Spirits of the Season: Eight Haunting Holiday Romances Page 3

  This was Archibald Skinner, who possessed a sparse ginger beard and an even sparser sense of decorum. “This Lady Garnet does not sound like a lady at all,” he agreed, and he and Freddie snickered together.

  Gentlemen of the most sterling quality, the both of them. Amelia must have shared my impatience, for she took up a lamp and led us all to a painting in a shadowed part of the gallery.

  “This is she,” she announced. “The artist finished this portrait just a few months before she took ill.”

  At once everyone else crowded around the painting, again shutting me out. When after much tactical use of my elbows I was finally able to approach close enough for a good look, I was disappointed. Despite Amelia’s claim, there was little resemblance between me and the lady I would be impersonating. True, she had fair hair and a slender figure, but her eyes were brown instead of green, and the shape of her face was more elongated and more refined. I would have to make my appearance quite brief—and hold my candle well away from my face—in order to deceive Marian.

  There was nothing remarkable about her clothing—a blue damask robe à la française with a diaphanous white fichu, clasped with a golden brooch set with dark red stones in a design of flowers. But her expression was one of fierce determination. The brown eyes fairly shot sparks with the intensity of her will. If I had believed in specters, this was a woman I could actually imagine returning from beyond the grave to pursue her own ends.

  “Some say that her appearance is a portent of death.” Amelia’s voice was impressively solemn. “Perhaps she is envious of the living and wants to cut short their time on this earth.”

  From the corner of my eye I saw Archibald Skinner’s hand steal forth to tug one of Cecilia Humphries’s ringlets. When she jumped and squealed, everyone laughed, catching the attention of the older adults at the other end of the gallery.

  “Amelia, what mischief are you about?” Mr. Tregonne asked, the mildness of his voice belying the critical query.

  “No mischief, Father. I was simply warning my friends about Lady Garnet’s ghost.”

  He chuckled. Mr. Tregonne was a large man with a straining waistcoat and exuberant side whiskers. He seemed a genial and indulgent father, and I felt a pang, thinking of my own father so far away. Tapping ash from his cigar, he said, “I ought to have known you would go parading the family skeleton about.”

  Mrs. Tregonne’s hand fluttered to her throat. “Amelia, aren’t you afraid of giving your friends nightmares? Why don’t you entertain us with some Christmas carols instead? Sir James, you have such a magnificent baritone; you must join Amelia in a duet.”

  So Amelia’s mother was indeed encouraging a match, just as I had feared… no, feared was far too woebegone a word. Nevertheless I was surprised at the depth of my relief when Mr. Tregonne vetoed the idea of singing and said that it was time for the young people to retire.

  I suspect that Amelia would have protested had she not wished to prepare for our prank. Instead, there followed a flurry of goodnights, and the company fragmented as each struck out for his or her room. Just before we parted I saw Amelia give a pretend shudder and declare to Sir James, “If I should see Lady Garnet in my room I should die—simply die!”

  “Then Tatham shall have two beautiful ghosts instead of merely one,” he replied, and she giggled with pleasure, peeping back at him over her shoulder as she sashayed to her room, her crinoline swaying sufficiently to offer a glimpse of ankle.

  The thought occurred to me that if anyone at Tatham deserved the name of strumpet, it might not be the resident ghost. But then I scolded myself. Amelia had every reason to contemplate a marriage with Sir James. In any case, it was none of my affair if she chose to flirt with him.

  As I lingered there, she caught sight of me and frowned, making a shooing motion. Obediently I withdrew upstairs to my room to wait for her summons. Soon, I imagined, we would begin the preparations for my spectral impersonation.

  Chapter 3

  Half an hour later, I was standing in Amelia’s bedchamber being transformed into the ghost. Amelia herself laced me into an old-fashioned sack-back gown, unwilling to bring a maid to dress me lest word leak out of my masquerade. The dress was from a trunk of old things she had ransacked for our purposes, and the faded ivory brocade seemed suitably ethereal for a ghost.

  “There’s a hidden passage I’ll show you,” she told me. “It leads to a secret door in Marian’s room. The house simply teems with them.”

  “Teems with secret doors?” My voice emerged jerkily as she tugged at the laces.

  “My great-great-however-many-greats grandfather had Catholic sympathies. He had priest holes built everywhere, with a perfect warren of hidden passages to connect them.” She tied off the laces, smoothed the billowing Watteau pleats into place, and stood back to gauge the effect. “Later on they became convenient for servants to go to and fro without being underfoot. So a number of the rooms have doors tucked behind bookcases and wainscoting and other unlikely places. Now the brooch,” she said, and to my amazement produced the very piece of jewelry Lady Garnet had worn in the painting. Noting my surprise, she explained, “All of her admirers and friends liked to give her garnet jewelry because of her name. Many of the pieces are still in the family, but they are too old-fashioned for Mama and me. And the stones are certainly not worth resetting.”

  “It’s lovely,” I said, my eyes following the pattern of delicate filigree and the glow of the wine-colored faceted stones in the lamplight. “And how clever of you to make certain that everyone saw the portrait, so Marian will recognize the brooch. But do you not think I need some veiling over my face to disguise me?”

