Spirited Brides

by Amanda McCabe

  Phillip locked the door to the library behind him and hurried over to the table, where the butler left various decanters and glasses every evening. Usually he did not touch them at all, but tonight was a marked exception. He poured himself a generous measure of brandy and gulped it down as if it was water. Then he poured out another one.

  What was happening to him? Here, in his very home, the place he regarded as a haven from the insanity of the outside world! Now it seemed that that very hysteria, the wildness of the so-called Romantics, had reached between the stones of Royce Castle and grabbed onto him.

  Clutching at his brandy, he sat down in the chair behind the desk and looked about at the library. It all seemed the same; the same neat rows of books, the same dark furniture, the same painting over the fireplace. His notes and volumes were all in tidy little piles on the desk. But he felt dazed, disturbed. Completely out of sorts.

  These were feelings he disliked intensely. He liked to know his purpose, his place in the world. He liked his household to be in order, to know what he could expect from every day.

  That was gone now, vanished in that blast of blue-green light. If he was to be honest with himself, he would have to admit that it had been gone before that, since the day Cassandra Richards stepped past his threshold. She was making him doubt things he had always believed—things such as logic, order, rationality. She had made unfamiliar feelings rise up inside him—desires for picnics, wild rides, and myths and stories.

  And now he had actually engaged in some sort of mass hysteria in the tunnel. The fact that they all believed they saw a ghost had infected his own mind and made him believe it, as well.

  That had to be all there was to it.

  He could not have actually seen some supernatural being. He shook his head stubbornly. That could not be.

  He took another sip of the brandy and reflected that soon he would have his peaceful, scholarly life back again. After the blasted masked ball, Cassie and her aunt and her strange friend would surely return to Bath, leaving him to get on with his work.

  Through the warm brandy haze, he wondered why that thought did not comfort him as it should. In fact, it did not comfort him at all.

  “Handsome but stupid, I see,” Lady Lettice commented, watching him from atop the rolling ladder next to Louisa. “Some of the best men are, of course. Sir Francis Drake, for one, was really very thick. But one does hope for more from someone who is meant to be a scholar. Now, if you had known Sir Phillip Sidney . . .”

  “Yes, yes,” Louisa interrupted impatiently. She had forgotten how Lady Lettice tended to go on and on about all the famous people she had once known. “But what do you think of my idea, Lady Lettice?”

  “Of matching up this man with your Miss Richards from Jamaica?” Lady Lettice tapped at her chin thoughtfully with her feather fan. One thing she had always been rather fond of was making matches; Louisa knew that very well. She thought perhaps it was to compensate for having never been married herself. And now Louisa hoped to engage her in this mission.

  “The free spirit and the stuffy scholar,” Lady Lettice went on. “I think it has great potential, my dear Louisa. Very amusing potential, indeed. Now, all we have to do is come up with a plan.”

  Louisa grinned. “Oh, yes. Sir Belvedere and I have been thinking on that . . .”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Oh, how marvelous!” Lady Royce cried. She had been reading the morning post over breakfast, and now held up a sheet of parchment with a pleased exclamation.

  “What is it, Melinda?” asked Chat, picking a piece of toast out of the rack.

  “My dear friend Lady Paige, the one Miss Richards met on her excursion into the village, is having a small supper tonight to bid farewell to her nephew, who is returning to Town. We are all invited.” Lady Royce refolded the invitation carefully and smiled. “This is splendid, is it not? I have not been out to dine in ever so long.”

  “Will there be many people there?” Chat asked. “Is it very formal?”

  “Oh, no, not at all. Lady Paige’s dining room is not big enough for a large party. I am certain Viscount and Viscountess Rockley will be there, and Mrs. Sattler and her daughter, and perhaps the Lewishams.”

  “It sounds delightful. Does it not, girls?” Chat said, and glanced down the table to where Cassie and Antoinette sat quietly.

  Antoinette, whose dark eyes were heavy with weariness after the exertions of the night before, nodded and murmured her assent.

