The Lady's Ghost

by Colleen Ladd

  Foxkin had kindly left her alone in the parlor long enough to count her money. It wasn’t much, not a tenth what the silver was worth, but it was enough to pay the doctor and still buy a few items to eke out the limited contents of the pantry. Accordingly, Portia gave Ellie a certain sum and a list of things to buy and sent her off to handle those purchases, the maid protesting all the way. Ellie sometimes forgot that Portia was no longer the innocent chit who’d married a man she hardly knew. Being seen without a maid would do less to harm her reputation than being seen haggling with the butcher.

  The state of the village spoke well of the Duke of Ransley. As the highest-ranking nobleman in the area, it was doubtless his influence that kept the buildings along the high street in good repair and the people in accord with each other, at least publicly. Aware of the eyes on her, Portia walked with her back straight and her head up, and no one went so far as to stare, at least not obviously.

  She made it to Mr. Millbank’s without incident, paid him, much to his obvious surprise, and left with the expressed hope that it would not be difficult to engage his services in the future.

  Partway back down the street, Portia stopped to look in the modiste’s prettily decorated window. One dress in particular caught her eye: a ballgown of severe beauty, its simple lines designed to show the wearer’s figure to best advantage. So far from London, it was not likely to be the first stare of fashion, but it was sharp and elegant and the deep shimmering blue of its bodice and skirts couldn’t help but catch her eye. Portia could never afford such a gown, but she couldn’t help noticing how it was cut, or imagining making that copper-colored ballgown from the dowager Lady Ashburne’s trunk over into the same pattern. If she still had it.

  She turned away from the window and was nearly bowled over by Lady Clarissa, who came pelting out of the shop dressed in a pretty gown of seafoam green, pins in the shoulders and skirts where the modiste was still working on it.

  “Lady Ashburne! How wonderful to see you.” Clary grabbed Portia’s hand and dragged her into the shop before she could either protest or return the gabbled greeting. “I must speak with you,” Clary hissed, tugging Portia toward the back of the shop, where a woman of middle years waited. She was pretty in a peculiarly French way and dressed in the perfect pattern-card of fashion, the best of advertisements for her shop.

  “Lady Clarissa, we must get on,” she said, her accent quaintly punctuating the words. “Your uncle, he will be most displeased if we are not completed in time.”

  “Yes, yes, Madame Fanchon.” Clary took a position with her feet together and arms outstretched with long-suffering patience. “May I make you known to my old friend, Lady Portia?”

  Clary’s eyes pleaded with Portia, and she allowed the modiste to greet her by that name. The woman looked her over with a quick judgmental eye and did not dismiss her out of hand, which was a credit to Ellie’s talent with a needle. Portia didn’t want to think about the reception she’d have gotten in one of her old gowns. Or if she were introduced as Lady Ashburne.

  Thus trapped, Clary’s “old friend” watched while the modiste poked and pinned, measured and mended. Clary’s eyes remained on Portia’s face throughout, the intensity of her gaze such that if she could have conveyed whatever was the matter by the force of thought alone, Portia would surely know in an instant why she was watching as her would-be pupil fidgeted her way through the fitting of half a dozen dresses, all pretty, but not quite the thing for a girl’s come out. Portia would have expected the duke to make use of the local modiste to create his niece’s wardrobe for the Season; her prices were doubtless more reasonable than those in Town. But then, Ransley had the money to pay a fashionable dressmaker straight from Paris once they got to London.

  “Out with it,” Portia said as soon as the modiste had declared herself satisfied and disappeared into the back room. “I’ve never seen you so skimble-brained.” Not that she’d had much opportunity to observe the young lady, but Clary hadn’t struck her as inclined towards histrionic displays. “What’s got you in such a taking and why did you not introduce me as Lady Ashburne?”

  “Because,” Clary hissed, “Mr. Millbank, that interfering old fusspot, emptied his budget to my uncle.” She turned about so Portia could do up her dress. “Oh, Lady Ashburne! He’s forbidden me to have anything to do with you.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Has he?” Portia was grateful Lady Clarissa could not see her face, and for her steady fingers, still automatically doing up the young lady’s dress. Clary had no idea how vital her lessons were to Portia—less for the money she was willing to pay than for the start her success could give Portia on a new livelihood—and it would be entirely too lowering for her to discover it now that the duke had dashed those hopes.

