The Haunting of Lady Sophie

by Marly Mathews

  Besides, how could he even like her? Let alone look at her? Not after what she had done to him the first time they had met. He only pursued her so he could torment her and gain satisfaction out of her discomfort. That was the only practical explanation there was.

  “I am touched that you find me so very amusing,” Redding declared softly, as he came closer to her. She wished he would keep his distance whenever he was in close proximity to her, he made her feel so strange, she almost felt as if she were floating on a cloud when he was around. “Have I told you that you look like Lady Starlight tonight, Sophie?” She smiled. His voice made her tingle all over. She gasped, as she watched her dress start to change shade. It was turning crimson red again. “Oh, no,” she whispered. She inhaled deeply, took charge of her wayward powers, and watched as the dress went back to being mourning black. “That is an interesting trick,” Redding murmured. “Show me what else you can do.”

  “That is it!” Lord Huntingdon said, “I don’t want you left alone with him much longer so I am going to make the book that houses my original deed and will, fall from the shelves. You pick it up, procure the documents, and show it to that little prick who now has my title and is enjoying my wife’s money with such blatant disregard for her well-being.

  “That bloody bastard is set on taking the Georgian Estate we bought in Devonshire and making it into a pleasure house for his mistress, where he intends to hold parties the likes of which would make your cheeks and ears burn red! Althea and I had traveled the Continent searching for art and other furnishings to make Huntingdon Park our home. Denham Abbey was never a home it was more like a mausoleum. I will not have him chasing his ghastly mistress naked through our love nest!”

  She giggled again, this time so far into the fits, she wondered if she would ever be able to stop.

  “Have you lost control of your wits, Lady Sophie? It would be such a shame if your great talent and great beauty were to be wasted because you are a hysterical creature,” Redding’s voice shot through her and struck her like an arrow in the heart.

  That sobered her right up. She sat up in her prim and proper way, and gave him a withering stare. “I am not hysterical, sir. You may just cast that ugly thought right out of your head immediately. I am probably saner than you are.”

  “I sincerely doubt that,” he snorted.

  “If Simone has her way, she will drag you to the altar in no time, and you will be stark raving mad after you marry her. Let me assure you of that, Lord Redding,” she said primly.

  He scowled at her. “When did I ever say I wanted to marry that odious girl? She annoys me to no end. I couldn’t imagine marrying a girl like her, she would harp me to my grave! And you keep throwing me at her like I am some kind of human sacrifice.” The sound of the large book falling from a high shelf startled both of them. It made such a jarring thud that her heart stopped beating for the briefest moment.

  She steeled herself and stood up. Her resolve could not waver. She could not reveal Lord Huntingdon’s will and deed to his Estate to everyone at the ball. She would be ridiculed for the rest of her life as being totally insane, and she would never be able to shake the moniker, Silly Sophie.

  Slowly, she walked over to the book and carefully bent down to pick it up. Her hand tingled from the residual supernatural energy on it.

  “Here let me put that back for you,” Redding murmured, suddenly appearing at her side. She shivered, and stepped away from him.

  “Would you please keep your distance, sir? And no, you cannot put this book back, I want this book,” she said, opening its leather bindings, she almost sneezed at the heavy dust that tickled her nose.

  “I hadn’t realized you were interested in different types of spirits. Does your father have to worry about you becoming a Lushington?” he asked, peering over her shoulder, and once again disobeying her wish to have a decent amount of space between them.

  She rolled her eyes. It would figure that Lord Huntingdon would hide the documents in a book that was about spirits of the alcoholic kind. She rolled her eyes.

  “I do like the occasional brandy before I go to bed,” she said, hoping her tiny fib would go over with him. Her mother was the one who liked to take a brandy before bed. She had never considered it before tonight, but after tonight, she just might need one in order to lull herself to sleep!