  Cassie looked over at Phillip, who just continued eating his sausages and said nothing. He just barely nodded in his mother’s direction. He, too, seemed weary, with dark circles beneath his eyes. Cassie had wondered all night and morning what his reaction might be to the night’s occurrences.

  Now she knew. He was not taking it at all well.

  He had greeted them politely when he entered the breakfast room, but had said barely a word since. He had scarcely even glanced at Cassie.

  Perhaps he was just tired, as they all were, she tried to reassure herself. But she still wished he would at least smile at her and talk with her as they had that night in the library. They could discuss what had happened in the tunnels, try to figure out what it all meant.

  But it was all too clear that he did not want to talk with her about anything right now, least of all what had happened. He appeared intent on denying it.

  Cassie turned her attention back to her plate, listening as Lady Royce planned what she would wear to the supper party. Later, when Phillip was not so tired, she would seek him out and talk to him.

  They had so many things to discuss.

  “Hm. I do see what Louisa means,” Lady Lettice muttered as she watched the scene in the breakfast room. Rather than perch on one of the cornices, as Louisa and Sir Belvedere liked to do, she peered out from one of the portraits. It was much more dignified in a farthingale. “He is a terribly stubborn man. He does not believe in us, even though he saw us with his own eyes, and he blames the poor girl for making him see the truth he will not acknowledge. She certainly has a streak of stubbornness, as well.” She peered at them closer. “Yes, indeed, this will be a challenge. Much more so than when I matched up Lettice Knollys and Robert Dudley.”

  Angelo tugged at her skirts. “Angelo wants some of those sausages! They smell so wonderful.”

  “Hush, Angelo! I told you yesterday, ghosts cannot eat. You do not really feel hungry, you just think you do,” she said distractedly.

  “No! Angelo is really hungry.”

  Lady Lettice did not answer; she was too busy listening to the humans’ conversation. “They are going to a supper tonight. An excellent opportunity. There are far too many of them for just one carriage; we shall have to see that Lord Royce and Miss Richards are alone in one.”

  “Angelo does not think a well-bred girl would be alone in a carriage with a man,” he said thoughtfully. “Look at what happened to Katherine Throckmorton.”

  “Then we shall just have to see to it that they are made to be alone,” Lady Lettice answered impatiently. She took hold of Angelo’s hand and floated off. “Now we must find Louisa and Sir Belvedere. They are probably lazing the morning away, playing chess in that East Tower, when there is work to be done!”

  “And maybe we will run into Jean-Pierre on the way,” Angelo said slyly. His dark eyes flashed with a usually hidden intelligence.

  Lady Lettice reached out with her free hand and cuffed him soundly on the head. “Never mention that name to me again! Jean-Pierre is—was a toad. And he is not a ghost, anyway. He has moved on. We shall never see him here.”

  But her mind whispered doubtfully, Will you indeed?

  “What will you wear to Lady Paige’s supper, Cassie?” Antoinette said, riffling through the contents of Cassie’s wardrobe.

  “I don’t know,” Cassie murmured indifferently, turning over a page of the poetry book she was ostensibly reading. In truth, she had not even read a single word in fully half an hour. “What are you going to wear
?”

  “Probably that yellow gown your aunt bought for me in Bath. I would not want to go frightening all the guests in my robes!” Antoinette laughed. “They will be frightened enough of me as it is!”

  Cassie also laughed and put aside her book. “Well, I do not care what I wear. You choose something for me.”

  “What about this one?” Antoinette pulled out a sapphire-blue silk. “You loved it when you ordered it from the modiste, and you haven’t worn it yet.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Perhaps? Don’t you want to look pretty for Lord Royce?” Antoinette held the gown up to herself, even though it was a foot too short, and danced about the room. “Oh, Lord Royce, you are so handsome,” she cooed in a strange, high-pitched Jamaican accent. “Won’t you please, please dance with me?”

  Cassie tossed a cushion at her, laughing helplessly. “Antoinette, stop! There won’t be any dancing tonight. It is just supper and maybe some cards.”

