And if the ghost was not supernatural, then one of the inhabitants of the Abbey was up to something highly irregular and thoroughly interesting. An intrigue was afoot, and I was determined to unearth it.
I hurried through my ablutions, eager to begin investigating my little mystery. I was thwarted by Morag, who insisted on taking her time with my hair, and Father, who sent a note requesting my presence in his study after breakfast.
“Bother,” I muttered, slipping the note into my pocket. The missive was perfectly courteous, but a summons from Father carried all the weight of a papal bull. “Finish, Morag. I’ve no more time to waste on your ministrations.”
She jabbed the last pins in my hair with what can only be described as unnecessary force. I rose and hurried to the door, turning to smile sweetly at her. “Mind you walk the dog. And I was quite serious about a coat for her. I’ve a pretty little jacket Plum purchased for me in Milan. Persimmon is a frightful colour for me, but it should suit Florence nicely.”
Morag crossed her arms over her chest and fixed me with a baleful stare. “I’ll not be sewing for a dog.”
I looked at her closely. Morag could often be cajoled into acquiescence, but once she had reached her limit, there was only one method by which it was possible to persuade her.
“I will pay you four shillings and will thank you for picking my pocket.”
Morag was nothing if not avaricious. She gave me a thin-lipped smile and scooped up the dog, tucking Florence under her arm. “Come on then, ye wee rat. Let us take the measure of you and fit you for your wardrobe.”
When I left the room, I took the opportunity to examine the spot at the end of the gallery where the ghost had disappeared. The egress was easy enough to find provided one knew where to look. The statue of Diana, poised on one foot, bow uplifted, obscured the view of the tapestry’s edge. Not much, but enough to confuse the eye, particularly on a moonlit night with ghostly draperies fluttering about.
With apologies to Venus and Adonis, I slipped behind the tapestry and found a solid stone wall, or at least the appearance of a solid stone wall. This was no simple case of a doorway that had been covered over for the sake of convenience. This was a proper secret passage, with a mechanism that had been oiled recently from the smell of it. I reached up to the single stone carved with the tiniest of March hares and pushed. The door swung back soundlessly. The passage beyond was black as pitch and freezing. I paused, listening intently, but of course I heard nothing. I stepped back and swung the door shut, moving out of the way as it slid into place.
I stood behind the tapestry, considering the matter carefully. The passage, although quite antique, had been well maintained, and the little hare had been carved by the family to clearly identify the key stone. Presumably the monks were cleverer than the Marches, and had found their way without such aides-memoire. The passage went some little way, then terminated in a flight of tight, twisting stairs up to a suite of lumber rooms. Originally a row of cells used as scriptoria by the monks, they were terribly useful for storage. The little passage itself had been occasionally used to move carpets or tapestries, but its dimensions had not permitted its use for anything more substantial. It was useful for the maids, for their rooms were in the attics, divided from the lumber rooms only by a short corridor. We children had used the passage when playing sardines or other such games, and I remembered sulking there once or twice when I did not wish to be found. I had not used it in a dozen years, and I did not think Morag even knew of its existence.
Who, then, did? My brothers, naturally, and Father and Portia. But try as I might, I could not imagine any business that would necessitate any of my family wandering the Abbey in the guise of a ghoul. There was Aunt Dorcas, of course, but I snickered when I thought of her attempting to negotiate the snug little staircase with her bulk.
That still left the guests, any one of whom might have heard of the passage from a member of the household and decided to do a bit of exploring. Harmless enough, but why in the form of a spectre?
Interesting questions indeed, and I pondered them as I descended to breakfast. My little detour had taken longer than I thought, and by the time I reached the breakfast room, it was empty and most of the chafing dishes had been scraped clean. Aquinas entered with a steaming pot of tea and a rack of fresh, crisp toast as I peered at the sideboard, frowning.
“Do not tell me I have missed Cook’s kedgeree,” I said mournfully.