  “Well there is nothing wrong with that,” he muttered, studying her intensely. “My mother even likes to have a wee dram of something before bed as well. She says it calms the nerves.” She wished he would look at something else in the room instead of her. The way he gobbled her up with his eyes made her feel so vulnerable—so naked.

  “Open that book up, dear Sophie, and dash out of this room as quickly as you can, for that man is about to do something both of you will later regret. Especially if you are caught! Hurry now, there’s a good girl!”

  She obeyed him without hesitating, and once the legal documents were in her hand, she sped out of the room with Redding close on her heels.

  She stopped to catch her breath, and had Redding softly whispering in her ear. Why could she not shake him? He wanted to stick to her like a bloody second skin! His breath sent tingles of delight shooting through her.

  “What do you intend to do with that?” he inquired nonchalantly, taking the documents from her, and studying them with his quizzical eyes.

  She groaned. Now, she would have to reclaim the bloody thing from him without actually touching his hands. Gloved or not, the extraordinary sensations that jolted through her whenever they touched were not something she wanted to experience at this critical juncture.

  As he read over it, his eyes widened, and he let out a low whistle. “If this is genuine, someone isn’t going to be a happy little lord—or should I say bastard.”

  “Of course it is genuine…” But how in the world was she supposed to prove that? She looked to Lord Huntingdon in exasperation.

  “Fret not, dear lady,” he said, bowing to her gallantly. “I have the key to blowing the secret wide open. It will be like we have thrown a stick of dynamite on it!”

  “But how?” she asked softly, wishing that Redding would just take his leave.

  “Mention the name Leticia, and you shan’t have any issue. That is the name of dear Larry’s mistress, and as his wife thinks he is devoted to her and only her, he doesn’t want that carefully crafted façade shattered. Given that motivation, he shall confess, of that I am sure. Wilhelmina isn’t the type of lady you want to cross. She would be murderous, if she ever discovered Leticia existed.

  “Willy has a temper on her the likes of which I have never seen in a woman. She is a literal hellcat when she is in high dudgeon. Why she will rip him to shreds! There is only one person in this life or the Afterlife that my nephew fears, and he is married to her!”

  “You have haunted him like the most persistent poltergeist, and he still has not crumbled beneath the pressure. I don’t know if that will work. He seems terribly determined to stay the course,” Sophie said.

  “Who the ruddy hell are you talking about?” Redding asked, “I don’t haunt anyone and I have no mistress. Nor do I have any need to crumble under pressure.”

  “Please, hush up, Lord Redding. I can’t hear myself bloody well think, and I am getting a thundering migraine!”

  “Oh of course, you need silence so you can hear the other voices in your head,” he concluded.

  She scowled at him, and resisted slapping him on the arm, as she would do if one of her brothers made such a ridiculous comment.

  “Wait a bloody second,” he said, his green eyes infused with what she could only assume was him connecting the dots. “Are you seeing one of your jolly spirits again? Oh, well that changes things considerably, doesn’t it?”

  She nodded her head, and cast her eyes downward to the wooden flooring. “Yes, and why pray tell are you interested?” She didn’t think he cared about the good spirits. The only reason they wanted her was because she could see and va
nquish the evil ones.

  “Why do you think I was trying to convince you to join the Magical Intelligence Agency? They want you for your unique talents. There is a department there that needs your services greatly. As an all seeing Soul Seer, you are highly prized. You could be a top notch Soul Protector as well.

  “Fortunately, the kinds of spirits I can sense are not in residence at this address, and for that I am eternally thankful. Unlike you, I can’t see them as if they are real. I only see black wisps, and it took many years of arduous training to open my sight to that. I am eternally grateful that I didn’t have such a burden when I was a child. I am pretty certain it would have driven me mad.

  “For you, it must have been a living nightmare, as you can see both good and evil spirits, can you not?”

  She nodded her head, and looked away from him. There was never any point in denying it. He had her completely figured out. He always had.

