“No. Not a ghost,” he replied, adding with a small smile he hoped would lighten her mood, “But your cousin is a thief, of sorts—of jam and pickles…”
Mary smiled, comforted by his placid voice and her cold fingers being warmed in his hands, which were surprisingly large and smooth. They sat there looking at each other for only a matter of seconds, as if they were the only two people in the room, speech unnecessary to communicate they were having the same thoughts—how much they had enjoyed their furtive passionate kiss, and how that one kiss had changed everything between them. Though in what way, neither was prepared to speculate for fear of ruining the moment. Then movement over Christopher’s shoulder had Mary snatching back her fingers, and her face ripened with color.
Christopher got off the bed with a frown and pulled the coverlet up to keep her warm.
“I’ll have Betsy fetch you a mug of warm milk—”
“Tea for me,” Evelyn the ghost said buoyantly, brushing past Christopher to take his place on the bed with all the familiarity of one invited to do so. He said over his shoulder to the Squire, “And you fetch the milk and tea. No one must know I’m here.” And with the expectation Christopher would immediately do his bidding, turned back to Mary and said with conspiratorial enjoyment, “Shall we have gossip with our tea and milk? I can provide one or two lumps of scandal, m’self, but I’m relying on you to tell me what’s been happening in town. It will be like old times!”
He then let out such a raucous high-pitched laugh that Christopher winced. But Evelyn’s peculiar affectation brought Mary to life, as if she was truly seeing him for the very first time, and she threw her arms about his neck, so overcome with emotion she could barely get the words out.
“Oh, Eve! Eve! It is you!”
“Of course it’s me, mon petit lapin. Well, a shadow of me, but me nonetheless.” He gently pulled out of her embrace, held her shoulders, and looked into her moist eyes. “No tears, Mary dear,” he murmured, and kissed her forehead. “I beg you. Never from you…”
Mary smiled and nodded, and sniffed. Here was her dearest cousin, believed dead, returned! He was right, too. He was a shadow of his former self, ghost-like in his appearance, with a mane of wild hair turned to silver before its time. But his blue eyes were just as piercing, and the enigmatic smile, which always hid his true feelings—but not from her—was his and his alone.
They had been confidants in childhood. He, an only child, coddled and delicate and a brilliant musician. She, the only girl amongst a band of rough-and-tumble brothers and boy cousins, who was never included in their games and schemes. And being the same age, it was only natural they would be drawn to one another. And while the boys went off riding, hunting, shooting, or just roaming about the Treat estate, Mary remained indoors at her embroidery or watercolors, practicing at being a lady, because that’s what the daughters of earls did, and because the boys did not want her. Evelyn, however, would double back and join her. They would hide out in one of the many unoccupied rooms in the palace-home of the Duke of Roxton, and there spend the day—Evelyn playing his viola, Mary with her embroidery, the first to hear and praise his compositions.
Such wonderfully carefree days were etched in her memory forever…
She put a hand to Evelyn’s cheek, and traced the contours of his gaunt face, and with touch sprang tears, tears that blinded her sight and made her gulp down an overwhelming emotion that he was indeed flesh and blood and alive!
“Oh, Eve, why did you never send me word? Why did you not let your inconsolable parents know you were alive? How could you allow us to grieve so? All those years… all those tears…”
“Believe me, ma chérie, there were many, many times when I wanted to write. But… it was better this way. Better that no one know the truth. Best that I remain—dead.”
Mary was incredulous.
“Surely nothing can be so awful that you would prefer to be dead to your family—to me—to those who love you?”
Evelyn huffed and shrugged and threw up a hand. As it was the one with two mutilated fingers, it only served to underscore how low his life must have sunk that he preferred to be dead to his family. He looked away from her steady, tear-filled gaze and shook his head.
Mary held her breath, wondering if he was about to confide in her. But the moment passed, and he caught up her hand and kissed it, saying with a forced smile and a twinkle in his blue eyes,
“I’m home now. That’s all that matters… Please, ma chérie, dry those beautiful eyes and be happy for me—for us.”
