The Lady's Ghost

by Colleen Ladd

  He stared at her for a long moment before sighing and seating himself. “You’re impossible.”

  “And you, sir, are infuriating.”

  Portia got him out of his coat, which was thankfully not cut to the snug height of fashion, wincing at the blood that painted his left sleeve from shoulder to elbow and crept inward from his shoulder. “Can you get the rest off on your own?”

  “Of course,” he growled, and began tugging his waistcoat buttons open one-handed.

  “Good. Drink this.” Portia handed him the bottle Mrs. McFerran had brought and went to drop the needle, thread, and bandages in the water that boiled fiercely on the stove. God alone knew how long they’d been in the stillroom gathering dust and worse. She turned when he gasped something even Roger had never said in her presence and began coughing. “What?”

  “What the devil is this?” Ashburne demanded, glaring at the bottle from which he’d taken, if his continued coughing was any measure, a large swallow.

  “I asked Mrs. McFerran to bring me a bottle of spirits.”

  “Did you tell her who it was for?”

  “Of course not.” Portia used a ladle to fish the bandages out of the pot and hung them in front of the stove to dry, then began the difficult task of retrieving her needle and thread.

  “Ugh.” He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “If I’d known I had such swill in my cellars, I’d have used it in the lamps years ago.”

  “Hoist by your own petard,” Portia said without sympathy. If he hadn’t conspired with Mrs. McFerran to drive her out, the housekeeper wouldn’t have made a point of finding her the worst bottle in the cellars. She took it from him and helped him out of his shirt. Blood ran freely down his left arm from a ragged gouge in the thick muscle of his shoulder. Portia concentrated on wiping away the blood, trying to notice neither his powerful chest nor the heat rising off his skin. Even seated, he was very nearly as tall as she, and he hadn’t the grace to look away while she inspected the wound, his direct black gaze reminding her that this body had crushed hers to the ground not a quarter-hour ago. This chest had pressed against hers. This mouth....

  Ashburne shifted his legs so he could bring her in closer, resting his hands on her waist. Drowning in the heat of his body, Portia reached for the bottle of alcohol and poured it over his shoulder. The resulting roar ringing in her ears, she slipped away to check on the bandages.

  “You,” he said between his teeth, “are a heartless hell-cat.” Already, new blood spilled down his arm.

  “If it’s not worth putting on the inside of you, my lord, then it might as well do some good on the outside. Your shoulder needs to be sewn up.”

  “It does, does it?” Ashburne mocked. “And your vast experience in these matters arises from?”

  “It’s not a vast experience,” Portia said impatiently, “but I have seen such injuries and I do know what to do.” Never a bullet-wound, of course, but Ashburne’s injury didn’t look so different from when Tony had fallen off the banister when he was ten and gouged his calf on the corner of a stair. The surgeon had required her presence, though she was then still a schoolroom miss, because Tony would be calm for no one else. “Or I could send for Mr. Millbank.” He glared. “Well then?”

  Ashburne picked up the bottle Mrs. McFerran had brought, looked appraisingly at it, then put it down again. “I should like something more palatable. There’s a bottle of brandy in Mrs. McFerran’s sitting room, if you would be so good?”

  It wasn’t a question and Portia left him holding his ruined shirt to his shoulder to stem the blood. The bottle was easy enough to find, tucked in Mrs. McFerran’s workbasket under a coat Portia now recognized by size and cut to be Ashburne’s. When she brought it to him, he drank directly from the bottle.

  “I can get the laudanum,” Portia offered.

  “You can get out.”

  “No.”

  “Get on with it, then. I suppose you’re good with your needle.”

  “Good enough.”

  He snorted and took another long swallow from the bottle. “Not that it signifies.”

  It was more difficult than the doctor had made it look. Pushing the needle into his bloody skin was impossible until she forced herself to think of it as the fabric for a new dress. Even then, she nearly couldn’t bring herself to do it. It didn’t help that he was watching, no expression on his face as she drew needle and thread through his flesh. He didn’t flinch, nor make any sound, and he drank steadily from the bottle without a sign the alcohol was having any effect whatever.

