The Lady's Ghost

by Colleen Ladd

  It took him half an hour to spirit away the rest. She would take the last of what was his? He would take all that was hers.

  When he was done, he shielded the candle flame with his hand and walked into her bedchamber. He stood a long while in the dark, her lavender scent filling his lungs and his head, looking anywhere but at his candle until he’d grown accustomed to the dark and could see the room clearly. In all that time, there was no movement from the bed. He approached and stood watching her peaceful sleep, untroubled by the noise of his activities or the voice of her conscience, if she had one.

  How, he wondered, could she look so sweet and innocent in her sleep—her hair fanned across the pillow, her face turned softly to one side—and yet be so heartless? How could he, knowing what he knew, still find himself attracted to the soft cloud of her auburn hair, the pale sheen of her skin? Quite without meaning to, Giles reached to brush one finger lightly over her downy cheek.

  She stirred and woke, looking at him through sleep-blurred eyes. He waited for the moment when she woke fully, terror stretching her eyes wide.

  He snuffed out the candle, her scream echoing in the dark room.

  *****

  Portia huddled in her bed all the rest of that night with the blankets drawn close about her, her eyes endlessly scanning her bedchamber. Hard as she tried, she couldn’t bring herself to get up and light her candle from the coals of the fire, assuming there were any. The blankets were no protection at all, but she couldn’t make herself let go of them.

  He’d been so close she fancied she could feel his breath. Giles Ashburne and no doubt about it, his face the face of the portrait, though somewhat racked about with the years. And wasn’t that the proof of it? Proof she hadn’t just dreamed it, for if she had, she’d have imagined him exactly as he was in the painting, not aged betimes by hard days and foreign climes.

  Portia shuddered and drew her blankets closer, eyes uselessly scanning the room, ears straining. Again and again she heard, or thought she heard, some stealthy sound, audible only by the desperation with which she listened. Nothing so obvious as footsteps. But he was coming for her, she knew he was.

  He’d been surrounded by a ghastly shuddering light that vanished the instant she saw him. She could see nothing now, but she knew he was still there, invisible to her straining eyes, for she could hear him. Yes, and smell him, the rich scent of his tobacco clinging to her senses as it clung to the pages of his books.

  Portia didn’t draw a full breath until dawn began to slowly gray the inky shadows. She didn’t close her eyes for even a moment until Ellie unlocked her door—the noise of the key scraping in the lock shuddering over her straining nerves—and came in with jaunty good cheer.

  “Good morning, my lady. I’ve finished your walking dress, and the first stare of fashion it is too, if I do say so myself.” She draped it over the dressing table chair on her way to bring Portia her morning tray and open the curtains. Something leapt onto the bed and Portia screamed before realizing it was the cat.

  Ellie whirled, her hand at her throat. “Oh, my lady! You frightened me.”

  “Well, he frightened me.” The cat settled himself on the counterpane and wrapped his tail unconcernedly about his paws, as if screams were a usual morning greeting. “Did he come in with you?”

  “I don’t believe so, my lady.”

  “You,” Portia said to the cat, reaching to rub his broad forehead, “are a sneak.” Well, at least the stealthy noises were explained. Somehow, Thomas had gotten himself locked in the bedroom with her.

  Too bad it did nothing to explain the apparition she’d seen. She tried to tell herself it had been only a dream, but could not make herself believe it.

  “Are you well, my lady? You look that done in, you do.”

  Portia doggedly poured her tea, managing somehow not to spill it, and lifted the cup to her lips, cradling it between her hands to get the warmth of it. “I’m fine,” she told Ellie after she’d swallowed several scalding mouthfuls. “I didn’t sleep well.” On no account would she tell Ellie what she’d seen—Portia was not capable of dealing with a hysterical maid on top of the night she’d had.

  “It’s what comes of not having a proper dinner, that’s what I say.”

  Dinner had been a cold collation, managed without stale bread and moldy cheese this time and assembled by Ellie and Portia herself, as Mrs. McFerran was needed at her husband’s bedside. Given the circumstances, it had not been a bad effort.

