“Well, I’m not,” he retorted.
“It doesn’t matter,” Abigail said, and all traces of laughter faded away, to be replaced by the Governess, in full form.
Christian frowned at both her transformation and her dismissal of the subject. It did matter, and he wanted to protest her acceptance of such treatment with a shout, raging at the injustice. But, of course, that would not be very scholarly, an observation that made him even angrier. He felt like snatching the spectacles from his pocket and smashing the damn things beneath his foot. They were probably what had given him the headache.
Christian set his teeth. Suddenly he was furious—with that idiot woman, with Abigail for her steadfast composure, and with himself because he could do little except return Mrs. Milner’s rudeness. Yet even as he fought against his frustration he realized that there was something else he could do.
He could make sure that Abigail never received another cut like that one. He could make her his viscountess, his future countess, take her to court, lavish her with jewels and fine clothes and servants to grant her every whim, and build her a house, the most beautiful, tasteful, modern house ever created. And then let anyone disparage her!
Yet instead of easing his frustration the plan only pained him, for Christian knew Abigail would never agree to such a proposal. She didn’t care about any of that and didn’t want to marry anyone, least of all him.
* * * * *
When Alf heard about Christian’s disappointing trip to Dowsett Manor, he snorted. “Of course the owner’s not going to know anything!” he said, shaking his head. “You have to go to the people in the know, the ones who wash the dirty linen, if you get my meaning. Let me pay a visit to the servants’ hall, and I’ll find out more than a dozen calls upon the witless gentry will get you.”
Christian took him up on the offer and was not disappointed. When the villager returned a few hours later, he had a satisfied grin on his face. “The house has changed hands several times over the years, so there’s no sense looking for any more of the bad blood between the original families.” Alf paused, to grin wickedly at Christian. “In fact, our Bascomb didn’t seem to have an aversion to his old neighbor. Quite the opposite.” When he leaned close and lowered his voice dramatically, Christian hoped whatever he had to impart didn’t involve any more mention of madness in the blood.
“I heard from an old stablehand who’s been there since he was a lad. Lady Chestleham used to go out riding, always to the line of oaks near the edge of the property. And she didn’t want anyone to attend her. Well, our man being curious, one time he followed her and found nothing but her horse standing there, the rider nowhere in sight.
“Well, he fussed and worried and didn’t know what to do, but knowing he wasn’t supposed to follow, he didn’t say anything. He went back to the stables, and lo and behold, the lady of the house rode right up later that day. Knowing his betters, or at least human nature, our man figured she was meeting someone up there, and he was glad that he didn’t come upon them, doing the deed right there in the woods!”
Christian frowned.
“You see?” Alf asked, as though he were dense. “Lady Chestleham was meeting old Bascomb, going through the tunnel he had specially made for her. Probably had that bath put in for just that sort of dallying, too!” Alf winked.
Christian held up a hand to stop the flow of information from the villager. He had no interest in the affairs of the neighbors. Nor did the report of their antics help him in the slightest. Instead, he felt the now familiar swell of aggravation at the knowledge that the tunnel seemed totally unrelated to the haunting, as well as yet another waste of his time.
For a man who had once pursued life with ease, Christian found himself facing a whole slew of disappointments. Although the whole house was abuzz with the prospect of a buyer returning with Mr. Smythe, the specter had not shown itself, making Christian’s effort to force the villain’s hand unsuccessful. He cursed under his breath. The days were passing, each more frustrating than the last.
Sensing his mood, Alf slipped away, leaving Christian alone near the servants’ hall, where he remained lost in thought until a small, stout female in an apron and cap came barreling into the room. At first he thought Alf was chasing her in some misguided romantic pursuit, but she was too hysterical for that, wailing and jabbering nonsensically. Christian tried to stop her, but she flailed like a wild thing, knocking him aside on her way to the door. She flung it open with a screech, then fled, and it was only then that Christian made sense of her screaming.
It was something about a ghost.
