A Man Of Many Talents

by Deborah Simmons

  “Lord Moreland!” Miss Parkinson’s calm voice was a reassurance.

  “Over here,” Christian called, even as he moved a bit more to keep Emery confused. His bearings were good, so he figured he could find his way back to the stairs even in the dark, but he would rather not attempt it. Especially with Emery lurking about. So the glow of Miss Parkinson’s lantern, when it arrived, was most welcome.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “Emery kicked over the lantern,” Christian said, hazarding a guess as he looked down and saw the lamp on its side.

  “If you hadn’t practically knocked me down, it wouldn’t have happened,” Emery said, effectively confirming Christian’s speculation. The young man was responsible, all right, but was the mishap accidental or deliberate?

  “I did not practically knock you down,” Christian said, not bothering to hide his contempt. “And you’re lucky these crates didn’t catch fire and send the whole place up,” he added, as he righted his lantern.

  Emery blanched but made no further excuse or argument, perhaps stunned to silence by what might have happened. Christian could only hope the peace and quiet would last more than a moment.

  “Perhaps we should remove all these old things to prevent such an occurrence,” Miss Parkinson said. The Governess looked a bit shaken but game, as always, and Christian spared a moment of admiration for her fortitude.

  “I don’t see why you must come down here and muck about, anyway,” Emery said in a petulant tone. He had recovered his tongue—and his ill temper—all too quickly. “So far all you’ve done is filch some wine.”

  Christian straightened himself to his full six feet two inches and stared down his nose at the boy in his best imitation of the earl’s most regal pose. Then he lifted his brows ever so slightly, daring the youth to say anything more. The boy paled again and started sputtering.

  “Emery!” Miss Parkinson cut in. “I realize that our nerves are strained by the falling lantern, but there is no call to insult his lordship.”

  “There was no call for him to push me, either!” Emery said mulishly.

  Christian had to stifle the urge to turn to the Governess and proclaim, “He started it!” Instead, he tried to stand on his dignity or whatever noble mien he was supposed to possess. It was the correct recourse, apparently, for Emery soon sputtered an apology.

  “I beg your pardon. My lord,” he added, in a less than sincere tone.

  But having his bellyful of dramatics, Christian had already turned his attention back to his investigation. Before Emery could do anything to stop him, he reached out to shove the nearest crate out of the way. And what he saw made him smile grimly. Stepping back, he gestured to his hostess with a sweep of his arm.

  “I’m guessing this is what caused the noises we heard last night,” he said. To his gratification, Miss Parkinson moved closer and peered downward, then looked up at him with at least a modicum of admiration. Christian fairly preened… until Emery spoke.

  “Nonsense!” he blustered in a poor imitation of the colonel. “Why, those tools could have been here for centuries!”

  Christian glanced down at the hammer and chisel, then back at the flustered Emery. “If so, why is there no dust upon them?”

  “B-because you blew it away!” Emery said, his mouth a petulant curl. Christian figured the boy might break down and bawl at any minute. Or, better, take his tools and go home.

  Nearly smiling at the thought, Christian squatted down to get a closer look. When he set his lantern nearby, the marks upon the old stone could be easily discerned in the lamplight. “What the devil were you doing?” Christian asked idly.

  “I… I? What do you mean?” Emery said, foiling Christian’s attempt to catch him at his game. Apparently the scholar was not quite as stupid as he seemed.

  “What is it?” Miss Parkinson said, bending over to gift him with a whiff of lilacs, especially delightful among the must of the cellars. Christian drew a deep breath, then tried to steady himself. Now was not the time to become distracted again, even if his hostess was leaning close.

  “Someone was hammering at the foundation,” she murmured. “But why?”

  Christian ran his fingers over the indentations. “I imagine whoever it was is looking for something,” he said. He glanced up at her. “Perhaps your family treasure?”