  When the slow, gathering silence had plucked up Portia’s nerves so badly she could feel her hands begin to shake, she said, “Why are you here, my lord?”

  “Ashburne Hall is my home.”

  “Dangerous place to be,” Portia murmured. “If the Duke of Ransley finds out—”

  “Is that a threat?” he asked, his tone so low and vicious that the words at first meant nothing. Then they sank in, and Portia’s jaw clenched.

  “Merely an observation, my lord. You must have a very good reason for taking the risk. Why are you here?”

  “Ashburne Hall is my home,” he repeated. He drank again from the bottle, and for the first time she noticed how white his knuckles were. She hoped he wouldn’t break the glass.

  “It has not been your home for ten years.”

  “I don’t give a bloody damn who owns it—”

  “I wasn’t talking about the succession. Don’t expect me to believe you’ve been lurking here the past ten years. I’m far from a widgeon, my lord.” It got easier as her stitches closed off the wound. The blood came slower and she could sometimes get two in before she had to stop to blot it away so she could see. “If you’d been in residence—assuming you could risk it, not knowing if or when Roger might take it into his head to visit—the ghost stories would have begun a great deal earlier than a month ago. And I wager the Hall would be in much better shape.”

  “Instead of the disaster you’ve made it.”

  “I?” Portia said, startled to hear accusation in his voice. “You must look to Roger for that. I have had all I could do to keep Rosewood Close habitable.”

  “Rosewood?” He turned, halting with a muttered curse when the movement twisted the needle out of her fingers. “What’s wrong with Rosewood?”

  “Nothing a concerted application of money wouldn’t fix.” Portia wiped blood away to verify that he hadn’t torn out her stitches. “If there were any to apply.”

  “What the devil are you about? I left more money than could be spent in a lifetime. How could Roger possibly have made ducks and drakes of it all?”

  “Drinking, dicing, demireps.”

  Ashburne took a long swig of brandy and produced a lengthy string of muttered curses.

  “Why are you here?” she asked when he appeared to be finished.

  “The devil take it! To prove myself innocent.”

  “Are you?”

  “Yes, damn your eyes!”

  “Nice to hear,” Portia murmured. “I rather thought you might be.”

  “How very kind of you to tell me so. Would I be here risking my life, my title, and my lands if I weren’t?”

  She wiped away blood and surveyed her work. The wound was only seeping now, blood oozing through the neat line of black stitches. She set about tying off her thread. “Beg pardon, my lord, but to the best of my knowledge only the first still belongs to you. James Ashburne owns the rest.”

  “Not for long, he doesn’t.”

  “What do you mean to do?”

  “I mean to take back what is mine.” His glittering eyes followed her across the kitchen.

  Portia laid the dry bandages on the table and used his shirt to wipe blood away from the wound one last time. He hissed when she dabbed the healing ointment on the outraged skin showing red between her stitches. “How do you mean to do that?”

  “That, madam, is my business. And I’ll thank you to keep your nose out of it, Portia Ashbur
ne.” She could feel him watching her and resolutely kept her eyes on the bandage she was winding about his arm. His mood changed so quickly she nearly reeled with the sudden damping of hostility. His free hand brushed her cheek, and Portia forced herself not to flinch away from the too-close smell of blood. “Portia,” he murmured. “Unusual name.”

  “Father was enormously fond of Shakespeare.”

  “Naturally.” Now he was laughing at her, though he wasn’t even smiling. “The Merchant of Venice. A very intelligent and just lady, Portia. Can I expect that same justice from you?”

  His tone brought her eyes to his. “I should hope so, my lord.”

  “Can I now?”

  She had the distinct impression he didn’t believe her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Giles woke to the sun warm on his face and knew he wasn’t in the priest-hole he’d occupied since Portia Ashburne barged into the Hall. His head ached almost as abominably as his arm.

