by Candace Camp
“Roderick and I were too much older than you. We were grown by the time you would have been interested in that knowledge. We only found out one day when we were trying to find a hiding place for some ‘treasure’ or other, and we realized that one of the tiles was loose. It came right off. No hiding place behind it, but we heard two of the maids talking in the sitting room below us.”
They reached the great hall and saw Lady St. Leger, Lady Pamela, and Madame Valenskaya and her party all standing at the bottom of the stairs. Lady St. Leger was wringing her hands, and Madame Valenskaya was patting her arm soothingly, when Irina Valenskaya looked up and saw Olivia’s group.
“Mother! Lady St. Leger! Look!” Irina cried, pointing.
Lady St. Leger turned, saw them and began to cry, hurrying toward them with her arms outstretched. “Belinda! Sweetheart! Are you all right? I thought something horrible had happened to you. And Lady Olivia! Thank goodness you’re here.”
“Heavens!” Lady Pamela advanced toward them more slowly, her eyebrows raised sardonically. “You are both covered in dust. Where in the world have you been?”
For the first time Olivia thought of what she must look like, and her heart sank. She was, as Pamela had pointed out, covered in dust. It was on her skirts and hands; she could see that now, in the light. Worse, no doubt it was on her hair and face, as well. She remembered the cobweb that had settled over them and how she had scrubbed at her hair and face, trying to rid herself of it. She must look a fright, her hair all mussed and coated with dust and cobwebs, her face streaked. It was doubly mortifying to look so in front of the poised and beautiful Pamela.
Olivia curled her hands into fists, refusing to give Pamela the satisfaction of letting her hands fly to her unruly hair, as they wanted to. “We have been in the other wing of the house,” she said with a calm she was proud of. “I’m afraid it is rather dusty.”
“But, my dear, why ever did you want to go in there?” Lady St. Leger asked.
“We were chasing the crying, Mama,” Belinda said, adding, “did you know that sound travels between your sitting room and the nursery?”
“What?” Lady St. Leger looked confused. “I don’t understand. How could you ‘chase the crying’? It was some poor lost soul. It wasn’t something you could chase.”
“It was a person, my lady,” Olivia said with all the gentleness she could muster. “Not a lost soul. A person who went into the nursery and cried by the fireplace, where the sound would come down into your sitting room.”
Lady St. Leger stared at her. “But, my dear, why would anyone do such a thing?”
“To convince us, perhaps, that there are lost souls here.”
Lady St. Leger gasped. “Lady Olivia! You must be overwrought. It is quite understandable, of course, what with the ordeal you and Belinda have been through, but you can’t have thought—you are implying that—”
“Yes, my lady. I can see no other possibility.”
“Disbelievers…” Howard Babington spoke up, sighing and giving a sorrowful shake of his head. “They will concoct any preposterous story to keep from admitting what is right in front of their eyes.”
“Yes. Someone was in the room with us, crying,” Lady St. Leger said. “We all heard it. You yourself checked the hall. It couldn’t have come from the nursery. It is too far away.”
“You have only to take up a tile at the fireplace—” Stephen began.
“Did you see someone doing this?” Babington asked innocently.
“No. They had left the room. They started the crying again and led us away, into the unused wing of the house.”
“That’s right, Mama,” Belinda interjected. “We followed it until we were lost, and then it just stopped.”
“But, darling, if you didn’t see anyone, how can you know that it was a person?” Lady St. Leger asked her daughter reasonably. “And Madame Valenskaya was right there in the room with us. She couldn’t possibly have done such a thing. You must see that you are being very unfair to her.”
“Her daughter and Mr. Babington were not with us,” Olivia pointed out.
“But they are right here. They have been with me for some time.”
“Sometimes the spirits can be unkind,” Mr. Babington said with the air of one imparting a sad truth. “When they are caught here, unable to reach the other world where they belong, they can be bitter. They will play tricks, frighten people, lead one astray.”
