“When I return to my normal dematerialized state, anything I have ingested dissipates.”
Josie could tell from the twinkle in his eye that he enjoyed putting her on the spot. Yet she couldn’t think of a witty comeback when he smiled that devastating grin. Her insides performed gymnastic flips that would have earned tens from an Olympic judge.
“As to my demise...”
“Deverell! This is not...”
“It’s quite all right,Amelia.You wouldn’t have me go back on my word as a gentleman, would you?”
She shook her head.
“Perhaps later,” Josie suggested in deference to Amelia’s pained expression.
“No sense putting it off. My memory of the incident is a bit fuzzy, but to the best of my recollection I had the misfortune to have my pistol misfire during a duel.The affronted husband defending his wife’s honor aimed for my...leg, and he managed to plant a bullet directly in my heart.Wingate always was a dreadful shot.”
“You don’t seem bitter.”
“It happened a very long time ago. Oh, I railed at the perceived injustice at first. After all, I had never touched his wife,much to her dismay. My particular code of ethics, lax though it may have been, did not include tupping the wives of my friends.”
Amelia choked and coughed to hide a little moan of dismay.
Josie was not fooled by Amelia’s cover-up or by Deverell’s attempt to shock. “Quite noble of you, I’m sure.”
“Dining lasted several hours and was considered an entertainment as well as a meal, thus the elaborate presentations,” Amelia said.
Deverell continued speaking as if he hadn’t heard Josie’s caustic comment or Amelia’s feeble attempt at changing the subject. “I would have laughed at his challenge and settled the matter over a glass at the club, but poor Wingate challenged me in the midst of a crowded ballroom. I was forced to defend my honor, if not that of a lady love.”
“You sound more sorry for him than for losing your own life.”
“He was the one shackled to a philandering wife. I had always rather expected to come to a bad end, and I suppose being shot was no worse and probably better than I deserved. There was only an instant of burning pain, and then I seemed to view the entire debacle as if floating above the field in a balloon.” He snapped his fingers. “Then blackness.”
“No beckoning light?”
“Nothing but stifling, unrelenting blackness. A void. Emptiness. Even the fires of hell would have provided a welcome diversion. Believe me, if there had been any sort of light, I would have gone toward it out of sheer boredom.”
Though Deverell seemed almost flippant in his manner, Josie saw something else deep in his eyes. Regret? Disappointment? Her throat tightened. Maybe this wasn’t such a good topic of conversation. Maybe she didn’t need to know about his death. After all, it was his current existence that interested her.“How did you get here?”
Amelia made a little moaning sound, and Josie glanced over to catch her unusually pale hostess removing the old-fashioned smelling salts from her reticule.
Josie immediately changed the subject. “I find the possibility of eating dessert with the meal quite appealing,” she said.
Of the same mind, Deverell spoke at the same time. “When dining à la Russe you simply serve yourself from the dishes within your reach.”
Amelia sneezed and seemed to gather herself. After blinking a few times, she resumed her history lecture as if she’d not been interrupted by her unruly student. “Women took extremely small portions. Not only were large lumps of food on the plate considered vulgar, but certain foods were deemed inappropriate for a delicate constitution. They spent much of the evening with their hands in their laps.”
“Must make it hard to pass the potatoes,” Josie muttered under her breath.
“Dishes were not passed from hand to hand as in a boarding house,” Deverell interjected with a curl of his lip.
“What if I want something beyond my reach?” Josie asked. She regretted her phrasing when Deverell raised an eyebrow.
“A man might offer a choice morsel of something within his reach to the woman seated next to him,” Amelia said.
“That was considered a signal of preference.
Miss Drummond will have no need to allow such intimacies,” Deverell said.
“She certainly can if she wants to.”
“As my mother’s guest, her reputation must be above reproach.”
“It will hardly be considered improper for her to accept a tidbit of food.”
“Guys,” Josie said, waving her hands to get their attention.“There’s no need to talk about me as if I weren’t here.”
Amelia apologized to Josie immediately. “I suppose discussing the fine points of etiquette is counterproductive when you have so much to learn.”
“There should be no argument,” Deverell said. “I am the expert.”
“From what I hear, you’re more familiar with the improprieties of the time,” Josie said, her sweet tone hiding none of her defense of Amelia.
Deverell raised his glass in response.“One must know where the line is drawn in order to cross it.”
If the man had traced a thick black line on the tablecloth with a felt tip pen, it couldn’t have been more obvious that he had just challenged her to step up to the mark and defend herself. Did she dare? There were few things in this world that scared her, and a chauvinistic buffoon was not one of them.
“Then again,” she said with a nod to acknowledge her entrance as a contestant in the latest battle of wits, “the boundaries constantly change. One can easily be left so far behind the times that he is no longer in the same ball game,much less the correct ball park.”
“Oh dear. I never did understand sports metaphors,” Amelia said with a sigh. “Unless, of course, they referred to riding or hunting.”
“Fox hunting is more than a sport,” Deverell argued.“It is indicative of a lifestyle. A reminder of accepted behavior patterns this century would do well to readopt as standards.”