Mary nodded and smiled and quickly wiped her face with the back of her shaking hands and that’s when Christopher stepped in and stuck out his handkerchief. She took it without looking at him. Possibly she had forgotten he was still in the room, her attention wholly focused on Evelyn.
“I am happy. And you are right. All that matters is that you are alive and have come home. It is—it is a dream come true!”
“Yes. A dream come true, ma chérie,” Evelyn replied softly, taking the handkerchief and patting dry her wet cheeks.
Christopher wanted to rip the linen square from the interloper’s fingers. Instead, he turned on a boot heel and left the room to fetch firewood, hot milk, and tea.
EIGHT
EVELYN’S DIRECTIVE that his presence be kept a secret was ignored. Christopher was not a lackey, and Mary’s cousin had no authority over him. What was the man doing here, at an isolated house miles from anywhere, hiding out, even from the servants? And why had he chosen to return from the dead here, and now? The timing of his miraculous reappearance could not have been worse. Christopher had finally let down his guard with the Lady Mary, and her response was everything he had hoped for. Yet, they had barely kissed, and he was given no time to explain his feelings, when they were interrupted by Evelyn. Christopher harbored this niggling worry that the man may have been listening through the wall, and timed his interruption. As to the evident cousinly affection between the pair, that bothered Christopher the most. But he did not possess an envious disposition, and so was pleased for Mary and her family that her cousin was indeed alive and well, and she so happy to see him.
He roused her sleeping maid, and by the time Betsy came into the kitchen, Christopher had stoked the slumbering fire into new life, put the kettle on the hob, prepared a tea tray, and taken the silver tea caddy from its locked cabinet. There was a matching silver teapot, strainer, and sugar bowl, but those had been packed away with the silver cutlery, plate, and goblets for Sir Jack Cavendish when he came of age. The Lady Mary was given use of the tea caddy and the second-best tea service of blue-and-white patterned Worcester. They had been part of her dowry, and upon marriage became her husband’s property. And upon his death, along with everything else, it all became the property of his heir; Lady Mary had no claim to anything, because Sir Gerald had selfishly left her nothing.
Christopher thought it callous of Sir Gerald not to have willed to his wife at least the tea caddy and Worcester tea service, to say nothing of an income to live on. He wished he was at liberty to give it to her, not because they were expensive and ornate grandiose statements of her position in society, but because they had once belonged to her, and they were something personal for Teddy to inherit.
As he set out the teacup and saucer, milk jug, and sugar bowl, he had a flash of memory of the Lady Mary cheerfully showing her little daughter how to use the silver sugar tongs to drop a sliver into her milky tea without creating a splash. The little girl had a chubby hand about the tongs, and with patient guidance from her mother was able to select a little lump of sugar. And when it went plop in her milky tea, Teddy had giggled with delight and looked around at her mother for approval. Mary had smiled and kissed the top of her daughter’s strawberry curls, telling her what a splendid job she had done with the tongs. Sir Gerald, who was present, merely grunted and crumpled his newspaper to his chest to accept a cup of tea from his wife, not a word of encouragement or acknowledgment for his little daughter’s
efforts. Evidence that Teddy had given the task her undivided attention showed in the tip of her tongue caught in the corner of her mouth. She still did that when concentrating on a task, be it saddling her horse, or writing without trailing her left hand in the ink and smudging it. It was a quirk inherited from her father, which made his unresponsiveness that much more deplorable.
And yet, had there been guests Sir Gerald wished to impress, Christopher knew the Baronet would have been overly effusive with his compliments and his largesse of tea and cake. In all his years at Abbeywood, Sir Gerald made no effort to know his plain-spoken neighbors, all of whom frowned on tea-drinking as the beverage of choice of city dwelling idlers with more money than sense; and in Sir Gerald’s case, money as well as sense was lacking.