  He forced his eyes open, the late-morning light spearing into his head, and found himself looking at his own bedchamber ceiling. He remembered then: dragging his coat on over his bare chest and leaving her in the kitchen. Expediency as much as exhaustion led him here—little point in hiding from her any longer. Though that maid of hers.... Giles closed his eyes again. Damn it all.

  He gingerly probed his left arm through his coat. His shoulder was tender and itched dreadfully where she’d sewn him up. Bloody hell, chased itself across his drink-thick head. You couldn’t have just let her get shot? It would have solved the most pressing of his problems. Even as the thought rolled around his mind, bumping up painfully against the parts of him that had been too brandy-sodden the previous night to be anything but miserable now, he recoiled at it. He couldn’t have done anything less than put himself between her and what threatened her; what’s more, he’d do it again if he had to.

  He wished he could convince himself that his certainty on that score had nothing to do with the soft give of her body under his, the cool trembling response of lips that had warmed quickly, parting under his to allow—

  “Bloody hell,” he said aloud, and worked himself upright.

  He’d gotten no farther than the edge of his bed when a key scraped in the lock. He had barely enough time to realize there was nowhere to hide before his dressing room door opened and Portia Ashburne came in, attired in a sapphire gown that made her eyes shine like jewels. Giles was so startled, he forgot to catalog just which of his late mother’s gowns it was.

  “How the devil did you know I was here?”

  She smiled sweetly. “You snore, my lord.”

  “I do not.”

  “How would you know?” Portia walked toward the bed, picking up a bottle from the bedside table. He could smell the crisp scent of lavender water that clung to her. “I can assure you, my lord, that when you’ve been imbibing....”

  Giles didn’t remember bringing the brandy upstairs. He scowled at her, not liking the cool condemnation in her eyes. How dare she judge him? He took the empty bottle, slammed it down on the bedside table, and stood, not caring that it would put him entirely too close to her until her startled breath fanned his bare chest.

  Mrs. McFerran chose that moment to let herself in through the hall door. Giles sat down abruptly on the bed while Portia moved to open the drapes, letting more light in to pierce his aching brain.

  “My lord,” Mrs. McFerran said, bobbing a neat curtsey. From the tray in her hands came the smell of tea and toast and the hot bran and rank herb odor of some kind of poultice. The combination turned his stomach. She nudged the bottle aside so she could set the tray on his bedside table, plumped his pillow against the headboard and said, “Let’s get that coat off you, my lord.”

  Knowing from long experience that there was no point in arguing with Mrs. McFerran in this mood, Giles obediently let her help him out of his coat, leaned against the headboard so she could put the tray across his lap, and did not, however much he wished to, flinch when she stripped off the bandages and applied the steaming poultice to his throbbing shoulder. Then, after enjoining him to eat, she whisked herself off with a promise to return that, in his current mood, he felt was more a threat than anything else.

  “Good Lord, that stinks,” Portia said after the housekeeper had gone.

  “Yes, thank you.” Giles poured himself some tea and attempted to ignore the smell. Thank God she’d only brought him toast. He didn’t think he could manage anything more in the miasma rising from the poultice. “Where’s your abigail?” Pray God she wasn’t out warning the neighborhood.

  “It’s her free day. I shooed her off to the village as soon as I rose this morning.” Portia turned dancing eyes on him. “She could hardly have missed your snoring otherwise.”

  Giles bit back his response and addressed himself to his tea. Mrs. McFerran returned with his clothes and shaving kit and a basin of warm water, checked under the poultice, and left with a satisfied look. At no point during the whole process had she looked daggers at Portia. Nor had she said a word about the impropriety of that woman’s presence in his bedchamber. Giles wasn’t skimble-brained; he knew he’d lost his primary ally against Lady Ashburne. Her pleased expression after seeing the job Portia had done stitching him up gave him a good idea why.

  As soon as he was certain Mrs. McFerran had gone for good, he scraped the poultice off onto his breakfast plate and used his napkin to wipe up the worst of the mess.

  “Mrs. McFerran will be disappointed,” Portia observed.

