

  Down to the first floor and across the great hall to the other stairwell, back into the south tower. They raced down the stone steps. Then Roy stopped and said, “Now, one for the old ladies.”

  Olivia and Bailey burst into the second-floor drawing room at the same time Lisle and Nichols did.

  “Did you see them?” Lisle said.

  “Only heard them,” Olivia said. “Was that—”

  “Bagpipes,” Lisle said grimly.

  “Really? It sounded so horrible.”

  “When don’t they?”

  Muffled screams came from the south-tower stairs. Olivia ran that way. Lisle was at the door ahead of her.

  “Stay,” he said. He pulled her out of the way and started down the stairs.

  She elbowed Nichols aside and went after him.

  “I’m not afraid of bagpipes,” Olivia said.

  “Anyone who’d use them to wake people in the middle of the night would stop at nothing,” Lisle said.

  “Really, Lisle, they’re not as bad as all that.”

  “They are. It’s the worst sound on earth. It’s the sound of ten thousand deaths.”

  They reached the open doorway of Lady Withcote’s room. She came to the door, her maid still trying to tie the ribbons of her dressing gown. “So sorry, dears. But that dreadful squalling startled me. I’m sure I leapt straight off the bed up into the air. Can’t remember the last time that happened. Lord Waycroft’s cold feet, I think.”

  Seeing she was unhurt, Lisle plunged back into the stairway, Olivia close behind.

  They found Lady Cooper standing on the step outside of her bedchamber, looking down into the dark stairwell. “It came from there.” She pointed. “You never mentioned ghostly bagpipers, Olivia,” she said reproachfully. “If I’d known they were coming, I would have watched for them. Have you ever seen a man blowing the pipes? It wants strong lungs, you know, and strong shoulders and legs—”

  “Good, I’m glad you’re unharmed,” Lisle said.

  He entered the small passage leading to the great hall, Olivia on his heels.

  “Let me go first,” he whispered. “Give me a moment. I need to listen, and you’ve no idea how loud your shift is when you move.”

  “It isn’t a shift. It’s a nightdress.”

  “Whatever it is, keep it quiet,” he said. “And do be careful with the poker.”

  The hall’s darkness was absolute. Since Lisle couldn’t see anything, he listened. But all he heard was the silence of the room. Whoever they were, they knew their way about. And they were gone.

  After a moment, Olivia came through the door. He didn’t have to see her. He could hear her. The soft rustle of her nightclothes sounded so loud in the great, silent room.

  She drew near and he could smell her, the light fragrance wafting from her clothes, and the scent of her skin and hair and the faint . . . something . . . too indistinct to be a scent, but it conjured sleep and still-warm bedclothes. Then other images rose in his mind’s eye: pearly skin in the moonlight, the low sound of her laughter, the quick shudder when she came to climax. . .

  He clenched his hands—and realized he was still tightly clutching the knife. He relaxed his grip.

  He wiped the images from his mind.

  “They’re gone,” he said.

  A light appeared in the minstrels’ gallery. Herrick stood there, in his dressing gown, candle in hand. “I’ve calmed the staff, your lordship,” he said. “Those who heard the noise, at any rate. Apparently the sound didn’t carry to the upper floors.”

  “Lucky them,” Lisle muttered.

  “Shall I organize the men to search the castle and grounds, your lordship?”

  “Our ghostly musicians will be long gone by now,” Lisle said. “Tell everyone to go back to bed.”

  Herrick quietly departed.

  Lisle turned back to Olivia. His eyes had fully adjusted to the darkness, and enough moonlight reached them to show the outlines of her semi-transparent, beruffled and beribboned gown. He redirected his gaze to the nearest wall niche.

  “We can’t hunt them down at night,” he said.

  “Certainly not,” she said. “They’ll know the countryside, while our London servants will only stumble about in the dark and break their necks.”

  “They must have been out there, in the second-floor drawing room,” he said. Mere feet from her bedroom. “Taunting us.” He longed for something to hit.

  “I must admit, it was disturbing,” Olivia said. “No one expects to hear bagpipes in the middle of the night, and when they’re played badly—”

  “How can you tell?”

  “Played well or ill, it’s a haunting sound,” she said.

  “I’m sorry we didn’t catch them,” he said. “I should have liked to see you take a poker to that vile bladder thing. It’s exactly like the Scots to invent a fiendish device like that. Bagpipes. Golf.”

  She laughed.

  The sound slithered down his neck and left heat trails.

  “Olivia, go to bed,” he said.

  “But surely you want to—”

  Yes, I surely do.

  “We can’t talk now,” he said. “Use your head. Look at what you’re not wearing. One of us has to be sensible, and we both know it won’t be you. Go to bed—and be careful with that poker.”

  Chapter 14

  Wednesday 19 October

  The sun was sinking behind the hills. Roy and Jock stood in the shadows of the ruined church, watching the men trooping down the castle road back to the village after their first day’s work at the castle. Some carried tools on their shoulders, some pushed carts, some drove wagons.