It was not surprising that in a county where cider was drunk, from laborer to master, tea and its associated paraphernalia were met with contemptuous scowls by yeoman farmers, and coveted sidelong glances by their wives. Derogatory opinion was declared loudly and proudly at a supper at which Christopher had been present. Everyone agreed excessive tea-drinking led to unnecessary waste and indolence. A certain baronet living among them was held up as the prime example of this. This baronet boasted of his connections to the aristocracy and kept tea in a silver caddy, for pity’s sake!
It was only when Christopher coughed into his fist that the assembled company remembered too late that he was sitting there—possibly Sir Gerald’s only friend in the world. Conversation came to a halt mid nod. With a shake of the head at the memory of those startled faces about the vicar’s table, Christopher unlocked the tea caddy with a duplicate key he kept on a chain in his waistcoat pocket. Lady Mary carried the other on her chatelaine. It had not always been thus.
The two keys had once been in the keeping of the housekeeper to whom Sir Gerald had entrusted the making of his tea. Christopher had removed both keys from her almost immediately upon her master’s death because Mrs. Keble had not only indulged herself by unlawfully taking tea from the caddy whenever she pleased, but there was the accusation—with no conclusive evidence, but Christopher believed it to be so—that she had profiteered by on-selling used tea leaves, and even tea dust, on market days to villagers. And the quantity of tea drunk by Sir Gerald meant that the quantity of used tea being sold by his housekeeper had provided Mrs. Keble with a hefty secondary income.
Inexplicably to Christopher, the woman had expected the quantity of tea supplied to the house to remain as it had been when Sir Gerald was alive, and that she would simply continue on with her illegal business venture unimpeded. So when Christopher confiscated the keys, gathered up all the silver and locked it away in a chest, and had all tea supplies brought directly to him, Mrs. Keble was incensed. He had hoped she would be offended enough to give notice of her own accord, or make some damning statement that would expose her illegal trading activities.
But Mrs. Keble proved more cunning than he had at first realized. When she could not seduce him with her charms, she tried to extort him, threatening to take her accusations to the Lady Mary. Her ladyship would be vastly interested to know that the Squire was paying for her ladyship’s tea, clothing, and postal allowances out of his own pocket. It was all true, but how the housekeeper came to find this out, when he had managed to keep it from the Duke of Roxton, the estate’s co-executor, was a mystery. He did not want Mary discovering he was her benefactor, or that she was a great deal poorer than she or her family realized.
Sir Gerald had left his wife and child destitute. There was no allowance. There was only debt, and so much of it that it was through Christopher’s generosity in lending the estate a substantial sum, to be paid back over time through estate revenues from wool and grain sales, that the contents of the house and parcels of farming land were not immediately sold off to pay Sir Gerald’s creditors.
Kate had accused him of allowing his heart to rule his head. There was no guarantee that, for his efforts on her behalf, the Lady Mary would ever look upon him as anything more than a neighbor. In fact, Proud Mary resented his high-handedness, particularly his intractability in allowing Teddy to visit her Roxton relatives. Christopher had abruptly terminated the conversation in an uncharacteristic temper, and words were said that should have been left unsaid. He had saved the estate, not only for Mary, but for her daughter, and for Sir Gerald’s heir Jack. They were the innocent victims of a man for whom the seven deadly sins were a way of life. The consequences of such a life on others he did not need to elaborate, because Kate, as a former disciple of at least five of those sins, was only too well aware.
He had immediately asked for forgiveness for uttering such hurtful words, and she had readily given it. That did not make him feel less of a nidget, and it took him some time to forgive himself.
“UNCLE BRYCE, is the ghost keeping you awake, too?”
Christopher was brought out of his introspection by Teddy. She was standing in the kitchen doorway, a quilted banyan over her nightgown, lace night cap askew. Her sleepy nurse stood at her back with a candlestick, one hand lightly on the girl’s shoulder for reassurance. She told her to go stand by the fire to keep warm, while she made her a mug of hot milk.
“Mr. Bryce has the milk on the table ready for us, see,” she added brightly and went about filling a small saucepan with milk.