“Yes.” Madame Valenskaya nodded her head sagely. “Is true. I haff seen it. Ferry sad.”
“Lady Olivia,” Pamela drawled, “while I admire your desire to support Lord St. Leger’s views of Madame Valenskaya and her friends, I feel I must point out that they are strangers to this house. How could they have known this trick with the tile in the nursery? I had never heard of it. Did you know about it, Lady St. Leger? Belinda?” At their negative shakes of the head, she went on, raising her eyebrows. “You see? If even we did not know about it, having lived in this house for years, how could these relative strangers have guessed that they could do it?”
“Yes, of course. It would be impossible,” Lady St. Leger agreed, pleased. She patted Olivia on the arm, giving her a sweet, understanding smile. “I am afraid you have been listening too much to my son’s doubts. Stephen has become much too cynical in the years he’s been away. But you can see that Madame Valenskaya and Miss Valenskaya and Mr. Babington could not have done such a thing. It was, I fear, as Mr. Babington mentioned—a restless spirit playing tricks on us.” She sighed, turning toward the medium. “We really must try to communicate with the spirits again, Madame. Clearly we must do something to try to help.”
“Yes, of course. As you wish,” the squat woman replied, her eyelids lowering over a gleam of triumph. “We try again.”
Even Lady St. Leger agreed that the séance must be put off until the next evening, as Olivia and Belinda had been through too much that day to participate. Olivia was a little surprised that Lady St. Leger wanted her at the séance at all. She was fairly certain, from a single malevolent glance Madame Valenskaya delivered to her, that the medium would have been more than happy to have her gone entirely.
However, she began to realize that Lady St. Leger was hoping to win her over to the side of the believers and that she felt sure another séance would do so. Lady St. Leger smiled benignly and patted Olivia’s hand the next morning after breakfast, assuring her that the séance would straighten everything out for them.
“You will see, dear,” she said, giving her a twinkling glance. “And then, perhaps, you will be able to persuade my cynical son.”
As for Lady St. Leger, her own faith in the medium appeared to be unshakable. When, that afternoon, Stephen showed Lady St. Leger and Olivia the loose tile in the nursery schoolroom and demonstrated that sound could indeed travel down to the sitting room below, she did for a moment look uncertain.
But then she shook her head and said, “No, Stephen, my love, how could Madame Valenskaya or her daughter or Mr. Babington have done any of that? It is too absurd. Madame Valenskaya is a dear friend. She has helped me so much the past few months. It would be most unkind of me to suspect her of playing such tricks. And, anyway, they are strangers to this house. They could not know about the nursery tile, and they certainly could not have led Belinda and Lady Olivia into getting lost in the old wing. Surely you must see that.”
“They could have explored the place,” Stephen said. “They have been here an ample amount of time, and it isn’t as if we keep watch on them all the time.”
“My dear! Of course not—what a thing to say.” She shook her head a little sadly. “You have set your mind against the possibility of the spirit world. You should be more tolerant, more open to new ideas.”
“Mother…”
She smiled, patted his hand and sailed out of the room. Stephen gazed after her in frustration.
“It is something of a sticking point,” Olivia admitted. “How could they have known of the loose tile? I feel sure t
hey could have explored the old wing and set up that trick, although I’m not sure to what purpose. I mean, Belinda and I would have suffered nothing more than an uncomfortable night, and probably not even that. You would have been bound to search the whole house.”
He shrugged. “They gave you a scare. With some, it might have been enough to convince you that there were ghosts, or even make you decide to pack up and leave. They could not have known it would make you more determined to uncover their perfidy.”
There was an admiration in the tone of his voice that warmed Olivia, but she pulled herself back to the point at hand. “However, even if it’s possible they explored the house, it seems unlikely that they would have thought of prying up all the tiles around the fireplace in the nursery to see if they could be heard downstairs.”
“Perhaps Roderick’s ghost told them,” Stephen said wryly, then sighed. “I don’t know how they found out. Maybe they discovered them in the same way Roderick and I did—they could hear faint voices, and they investigated and realized the tiles came up.”
