Mary huddled beneath the sheltering rocks of the sarsen stones that made the ceiling, her arms wrapped tightly around her waist. I haven’t anything left from breakfast to feel so ill to my stomach. “Tell me what happened back there.”
Trentwood stood in the shadows beside her. She could feel his white eyes watching her and fought the wave of nausea that shuddered through her body. Those white eyes had, for a brief moment, looked at her through Hartwell’s eyes. Certainly she hadn’t imagined that. That Trentwood had, for a time, stepped into Hartwell’s body so he could land a devastating punch to Steele’s jaw? One couldn’t imagine that. Just as one couldn’t imagine one’s father becoming a ghost.
I’m not mad. Please, tell me I’m not mad.
Outside, the rain plummeted to the ground more furiously than Mary had ever seen. It was as if the sky vomited on her behalf. She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead into the moss that clung to the vertical stone walls. She sighed as the cool rock soothed the pounding at her temples.
“What would you like to know?”
She wasn’t sure where to begin. “How did you do it?”
Trentwood shrugged. “One minute I was watching you thrash about in bed, and I heard you scream that terrifying scream of yours, and the next minute I was in your dream. I haven’t the slightest clue how it happened.”
Mary’s tongue felt heavy in her mouth. “I was talking about when you possessed Alex.”
Again, Trentwood shrugged. “I’m as new to this being dead folderol as you are in watching it.”
Wiping beads of sweat from her brow, Mary whispered, “You will limit such... jaunts... in the future, I hope?”
“Indeed,” he said with a short laugh. “It pains me to do it as much as it seems to pain you to watch it. Do you know how difficult it is to be dead, hopping around from one mind or body to the next, not knowing how you got there, or how you’ll get out?” He stepped closer, and she could smell his death-stench.
“No, I don’t. I never thought it was a skill I would need to learn,” she said.
“Inherited your mother’s morbid sense of humor, I see.”
“Given the circumstances, I think I’m glad of it.”
Trentwood stepped closer. “Mary, we must talk about your dream. We must talk about your mother’s death.”
Mary’s smile was grim at best. She spread her palms flat against the stone behind her waist and leaned against the cold stone wall. An odd sort of fuzziness encroached her vision. She tried to shake her head free of it, without success, so instead she fought to focus on Trentwood. “Very well.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked flatly.
“No—nothing,” she gasped.
The world became very dark. A dark cloud, probably, passing overhead. Though that hardly made sense, as they were properly sheltered by the stone ceiling of the tomb. Perhaps a tree had fallen? Mary hadn’t heard the shrieks of splintering wood, or the crack of a thunderbolt.
No, a tree hadn’t fallen, she had. There was no other explanation for why her cheek was nestled among the decaying leaves, or why Trentwood’s boots were so close to her nose.
It was actually rather comfortable. Mary closed her eyes. Perhaps it would be best if she slept a bit. Yes, sleep was exactly what she needed.
***
TWENTY-FIVE
Trentwood jumped away from Mary when she fell at his feet. Breathing heavily, he squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for her screams and the terrible rushing sensation he had felt the last time he had appeared in her dream.
A minute passed, though it seemed an hour. He opened an eyelid and then the other when he realized he was still in the godforsaken tomb with Mary at his feet. “Mary?” He crouched beside her, a hand held before her mouth and nose to feel for warm puffs of air.
She was breathing, faintly. Rather than warming him, her weak breaths left his skin feeling clammy, which again reminded him of how unnatural he was. He felt as if his skin was ready to molt from his body... though he wasn’t entirely certain he had a body beneath this skin, however solid he felt when he touched Mary.
Trentwood stood. Mary had fainted, if he could interpret anything from the clumsy way she had fallen, as if she had forgotten what it meant to stand upright. It was no wonder, really, given the last day, no, month—if he were being brutally honest, year—that she had tolerated.
But how to move her? Trentwood shuddered at the thought of touching her, now that he knew he could jump into her dreams. What other nightmares did she suffer, with him as the misinterpreted villain?