“Such as viewing women as chattel? Such as the old double standard?” Josie cautioned herself to remain calm. She would lose this argument by default if she let her temper fly out of control.
“Morals were upheld.”
“Ah, yes. How could I have misconstrued rampant syphilis, the white slavery trade, and open opium addiction to be immoral behavior?”
“Oh me, oh my.” Amelia flipped her fan open and worked it rapidly in front of her face.“Did you attend the Impressionist Exhibition at the Royal Gallery in London last month?”
“I refer to the best of society as a model, while you bring up the dregs as representative of the whole,” Deverell said.
“Oh, yes.” Josie nodded thoughtfully. “Among the aristocracy those terrible things surely never happened. Perhaps I should have mentioned the blind eye turned to mistresses, wife beating, and the sexual harassment of domestic help.” Josie batted her eyelashes and smiled directly into Deverell’s scowl.
“That sort of thing was much rarer than Gothic novels portray. One needed only repair to Covent Garden or walk down Haymarket Street to realize that the baser needs could be satisfied outside the home.”
“Our seniors group from the church went up for the day. Ruth Simms and I quite enjoyed the exhibit,” Amelia said, her voice an agitated squeak. “Though she appreciates Monet better than I.”
“Imperfect performance in striving for a goal does not lessen the value of the goal,”Deverell said, lounging back in his chair. He swirled the brandy in his glass and inhaled the fragrance before taking a sip.
His casual air did not fool Josie.The strength of an argument wasn’t dependent on the volume of the speaker—in fact the opposite was often the case. This was a tactic on his part to goad her anger. She wouldn’t let him manipulate her. She took several deep breaths.
“I suppose it’s terrible to admit, but I think Monet’s landscapes look like toxic swamps,”Amelia said, rambling on about
her visit to London.“I prefer Renoir and Degas, especially the portraits.”
“Speaking of the best a society has to offer,” Josie said when Amelia paused for a breath.“I think today’s woman is much better off than women in your day. She can choose a career and choose her husband. Independence is a great equalizer, though I admit, we still have a ways to go.”
“It is difficult for me to understand why a woman would choose the uncertainty of supporting herself over being put on a pedestal and cosseted.”
“Statues belong on pedestals,” Josie countered, “decorative and concerned only with the limited area they’re allowed.”
“We saw some lovely sculptures at the gallery. In fact, Castle Waite has always enjoyed a reputation for our fine garden statuary,” Amelia said, with a pleading look at Josie.
“A woman raised on a pedestal would not see it as limiting; she should see it as her proper place, the natural order of things,” Deverell pronounced with the certainty of the righteous.
“Now you’re making the assumption that all women are either near-sighted or unintelligent,” Josie replied. Amelia cleared her throat and Josie spared her an apologetic smile before turning back to face Deverell.“I’m sure even the women of your time noticed the disparity in the freedoms allowed men and those denied women.”
“I never heard my mother or any other women I knew complain.”
“Perhaps they feared the consequences of rocking the old pedestal, of risking a fall from grace. Or, perhaps you never bothered to listen.” Josie knew she had hit home when her comment caused a muscle in Deverell’s jaw to twitch.
Amelia rose from her seat, and Deverell also stood. Josie followed suit, placing her napkin unfolded on the table in the manner of her hostess.
“During the remove,”Amelia said, her voice raised a notch in volume. “The guests might mingle, but each remained partnered with her dinner companion as they moved around the dining room.This took a bit of skill to dodge the servants bringing in mountains of food without seeming to notice them at all.”
“I’ll use this break to excuse myself to the lady’s room,” Josie whispered to Amelia.
“That’s fine dear. I must mention that in the past it was considered very rude to leave the dining room for any reason until the hostess signaled for the ladies to depart.”
“But...”
“A convenience chair was provided in the corner. Behind a screen, of course, for the discreet use of any guest needing the necessary,” Amelia explained in a rush, obviously distressed by the need to discuss the subject. She rang the tiny bell by her plate.
“A chamber pot in the dining room? You call that a desirable lifestyle?” Josie asked, turning to Deverell.
He had disappeared as the servants began resetting the table for the second course.
Josie propped her feet on the chaise and folded the ends of the silk kimono over her legs. The nearby fireplace provided welcome warmth in the chill of the late September evening.As she scanned the two etiquette books again, she had to admit that they made more sense after she had experienced the formal dinner earlier that evening.
Deverell had not returned to the table after the first remove, and she and Amelia had been able to concentrate on the task at hand. Josie blamed the flatness of the conversation on the dull subject matter. She refused to admit that the spark had gone out of the evening when Deverell had left.
Josie skipped through the order of precedence, past royalty and the assorted archbishops. She would never need to know that part. Imagine Josephine Drummond meeting mad King George or the Archbishop of Canterbury. She reminded herself that she wouldn’t actually need any of it because the time travel wasn’t going to work, but she did want Amelia to think her lessons were effective.
Josie read the list aloud one more time in her usual method of committing lists to memory. “Dukes, marquises, earls...” She interrupted herself to respond to the knock on the door. Emma must be returning for the tray of hot cocoa and biscuits. “Come in. Earls, viscounts, barons...”
