Hesitantly she lifted the flask to her lips. Brandy, by the smell of it. She took a few sips, letting it burn slowly down her throat. A moment later she felt the heat spreading through her. He had been right. She needed it.
Ryne did not speak again until they were almost to Wicklow. By then he had been silent for so long that Amanda jumped at the unexpected sound of his voice.
“I applaud you, Amanda,” he said with a dark note of warning in his voice. “You have found in me a weakness no other woman ever dreamed was there.” He laughed harshly.
“You have baited the fox with your cunning ways and caught him in your trap. But don’t think you have tamed that beast yet, my sweet.”
Amanda had suffered enough of his sulking and his sarcasm. She hated having what had been the most beautiful experience of her life turned into an evening of regrets. She had hoped for too much in wanting the experience to matter to him as it did to her.
“Must you speak in riddles, Ryne? I have no notion what you are talking about,” she snapped.
“I am talking about my brother and myself. You read us both well. I thought you had set your cap for him, and I meant to save him from you. You made me think he had bedded you, and being the ‘gentleman’ he is, a wedding would inevitably follow. But I knew he would never take a bride who had shared my bed as well, so I—”
Amanda stiffened. “You are telling me you planned what happened tonight so your brother would not wed me?”
“In exacting terms, yes.”
Her heart felt as if it came crashing in. Their lovemaking had been a dirty, devious trick Ryne had planned. She floundered for a moment, her lower lip quivering, a dull agonizing ache sweeping over her. But she was determined not to let him see her pain. She whipped her head around to face him defiantly.
“You are a pompous boor, Ryne. What has your quarrel with your brother to do with me? And what concern is it of yours whom he marries?”
Ryne had seen the despair in her face, but he steeled himself against being drawn deeper into her tender trap.
“My brother needs protection against himself,” he answered harshly. “He is a fool about women, and even a poorer judge of them. In no time you would have wormed your way through his fortune. Though I can’t abide him, I wouldn’t stand by and see you wreak your havoc on his life.”
He stopped the carriage near the front steps of Wicklow. Amanda’s tiny fists were trembling. A short time ago she had thought she loved this man, this cold, arrogant bastard who thought he could dally with people’s lives.
Her voice shook with anger and contempt. “There is only one fool in your family, Ryne. And it is not Gardner.” With that she jumped down from the carriage and ran up the steps, speeding through the front door and slamming it in her wake.
“Amanda!” Ryne shouted after her, but she did not turn back. With an angry curse he snapped the reins and drove the team to the stable. It soothed him a little to brush down the grays and clean the harness after he had put the buggy away. But nothing, he thought, short of death, would ever calm the tempest that had started in his heart tonight on the riverbank.
***
“You are not looking so well, my dear.” Cecil Baldwin greeted Amanda with a jovial hug and a quick kiss to the cheek.
It was early afternoon. She had stayed in her room until she was certain Ryne was gone. She had slept fitfully, tormented by her own rampaging thoughts and the haunting distant whisper of her name in the deepness of her dreams. Twice she had awakened certain that someone was there. But each time there had been nothing but the long dim shadows cast by the moonlight.
Gussie brought the usual toast and tea at breakfast, but even that meager fare had been too much for Amanda’s dwindling appetite. She needed to talk to someone, and for that reason was doubly glad to see Cecil Baldwin. Talking with him might help get her mind off last night’s catastrophe.
“I slept poorly,” she answered, knowing there was no way to shield her tear-reddened eyes from his view. “May I get you a sherry, Mr. Baldwin?”
“That would be delightful, but in a moment. Emma Jones and Trudy will arrive within the hour. Meanwhile I insist you tell me what is the matter. A poor night’s sleep should not sap the color from your cheeks nor redden your eyes. Why, you look as if you have had a shock. Tell me, Amanda, have you been frightened?’
