The Ghost and Jacob Moorhead

by Jeanne Savery

  Mary blushed slightly. “That is a high compliment, Rube.”

  “That,” he said, his voice dry as the deserts surrounding his home oasis, “would be an insult to a lady of my people. As you know.”

  Mary laughed. “I’ll take it as a compliment. Now for my tale.” She settled more firmly into the armed chair Jacob had pulled into a position so she faced Jenna who sat against pillows in her bed. “I had stayed for—oh, nearly a year?—with Rube’s family.”

  “Where she saved my mother’s life,” inserted Rube. “She’d not bother to tell you that, but it is important.”

  “Where,” repeated Mary, “I happened to have enough medicines in my kit and, for once, the right medicines, so that I was able to add my bit to Rube’s family’s physician’s efforts. He is a good doctor, Rube, and I learned from him. Very likely he’d have saved your mother without my poor efforts.”

  “You learn wherever you go. Now continue or we’ll be all day at it.” He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall.

  Mary cast him a look, sighed and continued. “The tale that I was a doctor eventually reached the ears of the headman of a tribe some distance to the south. The man had a son who was dying. He sent for me.”

  “And, against all advice, she insisted she must go.”

  “Rube, who tells this tale? Me or you?”

  Jacob, before the tall man could retort, said, “I think you each have much to tell. Just carry on, either of you, whenever the other forgets something.”

  “Very well,” said Mary. “Rube’s father organized my journey—mounts, guards, food and water…and he sent Rube to keep me safe.”

  “Your cousin, Mr. Moorhead, rushes into danger never thinking it might be there. The journey was one adventure after another before we reached the headman’s region. Finally. Frankly, I’d rather hoped we’d be too late and his son already dead. It would have solved a number of problems.”

  “He was not dead. Nor was there anything I or anyone could do for him. He had a wasting disease, Jacob. Someday they may discover what causes such and a means of curing that sort of illness, but just now we can do nothing for it. And so I told his father. His father refused to believe me, insisted I was merely attempting to increase the offer of recompense he’d made me.”

  Rube scowled. “Since we’d already sent him word that no recompense would be asked or be necessary or accepted if offered, that didn’t make a great deal of sense.”

  “Rube, the man made little sense about anything except his love for his—”

  “Love? Nonsense,” interrupted Rube. “Love had no part in it. He’d sired only the one son among a multitude of daughters and now the son was dying. He was losing his heir.”

  Mary bit her lip. “Perhaps.”

  “Mary.”

  Mary smiled a weak smile. “I know, Rube. You would say I always look for the best in people. Well, I prefer that to looking for the worst! In any case, the young man died a few days after we arrived and I was accused of poisoning him. Murdering him.”

  “You would have laughed to see the look on her face when that accusation was thrown at her head.”

  “Rube…”

  His voice softened. “I know. You thought, at first, it was merely the father’s grief.” The steely look returned to Rube’s features. “Mary, my father warned you the man was insane.”

  Mary sighed. “I have met all sorts in my travels but never a madman who had the power of life and death over everyone in his realm. It was, I suppose, lucky that he wished to make a public example of me because that meant a spectacle of grand proportions must be organized.”

  “Which gave me time to organize her rescue and our escape. Believe me, that wasn’t easy. Not when the man was…” He frowned. “Mary, what was that odd word you used? The one derived from the Greek?”

  “Paranoia. He was afraid of everyone surrounding him and therefore set one against another in such a way he was surrounded by more guards guarding each other than any of them guarded him. You don’t want to know the details of how Rube got me away. And if you do, it’s too bad. I don’t want to remember them. We escaped…but it was almost immediately obvious the madman sent emissaries after me. They were ordered to bring me back for punishment.”

  “There were a series of attempted kidnappings before we left for England. We managed to get aboard a ship without anyone knowing, so it was some time before one of his agents discovered our new destination. After another two attempts at kidnapping, the madman’s agent organized a form of torture that would drive anyone less sane than Lady Mary straight into chains in a bedlam. If we could only find the spider in the center of the web, we might end things, but, although we’ve caught two of his minions, we’ve never managed to get one bit of information leading beyond them.”

  “We will not use torture, Rube,” said Mary.

  “Quickest way to information, my lady.”

  “Assuming you can believe what you are told.”

  “We’ve ways.”

  “Rube…”

  His mouth pulled in and then he relaxed, grinned. “I know. When in Rome and all that…”

  She smiled. “Remember it.”

  “Yes. It is how you delve into cultures you visit and it is a good way if you are only interested in learning. But I am interested in protecting you, in making it possible for you to live a normal life—or perhaps I should say, to return to the life you love.”

  Again those listening heard wry humor.

  Mary looked sad for a moment, thinking of all the places to which she wished to travel but dared not go. Not while there was still a madman insisting she be caught and returned to what he insisted was justice. She drew in a deep breath and huffed it out. Then she looked around. “Well? Now you know. Should we go?”

  “Go?” Jenna blinked. “Go where?”

  “Jenna, you are not stupid. Coming here, I may have put all of you in danger as well as myself. I should never have given into the temptation but I thought perhaps we could escape and not be followed.”