“I took the liberty of putting a bit back for your ladyship.
I have been keeping it warm in the butler’s pantry. I will fetch it now.”
I seated myself and sighed. There are few greater pleasures in life than a devoted butler. I counted myself very fortunate to have secured Aquinas. I had offered him an outrageous sum to leave his previous employer, an act that had stricken me from that particular hostess’ guest lists for eternity. It was a small price to pay for such competence, I reminded myself as he served a generous portion of the delectable kedgeree.
While I ate, Aquinas busied himself at the sideboard. I had just popped the last bit of buttery toast into my mouth when I had a thought.
“Aquinas, did Uncle Fly and Mr. Snow spend the night, or did they return to Blessingstoke last night?”
He lifted my plate and whisked the toast crumbs into his little silver pan. “I called the carriage for them at midnight, my lady. His lordship offered them rooms for the night, but the Reverend Mr. Twickham was feeling a trifle unwell and wished to sleep in his own bed.”
I looked up sharply. “Uncle Fly was ill? Nothing serious, I hope.”
“Not at all, my lady. If I may speculate, I believe Mr. Twickham indulged himself a bit more than is his custom.”
I burst out laughing. “He was drunk.”
Aquinas looked mildly shocked. “I should be heartily sorry if I suggested such a thing, my lady. However, if I were to observe that he seemed to have a bit of difficulty putting on his coat, and that entering the carriage proved so treacherous he nearly ended up in the moat, these would not be exaggerations.”
“Poor Uncle Fly. His head will be sore as a bear’s this morning. And we lot are supposed to descend upon him for luncheon! How ghastly.”
Aquinas agreed and removed my empty plate. I sat over the last few sips of my tea, making note of the fact that Uncle Fly and Lucian Snow could be eliminated from the list of possible miscreants who had donned the ghostly garb.
But instead of simplifying matters, it muddied them. Snow had a sort of puckish charm, and Uncle Fly had always been good for a joke, particularly of the elaborate and practical variety. If I numbered gambling among my vices, I would have wagered handsomely on one of them being our prankster.
Still, it left me with several interesting questions yet to be answered, including the one that intrigued me the most: what had Brisbane been doing when the clock struck two?
THE SEVENTH CHAPTER
O, that a man might know The end of this day’s business ere it comes.
—Julius Caesar
The door to Father’s study was closed, but I had no doubt he was within. I could smell his pipe tobacco, and if I pressed my ear quite tightly to the door, I could hear him talking. From the rhythm of his speech, it was apparent he was reciting one of his beloved soliloquies. Lear, no doubt. He was particularly fond of Lear.
I rapped sharply, and after a moment he called for me to enter. I felt a sense of peace descend as soon as I stepped over the threshold. Father’s study held only the most pleasant connotations for me. Any childhood transgressions were dealt with as a matter of business, and lectures and punishments were meted out in his estate office where farmers and servants were given their pay or their notice. Here, there was only the memory of spending time alone with Father, a rare privilege in a household of ten children. It was in this room rather than in the schoolroom that each of us had learned our letters, following Father’s finger as he traced out a line of Shakespeare and encouraged us to sound out the words. There wa
s always a treat if we excelled—crumpets Father toasted over the fire, turning them on forks until they were brown and crisp.
There was a fire now, crackling away merrily on the hearth, the mastiff Crab stretched out lazily in front of it, her immense paws thrust into the ash for warmth. The walls were lined with books, none particularly valuable. The rare and costly volumes were shelved in the formal library where they were regularly dusted and rubbed with neats’ foot oil. The study was the home of Father’s private collection, the bulk of it devoted to Shakespeare, with some poetry and a bit of history as well. The tall Gothic windows were hung with claret velvet, and a pair of enormous thick silk rugs from Turkey warmed the stone floor. The furniture was lushly upholstered in more claret velvet. There were curiosities as well—an enormous armillary sphere, the stone wing of an Italian putti, a revolting stuffed monkey called Cyril that Father had won in a wager against the King of the Belgians—but it was a comfortable room, a gentleman’s retreat. I remembered the hours I had spent in the window seat, secluded by those same velvet draperies as I read the books of my youth.