“Oh no,” she answered quickly. The eerie whispers she had heard in her dream were not what had left her trembling beneath the covers. It was Ryne Sullivan she could blame for her distress. “At least not recently,” she went on. “At first I found the house disturbing, but now I hardly notice the creaks and groans and the strange sounds at night. We are getting used to one another, Wicklow and I.”
“Humph. I am not convinced,” Cecil said emphatically. “I believe the atmosphere of this house is taking a toll on you. You will develop a nervous disposition staying here if you are not careful. Really, this monstrosity ought to be torn down.”
“Oh no, Mr. Baldwin. You mustn’t even say such. I do love Wicklow, just as it is.”
“Well—” He rolled his round eyes upward. “—it is beyond me how anyone could care for this mausoleum. The house is an affront to style and dignity.” He coughed. “But don’t you worry, little one. Once Emma and Trudy are here, you will fare much better.”
She smiled. “I’ll be glad when they have come. It has been more difficult than I thought, being alone.”
Cecil’s bushy gray brows lifted.
“I understood your cousin Ryne was staying here.”
She shuddered at the mention of Ryne’s name and turned, pretending a sudden interest in a miniature painting on a table.
“I seldom see Ryne. He might as well not be at Wicklow for all I know of his coming and going.”
“It’s just as well. He was always a wild one, that Ryne. Not levelheaded like his brother. Kept his mother in a dither, but they understood each other, those two, and there was no quarrel between them.” Cecil paced nervously around the drawing room as he talked.
Amanda hoped her appearance had not upset him as much as that. She would have to get hold of herself. It was done, after all, and there was no altering it. Her love affair, her hope, her dream, had spent itself like a shooting star in one brilliant but discordant chase through the heavens. It would shine no more. She must forget.
***
Emma and Trudy were settled in their rooms. They arrived a few minutes after Cecil, with only a few trunks and bundles. The hired driver obligingly carried the luggage up the stairs. Gussie prepared a lovely supper and when it was eaten, the ladies, already enjoying one another’s company, retired to the library for a pleasant evening of reading.
Trudy, it seemed, had a passion for reading, and the large supply of books brought her out of her shyness. She buzzed like a little bee about the novels she had read while in Richmond, and though Amanda was surprised at her education, she was pleased to have the young woman open up to her.
Once out of her shell, Trudy showed an effervescent quality, a bubbly, almost nervous way of talking. She entertained Amanda with her constant chattiness while Emma went up to get her sewing. Emma returned a short time later with an embroidered bag containing yarns and fabrics. The older woman seemed somewhat winded from climbing the stairs. Amanda wondered if it had been a mistake to put her on the third floor and asked again if they would not prefer rooms on the same floor as hers.
“No, my dear, I won’t hear of it.” She took a seat in a large comfortable chair. “It’s the long hours in the carriage that have tired me out. I am accustomed to climbing stairs.”
“If you are certain . . .” Amanda said, noticing again the heightened color in Emma’s ruddy cheeks.
“Of course I am. Now, you girls talk and leave me to my needlework.” Emma perched a pair of spectacles on her nose and threaded her needle. The usually talkative Emma proved to be the quiet one for the evening, busying herself with the intricate needlework she was doing on a sampler.
Amanda and Trudy left Emma to concentrate on the tiny lines of stitches. But after a few minutes, the conversation had bent its way toward talk of fashions and the coming round of late-summer parties to be held in Williamsburg. An hour had passed when Amanda got up to stretch her legs and noticed the progress on the sampler in Emma’s lap.
“That is lovely,” she commented. “I’m afraid I never learned to do as well with a needle.”
Emma stopped her work and looked up, her dark eyes twinkling.
“And neither has Trudy, though she tries hard enough.”
Trudy smiled. “No matter how hard I work at it, I shall never be as skilled as you, Aunt Emma.”
“Perhaps you will, my dear, when you have made as many stitches as I. But for tonight I have done all my old eyes will allow.” She folded the sampler and wrapped her yarns into small neat balls. “Trudy,” she said, rising and tucking the sewing bag beneath her arm, “let us say our good-nights. We must begin early tomorrow morning earning our keep.”