  “Another week and they’ll have it sealed up tight as a drum,” Jock said.

  “Not if we unseal it,” Roy said.

  “Are you daft? A score of men and more working sunup to sundown. All that work they done? And us with a few hours at night?”

  “Not all of what they done,” Roy said. “Only the work down around the basement, so we can get in. How much you think them Londoners can stand, night after night, us waking them up?”

  “Don’t know how much I can stand,” Jock said. “All that running up and down them stairs, lugging them curst pipes. All that time we could spend digging.”

  “Useful? Digging by night? All this time we been looking in broad day. What luck you think we’ll have shifting rocks at night?”

  It was hard enough finding coins in the daytime. It wasn’t like the things shot off shiny sparks at them, saying, “Look here. Money.” They were the same color as the ground, and hard to tell from rocks and pebbles.

  He and Jock had done well with the ones they’d found. A few in the basement. Some in the courtyard. But it was the old earring they found in the courtyard, near the watch house, that convinced Roy that old Dalmay wasn’t babbling nonsense, like everyone said. That earring told him the treasure was real, and it was there.

 
Below the wall, old Dalmay had said.

  People said, if them Dalmays couldn’t find their own treasure back when it was all fresh in their minds, then it was gone. Cromwell and his like had got to it, same way they got to everything else, they said. But if people’d seen them coins and that old earring and knew what they’d fetched in Edinburgh, they’d sing a different tune. They’d all be up at the castle with their spades and pickaxes—and not to help put it back together.

  “Laird’s son’s got them all digging, too,” Roy said. “If it’s in the courtyard or in the basement, they’re going to find it. We’ve got to make them stop.”

  Lisle was trying not to fall asleep into his plate. It had been a long day, though a satisfying one, and his brain was even more tired than his body. He still didn’t understand what his family had ever wanted with this ugly pile of stones. They had alternately abandoned it and wasted fortunes maintaining it. No matter what one did, it would always be cold, damp, and gloomy.

  All the same, when he’d watched the men marching up the road from the village, he’d felt a surge of pride as well as relief. In spite of the damage the laird, his father, had done, they were prepared to trust the son. Now he’d be able to get the job done properly. Since it was an immense job, it would keep him well occupied.

  He glanced across the table at the problem on whose account he needed to stay otherwise occupied. Olivia wore a gown of some heavy blue silken material, with the usual miles of material in the strangest places, while her shoulders and most of her satanic bosom lay naked—except for the sapphire pendant necklace winking up at him from the center of the devil’s land.

  She was rising from the table, preparing to lead the company to the fireplace for tea—or, in the ladies’ cases, another vat of whiskey—and conversation or reading, when the wail of bagpipes welled up from the bowels of the earth.

  Lisle leapt from his chair. “Herrick, Nichols, with me. You—” He signaled to the footmen propping up the wall. “Down the south stairs.”

  They all grabbed candlesticks and hurried down to the basement.

  They stumbled over the debris, searching the big, vaulted rooms. Then one of the footmen gave a shout. “Your lordship, here!”

  Lisle hurried toward the sound of the man’s voice. He found him pointing to the wall of one of the rooms.

  In large charcoal letters, someone had scrawled, BE WERE.

  That was all they found.

  The devils had got away. Lisle sent the servants back upstairs to assure the ladies that no one would be murdered at present. Then he walked back to glare at the scrawled message. When he got his hands on them. . .

  A familiar rustling came from nearby. He looked away from the misspelled taunt. Olivia approached, candle in hand. She paused at his elbow and studied the wall.

  “I must say, it does disturb me, their creeping in while the entire household is awake,” she said. “They’re strangely bold.”

  “Or strangely stupid,” he said.

  “Step-Papa always says that criminals tend to be men of low intelligence and high cunning,” she said.

  “I know. I’d far rather deal with clever ones. At least one can understand their thinking.”

  “Bagpipes are harmless enough in themselves,” she said.

  “That’s a matter of opinion,” he said.

  “It’s the harassment that worries me,” she said. “It upsets the servants.”

  It bothered him, too. They needed servants to function, and servants didn’t stay in bad situations unless they were desperate.

  “Unfortunately, one can’t keep a garrison here to protect us from invaders, as they did in the old days,” he said.

  “I doubt they’ll actually try to harm us,” she said. “That would bring the authorities into it—and what they clearly want is for everybody to go away so they can continue their treasure hunt.”

  “I’m not going away,” he said. “I’ve started, and I’m not giving up. I’ll restore this useless damned antique, and then I’m going back to Egypt if I have to row myself in a dinghy. Meanwhile, I’m going to booby-trap the basement. Those morons will have to find another way in.”

  “If we found the treasure first, they’d have to stop looking,” she said.