More importantly, how to get her back home? For she would, in her weak condition, catch influenza or pneumonia if she continued lying in those wet leaves. Hmm. Trentwood pulled out his pocket watch and swung it by its chain. Perhaps he could startle a farmer into running into the clearing? Or better yet, could he get Pomeroy to come?
The next thing Trentwood knew, he stood where he had never stood while alive: the servants’ room off the kitchen. Pomeroy sat at a roughly-hewn wooden table with a canvas apron covering his chest and lap. He was polishing the silver tray, now empty of Mary’s vomit, whistling as he did so.
That man was always far too cheerful for Trentwood’s taste, but then, his cheerfulness always suited Mrs. Trentwood, and Mary, too. Trentwood had to admit that when left to his own devices, Pomeroy was incredibly resourceful; he could think of no other man who juggled the responsibilities of butler, valet, and footman with a smile.
Trentwood shivered and somehow seemed to know it wasn’t he who shivered, but Mary, lying on the floor of the tomb. “Mary is in trouble. You must go to her,” he said to Pomeroy.
Pomeroy lay down the tray and lifted a tarnished spoon.
“Did you hear me, man? You must help Mary!”
Nothing. Not a blink, flinch, or gasp. Pomeroy, it seemed, was a lost cause.
To the parlor, then, where Hartwell and Steele drew up plans to investigate everyone still residing at the manor house.
“I doubt Pomeroy is blackmailing my sister, he’s far too frank,” Hartwell was saying when Trentwood walked through the wall into the parlor. “If the man wanted to ruin me, he would do it with his fists, not with his words.” He paused. “Though he’s got a wicked way with those, too.”
“What could he do to you that nature hasn’t already done?” Steele said.
Hartwell leveled a look at him. “And this is why you’ll never be more than a solicitor. You’re supposed to solicit the information from me, not throw judgment calls at my face, about my face! There is a subtlety to being a barrister which you simply lack!”
Steele scowled, but didn’t say anything, giving Trentwood the opportunity to whisper in Hartwell’s ear, “Mary needs you.”
Crying out, Hartwell pressed the heel of his palm to the side of his head.
“What?” said Steele, “what is it?”
“Mary! It’s Mary! You must go to her!” Trentwood insisted.
Hartwell stumbled to his feet. With his hands before him as though blinded by the pain, he felt along the overstuffed chairs littering the parlor on his way to the window hidden behind heavy brocade curtains. “How long has it been raining like that?”
“I don’t know, an hour?” Steele replied, also rising to his feet.
“Where is Mary?” Hartwell looked at Steele. “We’ve been talking for an hour and she’s trapped in the rain?”
“I warned her it was dangerous to walk alone,” Steele offered, weakly. “She was too ill!”
“We’re wasting time,” Trentwood snapped.
Hartwell rolled his neck as though he had a kink in a muscle and suffered a full-body shudder. “G-get your coat, we’re going after her.”
“You can’t be serious,” Steele protested, following Hartwell from the parlor. “I haven’t the clothes to go rushing out into a country storm! And neither, I think, have you! Send her servant, that Pomeroy man.”
Hartwell turned his back to Steele as he shoved his arms into his jacket and wrapped a woolen scar
f around his neck. “If you were a man, I’d lay you flat.”
Trentwood hooted his laughter. “Well said, son, well said.”
“I hardly think that was necessary,” Steele said under his breath as Hartwell slammed the door behind him.
Steele watched Hartwell run from the house, splashing through puddles and paying no heed to his surely ruined clothing. He watched Hartwell, feeling a knot gathering in his stomach. The man moved like a man in love.
Which was impossible, of course, for Mrs. Durham had admitted that Hartwell had been a guest at the manor house for all of a day and then some. Sensible men like Hartwell didn’t fall in love easily or quickly. Steele knew this because he was not the most sensible man in the world, he knew it and accepted it, and he happened to fall in love easily and quickly.
Such as a year ago, when a laughing, dancing Mary had admitted she found him the most interesting man in the room. It had been such a forward thing to say, so very un-English of her. He had fallen in love instantly, thinking that she must have loved him greatly to be so brash, so... American.