  He grunted, still inspecting the documents. He was an extremely intelligent man and having him assess her in such a way made her feel as if she was suddenly naked. Still, he didn’t rub her the wrong way. She delighted in being with him, and it wasn’t something she wanted to admit to anyone else—ever.

  Sophie sighed. She might as well confess all to Redding and hope he believed her.

  “I need to do something for the late Lord Huntingdon and trust me, it’s something I don’t want to do. I am going to humiliate myself in front of everyone. I’m going to look so damn divvy.” Her voice went low, strangled by the extreme emotions struggling through her.

  He stared at her with deep concern glimmering in his eyes. She had expected some sort of a clever retort to her admission, instead, all she received was sympathy and worry from him.

  Opening the secret doorway to the library, he reached for her arm, and dragged her back into the beautiful library. “There are far too many eyes and ears out there. You forget, this is not a magical household. We need somewhere private to continue this sort of conversation.” His grip on her softened, and the guarded expression in his eyes mellowed. “Has it ever occurred to you that you don’t need to do it your way, Sophie? While you spurned our professional partnership, I couldn’t possibly hold a grudge against you. To the contrary, I am going to offer you something I have rarely offered anyone else.”

  “And what is that something?” she asked, both dreading and anticipating the answer.

  Lord Redding was known for his penchant for gaming houses, music halls, and any other kind of fun to be had. Most of the ladies in the ton called him a wild rake of a man and said that any mother would be a fool to allow her daughter to marry him.

  That was probably one reason why Simone pursued him at every single social engagement in which they both were in attendance. Not only was he in line for a dukedom, but he was also someone that the other ladies mothers didn’t want their daughters to go near. They had them avoid him like the plague. Opening him up to ladies like Simone—no fortune, and no prospects.

  “I am going to offer you my help. Together you and I can break the new Lord Huntingdon into doing everything he should have done in the first place. However, it is going to take time to enact, and it’s going to take some creative problem-solving, are you up to that, my dear?”

  “I am up to anything, as long as I don’t have to hang myself out to dry in front of people who already think I am barking mad.”

  “What is that young buck saying?” Lord Huntingdon’s ghost demanded. “I want you to do this for me tonight! I have waited long enough, Lady Sophie. You must not make me wait any longer. It is not to be borne!”

  “I cannot. We have to wait. I simply can’t do it tonight. Lord Huntingdon, please try to understand my side of this. Please, I beg of you.”

  She could see by the enraged expression he wore that he wouldn’t see it her way. They rarely did. This was where Seraphina came in handy. Seraphina knew how to keep the spirits at bay and kept them from haranguing her to death. She could be annoying at times, but she was also terribly protective of her.

  “No! You do it now! If you do not, the hell my girls are in will continue! They are staying with her cousin and his wife hates her! That woman is such a foul little chit to them!”

  “I will ask my mother to invite your wife and children to stay with us at Rayne House. They will be safe and comfortable there. Many might think our townhouse is creepy, but in truth there isn’t a more secure place in Mayfair, to my knowledge.”

  She watched his eyes continue blazing with supernatural energy. Books started to fly off the shelves. The globe of the world started spinning, and the lights flickered.

  “What the bloody hell is going on, Sophie? He isn’t going to stir up a fuss, is he? I heard new spirits are highly unstable. He could break this house apart with his wayward supernatural energy,” Redding said, looking at her and what he would see as a space of thin air with a look of annoyance on his face. “We have to protect the innocents that are here. His wrath should only be focused on his nephew!”

  “The former Lord Huntingdon doesn’t like the fact that I am not going to confront the new Lord Huntingdon tonight. He says his wife and daughters are living in absolute hell.”

  “Blast and damn, we can do it tonight after the ball if he is that intent upon making his nephew get his comeuppance. But that is my last offer! Do you hear me, Lord Huntingdon?