  Both Miss Parkinson and Emery scoffed at that, but Christian continued to study the damage. “Look. These were not made at random. It appears as though they were trying to loosen a stone in the wall.” To what purpose? A hidden room behind? Some sort of secret storage place? The thing looked rock-solid to him, as only medieval foundations could be.

  “Well, I certainly don’t understand it,” Miss Parkinson said.

  Of course not. You’re far too prosaic to go knocking about for clandestine booty, Christian wanted to reply. And that was all to the good, for there was nothing he disliked more than women who swooned over a bit of fancy.

  The Governess would never swoon.

  “Most likely it is some housebreaker intent upon gaining entry to the main building,” Emery said.

  Christian rose to his feet. “I would think he’d do better to go through a door or a window than chip away at the cellar walls. The only thing he is likely to find behind there is good Devon dirt,” Christian noted with a nod toward the stone. He turned toward Miss Parkinson, only to discover, to his delight, that she stood so close that he could breathe in lilacs and her. “Well, there’s your ghost.”

  Her reaction to his words was almost comical. But a hairbreadth away, she looked up at him, her eyes wide and her lips forming an “O” as if in dismay. And then, abruptly, Christian realized just what he had said. If the specter was no more than some furtive hammering, then his work here was done. He could leave. He could be done with the blustering colonel, the mystical Mercia, and the supremely annoying Emery forever, as well as the only woman who had ever disdained his kiss. Christian stared at her. She stared back. And then they both started talking at once.

  “But, of course, we have yet to discover the perpetrator,” Christian said.

  “But, my lord, you haven’t really routed the ghost,” Miss Parkinson protested in a rather breathless voice. “This can hardly be construed as physical evidence, one way or another, of the specter’s presence or disappearance. After all, the potential buyers and the solicitor saw something they described as a phantom in the great hall itself.”

  “You’re right. I still have to take care of that,” Christian said. And when he looked down into the luscious lilac-colored eyes of his hostess, he forgot about the ghost, about Emery, even about how she had spurned him. Of course, it was hard to remember the spurning when her eyes were all soft and warm with something other than disdain, something almost like…

  “Well, I think it’s all nonsense!” Emery said loudly, breaking the spell that had held them both. “How you can possibly equate some old tools from a foiled housebreaking that probably occurred years ago to the specter that has haunted Sibel Hall these past weeks is beyond me!”

  He turned to Miss Parkinson. “I told you that this… nobleman would know nothing of such things!” Emery practically spat out the words, then turned on his heel to march away. But his grand exit was spoiled by his lack of a lantern.

  “Cousin Abigail, would you please light my way?” he asked stiffly.

  Recovering the wits that had temporarily deserted him, Christian didn’t know what to make of Emery’s exit. Did temper actually drive the boy, or was he trying to divert attention from the cellars? Or, worse yet, was he trying to separate Christian from his hostess? Christian’s eyes narrowed. It appeared that Miss Parkinson had no choice but to lead the boy away, but Christian had no intention of leaving just yet. Indeed, he wanted to explore the place more thoroughly, to see if there were any other marks or evidence of tampering. And, of course, there was the old wine cellar…

  “I think I’ll stay here and have a look around,” Christian said, tho
ugh he couldn’t deny his disappointment at her departure, especially when she stood there, gazing up at him for a long moment, as though undecided. “Why don’t you give Emery your lantern and stay here?”

  Christian knew the moment the words had left his mouth that he had pushed too far. His hostess assumed a wary expression and took a step back. “I will leave the, uh, investigating to you, my lord,” she said rather stiffly, though she again hesitated. “Are you sure you’ll be… all right?”

  Christian couldn’t decide whether her question constituted a slur upon his manhood or heartfelt concern, but he nodded. “I’ll be fine,” he said. As long as Emery doesn’t cause any more problems. He gave the belligerent youth a warning look, then watched the boy and Miss Parkinson move toward the steps, two figures in a pool of light that drifted through the cavernous space.