  “But you will still want to look nice, no? So you should wear this.” Antoinette laid the gown out on the bed and smoothed the shimmering folds.

  Cassie sighed. “I do not think Lord Royce would notice me if I showed up in my chemise.”

  “Oh, I do think he would notice that.” Antoinette came and sat down at the end of the chaise where Cassie lay. Cassie slid her feet back to make room for her. “What is the matter, Cassie? Did you and Lord Royce quarrel?”

  “Of course not. You cannot quarrel with a person when they won’t speak to you. He was so very quiet at breakfast and would not even look at me. Then, when I went to the library to talk to him, the door was locked. The butler said he had orders that no one was to go in today.” Cassie felt her chin wobble and clenched her teeth together. “Probably especially me.”

  “Oh, Cassie dear,” Antoinette replied. “Lord Royce has had a shock. He has spent so many years denying the existence of the supernatural, and last night he came face-to-face with it. Of course he does not feel well. He is probably still denying the whole thing. We have seen this many times, remember?”

  Cassie nodded. She remembered some of the people they had known in Jamaica, people who had been there for a long time and had seen much. They lived in fear of voodoo rituals and slave revolts.

  “At least that fear is not as dangerous here as it was there,” Antoinette finished.

  “Yes. But what should I do about Lord Royce? If I could just talk to him . . .”

  “Give him time. He will come around, probably sooner than you would think. After all, he is falling in love with you. He will listen to you.”

  Cassie stared at her friend, shocked. “In—in love with me? Of course he is not! He can barely be civil with me.”

  “A sure sign that he is in love, then.” Antoinette smiled and stood up to cross the room to the door of her own chamber. “We should be getting changed. We have to leave for Lady Paige’s house in an hour.”

  Almost an hour later, they all stood about in the drive, waiting for the carriages to be brought around. Cassie shivered in her cloak as a chill wind swept across her, and she looked over to where Lord Royce—she could no longer think of him as Phillip—stood, slightly apart from the others.

  He did not look angry or upset at all. Merely distantly polite and distracted, as if he was thinking of something else and did not see them.

  And looking so handsome in his evening clothes, with his hair sleekly tied back.

  Cassie sighed and looked away from him, trying to attend to the conversation of Lady Royce, Aunt Chat, and Antoinette. But all she could hear were Antoinette’s previous words echoing in her mind—“He is falling in love with you, you know.”

  Well, if he was he had a very funny way of showing it! Being argumentative and cool by turns was not Cassie’s idea of falling in love.

  She firmly turned her back to him, determined to enjoy her evening despite him.

  “Ah, here come the carriages now!” Lady Royce said, gathering her fur-trimmed wrap around her. “I have ordered two carriages for tonight, so we needn’t all be squashed together and crush our gowns. Chat and I will take the first one, and, Phillip, you may escort Miss Richards and Miss Duvall in the other.”

  Cassie thought she heard a soft giggle in her ear, but when she turned to look, Antoinette stood some distance away, and Aunt Chat and Lady Royce were already climbing into their carriage.

  “Louisa?” she whispered, wondering if the ghosts were playing some sort of joke that involved being invisible.

  “Did you say something, miss?” asked the footman, who had just stepped forward to help her into the carriage.

  Cassie looked around one more time, but saw only Lord Royce, who watched her quizzically. “No,” she said, taking the footman’s arm and stepping up into the dim interior of the equipage. “Not at all.”

  She had just settled herself on the soft leather cushion, when there was a strange sort of yell, and Lord Royce tumbled headfirst into the carriage. He landed with a hard thud on the floor at her feet.

  “Lord Royce!” she cried. “Whatever is the . . .”

  Her exclamations were interrupted when the door slammed shut behind him and the carriage jolted into motion. It gathered speed quickly as it set off down the drive.

  Cassie heard muffled shouts from outside. After making sure Phillip was not hurt, she lowered the window and stuck her head out to see the footman, Antoinette, and—oh, horrors!—the coachman chasing after them. Antoinette’s expression was frantic as she pointed at the carriage.