Olivia nodded slowly. “It wouldn’t be surprising if they were investigating the room above the sitting room your mother uses most to see if they could rig up some trick through the ceiling. And the nursery is someplace people never go, so they wouldn’t fear being discovered.”
“Possible. Even plausible. But not enough, I’m afraid, to convince my mother.”
“Tom went through the other wing of the house this morning,” Olivia told him. “He opened the windows and took a lamp to search the dust on the floor for footprints.”
“Did he find any clear ones?”
“Much of the halls was a mess, with you and Tom having walked them, and Belinda and I backtracking several times. But he did find in two hallways a single set of footprints in the dust on the floor. Belinda and I were never apart. He also found footprints apart from the two pairs together that Belinda and I made. There was obviously another person up there.”
Stephen nodded. “Of course, we were sure of that to begin with. Convincing my mother is another matter. I am afraid it is going to take something much more blatant.”
“I know.” Olivia sighed. “I should have caught them yesterday. I was foolish. I said right out loud that the sounds must be coming from the fireplace. I didn’t even think about the fact that whatever was said in the sitting room probably traveled right back to them. So they knew I was coming after them, and they were able to get away.”
“Don’t fret over it.” Stephen smiled and took one of her hands in his. “You have been doing an excellent job. I couldn’t have asked for more.”
She looked up into his face, her heart fluttering a little in her chest. When Stephen smiled at her in that way, she didn’t know what to say or do. He stepped closer to her, still holding her hand.
A voice came from the doorway. “Oh! My goodness! Have I interrupted something?”
Olivia took a quick step back from Stephen, blushing, as she turned toward the doorway to see Pamela standing there, an amused smile on her lips.
“I am so sorry,” Pamela said, her tone indicating she was anything but, and strolled forward into the room.
“Hello, Pamela.” Stephen’s voice was stony.
“My lady.” Olivia glanced around uncomfortably. Pamela had a knack for making her feel wrong and out of place, and the fact that she did so bothered Olivia even more. It was also most annoying that she felt guilty, when she and Stephen had been doing nothing wrong—and Pamela had no rights over him, anyway.
She cast a quick glance up at Stephen, who was looking at Pamela, his face unreadable. She could not help but wonder if, when he saw Pamela, he still felt the same rush of passion he once had. Was it anger or love in his heart—or a combination of both? Whatever it was, Olivia had a sudden urge to get away from the sight of them.
“I—um,” she began. “I was just about to go, um, work on something. If you will excuse me…?”
She turned and quickly left the room.
Pamela did not spare a glance at Olivia’s retreating figure. She looked at Stephen, her head tilted a little to one side, a slight smile curving her lips, her blue eyes twinkling with amusement.
“Really, Stephen,” she drawled. “Don’t tell me you are trying to make me jealous.”
His eyebrows rose. “I beg your pardon?”
She nodded toward the door through which Olivia had left. “That little scene with the duke’s dowdy daughter that I just witnessed. Holding her hand, looking into her eyes. Going riding with her…oh, and that touching moment last night when she came dragging in from the other wing, your arm solicitously around her waist.”
Stephen gazed at her coolly for a moment. “I am certain it will come as a great shock to you, Pamela, but nothing I have done with Lady Olivia has had the slightest thing to do with you.”
Pamela strolled forward, her skirt swaying gracefully, her eyes intent on Stephen’s. “Come, now, my dear, you can’t expect me to believe that you have any interest in the little thing. You forget, I know you.”
She stopped in front of him, only inches away. She put a finger on his chest and trailed it down the front of his shirt, saying, “I know your passion. She could never satisfy that. I know exactly the sort of woman a man like you wants.”
Her eyes glowed as she looked up at him, the full power of her charm turned onto Stephen. Smiling seductively, she slid her hands up the front of his chest, then went on tiptoe and kissed him.
9
Stephen’s hands clamped like iron around Pamela’s wrists, and he jerked them down. She blinked at him, her mouth slightly open in surprise.
