by Colleen Ladd
If by “the poor soul at the Hall,” Courtland meant Mrs. McFerran, then he was very much mistaken in her feelings on the matter. She delighted too much in speaking of Lord Ashburne’s misfortune to have ever held him in high regard. He’d hit the nail on the head with Foxkin, though. The innkeeper had flat-out told her he believed Ashburne innocent, an act of astounding trust on his part, she now realized.
Courtland made no comment on the state of the drive, though he was forced to slow to a crawl to navigate it without overturning his fancy equipage. When he pulled up before her door, he did not give her an opportunity to descend on her own, but leapt down and gave her his hand.
“I should like to make myself free to visit, Lady Ashburne,” he said, his leaf-green eyes holding her as captive as his warm fingers. “There’s little enough good society in the area. We must needs stick together, don’t you agree?”
Meaning, no doubt, that one door was already firmly closed against Portia and she shouldn’t dismiss him out of hand. “I have always thought, Lord Courtland, that one should never cut one’s neighbors without sufficient cause.”
He laughed. “I think I shall take that as an invitation, Lady Ashburne.” He leapt back into his curricle and took up the reins, pausing to doff his hat to her. “Until later.”
With that, he was off, traversing the drive at a faster pace now that he didn’t have to worry about bouncing his passenger out of her seat. She watched him go, aware of the Hall brooding at her back and trying unsuccessfully to decide what she thought of Lord Courtland.
She could see why Roger had liked him. Courtland was an engaging scamp. A man very much in Roger’s line, she reminded herself—a gambler and a libertine and overall a man of little account. She’d have to be featherbrained indeed to tie herself to another faithless lord.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It stormed that night.
The first crack of thunder occasioned a deal of rushing about, as Portia and Ellie snatched pots and buckets from the kitchen and ran about in the upper floors, sticking them under leaks. The hole Mr. McFerran had inadvertently made into the servants’ quarters required three large pans all by itself when the rain began seeping through the canvas stretched over the damaged ceiling. Portia imagined water was building up atop the canvas, a lake of it stretching out across the attic, engulfing wardrobes and trunks, seeking another way down. She wished her imagination were not so good.
She even dared enter the master’s bedroom, but saw no need to add a second bucket to the one that already stood under the leak. It was no fuller than it had been previously, and there was no sound of dripping even with the renewed downpour. Perhaps the leak was intermittent, or the new hole in the attic had drawn water away from the route it had previously taken into the room.
Dinner that night was shepherd’s pie, which Mrs. McFerran had insisted on taking time away from her husband’s bedside to cook. She was quick about it, the result much more the thing than her previous pretense at ill-cooking, and they somehow managed to eat every bite, though when Portia was in the kitchen collecting pans she’d thought Mrs. McFerran had enough food going for six. Ellie kindly offered to do the washing up. Rather, Ellie turned Portia out of the kitchen when she offered to help, the maid turning into a virago of offended sensibilities at the thought of her ladyship washing dishes in her smart, new (and only) gown.
Portia drifted about the old house a while, listening to the thunder outside, the plink of rain inside. Eventually, she took her candle into the library, which by some miracle escaped the worst of the leaks, and read until her eyes burned and the candle flickered low.
When Ellie had popped in some time previous, Portia sent her on to bed. Now she wished she hadn’t been so adamant that she could get herself into her own nightrail. The thought of retiring to her dark and silent bedchamber did not appeal. Nor the idea that she would be utterly alone as she climbed the stairs, walked down the hall, and turned the key in her lock.
Portia put down her book with a sigh, finally admitting to herself that she was afraid to sleep in that room. By light of day, she could listen to reason and believe it nothing but a vivid, terrifying dream. How could it be else? But reason and logic faded to nothing when the sun went down. Portia shivered to think of waking to find him bending over her. And if the next time he appeared to her not as a man, but a drowned corpse, bloated and faintly glowing? Portia shuddered and scolded herself for allowing her imagination to run away with her.