Father laid his book upon the desk. Bound in green leather and stamped with the March coat of arms, it was part of the set of Shakespeare that had been printed for him as a gift by the queen upon his accession to the earldom. I hazarded a glance at the cover as I took a chair opposite his. King Lear. I smiled to myself, but Father missed nothing.
“You seem in good spirits,” he observed.
“I was merely thinking how nice it is that some things do not change.”
He raised a silvery-white brow. “Like me? I shall never change. I am half as old as Methuselah and I mean to live forever. I shall point and laugh when Stonehenge crumbles to dust and I am still here.”
“Just as well. I am told there is no more space left in the family crypt.”
He pulled a face. “That may be, but when the time comes I shall make room for the old crone if I have to turn half the family out and sell their bones to make corsets.”
“I presume you are referring to Aunt Dorcas?”
Father stretched his legs, wincing only slightly. I could only assume his rheumatism was paining him. His little twinges usually presaged a change in the weather.
“I had forgotten how awful she could be,” he mused. “Hard to imagine now she was once the toast of the Regency and her sisters with her. All four of them were painted the year the elder two came out. The paintings are in the little alcove outside the music room. Striking girls, they were. All the bucks were in love with them.”
“Even Aunt Dorcas?”
“Indeed so. An heir to a dukedom shot himself for love of her when she rejected his suit. They said she heard the news, then put on her prettiest gown and went to a ball where she danced every last dance, drank two bottles of champagne, and swam the pond on Hampstead Heath just to watch the sun come up.”
I shook my head. It seemed impossible to reconcile that desiccated old toad with a ripe, nubile young woman who broke men’s hearts as easily as one might crack an egg.
“I suppose time changes people,” I hazarded.
“Time and regret,” he corrected. “Dorcas and her sisters were outraged by Rosalind’s elopement with a footman. They withdrew from society and refused to marry. They thought they were disgraced, as if marrying one’s footman is any worse than the rest of the antics they got up to,” he finished, reaching for the cup of tea on his desk. “They immured themselves in that old house in the Norfolk fens, and scarcely spoke two words to the rest of us for decades.”
“How dreadful! To shut themselves up like that, with only each other for company. Why did we never visit them?”
Father shrugged. “They made it quite clear no one was welcome. They were content to fester in the country, quarrelling with one another and complaining bitterly about the pittance of an allowance they received.”
This surprised me. “They were not given proper allowances?”
Father named a figure that made me gasp. “Generous enough, by anyone’s standards,” he commented dryly, and I was forced to agree. “Added to which, Grandfather settled the Norfolk house on them and paid for the maintenance. Their expenses were virtually nonexistent. I’ll wager there is a small fortune stuffed under a mattress or behind a fireplace brick in that house.”
“But I thought that side of the family was poor,” I protested. “Emma and Lucy, always coming to us looking little better than charity children, complaining about cold-water baths and wearing the aunts’ castoffs.”
Father sipped at his tea. “Living in isolation can turn a person’s mind, and their minds did not have far to turn,” he said with a meaningful look over the rim of his spectacles.
“You mean they became peculiar?”
“In a word. They began to hoard things from the reports my father received. Money, newspapers, jars of jam. And never spent a ha’-penny if they could help it. Dorcas even had her sisters buried in paupers’ graves in the churchyard in Norfolk to save a few pounds. She was certainly not going to spend her life’s savings educating two girls she viewed as the fruits of sin.”
“Their parents were married,” I pointed out.
“Hmm. Yes, well, there was some confusion on that point.”
I blinked at him. “Good heavens. Why did I never know any of this?”
Father shrugged. “Old family gossip. You were always burrowed somewhere with your nose in a book.”