  “And I think we did,” said Rube quietly. “The thing is, no matter how careful we’ve been—in the past, you know—we are always traced. Very likely, because of me. I, hm, stand out among the rest of you here in Mary’s homeland.” He cast a wry look around the room.

  Jacob chuckled. “We’ve men who have complexions as dark, Rube, or even darker. Men who have spent their lives in India, for instance, and not taken care to remain out of the sun. But no one I know has dark curly hair in addition to golden skin. It is possible you are correct and that you may be the means by which Mary is traced.” Jacob, tactfully, didn’t mention Rube’s way of dressing, which was not that of an Englishman.

  Rube nodded. “On this journey I was very careful to remain out of sight. We traveled straight through with nothing more than changes of horses to slow us up.”

  “That explains how you got here so quickly.” Jenna’s comment was ignored.

  Rube frowned. “If our enemy is as intelligent as I think, he will check for someone traveling fast. Or perhaps he has other means of tracing us. Bribery perhaps? We cannot know, but you must believe that eventually he will find us and once again organize a web of watchers around us along with the occasional hint he hasn’t forgotten us.”

  “Hint?”

  “He leaves…messages.”

  “Your grim tone suggests they are not neatly written notes handed in at the door.”

  “They are not.” Rube stared at Jacob and Jacob stared back.

  “I will,” said Jacob after a moment, “pass on the word that any such, um, message is to be reported directly to me.”

  “Or me.”

  “Or you,” agreed Jacob absently, his mind elsewhere. “Mary, I think you must stay here. Your danger has not resulted in danger to anyone else, has it?”

  “No,” said Mary, but with a doubtful note.

  “But you worry?”

  “Yes. I have to believe the madman will lose patience.”


  “It is a cat-and-mouse game,” said the bodyguard. “Then there is something that occurred to me not too long ago. It is possible our spider doesn’t wish to capture you but is waiting for his king to die, so that he may go home without you. Getting you out of the country, secretly, would not be easy and he must know it. But in the meantime he follows his king’s orders to the letter, if not with quite the spirit intended.”

  Mary sighed again. “Jenna?”

  “I agree with Jacob. You must stay.” Jenna had listened to urgings whispered in her ear, insistent promises to help watch over Mary and give warning if trouble arrived. “We can, I think, keep you safer here than anywhere else… But please don’t ask me why.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “I said not to ask,” she growled but then relaxed. “But I do have very good reasons.” Jenna, blushing, looked down at her hands.

  Jacob gave her a sharp look but glanced away almost immediately. Surely not, he thought. Surely she doesn’t hear that voice as well? My granduncle’s voice? Jacob shook his head ever-so slightly. No, of course not. It was only he who had lost his mind to the point he heard voices. Voices that could not exist…

  * * * * *

  Melissa yawned. “You again.”

  Everston sneered. “You have been a naughty girl, have you not?” he asked.

  “I haven’t a notion what you mean.” Melissa leaned forward on one elbow and chose another bonbon, hiding her expression by doing so.

  “I think you do.”

  “Lord Everston, if you’ve something to say then say it.” She continued to poke through the box, searching for—well, pretending to search for a certain flavor.

  “But it is so much more fun to drag it out,” he complained in, for him, a whimsical tone.

  “I assure you, I am not in the mood for games.”

  “Ah. But you were the other evening, were you not?”

  Melissa tensed. So. As I guessed. Word has gotten around.

  “You and Lady—”

  “So why is it so terrible?” interrupted Melissa. “A few friends gathered to play a few hands of cards. What of it?” She shrugged one shoulder and turned her head away.

  “A few…innocent…hands of cards.”

  “Is that so very bad?”

  “It is when you lose as much as you are said to have lost.”

  He knows. How could he know that? Melissa swallowed and saw that his lordship noticed—at least she assumed that explained the gloating look coming into his features. “So?”

  “So the debt must be paid, must it not?”

  “And?” Melissa wanted no one to know how she fretted about that little problem. She hadn’t a notion how she was to pay it.

  “I will pay it. For a price.”

  Melissa thought of her bed upstairs and shuddered slightly.

  “I will pay it if you pack your trunks and go north. Immediately…” he said, either missing the shudder or not understanding it.

  She cast him a quick glance and, relieved, felt herself relax. “It is not a small sum, you know.” She named an amount twice what she’d actually lost. “If I agree to go, I’ll take a draft on your bank.”

  “You’ll do no such thing. If you agree to go, I will visit the lady and will give her coin of the realm, saying I am your messenger in this.” He grinned a tight grin. “I’ll not be choused, my dear. Do not think it.”

  “But that debt is not all. I will need money for the journey. And I really cannot go into the country without proper clothing,” she added. “I must visit my modiste and I doubt very much if she’ll do the work unless I pay something, at least, on what I owe her.”

  “Poor dear. Life is treating you shabbily, is it not?” said his lordship, pretending to console her.

  “You don’t mean it but it is.” Melissa pouted. “Nothing has gone right since your cousin went north.”