  “I will not allow Sophie to put her sanity and her reputation at risk by degrading herself in front of a bunch of idiotic aristocrats who have no idea of any worlds beyond the boring one they live in.”

  “Lord Redding, you are one of those idiotic aristocrats!” she said, fighting the urge to fall into another fit of giggles.

  It was something she did when she was incredibly nervous, and it was a habit she had yet to break no matter how hard she tried.

  “No, there is nothing boring or idiotic about us, darling Sophie. We have the worlds of magic at our fingertips, and our minds are open, not closed like a wardrobe.”

  “So, he’s a witch too, then?” Lord Huntingdon grunted.

  “Males usually prefer warlock or wizard, but witch works too,” she muttered.

  “Sophie, Sophie…” her father’s harried voice carried to them from outside of the library.

  She went stock still, frozen with trepidation.

  Biting her lip, she met Redding’s gaze. “If my father finds me in here, alone with you, he will have a fit of monumental proportions! You don’t want to see my father when he has lost his temper!” She looked madly to the door and reached out to grip Redding’s arm. “You need to disappear right now! Go on, off you go!” Her father would find the entrance soon, and if she were caught with Redding alone, she would be thrown into a scandal, of which she might not be able to recover from.

  A scandal that would circulate like wildfire through the wagging tongues of the ton. She would go from being the one who was daffy at the best of times, to being known as having loose morals, and she couldn’t bear that. She would rather have everyone believe she was slightly mad over having a ruined reputation. She would become more of an outcast than she was now if that happened.

  “It is too late for me to do anything now,” Redding muttered.

  Too late! Fiddlesticks! He didn’t want to do anything! The hidden door opened, revealing her father in all of his terrible glory. She braced herself for a volcanic reaction, the likes of which would have Redding taking a fit, but alas, her father merely stood on the threshold and stared at her silently, his expression unreadable.

  After a few moments, she mustered enough nerve to speak without her voice breaking.

  “Papa, however did you find me?” she asked innocently, searching his visage for some kind of a hint about he was going to react. So far, so good, he seemed entirely unaffected by the entire debacle she found herself squarely in the middle of.

  “Charlotte grew alarmed when you left Lord Redding, Lady Montagu, herself and Simone. When you didn’t return within a respectable amou
nt of time, she knew something had to be done. Being a good dutiful sister, she came for me as she could not leave the twins alone for long. There is no telling what sort of magical mischief they could wreak while watchful eyes were away.

  “I determined fairly shortly that you were most likely in the grand Library this house boasts, though I confess, I did not think you would make your very own magical doorway into it. You know you must act with caution when using your talents in a non-magical home, Sophie. I thought your mother and I had taught you better than that!” His chastisement made her cheeks redden.

  “I did no such thing, Papa. I would not conjure a doorway in a house like this! I know how important it is for us to veil our world from the non-magic kind!”

  “You did conjure the doorway, Lady Sophie. That was how I found you. I sensed the magical imprint,” Redding confessed.

  Her father let out a soft chuckle. “This comes as no surprise. My sweet Sophie has been conjuring doorways since she could walk. She caused her mother and me no end of grief when the little poppet would disappear and we would spend oodles of time just tracking her down.

  “Fortunately, she had her favourite haunts, and so we never lost her for long, but let me tell you, she had a magical nursemaid as soon as she did her first vanishing act!

  “When she popped out that first day the unfortunate nursemaid fainted dead away. It took three long drags of smelling salts to wake her. When she did wake, she ran out of Castle Rayne screaming like a madwoman. I have never seen such a hysterical creature before! It took me and a few of the footmen to subdue her long enough for me to manipulate her memory of the day’s events.

  “I suppose it was my fault for not employing a magical nanny like my dear wife wanted, but Simone never had any magical accidents, so I guess that is why I wasn’t worried about Sophie and Sylvie. We determined somewhat shortly that Simone’s talents were rather lacking. Sophie and Sylvie’s thrived as soon as they hit the age of one year.”