  “May I use your keys, my lady?” The question was perfunctory, as Ellie already had the ring Portia’d left on the dressing table and was fitting the key to the lock on the dressing room door. Portia sipped her tea with her eyes closed and had nearly succeeded in nodding off sitting up when Ellie screamed.

  Tea went all over the counterpane, and Portia barely caught the cup before it rolled off the bed. Her heart pounding, she scrambled out of bed and padded barefoot across the floor.

  “Oh,” Ellie moaned, “all gone, they’re all gone.”

  With a sense of weary fatalism, Portia looked in to find the dressing room bare of all but the most basic of underclothing. Everything had been removed, from her recent acquisitions to her oldest gown. He was determined to leave her nothing, she thought numbly, to leave her shivering in her shift. She did shiver then, and something in her woke up.

  Why did she persist, in these moments, in thinking of a man? It was, again and always, Mrs. McFerran who found a way through locked doors, who would do anything to see Portia out. Well this effort was self-defeating; Portia could hardly vacate the Hall in her nightrail. Perhaps the housekeeper intended to scratch at her door once the full import of Portia’s situation was borne home to her and offer the return of her dresses if she’d leave. If so, she’d grossly miscalculated. Besides, she’d missed one.

  “Well,” Portia said, giving Ellie a smile that only shook a little, “it shan’t be hard to decide what to wear. Come along, Ellie, let’s get me ready for the day.”

  “But, my lady!”

  “Once you do, we’ll go looking for my gowns.” Portia seated herself at the dressing table and stared defiantly at herself in the mirror. At the edge of the reflection, she could see Thomas lapping milky tea off the counterpane. “And we won’t stop until we find them.”

  Portia closed her eyes while Ellie brushed her hair, and found it difficult not to let her head nod with weariness. What connection, she wondered, did the missing gowns have with Ashburne’s... visitation? Was it only coincidence that she had seen, or dreamt, a ghost the same night Mrs. McFerran was walking off with her entire wardrobe? Unbidden, the sight of him came back to her: skin pale, hair and clothing so dark they merged with the night, assuming he had a body at all and didn’t just fade away into nothing. Flames had flickered in his black eyes as if he carried all the fires of Hell inside him.

  Portia shuddered, and Ellie rushed to wrap her in her dressing gown. No, Portia thought, firming her spine, she would not succumb to a fit of the vapors. She was strong; she had to be. They would not drive her out. Not Mrs. McFerran, nor her mice and thievery and ghost stories.

  Not the ghost himself.

  *****

  The day did not get any less wearisome.

  Portia began it with a visit to Mr. McFerran. His wife watched with smoldering resentment and said not a word while Portia touched her fingers to the sleeping man’s brow. He was overwarm, sweating in the grip of laudanum and fever, his braced and bandaged leg an unwieldy lump under the blankets. Fever was to be expected, but if he did not improve on his own, a return visit of the doctor would be required.

  Portia left without a word about the gowns. She had no doubt Mrs. McFerran would look at her with her flat black eyes and say she hadn’t any idea what Portia was talking about. It would be less infuriating to find the missing gowns herself.

  Except they were nowhere to be found.

  Ashburne Hall contained a vast number of hiding places, and Portia and Ellie had poked into all
of them by tea time. Every room in the servants’ quarters but the McFerrans’ own, which in any case contained no hiding place large enough to conceal an entire trunk-full of gowns. Every guest room. Every one of the family apartments. Every inch of the attics and every box, trunk and wardrobe. They looked in the musty conservatory, under the billiard table, in every nook and cranny of the kitchen. And the breakfast room. And the dining room. Portia set Ellie to searching the housekeeper’s sitting room and the stillroom and went herself to check the library and butler’s pantry, which Mrs. McFerran ought no longer have keys to. But then, Portia had believed the woman no longer had keys to her dressing room until she woke to find it ransacked.