18
Christian skidded to a halt on the tiles of the great hall, only to glance around in disappointment. He had half expected to run right into the specter, corporeal or not, but the space was just as dim and deserted as usual. He swore under his breath, pacing the area until Abigail arrived, breathless, behind him.
“He’s gone.” Christian cursed, unable to hide his frustration with a scholarly pose. Just once, he’d like to get his hands around the neck of the formless thing or, better yet, around the neck of the person responsible for it.
“Wait. I think I see something up there,” Abigail said, pointing to the fretwork. “Put your spectacles on, and perhaps you may see it, as well.”
“I don’t need my spectacles,” Christian said through set teeth. But he moved closer to the carved wood and looked upward. There was something. It appeared to be a bit of white, perhaps a piece of the ghost’s costume that had caught and held.
“I’m going up for a closer look,” Christian said to Abigail over his shoulder. Grabbing a lantern, he headed toward the door that now had no lock at all, thanks to Alf. He grinned at the sight, then moved the coffer that hid the stairs to the minstrel’s gallery. Of course, as soon as he stepped through the opening, he heard Abigail behind him. Without bothering to tell her to wait behind, he hurried upward, anxious to see a piece of evidence at last.
He walked nearly the length of the minstrel’s gallery before he spied it. A slip of something, probably material of some sort, it dangled from a space in the fretwork, tantalizingly out of reach. But Christian was more determined than any specter.
“I think I can reach it.” Ignoring Abigail’s protest, he leaned forward as far as he could. At another time he might have been more gratified to feel Abigail’s arms round his hips. Now he simply ignored her attempt to anchor him and reached even farther, only to fall back with an oath. Finally he lunged, catching the edge of the cloth and tugging it loose. With a grunt, he landed on his feet, straightening as Abigail released her hold upon him.
Drawing in a deep breath, Christian opened his hand to examine his precious clue. But the evidence, such as it was, made him swear aloud. Although he wasn’t sure what he had hoped to find, this definitely was not it.
“Nothing,” Christian muttered as he fingered the piece of material. “Nothing but a linen napkin stuck into the fretwork.” It was almost as though the specter—or its perpetrator—was deliberately taunting him. Christian felt a surge of angry frustration.
Apparently Abigail wasn’t very pleased either, for while he stood there staring at the napkin, she smacked him on the back with her fist. Hard. It could not be considered a love pat, even by someone as desperate as himself. And then she did it again. Harder.
Christian swung round before she could land another blow. “What the devil?”
“You idiot!” she cried, her face pale in the lamplight. “You could have been killed!”
Oh, no. Not that again. Christian groaned. He appreciated her concern for his safety, but why did she always have to insult his intelligence? “I wasn’t going to fall.” Did she think him wholly without any physical skills? He could name a few…
“And just what if this was a trap? What if the specter had tampered with the railing? You could have gone headfirst into the fretwork or the tiles below! Did you stop to think of that?” she demanded.
Well, actually, no, Christ
ian admitted to himself. He flashed her a grin in appeasement, but the Governess was not appeased. This time she clouted him upon the arm. Apparently she struck out at whatever part of his body was closest, and in a cautionary move, Christian turned slightly so that the lower part of his anatomy faced the railing. No need to endanger himself unnecessarily, he thought, more threatened now by Abigail than by the ghost.
But even as that thought went through his head, her words returned to nag at his brain. Something about a trap? Christian froze. Maybe the napkin hadn’t been placed here as a taunt, but as a lure. Grabbing the lantern once more, he ran to the steps and hurried downward, Abigail on his heels, only to stop at the bottom.
It was as he feared. The opening was blocked.
Christian cursed his own folly. He had been careless, so desperate for a clue that the culprit had outwitted him. The realization both shocked and enraged him, and he felt like smashing his fist into whatever covered the way out. Instead, he forced himself to think, not the scholarly-type thinking, either, but the pirate type.