  “I haven’t any at hand.”

  “What about some flour to whiten my face, then, so that I look more ghostly?”

  She shook her head impatiently. “We haven’t time to raid the kitchen. I’m certain you’ll make a dramatic impression just as you are.”

  After peering outside her bedroom door to make certain no one was about, she led me through the darkened house. Each of us carried a candle, and the flames cast giant darting shadows on the walls as we stole silently on. Our destination proved to be a small sitting room in the main wing. Judging from the sparse, mismatched furnishings, it seemed not to be in frequent use.

  When Amelia pressed a knot in the paneling next to the fireplace, a hidden door sprang open. I saw that it led into a narrow corridor that was more like a tunnel, having no external windows. I admit that I felt a qualm at having to enter that pit of darkness without a guide.

  “How shall I know when I have reached her room?” I whispered.

  “It is the second door on the left side of the corridor. Just keep straight on and you’ll find it.”

  I stepped into the dark passage, and she made as if to shut the door behind me. “Don’t!” I pleaded in an urgent whisper. The thought of being closed in made my skin crawl.

  She gave a disdainful shrug. “Very well, I shall leave it cracked. Now go! It must be almost midnight.”

  I shall not soon forget that eerie journey through the dark corridor. Perhaps it seems childish to say so, but the feeling of being closed in on all sides in the darkness plunged me into an overwhelming dread. I could feel my heart thudding all the way up to my throat and down to my fingertips, and I could not entirely suppress a wild idea of being closed in here forever, without fresh air or light, unable to find my way out. I remembered horrifying stories of men hiding in priest holes who had starved or suffocated before anyone came to release them.

  This was folly, I told myself. It would be impossible for anyone not to find me if I became stuck somehow; the sound of my vigorous shouting and pounding at the door would bring someone at once. Nevertheless it was with great relief that I arrived at the second door on the left side of the passage.

  I laid hold of the latch, pleased to see that my hand was steady, and pushed the door open slowly.

  The bedroom I entered was dimly illuminated by the fire, banked low
on the hearth but still emitting a glow. By its light and that of my candle I saw that the room was large and elegantly appointed in a style far grander than my own room. Marian evidently warranted finer quarters, but I did not begrudge her them, since at least I could sleep peacefully in my smaller room in the knowledge that no secret door existed there to disgorge unexpected visitors.

  As handsomely furnished as was the room, however, it lacked one notable feature: Marian. The rich red curtains of the tester bed were drawn back, showing the bed to be empty.

  How anticlimactic.

  Well, perhaps it was for the best. I might have frightened Marian into fits. Still, the mystery perplexed me and kept me standing there a few moments more—crucial moments, they would prove—while I wondered where she could be.

  Then several things happened almost at once.

  A thud sounded near the hearth, making me jump and gaze wildly in that direction. I saw now that someone was sitting in one of the wing chairs before the fire, but they were in shadow, so all I could see was a hand and an arm clad in a white sleeve. The noise had been the sound of a book slipping from their fingers to fall to the floor. Then the person stirred, and as the shadowed face emerged into the glow cast by the banked fire, I saw that the drowsy reader was Sir James.

  What was he doing in—

  A pounding on the main door across the room made me gasp. “Fire!” shouted a masculine voice. “I say, come quickly! Everyone come at once! Fire!”

  It was Freddie’s voice, and with recognition came understanding… far too late.

  Marian had never been the object of Amelia’s prank. I was.

  Freddie’s summons had completed the task of waking Sir James. “Who’s there?” he began, his deep, resonant voice blurred with sleep, and then his eyes fell on me.

  For one frozen second I could only stare at him, and I imagine my expression was no less shocked than his. Then, belatedly regaining the power of motion, I darted back through the secret door and yanked it closed behind me, dropping the latch into place—

  But the latch did not drop into place. Instead the door stubbornly refused to move the last crucial half inch to shut completely. “Blast!” I hissed as I realized that the flowing back of my Watteau gown had caught in the door. Dropping my candle, whose flame had been extinguished in my wild leap to safety, I grabbed the fabric with both hands and pulled.

  To my horror, the door swung open again, and a tall figure was silhouetted on the threshold. But my pursuer had unintentionally released me by opening the door, and with a brief flash of elation I started at a run down the corridor. “Stop!” came a fierce command. I had no intention of obeying, but I had gone no more than half a dozen steps when the door shut once more, plunging the scene into complete darkness, and the thud of pursuing footsteps sounded behind me. The back of my dress once more caught fast in something, and with a startled yelp I came to an abrupt stop.

  “Who is that?” my captor demanded. “Miss Reginald?”

  “Turn me loose,” I said haughtily.

  “If I do, will you set off running again?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then I shan’t turn you loose.”

  I had no reply to this. Distantly there came the sound of Freddie’s continued shouts.

  “What is the lad about?” Sir James wondered aloud. “Are you two in league to cause some mischief?”

  “I’m afraid not,” I said. “The mischief was purposed for me. It seems I was to be discovered in your room. If you will be good enough to keep your voice down, however, we may escape Freddie’s notice.”