  Ellie joined her in the butler’s pantry, panting that she’d found nothing, but thought she could hear footsteps on the stairs. Portia collapsed into the hard, straight-backed chair the butler had used when polishing the silver and tried to think. She was tired, hungry, and growing depressed at consistently receiving less than nothing for her pains. Not just the effort to find her gowns, but the struggle of simply living at Ashburne Hall. If she thought James would take her back, she might well have hied herself back to Rosewood. She could hire a coach at the Duck and Drake. If she had the money for a coach, which of course she hadn’t.

  Portia picked up a Russian samovar, squat-legged and pot-bellied, heavier than it looked and ugly as sin. “How could anyone possibly care what happens to this?” she asked Ellie. “What do you suppose it would bring?”

  Mrs. McFerran swooped suddenly into the butler’s pantry and snatched the samovar from her. “How dare you!” she gasped, clasping it awkwardly to her bosom.

  “How dare you, madam?” Portia snapped back. “I don’t know what you’ve done with my clothing, but it serves no purpose to take it. You might as well return it and save yourself the trouble that will surely follow if you do not.” Her mother would never have spoken to their housekeeper thus. Her mother would never have had to; Father would have turned the woman out at the first sign of trouble. Pity Portia could not do the same.

  “And if I do not? You shall simply take this—” Mrs. McFerran shook the samovar at Portia. “—and trade it for gowns and jewelry and fancy trinkets. You would take this and all the rest and sell it for your own pleasure.”

  Portia gaped, thrown momentarily off. It was only then she remembered her threat the previous morning, that if the stolen ballgowns were not returned by evening, she’d sell the silver to buy some. Never mind the doctor and the hole in the roof, this was what Mrs. McFerran thought she was about. The truth knocked at Portia’s teeth, but even if Mrs. McFerran would have believed her, which was debatable, Portia could not bring herself to tell the woman that if they wanted the doctor back, they’d have pay him first. She was as proud, in her way, as the rest of the ton—it was one thing to drown yourself in debt for ballgowns and fancy finery, but to admit you hadn’t the blunt to keep life and limb together.... No, it was too lowering to be borne.

  Portia stood and lifted a silver cruet stand from a nearby shelf, turning it this way and that. “It doesn’t bear the Ashburne crest, so it’s safe enough to spout. There won’t be any talk to sully the family name.” Further, she might have added. “And you must admit it’s particularly ugly. Though not nearly as ugly as that samovar.”

  Mrs. McFerran clutched the offending urn closer. “You can’t.”

  “I can and will.”

  “You’ll be selling the library next.”

  It was true the books might fetch a higher price than the silver if spouted in the proper place. Portia shuddered at the thought. Ashburne Hall could afford to lose a few ugly pieces of plate, but Portia could not bring herself to part with a single volume from the library.

  “No,” Portia said, almost gently. “But I will be selling this.” She handed the cruet stand to Ellie and took the samovar from her housekeeper, who let it go without a struggle, either too startled or too smart to tussle with her mistress, however brazen she was in speaking to her. “And this.” She handed it to Ellie as well, locked the butler’s pantry, and started down the hall.

  “And,” Mrs. McFerran asked, “if your gowns reappeared?”

  Portia did not turn. “I would still sell it.”

  *****

  She took Ellie with her to the Duck and Drake. It was one thing to walk about the countryside by yourself, another to do it while lugging several valuable pieces of silver. She found a couple of burlap sacks in the dilapidated stables to hide the gleam of silver in, and together they set off through the home wood.

  Portia half expected to be run over by Clary, racing late to her second lesson, but there was no sign of the girl. She ought to have shown up at the Hall in the middle of Portia’s clothing-hunt. It was just as well she hadn’t, but the young lady was now so late it was quite clear she wasn’t coming. Portia fretted uselessly over what Mr. Millbank had said to drive the chit off and, worse, whether he’d carried the tale to the duke, who was so set against the Hall that Clary’d hardly dared approach it that first day. Portia couldn’t afford to lose her first pupil. She was relying on Lady Clarissa’s example to bring in more students after she went on to have a (hopefully) brilliant Season. It really was her only hope. She certainly could not continue to spout the silver—sooner or later it would run out, or James would discover what she was doing, or Mrs. McFerran would murder her in her sleep.