She put her book back on the shelf, locked the library, and went upstairs, barely giving Giles Ashburne’s portrait a glance when she passed it. Nor did she look up or down the hall, but continued up to the servants’ floor. The McFerrans’ door was closed and Portia tapped lightly before pushing it open.
Dimly lit by a single, guttering candle, Mrs. McFerran’s face was a study in fatigue, a dozen years older than the woman who bore it. Mr. McFerran tossed restlessly, making pained sounds whenever his movements shifted his splinted leg. For all they’d done to her, Portia could feel nothing but pity.
She went to Mrs. McFerran and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Let me watch a while. You can do him no good if you fall ill yourself.”
Mrs. McFerran stared, then nodded slowly and hoisted herself out of her chair like a woman of ancient years. It occurred to Portia suddenly to wonder just how old the McFerrans were—the woman seemed so vigorous in her antipathy, the man timeless in the way of all woodsmen. Portia saw Mrs. McFerran to the door and closed it behind her—she trusted the housekeeper could find an untenanted bed for the night, or would not mind sharing with mice. Then she went back to the bedside and sat watching Mr. McFerran twist in the grip of fever until her eyelids drooped, the only thought in her mind the dread certainty that Mr. Millbank must be sent for first thing in the morning.
*****
Giles found her there sometime after midnight.
He had stopped in to see how Mr. McFerran was doing, expecting to see the old man’s wife at his side, and the sight of Portia nodding in the chair by the bed so startled him that he stood for some minutes watching her from the doorway, though she might wake any minute and see him. He wouldn’t particularly have minded scaring her out of her wits again, but her screams might wake the invalid.
Still he stood and watched. He’d not thought her the kind of woman to pay such attention to a mere servant, nor to step one iota out of her way to demonstrate even a lick of kindness. Gowns and jewels and hair were all her sort cared for. He saw he’d inadvertently left her one of the dresses she’d stolen. He’d make sure not to miss it again tonight. His eyes drifted down over her. The gray dress clung invitingly to her curves, and the sight of her sleeping there, her bosom rising and falling with each soft breath, kindled a growing heat in his chest. He forced his eyes away. No, perhaps he would leave the dress. He could imagine far better than he liked her drifting about the place in her shift and it did nothing for his peace of mind. It was infuriating to find the exterior so appealing when everything about the interior disgusted him.
Indeed, she might almost be taken for an angel of mercy, dozing peacefully in a chair by the old man’s bed.
How fortunate he knew better.
*****
Portia stirred and blinked open unwilling eyelids. She hadn’t meant to drowse at Mr. McFerran’s bedside. She was glad to see he’d fallen into deeper slumber. Fever still dewed his brow, but at least he no longer hurt himself with shifting about.
She stretched and looked around, surprised to find the door open. She was certain she’d closed it. Perhaps it had not quite latched.
But it seemed to Portia that she’d heard something, just as she woke. Something muted and repetitive. Footsteps, perhaps, retreating down the hall.
She went to the door, hesitating a moment before she could bring herself to look out. Her eyes fell on a figure in the hall and her heart leapt into her throat. It was only with a mighty effort she prevented herself from screaming the house down.
“Ellie Brown,” Portia scolded when she got her breath back, remembering to keep her voice low, “you took ten years off me.”
“You, my lady? What about me?” Ellie scurried the last few feet and darted in at the sickroom as if she were escaping the storm that still crashed and muttered without. “I ‘bout near died when you stuck your head out sudden like that,” she whispered. “What were you looking for?”
“Nothing.” Portia glanced at Ellie’s slippered feet. She was as certain as could be that the footsteps had been shod. Even, perhaps, the peculiar muted crack of boots. “You didn’t see anyone in the hall?”
Ellie’s eyes popped. “Who should I meet in the hall?”
“Mrs. McFerran, perhaps,” Portia lied to calm her.
“No, my lady. No one.”
“No matter.” Portia stared irresolutely at the door. Perhaps she’d merely imagined the footsteps.