  As he caught himself mooning again, Christian decided that it might be best if Miss Parkinson didn’t return. He had a feeling he would need all his wits about him down here in the bowels of Sibel Hall, where any manner of trouble might be lurking—and not all of it involving a specter.

  7

  Abigail mounted the stone steps with mixed feelings, struggling against an unaccountable urge to slow her pace. For one wild moment she wondered if there actually was some otherworldly presence behind her, tugging at her skirts, pulling her back down toward the cellars—and Lord Moreland.

  “I told you this viscount would be of no use to you!” Emery grumbled, dragging her from her thoughts. Any other time, she might have been grateful for the interruption, but not here, not just now, and not to hear the same old litany. Her cousin had made the same complaint so many times that Abigail was heartily sick of it.

  “And I told you that no one else would come,” Abigail said, wearily repeating her defense yet again. Emery knew Lord Moreland had not been her first choice, for she had explained her actions to all three of her cousins, even as she undertook them. After the specter’s initial appearance, she had sought out the learned community, those scholars at Oxford and Cambridge who, by their reputations, would be trustworthy seekers of knowledge.

  They had failed to respond to her letters more often than not. And the men of science, even those who once had been her father’s friends and colleagues, had proved equally uncooperative. The Royal Society, that most august of bodies devoted to new fields of study, had dismissed her entreaties outright, and most of the individual members she had contacted had scoffed at her request. Those who had not had demanded an exorbitant sum before venturing forth in the name of study. Offended, Abigail had replied that if she had that sort of money, she wouldn’t need their services in the first place.

  With the pool of qualified gentlemen shrinking, she had been forced to seek aid from, well, the Last Resort, or so she had deemed him. Lord Moreland was not a researcher in any sense of the word and certainly not a scholar, as Emery kept reminding her. Indeed, from what she could ascertain, the man was an idle, titled rogue, a rake even, the type she held in the utmost contempt when she considered such fellows at all, which was as infrequently as possible. Worse yet, he appeared to have a penchant for notoriety that she did not care for in the least. But that notoriety was what had brought him to Abigail’s attention. Hadn’t he exposed the most famous ghost of the decade, perhaps even the century, as a hoax? He must have some sort of… affinity for such things.

  “I just don’t understand why you had to call in an outsider,” Emery muttered.

  Abigail stifled a sigh. Of course Emery didn’t understand. Sibel Hall wasn’t his house, so to him the phantom was an object of interest, while to Abigail the thing was a nuisance. It was most vexing. Abigail had been toiling away in virtual servitude when out of the blue she had been gifted with the Hall, a rambling country home that she deemed worth a small fortune. But just as soon as she took possession of the property, she began to hear tales of a ghost that was frightening away the servants and, worse yet, prospective buyers as well.

  The cousins claimed the apparition had been in the family for years, making an appearance only when he was displeased with the actions of his heirs, which might, they suggested, include her plans to sell the place. But as far as Abigail was concerned, she and her cousins were distant connections at best, so why would they be any more palatable than a stranger? And, if the spirit were protesting her efforts, why didn’t he show himself to her personally? Then at least she could try to reason with him.

  Abigail was well known for her ability to soothe, if not the savage ghost, then a variety of annoying persons, including her rather astringent godmother. Unfortunately, the specter, legendary or no, appeared only to other residents of the manor, the servants, and prospective buyers, who took one look at the ghastly white form and lost interest in Sibel Hall. Permanently.

  It all seemed an excessive waste of energy, for surely anyone, dead or alive, could see that neither Abigail nor any of the threadbare residents of the manor could afford to maintain it. Indeed, she was hard-pressed to keep those servants who hadn’t fled, for her bequest did not include the wherewithal to actually live at the Hall for any length of time.

  Not that Abigail was complaining. No one could have been more surprised at the news of her inheritance, especially since she had met her great-uncle Bascomb exactly once in her life, at her parents’ funeral. He had appeared duly unimpressed with her, warning her that she would have to make her own way in the world, as he was already supporting enough destitute relatives.