But then her father had fallen ill, and Mary had dropped off the face of the earth, and Steele had fallen in love with another young woman, a true American with no name worth remembering, but enough wealth to catch any man’s attention, sensible or not.
Yet here Steele was with Mary back in his life. Surely it meant something. And with Hartwell off on his madcap rescue, it seemed only right that Steele perform his own great deed.
“Pomeroy,” he shouted, “Pomeroy, prepare the parlor.”
Pomeroy came sprinting at Steele’s shout, for it sounded more like a scream of agony. “What is it, what’s happened?”
“Miss Trentwood—something’s happened to Miss Trentwood and we must find blankets and... and I don’t know what else, but she will be cold, surely, and must be warmed. What shall we do? What shall I do? I’ve never met a pair of such ninny-hammers, running out in weather like this!” Steele returned to the front door, throwing it open to stare at the lane devoid of Hartwell and Mary.
Pomeroy, to his credit, seemed to understand Steele’s frantic rambling. “If you would be so kind, sir,” he said, his tone firm, “do enlist Mrs. Durham for any extra blankets she might find. I will warm some chocolate and get the fire in the parlor to a healthy blaze again.”
Steele nodded. “Yes, yes, good man for thinking of it.” He sprinted upstairs, his head swiveling. “Mrs. Durham?”
For a maddening minute, there was no answer. Then came Mrs. Durham’s head poking from her doorway, a cautious, yet oddly blank, expression on her face.
“Mrs. Durham, you must pardon my rudeness, but it seems something has happened to Miss Trentwood, and Mr. Hartwell has gone to fetch her but we are in need of blankets,” Steele rattled off, brushing past her so he could whisk the blankets from her bed. He coughed at the cloud of dust that he disrupted. “Good lord,” he wheezed, “is there no one to do the housework?”
“No, no one,” Mrs. Durham said dully.
Steele moved to the window to pick up a knitted throw and to the vanity to grab a heavy shawl. All were covered with dust. His lip curled. “When Miss Trentwood is returned and feeling well, we shall have to press upon her the risks of such living, Mrs. Durham!”
“Yes, of course,” she replied.
“Thank you for your kind understanding, Mrs. Durham, you must understand this is a special circumstance, for I would never in my right mind burst into a gentlewoman’s bedroom and steal her bedclothes from under her! No indeed, I should have asked you to do it yourself, but you see, I’ve no idea when or if Hartwell will return with Miss Trentwood, and so we must be at the ready. Surely you understand, Mrs. Durham.”
“Oh yes, quite clearly.”
Had Steele been less frantic, he might have noticed how Mrs. Durham moved as though she struggled against the tide. He might have noticed that her hair was half-undone, her hairbrush bloodied, and her fingertips raw. He might have noticed that he had lifted not only every available bit of linen in the room, but also a pile of unaddressed letters that had been tucked in a fold of the blanket by the window.
No, it was not until Steele was in the parlor, laying the extra linens around the fire to warm them for Hartwell and Mary’s arrival—no, not Hartwell and Mary, for the thought of them together, even in a simple address, made his heart feel sour. To be more accurate, it was not until Steele was in the parlor, laying the extra linens around the fire to warm them for Mary’s arrival that he found the letters.
By that point, he was far calmer. Pomeroy had forced a cup of hot chocolate into his hand, and he had half-drunk the cup by the time the letters had fallen to the floor.
Steele lifted one, his brows rising as he recognized the handwriting. It wasn’t that he knew the writer, per se, but that he had seen the writing before, and recently. Leaving his cup of hot chocolate by the fire screen, he lifted the letter he had been studying with Hartwell, before Hartwell’s freak announcement that Mary needed help.
Of course they would be the same handwriting. Of course it would be Steele who would have to tell Mary the truth about her aunt. Of course. Dammit.
***
TWENTY-SIX
In Mary’s dream, she was lifted by a handsome beast with arms as thick as a steam engine. The beast shot out from the tomb much like a runaway train, roaring through the trees and farmer’s fields back to the manor house. He kept repeating her name, but she couldn’t answer. She wanted to, but her mouth wouldn’t open, and neither would her eyes.