“Don’t make a fool of yourself, Pamela,” he bit out.
Her eyes widened, and anger flashed in them. “How dare you! Let go of me!”
“Gladly.” He released her wrists and stepped back.
“Are you going to try to tell me that you’re in love with that chit?” she cried, her cheeks flushed with rage.
“I am not trying to tell you anything, Pamela. What you do, what you say, what you think, is of no interest to me.”
“Of course. You want to hurt me. I realize that. I hurt you all those years ago, and it is only fitting that you retaliate.”
“I have no—”
“No.” She raised a hand, drooping artistically against the back of a chair. “What I did to you was terribly wrong. I knew it. I regretted it as soon as I had done it. But then you were gone. I could not take it back, however much I wanted to.”
“Pamela, please, don’t—”
“I must,” she said quickly, turning away from him. “I never loved Roderick, not as I loved you. I was foolish, I admit that. I was only a girl, and my head was turned by the dazzle of a title…jewels, gold.” She sighed. “As I said, I was very young. It did not take me long to discover how little any of those meant when I was sharing my life, my bed, with a man I did not love. I had years to regret what I had done. Every day I wished it was you by my side, not him. Every time he kissed me or touched me, I pretended it was you. Always.”
“Stop it.” Stephen’s voice was clipped. “You are humiliating yourself to no purpose.”
He walked over to her and put his hand on her arm, turning her around. Her blue eyes were aswim with tears, and her face was soft and vulnerable, her pink lips trembling.
Grimly, Stephen said, “I am sure that many other men would be entranced by the picture you present. Try it on one of them. Not me. You forget, Pamela. I know you. I know that you are always playing a part, always angling to get the advantage of someone else. No one can really know you, because you would as soon lie as speak the truth.”
“I’m telling you the truth right now. I swear it!”
“Then I am sorry for you, for you’ve lived a very unhappy life, all of it of your own making.”
“I have,” Pamela agreed earnestly, reaching out to take his hand. “But I learned from my mistakes. I know now that all I want is you.”
Stephen
grimaced. “I am sure that is true, since the title and wealth and jewels are now mine.” He pulled his hand from hers. “It doesn’t matter. Whether I believed you or not, it simply doesn’t matter. I have no feeling for you anymore.”
Pamela stared at him, shocked. “No…Stephen, that can’t be true. You love me.”
“I was infatuated with you, and it was a very long time ago. I feel nothing now.” He turned and walked out the door, leaving Pamela staring, openmouthed, after him.
They gathered in the same room that evening for the séance. As they started to take their accustomed places, Stephen said evenly, “I thought, Madame Valenskaya, that we might sit differently this time. I would very much like to sit beside you. I think it would help me understand what you do better. Don’t you?”
“No!” Madame Valenskaya’s eyes widened in alarm at his words. “I mean, it would not work. I must haff close de ones who believe.”
“Indeed.”
“Yes,” Irina said flatly. “Mr. Babington and I must sit on either side of Mama. It creates a better link, you see, to the spirit world. A disbeliever at her side would break the connection. The chain.”
“Then perhaps Lady St. Leger could take your place. You would like that, wouldn’t you, Mother?”
Lady St. Leger smiled. “Why, yes, dear, that would be very nice. If that is all right with you, Madame.”
“Is not good,” the medium said hesitantly.
“Or Belinda,” Stephen went on, pleasantly unyielding. “Or Lady Olivia, perhaps.”
“No. No. Not her.” Madame Valenskaya’s eyes cut to Olivia and quickly away. “Irina sits here. And Mr. Babington.”
“But Lady St. Leger is a believer. Surely it would not make any difference if she sat beside you.”
Madame Valenskaya looked again at Lady St. Leger, who appeared eager to sit beside her. She chewed at her lip and said finally, “Yes. Is all right. Tonight. A, how do you say? Experiment?”
Stephen said nothing, merely held out the chair for his mother. “Shall I sit here beside you, Mother?”