“And here I thought the family was in danger of becoming respectable.” I still could not quite take it in. Lucy and Emma, bastards, and Dorcas and her sisters mad as hatters, after a fashion.
“But Aunt Dorcas’ pearls and the lace,” I began. Father shook his head.
“The pearls are glass beads, and the lace was her mother’s. Her maid has been tearing it off and sewing it onto different gowns for fifty years. And what she has not hoarded, she has pilfered. Mind you lock up your valuables, I cannot vouch for their safety,” he said with a sigh. “I could almost feel sorry for the old trout, but she is one of the most tiresome women I have ever known.”
“Then why did you invite her for the wedding?”
Father’s usual benign expression turned murderous. “I did not. That would be the handiwork of your Aunt Hermia, who I hope is suffering mightily from the pangs of her conscience as well as a toothache. She insisted if Lucy was to be married from here, Dorcas had to be present, and then she hared off to London while I have endured the old terror,” he said with real bitterness.
“Aunt Hermia cannot help a toothache,” I chided. “Besides, with so many other guests, you cannot be much bothered with her.”
“Emma was not best pleased to see her,” Father confided. “Although I imagine she has had an easier time of it than her sister. I would rather have the keeping of ten children than one old woman.”
“You did have the keeping of ten children,” I reminded him. “Now, tell me how it came to be that Lucy is to be married here.”
Father shrugged. “Cedric is an acquaintance from the Shakespearean Society. Lucy was visiting London with friends. She called upon me, quite properly. I was just about to leave for a meeting, and the girl trotted along.
Cedric was there, and I introduced them. He was instantly smitten, and since then they have been inclined to view me as something of a faery godfather. I have been told they mean to name their firstborn after me. It is all incredibly fatiguing.”
“And Mrs. King? She is a member of the society also?” I asked carefully.
Father levelled his clear green gaze at me. “She is. As is Brisbane. They both began attending in September. I introduced them as well.”
“You are a regular Cupid,” I commented lightly. “You will want only a bow and arrow to complete the illusion.” I chose my next words carefully. “I am surprised their courtship has progressed so quickly. Mrs. King does not strike me as the type of woman to become engaged to a man she has known but for two months, although perhaps I have misjudged her.”
Father said nothing, but he sipped at his tea and his eyes slid away from mine. He knew something, and he was determined not to speak of it. And when Father made up his mind, it was pointless to attack him directly.
“What do you think of Violante?” I asked, and I do not think I imagined he looked relieved.
“I like her fine. She seems a rational sort of girl, from what I could determine with my faulty Italian. Pleasant enough, although with a beastly temper, I should think.”
“Then you are not still angry with Lysander for marrying her?”
He set the cup into the saucer with a sharp rap. “Why the devil should I be angry? Ly has to live with her—”
Too late, he remembered the letter, the summons home with dire threats if we failed to obey. It had been a blind then, a lure to bring us back, for some other purpose entirely. But Father could hold his counsel well enough when he chose. If I wanted to know what he was about, I should have to lull him into security first.
I cut in smoothly. “I am so glad to hear it. She is indeed a delightful girl, and it is not kind to say it, but I think Lysander needs to be shaken up a bit. He is too tightly bound within himself. She is a tonic for him.”
Father laid down his cup and smoothed his waistcoat, a fraying affair in aubergine stripes. His sartorial taste was frighteningly close to Plum’s. “I am glad to hear it. Now, the reason I sent for you. Say hello to your friend. He has missed you, you know, and I don’t mean to keep him forever.”
He nodded toward the corner behind me. I turned to see a large, ornately wrought birdcage standing where a bust of Kean usually held court. Inside the cage was a bundle of sleek black feathers and a pair of intelligent jetty eyes.
“Grim!” I cried. I went to the cage and leaned near, careful to keep my arms behind my back. It would not do to have the tweed of my sleeves shredded by his sharp talons. He looked up at me, his head tipped quizzically to the side. After a long moment, he opened his beak.
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