  Cassie twisted about and saw there was no one sitting on the box at all. The horses were running off on their own.

  Her heart lifted into her throat with a cold, frightened leap. She fell back against the seat, gasping. They were going to go right over the cliffs in this runaway carriage and become ghosts who were trapped at Royce Castle forever!

  Phillip hauled himself up off the floor and onto the seat opposite her, his hair falling loose onto his shoulders and his cravat askew. “Someone pushed me in here!” he muttered indignantly, as if not even aware that they were moving at a dangerous speed.

  “We have worse troubles than that!” Cassie practically screamed, lunging across the space between them to grab onto his coat. “No one is driving this carriage!”

  “What?” he said, frowning in confusion. “That cannot be.”

  “Of course it is! I saw it with my own eyes. No one is on the box.”

  He pressed her gently back onto her seat and stuck his head out the window. Then he fell back beside her, his expression unreadable. “You are right,” he shouted over the rush of cold wind that swirled around them from the open window. “No one is driving this carriage.”

  “What are we going to do?” Cassie asked frantically.

  “I have to try to get up onto the box myself and slow the horses.” Phillip looked back out the window. “But I do wonder one thing.”

  Cassie wondered one thing, too—she wondered how he could be so calm in the face of impending doom. “What?”

  “Why is our carriage running away so perfectly down the road? Why are we not crashing through the woods?”

  Cassie peered past his shoulder to the flashing-by scenery. He was right. They were going in a straight line down the road, away from the village and the castle.

  She frowned. Louisa! Of course it had to be Louisa and Sir Belvedere and probably that new Lady Lettice and her dwarf friend.

  No one had ever told her that dead people could be so mischievous.

  She leaned out the window again, and this time she saw Sir Belvedere sitting up on the box, his armored legs held stiffly before him, wielding the reins. Louisa sat beside him, her blue cloak billowing in the wind.

  “What are you doing?” Cassie shouted. “Are you trying to get us all killed?” Then she remembered the incontestable fact that those two were already dead, and amended, “Are you trying to get Lord Royce and me killed?”

  “Certainly not, fair lady!” answered Sir Belvedere.
/>   “Do not worry, Cassie,” added Louisa. “We have a plan.”

  That was what Cassie was worried about, them and their plans. She retreated back into the carriage, where Lord Royce had already stripped off his coat in preparation of trying to take back control of the carriage.

  Cassie allowed herself one instant of watching him appreciatively, then said, “I do not think you will have to perform any death-defying heroics today. It is only Louisa and Sir Belvedere playing some sort of joke. They say they have a plan.”

  He frowned fiercely. “Ghosts? Ghosts are absconding with this carriage?”

  She nodded, feeling suddenly very tired after her great rush of fear. “I am afraid so.”

  He pushed past her to look out the window.

  “Good evening, my lord!” Cassie heard Louisa and Sir Belvedere chorus.

  Then Lord Royce—looking much more like Phillip again—came back inside, and sat down beside Cassie quietly.

  “So they are real,” he said.

  Cassie nodded sympathetically, remembering how bewildered she had been the first time she woke up to find Louisa at her bedside. “Yes. Did you think that they were just a dream?”

  Phillip gave a short little bark of laughter. “Hoped they were, perhaps. It is never easy to admit that one is wrong.”

  “No, it never is.” She knew that all too well.

  “But what do they want of us?” he said in an unsettled tone.

  “I’m not sure. Just for us to be their friends, I suppose, and help them to understand. They are just as confused about why they are here as we are.” She paused for a moment, then went on, “I have no idea why they would want to push us into a runaway carriage, though. That seems mean, and they are not mean at all.”

  Phillip still seemed unnaturally still and calm, as if stunned by the proceedings. “You have talked with them a great deal?”

  “We have become friends. I do not know this Lady Lettice at all, though, having just met her last night. Perhaps this was all her idea.”