  She allowed Foxkin to bring them tea—she was famished, and in any case would soon be able to pay for it—and waited until he came back to take the tray to ask if he knew where she might be able to sell a few pieces of silver. It was the first time he’d seen her in suitable clothing and Portia hated to extinguish the look of approval that had sprung into his eyes when he saw her in the gray silk walking dress, but she had no one else to ask.

  Foxkin looked the samovar over, rubbing his chin with one hand. If he recognized the monstrosity, he chose not to mention it. Nor did he ask if she was certain she wanted to sell it or give her a look either condemning or pitying, for which she was grateful.

  “Well, my lady, there’s no one closer than a day’s ride who’d give you fair trade for a piece like this,” he said finally, dashing her hopes. “Still.” He stepped back, as if a different angle would make the samovar less hideous. “I fancy I know a gentleman hereabouts who would be interested in such a piece.”

  Portia couldn’t imagine why. “Could you direct me to him?”

  “I could, but your ladyship shouldn’t be walking about the neighborhood with such a heavy burden.” Nor would it do her reputation any good to show up on a gentleman’s doorstep with something to sell, like a common gypsy. “If I may... I could keep this piece, and the other, and contact the gentleman I have in mind. If he proves as interested as I’m certain he will, I can arrange the matter. Would that suit?”

  “Yes, thank you.” It didn’t suit, but it would have to do. It was not that Portia didn’t trust Foxkin. The innkeeper had been nothing but beforehand with her so far and she couldn’t afford to start mistrusting him now. But the money would be, she feared, several days in coming, by which time the attic and servants’ quarters might well be flooded and who knew what state Mr. McFerran would be in.

  “I believe I know what he would offer, my lady,” Foxkin said slowly, choosing his words carefully. “May I advance you part of that sum, purely in good faith?”

  Purely in pity, Portia feared, but she couldn’t afford to turn it down. “That would be most agreeable of you, Mr. Foxkin.”

  He excused himself, taking the silver with him, much to Ellie’s unspoken consternation. Portia was careful not to meet her maid’s eye. She didn’t need scolding, she needed the money, and if whatever Foxkin gave her was all she got out of the silver he’d just walked off with, it would still be more than she had. He returned with a modest bag that jingled with coin. She tucked it directly into her reticule; she would not embarrass either of them by counting it in front of him.

  “I find myself curious, Mr
. Foxkin,” Portia said, once she’d drawn the strings on her reticule.

  “Yes, my lady?” he said with such avidity she knew he would be as happy as she to embrace some less embarrassing subject.

  “Was Lord Ashburne liked?” He looked startled, and she added, “Before.” In some ways, she was nearly as startled as he that the question had left her lips. In others, she understood herself quite well. She was looking for some reassurance that the dark figure bending over her in the night wasn’t evil by his very nature.

  “Well, my lady,” Foxkin said cautiously, as if feeling his way through dangerous territory, “yes. Yes, he was. He wasn’t always a comfortable man.” Portia started at hearing the very thought that had come to her when she first saw the implacable black eyes of Ashburne’s portrait and nearly missed the rest. “But folks hereabouts liked him. More, probably, than the duke. His grace is honest and fair, but... unbending, while Lord Ashburne....” Foxkin seemed suddenly to recollect himself. He straightened his shoulders and took one corner of his apron in his large fingers. “Is there anything more I might do for you, your ladyship?”

  “Yes,” Portia said, reminding herself she had no call to stick her nose into a crime ten years dead and gone. “Can you direct me to Mr. Millbank’s place of residence, and who would you recommend to repair a roof?” Even with the money he had advanced her, she didn’t have enough to cover both expenses, but with any luck she soon would.

  Foxkin looked taken aback, but recovered quickly. “Certainly, my lady.”

  Mr. Millbank’s house was located on the other end of the village. The last time she was at the inn, Portia had been careful to return home the same way she came, not wanting to be seen any more than necessary in her disreputable gown. Today, with her new walking dress, more fashionable than anything she’d had for years for all it was made over from a dress last worn in the previous century, she did not hesitate to step out toward the village. She might have only the one dress in her closet, but she needn’t act like it.