Thankfully, Abigail remained quiet behind him, offering no suggestions and placing no blame. Taking a deep breath, Christian lifted a hand to the wall before him, running his fingers over the edge of the plaster, then into the opening, where he felt the smooth surface of wood. Presumably someone had set the heavy cabinet back into place to block their exit. However, since he had moved the thing before, he ought to be able to shove it out of the way again, even from this awkward angle.
Raising both palms to the surface, Christian pushed, but the thing didn’t budge. He tried again. And again. And again. In disbelief, he finally struck the surface hard with his palm, then leaned forward to rest his head against it as he gasped for breath. Although he hated to admit that anyone, particularly anyone here at Sibel Hall, could best him, he could do no more. No doubt another piece of heavy furniture had been moved in front of the coffer or a chair wedged against it, effectively preventing their escape.
“Perhaps Sir Boundefort is holding it closed,” Abigail whispered from behind him.
Frustrated and disgusted with himself for not anticipating this predicament, Christian answered in a voice heavily laden with sarcasm. “Oh, I’m sure that’s it.”
“Perhaps you can reason with him,” Abigail suggested.
How a perfectly logical woman could spout such nonsense was beyond Christian’s endurance, especially in his current mood. He set his teeth. “I can’t very well reason with him when I don’t believe in him!”
Naturally, his companion answered in kind, her tone that of the Governess in high dudgeon. “Well, you are the ghost expert!”
Christian blew out a breath, his patience exhausted. “I hate to tell you this, my dear Miss Parkinson, but I am no ghost expert," he said. And it felt good.
“But—but what of your reputation?” she sputtered.
“My reputation, as it were, is mostly a tissue of fabrications and exaggerations.” With a sigh, Christian dropped his arms and turned to face his hostess.
“But what of Belles Corners?” she asked, her expression one of disbelief. “Why, it is the most famous debunking of paranormal phenomenon since the Cock Lane ghost.”
“The Cock Lane ghost?” Christian asked, his brows inching upward.
The Governess eyed him as though he were an imbecile. “Yes, the Cock Lane ghost. Surely you have heard of it?”
Christian shook his head with deliberate firmness.
The Governess sighed in exasperation. “In the latter part of the last century, the landlord of a house in Cock’s Lane coaxed his daughter into using a piece of wood to make rapping sounds, which he claimed were caused by the ghost of a previous tenant,” she explained. “Various personages, including Samuel Johnson, investigated before it was discovered to be a scheme to discredit the previous tenant. Why, the case is infamous! Surely you remember it?”
Christian grinned, overcome by a kind of unholy elation at the admission of his ignorance. “I hate to tell you this, but I was dragged by friends on a lark to Belles Corners.” And often had he regretted it since. “All I did was look at the bed more closely than most and found the boy inside rapping.” Christian paused to flash a wicked smile. “Perhaps he got his idea from your Cock Lane business!”
The Governess crossed her arms across her chest. “Perhaps not,” Christian muttered. “But because of that one fateful afternoon, I am now viewed as the premier expert on hauntings when I assure you that I know nothing more than the average man—probably even less.”
As the truth dawned on her, the Governess looked horrified and more than a little outraged, making Christian thankful that no weapons were within her reach. But he knew she also wielded a mean fist, so he stepped back, coming up against the blocked exit.
“So your trumped-up expertise consists of nothing except happenstance?” she demanded.
Christian frowned. He would rather claim he was more intelligent than the rest of the rabble at Belles Corners, but instead he simply shrugged.
“Why, then, did you answer my summons, wholly misrepresenting yourself and your abilities?” she demanded, her lilac eyes huge in her pale face.
Christian threw up his hands. “Believe me, it wasn’t my intention! Most of that correspondence, and I get plenty of it, goes to my town house, where my secretary has instructions to toss the lot of it.”
“But mine was addressed to your family seat.”
“Exactly,” Christian said. “It arrived at the family seat, where my grandfather managed to snatch it up and determined that I should come take a look.”