  Giles set his breakfast tray aside and climbed out of bed. “Mrs. McFerran won’t know unless you tell her. And if you do, I shall see to it that every dress in your wardrobe vanishes, including the ones your maid thinks she’s got safely squirreled away.”

  She wet a cloth in the washbasin. “This will need to be rebandaged.” She began dabbing at his shoulder.

  “You were quick to winkle yourself into Mrs. McFerran’s favors. Give me that.”

  Portia stepped out of his reach. “I merely asked if she wouldn’t mind helping me tend to you this morning.”

  “I am quite capable of tending to myself. Give me that,” he said again when she went back to gently cleaning his arm.

  “I’m nearly finished.”

  “You’re a stubborn baggage.”

  “She was much relieved,” Portia said as if he hadn’t spoken, “when I assured her I wouldn’t be bruiting your secret all about the neighborhood.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t when you opted to sew me up instead of running for Ransley,” Giles said with more assurance than he felt. The last woman he’d trusted had betrayed him. And got herself killed into the bargain. Gooseflesh rose on Giles’ skin at the memory of bullets hissing so close by Portia’s head that one had taken him in the arm when he wrapped them around her.

  He looked down at her head, bent in concentration as she cleaned and rebandaged his wound. She didn’t even come up to his shoulder. Though Lady Amelia had been taller, she’d possessed a doll-like fragility Portia lacked. And not one-tenth of Portia’s stubbornness, for all Amelia had been bull-headed as anything. “Did you never believe I was a ghost?”

  “I’m not so cloth-headed as to believe everything I’m told. Though I own you gave me some bad moments, my lord.” Portia tied off the bandage and smoothed it lightly. “I trust, now that you’re back among the living, you’ll have the courtesy to stay out of my bedchamber.”

  Giles’ first impulse had nothing to do with courtesy and everything to do with the memory of how she’d looked when abandoned to sleep. The second was to defend his right to not only enter any room in the Hall, but invade her chamber and her privacy if she had no more shame than to read his private correspondence. He mastered both impulses and instead said, “I notice you’ve no compunction about entering my bedchamber.”

  “Someone had to see to it that you were in good health. Besides,” she said, sitting on the end of his bed and drawing her legs up under her, “I wanted to speak to you
before you vanished again.”

  “You think I’m likely to?” Giles concentrated on sorting out his shaving things one-handed, most emphatically not thinking about her perched on his bed.

  “I thought it possible. Though I would hope you know I’m not fool enough to believe I imagined it all, even if you had vanished by the light of day.”

  “Of course.” Giles said, at a loss. Hard to believe he’d held his own on the floor of the House of Lords when he couldn’t even keep his countenance before this one spirited woman. Blame it on the vicissitudes of a decade in exile. He’d sailed all the seas of the world and done well enough for himself to be able to undo some, at least, of the damage to the Hall, but he’d been careful to avoid the company of Englishmen and the places they gathered, and he hadn’t spoken to an Englishwoman of his own class in years. Add to that the hardships of the last month: sneaking back into England by the poorest, most uncomfortable means possible so he might not be recognized by any member of the ton; heartbreaking weeks spent searching the Hall in constant, mind-numbing disbelief at the infamous condition of his home; reduced finally to prowling his own halls by night, rarely seeing the McFerrans and almost never speaking to them for fear of being seen or overheard. It beat a man down, made him feel as if he were, indeed, more spirit than man.

  And this woman, whose beauty cut him like a knife, who spoke so plainly and was so unintimidated by him and so infuriatingly stubborn.... He had no defenses against her.

  Not against her persistence, nor her intelligence. Far from the usual air-brained society miss, Portia plowed on with unflagging determination, doing whatever was necessary. He had to look no further than the work she’d already done at the Hall to see she was a woman who would survive any indignity. How very different she was from the women he’d known, from Amelia, who’d been unwilling, or unable, to exchange more than mere commonplaces, who wanted gallant gestures and speeches like overblown roses, things he’d never mastered except on paper, and even then found himself unable to send.