  “Oh, my lady!” Clary spun and grabbed Portia’s hands. “Portia, please! You must help. You have to do something.”

  “Turn about, you’re not done up yet. What do you expect me to do?”

  “Convince him!” She fidgeted until Portia had done up the last button, then whirled on her again. “If I don’t have you to teach me, I’ll be the laughing stock of the ton. I will, I know it!”

  “Take a damper, child.”

  Clary scowled and stamped her foot. “I’m not a child.”

  “You’re certainly acting like one.”

  With a sigh, Clary plumped down in the velvet chair. “I know. I’m sorry. But I was so happy. So certain it would all turn out right, now that I’ve got you to teach me.” She turned liquid blue eyes on Portia. “I was even looking forward to my Season.”

  “You still should.” Portia took a breath and threw her hopes to the wind. “You proved yesterday that you know how to comport yourself. You’ve a governess, I’m sure, and a good one. You’ve just let yourself forget her lessons. Put your mind to it and you’ll do fine.”

  “No. I need you! I’m a hopeless hoyden, Lady Ashburne. Without you, I’ll make an absolute cake of myself, I just know it.”

  “You will if you keep on like this.”

  “Please, Lady Ashburne.” Clary clasped Portia’s hands again and turned the most perfectly pleading look on her. “Please talk to my uncle. I’m certain you can convince him, if you only try.”

  “What do you suggest I do? Present myself at Tynesfield and ask for an audience with his grace?”

  “Oh, I knew you’d do it! I knew it!” Clary leapt to her feet and caught Portia in a rib-bruising hug. “He’s coming in his carriage to pick me up. He’ll be here any minute.”

  With that, she dragged Portia to the door and Portia, all too aware of the flaccid state of her so-recently filled reticule, the exorbitant cost of fixing her roof, and the fact that she currently had but one dress to her name, allowed herself to be led. She hadn’t the foggiest idea what she’d say to the duke and she wasn’t looking forward to finding out. She had only one thing going for her: she was not impressed by his title. She was a duke’s granddaughter, and dukes did not intimidate her.

  “Oh dear,” Portia murmured when the Duke of Ransley’s curricle came into view, its black lacquered sides shining like polished silver. He was younger than she’d expected and tall, as fair of hair as his niece, with a strong face and piercing, almost colorless eyes. If Clary hadn’t been squeezing her hand so tight, Portia might well have faded back into the modiste’s shop. The man was the very definition of formidable.

  Ransley drew his horses, an impressive matched pair of grays, to a prancing halt and sat looking down at them. Portia felt his eyes on her, as sharp as the modiste’s and more measuring, and lifted her chin to stare him full in the face. His lips twitched, his expression almost approving, but he had not missed the grip his niece had on her hand, and the first words out of his mouth were, “You did not tell me you were meeting a friend at the dressmaker’s, Clarissa.”

  Lady Clarissa made a sound very like ‘eep’ and seemed to dwindle before Portia’s eyes. “Well, Your Grace,” Portia said when the girl seemed unabl
e to do more than blink mutely at her uncle, “it appears we have no one to do the honors.”

  “A pity. We shall have to shift for ourselves.” He made a credible bow from the seat of his curricle. “Ransley, madam, at your service.”

  Portia curtsied, hoping her trepidation didn’t show. “Lady Portia Ashburne, Your Grace.”

  His eyes shuttered, every hint of affability evaporating from his face. If she’d thought Mrs. McFerran a past master at coming over the gargoyle, it was only because she hadn’t yet met the Duke of Ransley. “Give you good day, madam,” he said in a voice like ice. “Lady Clarissa, if you would climb up, please. We have much to do.”

  Portia unobtrusively tightened her grip on Clary’s hand when she felt it begin to slip away. Once the chit got into Ransley’s curricle, he would give his team the office, and that would be the end of it.