“You need your sleep, my lady,” Ellie said, in much the same tone she’d used when Portia was a little girl. “Go on. I’ll watch here.” There was no arguing with Ellie in this mood. Portia went, her candle flickering dreadfully, threatening to leave her lightless in the draughty hall.
Even held as high as she could stretch, the candle’s feeble light could not penetrate all the corners of her bedchamber at once, and Portia was not satisfied she was alone until she’d poked into every nook and cranny and checked three times that the doors were locked.
She used her candle to light the fire Ellie had laid in the hearth and did not climb into her bed until the flames sent fingers of light probing into every corner of the room. Then she changed quickly into her nightrail and climbed under the blankets, determined to stay awake.
No dripping phantom would sneak up on her tonight.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Portia was awakened by a horrendous crash.
She bolted upright in bed and found herself looking into curiously flat black eyes. She scrambled wildly back and tumbled ignominiously off the bed.
“My lady!” Ellie gasped, rushing to help her up. “Oh, I’m terrible sorry, my lady, but I was that frightened, I was!”
“What the deuce is going on?” Portia demanded. That Ellie didn’t immediately scold her for her language showed it was serious indeed. Portia rubbed both hands over her face, trying to reach some middle ground between drowsiness and terror, and forced herself to look around.
The fire she’d lit before turning in had burned down to nothing. A lacquered tray and its contents were strewn across the floor just inside the door, tea from the broken pot seeping into the rug. Someone had pulled the chair from the dressing table close to the bedside and Giles Ashburne’s portrait leaned rakishly against it.
“How did you get it in here, my lady?” Ellie asked, rushing to wrap her shivering mistress in her dressing gown. “And all on your own, too.”
“I didn’t,” Portia managed. “It wasn’t there when I went to bed.”
The admission frightened Ellie into a fit of hysterics so profound that Portia was at last reduced to shoving the maid onto the bed and digging out the vinaigrette Ellie insisted she keep in her toiletries, no matter she’d never needed it. She was glad for it now, for two good whiffs of the awful thing, and Ellie collapsed in a shuddering, thankfully quiet, heap.
Portia left her there, alternately moaning “oh, it’s the ghost, oh my poor lady” and sniffing gingerly at the vinaigrette with the determinedly martyred look of those taken suddenly ill. Portia rather doubted her sturdy maid would faint, even in an excess of superstitious nonsense, or that the foul-smelling stuff could possibly be helping, but at least it kept Ellie mostly quiet. She tried the door to the dressing room and found it still locked. The door into the hall, of course, stood open as Ellie had left it. Portia thought briefly of how the maid’s shrieks must have echoed throughout the house and hoped it had at least shaken Mrs. McFerran’s nerves a bit. Then she remembered Mr. McFerran and hoped that, by some miracle, he had managed to sleep through the ruckus. Portia picked her way through her spilled breakfast and removed the key still stuck in the outer door lock.
“Is this your key?”
“Yes, my lady. I’d just got the door open when I saw....” Ellie broke off, shuddering, and took such a deep whiff of the vinaigrette that she fell into a coughing fit.
“The door was locked when you got here?”
Ellie nodded, her eyes watering.
Portia handed the key to her and went to stand before the portrait. It seemed much larger now that she looked it straight in its painted eyes than it had hanging at the head of the stairs. It was placed deliberately so it would be the first thing she saw when she woke, and Portia shuddered to think of waking in the night to find it staring unblinking at her out of the gloom.
She walked around it, but there was nothing to see. Just the portrait, which had proven so difficult for the McFerrans and the potboy from the Duck and Drake to handle the night Portia arrived, leaning negligently against a chair as if it had taken a stroll up the hall to prop itself there. “How did you get here?” Portia murmured. The doors were all locked, and though Mrs. McFerran had shown herself adept at circumventing locks, she wasn’t strong enough to shift the large painting all by herself.
“Oh, it’s the ghost,” Ellie wailed. “Oh, my lady, this is a horrible place. We can’t stay here. We’ll all be murdered in our beds, we will.”