Deverell sauntered into her room. “Ranked among themselves by date of creation in the following order: English, Scottish, of Great Britain, Irish...”
Josie sat up straighter and tucked the edges of her kimono closer together across the embroidered yolk of her nightgown. Not that she was indecent by any stretch of the imagination. She’d been in public places wearing much less than the floor length, long sleeved, cotton granny gown. Perhaps the candlelight made the atmosphere seem intimate. Or maybe the cozy fire.Whatever it was, she was suddenly conscious of her nakedness under the voluminous nightgown.And obnoxious Lord Waite was the last man...make that ghost...the last being...she wanted to be cozy with. She tucked the kimono around her knees.
“How in the world am I supposed to know the order of their creation?” Josie slammed the book shut and placed it on the table.
“Didn’t Amelia include a copy of Debrett or Burke’s?”
Josie waved toward the stack of books on the dressing table. “Isn’t an earl an earl regardless?”
Deverell raised one eyebrow and tilted his head back to look down his nose at her. “A ninth generation title is more prestigious than a recently awarded one. It also makes a difference if the earl in question is the eldest son of a marquise or the younger son of a duke.”
“As a modern American, I find the whole business of precedence nit-picking and tedious.”
“I was under the impression that Americans had their own version, senators before congressmen, governors before mayors, that sort of thing.”
Josie knew she was on unstable ground for another argument. That American titles were earned rather than inherited would hold little consequence with this man. Better to try another tactic.
“Why are you here?” Josie realized too late that her words sounded rude so she softened their effect with a smile. Since Deverell had remained standing, and she was uneasy with him looming above her, she waved an invitation for him to take the other chair by the fireplace.
Deverell shrugged and draped himself in the chair before responding.“I saw the light under your door.”
Josie remained silent to encourage him to continue. He smiled at her as if he recognized the negotiator’s trick he had used so effectively earlier. His slow grin caused one deep dimple to crater his cheek.Tingling goose bumps sped along her extremities.
“I wanted to apologize for leaving without an explanation.”
“If an apology is due, it belongs to Amelia.”
Deverell nodded. “A small bouquet of flowers will arrive in the morning.” He shook his head and chuckled with self-depreciation. “Once started, I seem to have succumbed quite readily to the convenience of the telephone and credit card.”
Josie resisted the urge to comment on his flagrant use of someone else’s credit card. Amelia would be thrilled to receive the flowers, even if she wound up paying for them herself.
That was the problem with elaborate rituals of manners.Were sincere feelings expressed, or was it simply obeisance by rote? If someone felt required to send flowers, did the flowers still convey any meaning? For Amelia’s sake, she wanted to believe his actions were motivated by true contrition.
Since he seemed to be feeling magnanimous, now was certainly a good time to continue her interrogation.“You mentioned earlier that you are aware of modern times....”
“Only in a general sense as pertains to the world at large. My concern has been this castle, so I’ve been aware of the lives of this family.”
Josie aped his raised eyebrow and he chuckled in response.
“You are correct, of course. I’ve paid little enough attention to the family’s affairs, or Amelia wouldn’t be in this predicament. I have spent most of my time trying to read every book in the library.”
Josie pictured the large library with its massive floor-to-ceiling shelves and appreciated the enormity of the task. Even an enthusiastic reader would have material for at least two hundred years. She recal
led the matched sets of leather-bound classics, though in truth the shelves that were filled with her favorite romance novels were more enticing. “An admirable goal,” she said.
“Humph,” Deverell snorted. “An onerous, Sisyphean task. My curse was to be born into a family of readers and book collectors. Amelia brings home bags of paperbacks from the church rummage sale. If the south wing collapses, it will be from the weight of the crates of books stored there. I loathe reading.Too solitary.Too inactive.”
“Then why do you do it?”
Deverell raised one hand and, with the flick of his wrist, produced his signature snifter of brandy. Did he use it as a prop to convey a relaxed attitude? His long, tapered fingers curled around the globe of glass, caressing the curves absently as he gazed into the fire.
“Never seems to taste right,” he mused. “Even fully materialized, I cannot generate the body heat required to warm the brandy properly.”
Without thinking, Josie reached for his brandy snifter. Silently she cupped the glass in two hands, gently, slowly, swirling the liquid for several minutes before handing it back.
He breathed the aroma and took a healthy swallow, his eyes closing in an expression of intense pleasure.“Thank you.”
The simple heart-felt words meant more than any elaborate phrases. She knew instinctively that he could have easily called any number of flowery speeches into use.A warm glow spread through her stomach as if she had sipped from the snifter herself.
“If you dislike reading,why are you trying to read through the library?” she asked, as much to get her mind back on a safe topic as to satisfy her curiosity.
“Because I must complete the task in order to be free of my obligation.”
Josie waited, not comprehending his meaning.
Deverell rose to pace the small chamber.“When I died, I chose to redeem my worthless life by assuming the guardianship of this castle. Rather than a specific time span, my term will last until I complete a task designed to improve my character.Then, another guardian can take my place and I will move onward.”
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