  If she ever hoped to have a comfortable life, or a house that wasn’t crumbling about her ears, she would need a solution more long-lasting than spouting the silver. Lady Clarissa Seabrooke was her entrée into that life, the only chance Portia might have to prove herself worth hiring. The young lady didn’t shrink from calling herself a hoyden, wouldn’t hesitate to give credit where credit was due, and could be relied upon to spread the word that here was a gentlewoman who could take a wayward chit, of whatever parentage, and turn her into a lady. If she let Ransley take that away from her without a single word spoken in her defense, then she deserved Ashburne Hall and all its discomforts.

  “Beg pardon, Your Grace, but have I done aught to offend you?”

  He stared stonily at his horses as if her voice was but the buzzing of an insect.

  “I understand that you have reason to mislike my house and my name, but I assure you, sir, I have done nothing to earn your enmity.”

  “You live, madam. That is enough.” Still he did not look at her. “Turn loose of my niece this instant.”

  She released Clary, who’d recovered enough from her initial fright to plant herself at Portia’s side, a mutinous gleam in her eyes. “You misjudge me, Your Grace, if you think I would hold her against her will. And you misjudge your niece if you think she would let me. She came to me for lessons; I could do no less than teach her.”

  “What has she to learn from such as you?”

  He might have accosted her with the basest Billingsgate and cut her less deeply. But his contempt only stiffened her spine. She glared at his aristocratic profile, turned to her as if she were so far beneath his notice he didn’t owe her even the courtesy of looking at her. “I am the granddaughter of a duke. I am a lady in my own right and was raised with all the manners of my class. You may choose not to bother yourself with the raising of your niece, but someone has to see to it she becomes the incomparable she should be, and not the laughingstock of the beau monde.”

  “Beware, madam. You dare too much.”

  “Someone must. Someone must see your niece for who she is and what she may be.” In a moment, they’d begin drawing a crowd. Portia hated to make a spectacle of herself. She hated even more giving up without a fight.

  “My niece will have nothing to do with any of your cursed name, or with that double-damned place.” Ransley turned, and when his eyes fell on her, it was all she could do not to back away from the hatred in the pallid depths. “Do you understand me, madam?”

  “I am not an Ashburne.”

  “You are worse. You were not born to the name, but chose to take it upon you.”

  “What does that signify? That I wed Roger Ashburne, the more fool I? That might prove me to have been a want-wit, but it doesn’t make me cursed. You know nothing about me, Your Grace.”

  “You allied yourself with that family. That is all I need know. I have lost one niece to the Ashburnes, I will not lose another. You may rely upon that.”

  Somewhere in her anger, Portia found an uncomfortable pity. “Giles Ashburne is dead, Your Grace, and Ashburne Hall nothing but a crumbling wreck.” Portia dared to step closer and put her hand on the polished armrail of his curricle, her voice unconsciously gentling. “Giles Ashburne is dead,” she repeated. “He can do no harm to Lady Clarissa. I would not want to. She needs help, Your Grace, and you must—”

  “I must nothing, madam. My niece will have nothing to do with you or yours.” His gloved hand came down on hers, trapping it hard against the curricle. “If Ashburne had not fled justice, he’d have been found guilty by the House of Lords, his title and lands stripped away and all those of his blood tainted with his crime. He fled man’s justice, but he could not flee God’s.” The pressure of his hand numbed her fingers.

  “I am no threat to your niece.” Portia dragged her hand free. “I am no descendent of Lord Ashburne. You cannot penalize me for what he did.” It seemed to her that something came over her then and she hardly knew what she was saying. “Assuming he even committed the crime with which you are determined to tar his whole line.”

  “You forget yourself,” Ransley growled, his face incandescent with rage. Portia stepped hastily back, half-afraid he would strike her with his whip. How badly it might have gone from there she was never to know, for a canary-yellow curricle drew suddenly to a halt next to the duke’s equipage and the driver, a strapping man dressed in the peacock colors of the sporting set, his red hair cut à la Titus, threw the reins to his tiger and leaped down. “Lady Clarissa, if I may be so bold….” Without waiting for a response, he kissed her fingers and handed her into Ransley’s carriage with a flourish.