“I’ve never heard of a ghost killing anyone, Ellie. Come to that, why would it want to? It would just make more ghosts to clutter up the place.”
It was an unfortunate attempt at humor, and Ellie wailed, “Oh, oh, oh, we’ll be murdered, we’ll all be murdered. We have to leave, my lady. We must, oh we must!”
“And go where? What do you suggest we do, sleep under a hedgerow?”
Her tone had a more salubrious effect on Ellie than the vinaigrette. The maid stood and shook out her skirts in a huff. “I’ll just see if my lady has any dresses left, shall I?”
“If I have, they’re not going to be in there,” Portia said when Ellie picked up the key to the dressing room.
Ellie made a show of looking about the room, her pantomime somewhat undercut by the fact that she wouldn’t look directly at the portrait that dominated the space. “Nor out here, either,” she said, her mood shifting towards maudlin again. “Your beautiful new dress. All that work. And now it’s gone, and your ladyship has nothing to wear.”
“Did you think I was fool enough to leave it where someone could walk off with it?” Portia lifted her pillow to show Ellie where she’d hidden the gown before composing herself to sleep.
Ellie gave a cry and caught up the dress, shaking it out and holding it up. “It’s all over wrinkles, it is.”
“Yes, but it’s still here.” Portia ignored the much put upon look her maid directed at her and slid her feet into her slippers. “Now, I suggest we repair to the kitchen, where I can have my breakfast and you can press my gown.”
“But, my lady.” Ellie made a helpless gesture toward the painting.
“If it’s still there when we return, then you and I will see if we can’t move it back to the landing.”
“If it’s still...” Ellie trailed off with an audible gulp.
“Who knows, we might be lucky and it’ll go the way it came.” Portia shooed her maid out into the hall, and struck off toward the kitchen, not bothering to lock the door behind her. Not only would things be quite a bit easier if the portrait was, in fact, removed while they were downstairs, but it seemed foolish to continue engaging in such a useless gesture.
Someone continued to get in regardless.
*****
Fed and dressed at last, Portia climbed the stairs to the servants’ floor. The first floor landing looked empty without Giles Ashburne glaring down upon it.
Mrs. McFerran sat stolidly beside her husband’s bed, watching him twist and turn. If it hadn’t been for her emotional reaction when he was first injured, Portia could almost have believed the woman didn
’t care, so blank was her expression.
“No better?” Portia asked quietly.
Mrs. McFerran looked at her for a long moment before shaking her head.
“I’ll send for the surgeon.”
Portia went back down to send Ellie after the doctor. She hated to send the maid out in such weather, for it was still pelting down rain, but there was no one else and Portia could not go herself. Nothing harmed a lady’s reputation like being seen splashing through the rain on foot, presenting the overall appearance of a drowned rat.
Unless it was being seen wrangling in the street.
Portia sighed. She went into the library, the cat greeting her with a much put-upon yowl the moment her key scraped in the lock.
“How did you get in here?” Surely she hadn’t locked the cat in when she went upstairs last night. Thomas mewed again, stropped himself vigorously about her ankles, and trotted off in the direction of the kitchen. Portia went on into the library and sighed again. Someone had gotten in here as well. This time, it was the second case from the door that was empty. The books were once again piled into stacks all over the floor, and the overall mess was, if possible, worse. Some of the stacks looked so precarious they might go over any minute, and there were loose books scattered about the floor, as if tossed there by someone in a tearing hurry.
Anger rose briefly in Portia’s breast, then fell away again, conquered by fatigue and a touch of the dismals. Could nothing go right? She set about putting the books back with dogged persistence and was still at it when Lord Courtland called.
He didn’t bother with the front door. Or, if he did, she didn’t hear him. Portia ought, perhaps, tell Mrs. McFerran to reaffix the knocker, assuming she could find it. It may well have been taken down some time ago, for who was welcome here? Instead, Courtland rapped on the library windows, startling Portia half to death. He smiled unapologetically and headed back to the front of the house without any apparent doubt she would let him in.