  Of course, Abigail had no intention of foisting herself off on a man she didn’t even know. Instead, she had taken a position as companion to her godmother, who, though not exactly what one would call a termagant, nonetheless had reminded Abigail often enough of the charity involved in her action.

  Abigail had already spent many long years attending the lady, and indeed had seemed destined for a life of stifling duty, when she received notification from the solicitor about Sibel Hall. It was a veritable godsend. Although far too large for her alone, the property could be sold, providing enough money to allow Abigail to set up her own household. Nothing grand, mind you, but a place of her own, a tidy little cottage where she could do as she pleased and never have to wait upon anyone except herself. It had seemed too good to be true.

  And so it was. The buyers had fled, the larder was increasingly bare, and the man she had asked for help seemed to do little more than disturb the tenants of the place, especially herself.

  “Well, obviously the fellow is accomplishing nothing,” Emery said, as if reading her thoughts. “Just tell him to be on his way, and let’s be rid of him!”

  The suggestion sent a frisson of horror through Abigail that could not be explained away in terms of foodstuffs or potential sales, and she reached for the brooch that hung on a chain beneath her gown, absently running her fingers over the surface while she tried to understand the odd sensation. Naturally, she did not want Lord Moreland to leave while the threat of the specter remained, she reasoned. After all, nothing had been proved to her satisfaction concerning its existence.

  But her dismay went far deeper, and Abigail knew it. Truth to tell, her sudden anxiety had nothing to do with the ghost and everything to do with Lord Moreland. Abruptly aware of what she was doing, she took her hand from her throat, only to find it was trembling, a strange reaction indeed. Halting her steps, Abigail drew in a deep, steadying breath.

  Inviting Viscount Moreland to Sibel Hall had seemed a logical conclusion to her problem when she had penned the letter to his family seat. But the reality of the situation was something else entirely. From the moment he entered the study, he had upended all of her expectations. How could she have imagined he would be so handsome, so witty, so very alive? Abigail told herself that such attributes were what made him a rake and what made such men appealing to less-discerning women. Nonetheless, she had never felt more plain, more dull, and more dead inside.

  As had become her habit in the past years, Abigail sought to arm herself with the fac
ts, and the facts were that this promising young nobleman had accomplished nothing in his life beyond the typical ton pursuits of gaming and attracting females. Abigail reminded herself constantly of his failings, seeking them out and latching on to each one tenaciously. And yet… it was far more difficult to disapprove of someone in person than when reading what accounts she could find of his dissipations.

  “You may rest assured that he will find nothing else,” Emery insisted, interrupting her thoughts once more, and Abigail scolded herself for her inattention. It was not like her to be so impolite, and yet Emery was straining her patience with his constant whining. It reminded her all too well of her godmother and years spent in less pleasant circumstances. “I am not wholly convinced that those items that he claimed as evidence are indicative of anything at all, let alone the ghost. Spurious logic, indeed!”

  “Perhaps,” Abigail admitted. Somehow, she could not envision the misty form of Sir Boundefort brandishing hammer and chisel. After all, wouldn’t a specter use more deadly implements if it were intent upon violence? Or wouldn’t it possess otherworldly powers that made such objects unnecessary? Abigail shook her head. “But those tools undoubtedly caused the noises we heard last night.”

  Emery snorted. “Spurious logic again! I tell you, any loose board could have been rattling in the wind. And as for Lord Moreland’s purported find, I wouldn’t put it past him to have placed them there himself, so that he would look good in our eyes, instead of wholly ineffectual!”

  Abigail gasped at such an accusation, taken aback that Emery would so malign their guest, but her cousin didn’t appear the slightest bit remorseful. “After all, he made quick work of the locks,” Emery pointed out. “Who is to say the man had not opened those doors before today?”