“Best heat all of it,” Christopher said. “Betsy will be here directly.” He did not need to add that the milk was for Lady Mary. He caught the nurse’s significant sidelong glance at Teddy, alerting him that the child was unsettled, and he suspected she had woken from a bad dream, given she had mentioned the ghost. He acknowledged this with a slight lift of his brows, before taking a seat at the table.
He beckoned Teddy to him, saying with a smile, “Would you be disappointed if I told you there is no ghost?”
Teddy’s small hand convulsed in his. “No ghost? Truly?”
“Truly.”
“But… How-how can you be sure?”
Christopher heard her note of hesitant uncertainty and looked grave. He did not answer immediately. He wanted her to feel he had given the question serious thought. He was also surprised at the change in her since dinner, when she had laughed and teased him about a supposed ghost in the kitchen, and its liking for jam. The thought of a ghost haunting the house must have played on her mind while alone in the dark of her bedchamber; and who knew what else the maids and Cook had said in front of her about the ghost that she may only have remembered while falling asleep.
“Truth is, I can’t be absolutely certain. Ghosts could be anywhere. Folk will tell you the Puzzlewood is haunted, but we ride through there often enough and have yet to come across a ghost—”
“But we go in daylight, Uncle Bryce. And ghosts only come out at night.”
“Ah, yes, so they do. But not here, not in this house, day or night. No one has actually seen a ghost, they have only presumed there is one because they can’t explain how some condiments went missing from the pantry.”
Teddy moved in closer so she could whisper. Fear put a quaver in her voice. “Strawberry jam was Papa’s favorite.”
Christopher was startled. “Was it?”
Teddy nodded. “Yes. He kept it all to himself. No one else was to eat it. Not even Mama.”
“I see.” Christopher smiled. Privately, he seethed at such selfish behavior, which did not surprise him. It was typical of Sir Gerald. “But you and your mama prefer marmalade, so everyone had what they liked best, didn’t they?”
“Yes. We did. But Mama and I like strawberry jam, too.” She suddenly hunched her shoulders, and said in a conspiratorial whisper, leaning in to Christopher, “Cook let me have a spoon of it here in the kitchen. But I wasn’t to tell Papa. And I didn’t.”
Christopher wondered where this conversation was going, and should not have been surprised by what Teddy said next, but he was, and could have kicked himself for not thinking of it sooner himself.
She looked over her thin shoulder, and there was Jane,
come out of the scullery sleepy-eyed and tying her cap on straight to take over from Nurse, who was stirring the milk in the saucepan. Betsy, who had also appeared, had gone straight up to the fireplace to see to the hot water for the teapot. Satisfied she would not be overheard, she turned back to Christopher and said solemnly,
“I know it’s bad manners to eavesdrop. Mama has told me to close my ears and try hard not to listen. But sometimes that is very difficult when the servants talk as if I’m not here at all.”
“Yes, I understand your dilemma. Once something is heard it is very hard to unhear it.”
Teddy nodded. “That’s what I think, too. But I don’t want to disappoint Mama. I can tell you what I can’t forget, can’t I, Uncle Bryce?”
Christopher smiled. “Yes. Whatever you like.”
The girl nodded again, gave a little sigh, and confessed, “Cook says she would take an oath on her second son Timothy’s grave that the ghost haunting the house be the dead master. That’s Papa, isn’t it? Cook says the missing strawberry jam is proof that it doth be him. She says his soul be restless and can’t settle because of what he did—did to himself.”
“Did to—himself?”
“Yes. Papa haunts the house because he can’t find peace. And that’s what ghosts are—the souls of dead people who must wander the earth until they make amends for their sins. Only then will they be allowed into heaven. Cook says any man that doth take his own life is not a Christian and should be buried at the crossroads. Sinners aren’t buried in the churchyard. And sinners don’t go to heaven. Cook said Papa killed ’eself and that doth be a sin, so Papa’s grave should be at the crossroads. But Cook says he was given a Christian burial because he not be common folk but a baronet—”
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