He saw no need to add that the old man had cajoled him with tales of Sibel Hall’s nonexistent architectural delights. Besides, for some reason, he found himself loath to admit his passion for building to Abigail, who would no doubt scorn him for a fool, one of those arrogant noblemen who played at being his own architect, especially since she scorned him enough already.
“I see,” she said dully.
Christian waited for the inevitable blow, or, at the very least, a long lecture from the Governess on duty and responsibility and honesty, but it never came. Instead, she simply turned on her heel and ran up the steps, disappearing into the darkness of the top, without any light to guide her.
“Abigail, wait!” Snatching up the lantern, he hurried after her. She was the one who had warned of traps, and yet she was racing up there, recklessly, just to avoid his company. He would rather have faced the lecture.
“You have to admit that I’ve been of more help than anyone else!” Christian yelled. “You don’t have to know anything about ghosts to know that someone is trying to scare away buyers and worse!”
He emerged at the top of the stairway to see her standing at the balustrade, shouting out into the shadows. “Hello! Is anyone there?” she called.
Christian set the lantern down. “What are you going to do? Keep yelling until you are hoarse? Unless someone chances into the great hall, you’ll never be heard.”
Ignoring him totally, she leaned forward. “Hello! Can anyone help me?”
Christian swore under his breath. The only thing worse than being trapped up here was being trapped up here with a woman who ignored him. He had half a notion to take her in his arms and make his presence felt, most keenly, but the thought of another rejection on top of everything else was too much. Besides, righteous guilt gnawed at him, forcing him to take the blame for this debacle, despite his grandfather’s schemes and all the circumstances that had conspired to make him into a ghost router, a scholar, a wearer of spectacles.
Christian scowled, then winced as Abigail’s shouts echoed in the narrow space. With a glance at the fretwork, he decided that now was as good a time as any to find out just how sturdy it was. Walking to the railing, he put a booted foot onto the ledge and launched himself forward.
“Christian, no!”
Now she noticed him, Christian thought, as Abigail’s shriek echoed behind him. But he had already latched hold of the
carved wood. He struggled for a moment, wondering just how far it was to the floor and what his chances were of surviving a fall, before he found a foothold. The fretwork, no doubt carved out of solid oak, didn’t even sway, and as he made his way downward, he didn’t encounter any broken pieces or rotten wood. Thankfully, his pirate blood came in handy, along with a lot of tree climbing in his youth, and he made his way nearly to the bottom before dropping easily to the tiles.
“Christian! Are you all right?” Abigail called from above him, her panic obvious.
Slightly mollified, Christian grinned. “Yes! As soon as I find a lantern, I’ll get you out of there.” He grabbed one from its hiding place and headed into the old buttery. Sure enough, a heavy casket was wedged in front of the coffer. With a couple of mighty heaves, Christian dislodged it, then managed to push the cupboard away from the wall. He had barely moved it when Abigail, who never burst or leapt, flew out of the opening into his arms.
Half expecting violence, Christian blinked in astonishment as he was enveloped in lilac scent and warm, soft woman. Was she crying? He was definitely mollified. Murmuring something unintelligible into her hair, Christian pressed his lips against her forehead. And from there, it was only a brief, tender trip down to her mouth, where all the heat between them blazed forth… until Abigail broke away.
“You idiot! You could have been killed!” she whispered breathlessly, still locked in his embrace.
“What did you want to do, cry for help for days?” Christian asked lightly. She was pressed up against him so tightly, he found it hard to think, let alone speak.
“Someone would have come, eventually,” she answered.
“Well, if you want to go back up there…” Or somewhere more comfortable, like the nearest bed… Without waiting for further argument, he took her mouth again, and she answered in kind, all their disputes lost in the passion that rose between them, fast and furious.
Christian might have pushed her up against the wall or the cupboard or anything, his oft-thwarted need was so great, but a noise, over and above their frantic breathing, penetrated his fevered brain, and he broke away, putting a finger to Abigail’s lips. He barely had time to enjoy her dazed expression of disappointment before he heard something else coming from the great hall.
A Man Of Many Talents Page 27