  “Courtland,” Ransley said, barely more civil than he’d been to Portia. He gave the reins a slap and his horses bounded away, Clary shooting Portia a despairing look as she was carried off.

  “And Lady Ashburne. A pleasure.” Courtland took her hand and pressed a kiss to it that was as disconcerting as it was surprising. She withdrew her hand in some confusion. Gloves. She really must get some gloves. “My dear Lady Ashburne,” Courtland said with an engaging smile, “my deepest apologies, but you must forgive my familiarity. I feel I know you, Roger spoke of you so often.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” Portia murmured, unable to imagine why a man who’d hardly ever thought of her could possibly be moved to speak about her. “However, he most certainly spoke of you.” She watched Ransley’s carriage pass from sight. “I have a bone to pick with you, sir.”

  “For interrupting your discussion with Ransley? Think nothing of it, my lady. I was happy to assist.” Without so much as a by your leave, he tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and walked her to his curricle. “Allow me to see you home.”

  Portia was tempted to decline, and hotly too, but it would hardly help her reputation to brangle with two local noblemen on the same afternoon. Besides, she’d told Ellie to go directly to the Hall once she’d seen to her purchases, and it would be better not to be seen trudging home alone like the veriest peasant after making such a spectacle of herself with the duke. She allowed Courtland to hand her into his curricle and waited until he clucked to his team to say, “I had not finished my discussion with the duke.”

  “You have if you know what’s best for you, my dear Lady Ashburne. The stand you took was not like to make you popular with the duke, or anyone else in these parts.”

  “I should thank you for your interference, is that it?”

  “I certainly hope so. I’d hate to find myself in your ladyship’s black books.” He smiled sidelong at her, and Portia wished she had not only the gloves but the parasol so beloved of fashionable ladies, for it would have given her something to do, for all that she’d always thought fidgeting with such items the province of ninnyhammers.

  She turned her eyes to the road, and after the silence had drawn out a little too long, said, “I was given to understand that you do not often visit your manor, my lord.”

  “Not a sennight here and already listening to gossip,” he teased. Courtland slapped the reins, drawing a little more speed from his cattle. “I like the countryside well enough. There are such bea
uties to be seen.” He frankly stared at her until a bend in the road required his attention. “But in truth, I found it necessary to rusticate for a time.”

  “Your creditors?” Portia knew too well how it went. It had taken her half her marriage, the more fool her, to understand why there was never any money and why Roger would come now and again to Rosewood, acting as if he enjoyed his country visit while all the time looking for a way to get back to London.

  “Are best left unmentioned,” Courtland murmured. “For they are unmentionable creatures indeed, are they not?”

  “Perhaps,” Portia said, though she might have pointed out that his life would be circumscribed indeed were there no one to loan him money. She adjusted the brim of her bonnet for want of anything else to do. “Does no one doubt Giles Ashburne’s guilt?”

  Courtland drew his team to a halt in the middle of the road and sat looking at her until her nerves were stretched unbearably. “If they do,” he said finally, “they’re smart enough not to mention it. You’ve seen how passionately the Duke of Ransley believes it, and he’s a hard man to cross. Besides.” Courtland got his horses started again. “I know nothing to suggest that Ashburne did not kill Lady Amelia, much as I wish I could say otherwise, for he was a friend. However I try, I cannot see why he would have fled were he innocent.”

  “I see,” Portia murmured. “How did he die?” Mrs. McFerran hadn’t said, assuming she knew herself.

  “The packet whose captain he bribed for passage to France sank off the coast with all hands on board. They never found all the bodies.”

  Portia frowned. “Then—”

  “There were enough,” Courtland said in a hard voice. “I went to France with Roger to identify his cousin—the House of Lords would never have taken his uncorroborated word. But I own I’d have gone in any case, for Roger’s sake. He was in a bad way.” Courtland fell silent long enough to make Portia’s face burn for her curiosity. Finally, he shook himself. “So, you see, Ashburne’s fate was sealed by an act of God and no one now doubts his guilt. I suppose there might be a few here and there who dare think otherwise. That great oaf of an innkeeper, perhaps. And that poor soul at the Hall who could see no wrong in her master no matter what he did. But they’re few and far between, and even they know to keep their peace.”