“Mary, wake up!” she heard her mother cry.
Mary woke with a gasping shiver. It took her a moment to realize she was no longer sprawled across the floor of the tomb, but in someone’s arms. They raced along the slippery lane to the manor house at superhuman speed.
“Put me down,” she rasped, thinking it was Trentwood who carried her, for who else could move so quickly while carrying her? She wasn’t the smallest of women.
“Can’t,” Hartwell said, panting. “Too cold. Besides, don’t think I could stop if I wanted. Tried already. Lost control. Of my legs.”
Mary clung to his neck as the fields surrounding her house whizzed past them. “Seems as though you’ve got firm control... Could you slow down a bit, if you won’t stop?”
“Tried that, too.”
Mary bit her lip. Hartwell looked panicked, and not simply for having found her fainted away on the floor of a tomb. He looked terrified, frightened out of his wits for his wellbeing. His eyes were dilated, his nostrils flaring. The wind and rain had torn his hat from his head and his hair was plastered to his face.
With everything else that had happened, Mary believed Hartwell wanted to stop, most dearly, but couldn’t, for purely supernatural reasons. Do I dare? She winced when Hartwell looked at her from the corner of his eye. Yes, she did dare, she must.
“Father,” Mary said, “Papa, I’m feeling much better now.”
Hartwell looked at her sharply.
“Papa, please.”
Hartwell shuddered to a standstill. He stopped so quickly Mary would have flown from his arms had he not tightened his grip. He panted so heavily that she worried his lungs would burst from his chest. Suspecting her legs were still too weak to carry her weight, she remained in his arms, feeling sheepish as she clung to his neck.
“I’m sorry about all this,” she said after a moment or two.
Without a word, Hartwell moved one foot forward with a quizzing expression on his face. He took another step, and another, until satisfied he controlled his movements. “I don’t suppose you would mind telling me what all this is about,” he said, not looking at Mary.
Mary tightened her hold around his neck as he stepped over a large puddle in the road. “You wouldn’t believe me.”
“If this is about ghosts, I’ll have you know my mother thinks she’s been speaking to them for years, and let me just say that none of them have had the same effect yours seems to have on me.”
/> There was a low whooshing sound Mary had come to recognize as Trentwood appearing from nothing. She glanced over Hartwell’s shoulder to find Trentwood following a pace behind them.
“He’s a quick one, isn’t he?” Trentwood said.
“He’s here, isn’t he?” Hartwell said. “Your father?”
“How can you tell?” Mary whispered.
“My head feels like it’s about to split open,” he replied through gritted teeth. “I think it’s his proximity. He’s very close, isn’t he?”
Trentwood, with a great frown, stopped walking so the distance between them grew until he was three yards away. With a low sigh, Hartwell’s expression cleared.
“Much better, thank you, sir,” he said.
“I don’t understand,” Mary said. “You know my father is haunting me? And you don’t think I’m mad?”
Hartwell’s laugh was short and without mirth. “No more mad than I. I’ve suspected for a while, or wondered at least, if you believed you were being haunted. But today, the oddest things have been happening...”
“Such as not being able to control your legs?” Mary offered.
“Or knowing you needed help,” Hartwell replied. “We were in the parlor, Steele and I, and all of a sudden I had an awful headache, and I knew, somehow, that you were at the tomb. And then… I lost time earlier. I thought little of it, but now… you and Steele are under the impression I punched him, and my hand does hurt, so perhaps I did.”
Mary leaned her chin on Hartwell’s shoulder, watching Trentwood follow at a respectful distance. How can I tell him?
Tell him what you must, Trentwood said, his voice echoing softly in her ear.
Clearing her throat, Mary said, “My father began haunting me the day of his funeral. I don’t know why, or how this came to be. He doesn’t seem to know his strength.”
“You don’t know why he is here?”
Mary shook her head. A lump gathered in her throat and tears in the corners of her eyes. She swallowed the lump and buried her face in Hartwell’s shoulder. She felt Hartwell stop walking and hold her closer to him in a semi-embrace. She pulled her arms ever tighter around his neck, sniffling.
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