“Oh no,” Amanda said quickly. “You must rest a day.”
“Nonsense,” Emma said. “A morning with a cleaning cloth and pail will be just what’s needed to take the stiffness out of these old bones. And if you don’t mind my saying so, my dear, you could do with a long night of rest yourself.”
“I could indeed,” Amanda answered.
What a pleasure it was to have Emma and Trudy with her. They were like sunshine to a spring day. How had she gotten through the long evenings without them? Tonight they had kept her mind from dwelling on memories of the evening before when she had been on the riverbank and in Ryne’s arms.
A small flutter started in her belly and a flush of heat rippled under her skin. As it was, she had thought of him no more than a thousand times that day.
***
“Sleep well,” she called, waiting until the candle Trudy carried was out of sight in the stairwell.
She had to cross the landing of the main staircase again to get to her room. Below her the Turkish King stood, a gleam of moonlight reflecting from his glass eyes. It made him appear too frightening and lifelike and she hurried on by rather than look at him any longer.
Even Ezra had found the king inhospitable and sought another spot for the evening. Actually Amanda couldn’t remember having seen the bird since Emma and Trudy arrived. Undoubtedly the parrot was wary of strangers and would stay hidden until he grew accustomed to having them in the house.
The corridor seemed interminably still and dark. She knew she had forgotten to leave a candle burning in her room and could expect to find it as foreboding and empty as the long, shadowy hall.
She stopped for a moment at the doorway to the rose bedroom, wondering what it was that aroused her suspicions. The door. She remembered vaguely having left the door open. But now it was shut. Could Ryne possibly be . . . ? No. She was being stupid. She knew instinctively that it would be days before she saw Ryne again. He had made it apparent he wanted to avoid her.
She found herself forming his name on her lips. Hurriedly she went inside and shut the door. “No, no,” she said aloud. “I won’t think of him. I won’t.”
The candle she held cast a small moving circle of light over the floor and left the remainder of the room in semidarkness. Amanda couldn’t suppress the sob that came quickly and unexpectedly. She felt dejected and sad and really terribly alone, even knowing Emma and Trudy were in the house.
Slowly she went to the bedside table to light another candle. One little flame spawned another, and the circle of light grew and brightened the room. Amanda set the burning candles side by side on the dressing table, but she would not look in the mirror because she did not want to see the sadness in her eyes. She had been a fool, such a dreadful fool.
Her hands worked numbly at the row of pearl buttons that fastened her dress, but they stilled entirely when she heard the hollow scraping sound from a dark corner of her room. It was a sound like hands scratching at stone. For several seconds she felt as if her limbs were frozen. Someone was there, in her room. The someone who had come in and closed the door. And waited.
If ever she had known fear, she knew it then. Not only did she hear the scratching and clawing, but she saw a shadowed movement, like the lifting of a shoulder, from a figure in the corner beside the desk.
Her hand slipped behind her back to the dressing table and found the hard-backed hairbrush, the only item within reach that she could use as a weapon. From the corner the figure moved again as she watched.
“Who’s there?” she called out shakily, not knowing where she found the courage to speak. “Who is it?”
She saw the shadow move toward her, slowly and steadily.
“Who’s there?” came the shrill, mocking reply.
Chapter 9
“Ezra!”
The parrot, his feathers ruffled and puffed so that he looked immense, flew from his perch on the wall peg in the corner that also held her black shawl. He flew to an empty candle holder on the mirror frame. There the light reflected from his blue-green feathers and cast a shadowed image of his wickedly curved beak onto the wall.
Amanda breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed ridiculous now that she had been frightened by the movement of the bird spreading his wings and fluttering the silk shawl beneath his feet. But she was still in a quandary over how the bird had come to be locked in her room.