  “Then the answer is obvious. To make things right, you too must go north. I will send you in my small carriage with my second coachman. Since I can only spare a pair and do not care to spend money for fresh teams, it will take longer.” He frowned. “Which means the cost of beds along the way, while the horses are rested, and food. Ah, the cost of it all! Do let me think just who I know with whom you can stay the nights.”

  “Perhaps I could pay my own shot at inns.” Melissa spoke quickly, making the offer before he could call up the names of people she had no desire to visit—especially since she hoped no one need know where she’d gone—just in case Jacob continued to be stubborn and, again, refused to wed her.

  Mud smiled that tight smile she hated. “Ah, then you are not quite up the River Tick? In that case perhaps you’d care to spring for horses along the way as well? And travel more quickly?”

  “No. I’m not in the basket, as the saying is,” she added quickly. The old miser. He’ll not give me a penny more than he need. And I need every penny he’ll give me. Drat that cheating woman. “But,” she continued after only a moment, “I am not well forward at the moment either. Come quarter day—”

  “Which,” he interrupted, “is still some weeks in the future.”

  “Six,” she said without thinking.

  “Ah. You are counting,” he retorted.

  She looked up. “My father was interested only in the settlements. He cared not a jot about negotiating a decent widow’s portion, made no effort to see that it was adequate.”

  “I hear he has another gentleman lined up who will make further settlements?”

  “He and his gentleman may go to the devil,” said Melissa, her voice hard. “I am of age now. He cannot force me to his wishes. Not this time.”

  “You sound very certain of that.”

  “And why should I not?”

  “My dear, you have had little care for your reputation and you cannot possibly live on your widow’s portion, as I suspect you’ve already discovered. If you cannot seduce my cousin into marriage and away from that property, then what will you do?”

  “Go abroad?” she asked in a flippant tone. “I understand one may live quite well on a pittance.”

  His features relaxed into a completely blank expression, except for eyes that burned hot. If his eyes were hot, his voice was chill. “I doubt you would like that at all.”

  “I agree that I would prefer to stay in England but you have not sweetened the pot sufficiently to convince me I wish to travel north. Something you feel strongly I should do…”

  He had thought she’d run from scandal. From debt. She could see it in every expression, almost see him shake with the tension of the anger filling him. Silence reigned for a long moment and she refused to allow herself to be intimidated into breaking it.

  Barking the words, Everston asked, “Your modiste… How much do you owe her?”

  Melissa told him. The true figure was in her mind because she’d received still another dunning note only that morning and she merely added enough for two or three more gowns before stating it.

  He cringed and then sighed. “Very well. Your gaming debt, your modiste and my carriage and coachman for the journey north. You will pay for accommodation, your room and board at the inns at which you stop for a night.”

  “You, my lord, are a miser.”

  “You, my dear, are a whore and not worth so much as I’ve agreed to pay.”

  Melissa expressed her outrage at the insult even as she wondered if she could get anything else out of him. She decided she’d pushed him as far as he was likely to go and turned her mind to practical matters. “I can be ready to leave… Oh, I think a week from Thursday.”

  “You’ll leave tomorrow.”

  “I have things to arrange before I go and I will leave a week Thursday—or we may forget the whole thing.” She reached for the candy box and sorted through it, pretending not to care about his decision.

  He eyed her. Something in the set of her mouth, the firmness of her chin, convinced him. “Very well. Give me your account at your modiste and I will forward the who
le.”

  “I was so angry when I received it, I burned it. I will get another.”

  “You would cheat me.”

  “I assure you, it will be no more than I have said.”

  He looked frustrated but, after gnashing his teeth twice, he nodded. “One week. Thursday my coach and driver will be outside your door at nine in the morning.”

  “Nine.” She started up and then relaxed. “You are insane to suggest anything so uncivilized. Not a moment before eleven.”

  “In this you will not change my mind. Nine.” He rose to his feet, bowed and stalked toward the door. His hand on the handle, he turned. “Remember. He must leave the estate and he must stay away from it for more than a week. And it must be known he has done so. Do not fail me.”

  “Why? You, it seems, have failed me. You have failed to pay me what you owe me for such labor.”

  “If you are smart and very good then you’ll get him to wed you and that will be more of a reward than you deserve.” He left, shutting the door with a snap.

  Melissa ground her teeth. How she hated the man. Something a trifle cold settled around her heart as she sensed that perhaps the reason she didn’t like him was that he was too much like herself.

  But that means I don’t like myself and that must be nonsense…

  Chapter Six

  Somewhere in London, in a hidden suite of rooms fitted out in a sybaritic manner quite at odds with any English style of decor, an overly thin man lolled against a pile of soft pillows. Beside him stood a water pipe, the scent of which had the second man in the room, a slave, wrinkling his nose—but he said nothing. He dared not. Criticism was not well received by the emaciated creature who was his master and if his master desired the slow death of the opium addict, well, that was the way of the world, was it not? The slave cast his mind back to his master’s last question. “I have thought and I have told you all the letter said. She escaped them.”

  “Imbeciles. Idiots. Find them. Kill them.”

  “They will have disappeared.” The second man spoke in a soft, even tone. “Either they are lost in the stews of some city or they have taken ship and gone heaven only knows where. They are unimportant. It is the woman we must find.”