  He was tired and it was hard to look at her and be sensible when he was being stabbed to death inside. He was furious with himself for not being able to master feelings that could only lead to unhappiness. It was on the tip of his tongue to say, “There is no treasure,” and to tell her to stop being a romantic idiot—and to put on more clothes, and not stand so close, where he could smell her.

  The warning voice spoke in time.

  Think.

  Treasure. There wasn’t any but she’d never believe that. She wants to look. Why not let her? It would keep her busy, and if he presented it carefully, it would keep her out of trouble.

  “Very well,” he said. “Let’s look at this logically. Even deeply stupid men wouldn’t work so hard without very good reason.”

  “That’s it, exactly,” she said. “They’ve been at it for years, if we measure from when the haunting started. There must be something behind it.”

  “If we knew what that was, then we’d know what to do,” he said. “Maybe there’s something in Cousin Frederick’s papers. Or something he said. The trouble started after he left the castle and moved to Edinburgh.”

  His mind was already gnawing on the puzzle. It was easy enough to set the lures for her without telling an actual lie.

  “It’s intriguing, I admit,” he said. “But I haven’t time to think about it. I haven’t time to study his papers and books and talk to the people who were close to him. I’ve got this heap of stones to ‘restore to its former glory’ to appease my deranged parents.”

  He saw her face fall, and he felt ashamed. Worse, the mad part of him—the part she could summon so easily—wanted to drop everything and pursue the mystery. That part of him wanted to hunt with her for treasure, the way they’d done before. Oh, it was tempting. He recalled the excitement of breaking rules and surviving by one’s wits.

  He could feel himself being drawn in, and he knew he ought to fight, but the mad part of him didn’t want to.

  Then, “You’re right,” she said, her expression brightening. “Treasure or no treasure, the castle must be restored. I did promise you’d return to Egypt by spring. Which means we’ve not a minute to waste. I’ll tackle the mystery. Now that Herrick’s taking charge, I’ll have plenty of time on my hands—and I daresay the ladies would adore collecting gossip from your cousin’s friends.”

  She stepped closer and patted his chest. “Don’t you worry about a thing,” she said. “Your loyal knight Sir Olivia will do what’s needed.”

  When I grow up, I’m going to be a knight, she’d told him the day he met her. The gallant Sir Olivia, that’s who I’ll be, setting out on perilous quests, performing noble deeds, righting wrongs.

  She hurried away then, and he stood watching, until she was out of sight and the rustling faded.

  He turned to stare at the wall.

  BE WERE.

  But of course he didn’t believe in presentiments or omens. Or warnings from imbeciles who couldn’t spell.

  He turned away and went back upstairs.

  As he’d said he would, Herrick had ridden to Edinburgh on Wednesday. By Thursday, they had a housekeeper, Mrs. Gow. By Friday, Herrick and Mrs. Gow had hired a full Scottish staff. That day, Olivia gave all of her London staff except the personal servants permission to return to London.

  Only Aillier insisted on remaining. The others couldn’t pack fast enough. They were gone by mid-afternoon.

  Meanwhile, she spent hours poring over Cousin Frederick Dalmay’s books, pamphlets, and periodicals. Wherever Gorewood Castle was mentioned—in an article, say, by S
ir Walter Scott for an antiquarian publication—Frederick had placed a paper marker and written notes in pencil in the margin. The notes were illegible for the most part, but no matter.

  The printed material told her about all the ghost legends: Different ghosts, she found, were popular in different eras. She learned, too, about curious doings at banquets and bewildering legal matters. Frederick had kept records of all the property disputes. He’d kept a set of journals as well. As far as she could make out, these dealt mainly with Gorewood Castle and its history. They seemed to refer occasionally to annoyances pertaining to the castle. But she couldn’t be sure, because the small, spidery handwriting was nearly impossible to read.

  She thought Lisle would have no trouble making sense of it, being more accustomed to deciphering strange scripts, some of them partly defaced by time or vandals. She would have to ask him if he could spare a little time for that.

  Then, on Monday, she was turning a page, debating whether to beg Lisle to explain it to her, when the piece of yellowed, partly burnt paper fell out.

  “But it’s a clue,” Olivia said. She waved the creased, brown-edged paper in Lisle’s face.

  Reluctantly, he took it from her.

  His plan had been working so well. He did his job and she did hers. Their paths crossed at mealtimes, when the ladies were there as well, and they couldn’t help but be a distraction.

  But today Olivia had cornered him in the basement well room while the workers were outside, eating their midday meal. She was practically dancing with excitement because she’d found a CLUE.

  She wasn’t supposed to find any clues. She was supposed to keep searching and searching until he got the work done and came to his senses about her or, if that was impossible, until he solved the problem of what to do about her.

  “What does it say?” she said.

  He looked down at the uneven grid with its random marks. “It doesn’t say anything,” he said. “It looks like a child’s scribbling and drawing. One of Cousin Frederick’s early efforts, perhaps. My mother kept all my drawings. Keeping this sort of thing isn’t an act of judgment but one of sentiment, apparently.”