“How did you get here, Ezra?” she asked, approaching the parrot. They had become friends of a sort since she had fed him the bits of apple. Ezra hopped to the dressing table and strutted for a moment before he stopped to preen his feathers majestically in affectionate response to Amanda’s voice.
“Lovely,” he said.
She enjoyed having the bird in the house and hearing him quote those strange fragments of poetry that he must have learned decades ago on board Jubal Wicklow’s ship. What dark tales he might tell of the Golden Dawn or of the early days at Wicklow. But Ezra, like Wicklow, kept his secrets locked away and hidden like the silent empty rooms of the old house. Only occasionally would he utter a new phrase or mock the words she recited to him.
“Did you follow someone in?
“Nonsense,” the bird squawked. “Nonsense.”
Amanda tapped her shoulder and the bird made a graceful hop to sit there. Nonsense. That was Emma’s word. It dotted her conversation like pepper. Had Ezra been hiding and listening to the three of them talk all afternoon? What a sly old bird he was. He heard and saw all it seemed. Amanda wondered what strange things she might learn if only Ezra would tell.
“Come on now. I’ll put you out,” Amanda said, pausing to affectionately stroke the smooth green feathers on Ezra’s neck. She was thinking that Ezra must be fond of her, just as he must have been of Elise and Evelyn before her. “You wouldn’t like being locked in here all night.”
She walked slowly to the door and turned the porcelain knob carefully, not wanting to make a sudden move that might cause the parrot to grip her shoulder too tightly with his sharp and powerful talons. Gently she eased the door open.
“A good night to you, Ezra,” she said, offering the bird the freedom of the long hall and the opportunity to return to his favored spot on the shoulder of the Turkish King.
“Nonsense,” Ezra said loudly.
“Go on now,” she urged the bird along. So occupied was she with getting Ezra to leave her shoulder that she didn’t notice for a moment the faintly sweet scent of the air in the hall. It smelled of spices and flowers, as if someone in that room at the far end, where the door stood ajar, might be burning a peculiar Oriental incense.
The pleasant little sitting room had belonged to Evelyn and was part of the master chamber. For some inexplicable reason it was the sole room at Wicklow that Amanda had not thoroughly inspected. She had looked in a time or two, but always been met by such a sense of foreboding that she had simply put off going farther than the doorway.
Still, she had a precise image of the room in her mind. There was a
day couch beside the long windows, its delft velvet old and faded. The mantel had the familiar gargoyles carved in gray marble, and always they stared back at her when she stood at the door—as if warning her to stay away. The wallpaper, which had lasted well, though it was undoubtedly that chosen by Evelyn, was of a narrow blue stripe bordering rows of dainty primroses. The rug was still good. It must have been used little. And at some point in the past someone had removed Evelyn’s portrait from the library and hung it opposite the mantel.
“Evelyn, Evelyn.” The voice drifted in the dark still air of the hall. Amanda stiffened as she heard it a third time. Who was calling Evelyn? The whisperer? The shade of Jubal Wicklow? But it was not yet midnight. She had never heard the whispers so clearly.
With a squawk, Ezra left her shoulder and flew in that direction, disappearing into the room, which seemed to give off a dim glow of light. Her curiosity aroused even as her fear mounted, Amanda followed. Perhaps it was true that Jubal’s spirit still lingered at Wicklow. Perhaps he could not rest until he knew what had become of Evelyn. Evelyn, who had pale blond hair and a serene face and silver eyes that even from the portrait seemed to look through time. Evelyn, whom Jubal Wicklow had loved so deeply.
“Is someone there?” she asked softly.
The reply was a fierce flapping of Ezra’s wings and what sounded like a frightened screech. Amanda hurried through the door. Before she was fully inside, she was conscious that the light she thought she had seen was gone. In the center of the room she stopped quickly. She felt as if she had been engulfed by a sudden flow of cool misty air. A moment later she heard the door swing shut behind her. That sound was followed by what she perceived to be light, shuffling footsteps. The footsteps were followed by the low, abrasive sound of stone scraping stone.
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