  To my relief, his next words were spoken more quietly—albeit with a good deal of vigor. “What were you doing in my room at all?”

  I sighed. “Amelia came up with a plan for me to make an appearance as Lady Garnet. She told me it was Marian I would be surprising, but it appears that she sent me deliberately to your room and told Freddie to raise the alarm so that when all of the guests emerged from their rooms I would be seen to have been in yours.”

  There was a pause, then the perplexed reply: “But that might have meant your ruin.”

  “Exactly,” I said bitterly. I could not remember ever having felt more humiliated than at this moment, knowing that the girl who was probably my closest friend had tried to wreck my reputation past recovery, thus making me a complete outcast, unable to appear in society ever again. For an unmarried young woman to be found in a man’s bedchamber—especially in the middle of the night—was social death. I would have been branded a fallen woman and thrown out of the house. It was most unlikely that any gentleman would have risked marriage with me after that, and I would have been doomed to spinsterhood and notoriety.

  Adding an extra layer of humiliation was being held in the grip of this man in particular, and in such an undignified way; he grasped the folds of fabric at the back of my dress rather as one might hold a puppy by the scruff of its neck.

  “This is really becoming most uncomfortable,” I pointed out, and the pressure at the back of my bodice eased somewhat, though not enough for me to make my escape. Curses on this sack-back gown! What a lot of trouble might have been averted had Lady Garnet worn a robe à l’anglaise.

  “I wonder how long we shall have to wait before Freddie gives up,” my captor mused aloud. “If he has raised some of the others, it may be some time before they realize he woke them unnecessarily. I’ve no great desire to spend the next hour standing about with you in a dark corridor.”

  “You are hardly my first choice of companion either,” I snapped. “And my feet are turning to two blocks of ice standing here.”

  My companion’s voice was similarly icy when he replied. “Have you a better plan, then, Miss Reginald? I must remind you that it is your actions that resulted in our present uncomfortable situation.”

  “You did not have to chase me,” I pointed out.

  “I beg your pardon, but I most certainly did. When a man who has fallen asleep over a volume of Dumas awakens to find a lovely vision before him who flees before he can scarcely catch a glimpse of her, naturally he wishes to detain this sylph before she departs his life, perhaps forever.”

  I could not tell from the tone of his voice whether he was in earnest. “Is that truly why you followed me?”

  “Possibly,” he said, and now his voice had regained the sarcasm I had heard earlier in the evening. Though I could not see him, I could vividly picture the hard twist of his lips and the coldness of his blue eyes. “Or perhaps I was rightfully infuriated that my room had become a kind of general thoroughfare and wanted to shake some sense into the intruder who had violated my private sanctum.” Before I could reply, he added, “In any case, I think we’d best shift from here. You need to return to your room, and I to mine, before we are missed. Can you lead us out of here?”

  “Perhaps,” I said. After our brief scuffle in the dark I was no longer certain in which direction I had first come. If the sitting-room door at the end of the passage was still open, it was not letting in any light to guide us. “I suppose we can try each door as we come to it, although goodness knows what room we may blunder into.”

  An aggrieved sigh came to my ears. “Excellent. Midnight hide and seek in the dark. Exactly how I like to spend my winter nights.”

  “Now you sound like a fussy old woman,” I informed him. “You’ve little enough to complain of. After all, you are still dressed. Imagine if you had already retired when I stumbled upon you. You would have had nothing but a nightshirt to keep you warm.”

  “Less than that,” was the reply, in a tone of amusement.

  “Pardon?”

  “I sleep in the altogether.”

  “I…” I swallowed. “That is information I did not need to possess, sir.”

  “I do beg your pardon, Miss Reginald.” His voice was respectful. Sincerely so? Or was he baiting me further?

  “The enforced intimacy of our circumstances has made you forget yourself,” I said sternly, choosing to err on th
e side of caution.

  “Pray forgive me. I forgot for a moment that I was speaking to the niece of a duke and fancied that I was addressing a… how did young Freddie put it earlier? Ah, yes, a strumpet who visits gentlemen in their rooms.”

  Evidently this obstreperous man could not forget our differences and behave like a gentleman for more than five minutes. He seemed to be taking a perverse pleasure in trying to make me lose my temper, but I would not give him the satisfaction. With new purpose I began feeling along the wall for a door. “It’s time we found a way out of here,” I said.

  “There you and I are, for once, of the same mind. It’s a pity you lost your candle.”

  A biting retort died on my lips as my searching hands encountered a door handle. Gratefully I pressed it and swung the door open. It moved with a deep groan, as if the hinges had not been oiled in many years, and when it fully opened upon the moonlit room beyond, I knew why.

  The bedchamber we now entered seemed to have gone untouched for a century. Moonlight shone through the large window opposite us, and its cold and eerie illumination revealed the shrouded shapes of furnishings covered in sheets, shapeless hulks looming all around us. Dust rose as I took my first steps into the room, and the back of my neck prickled at the knowledge that bloomed in my mind. “This was Lady Garnet’s room,” I whispered.

  “How do you know that?” my unwanted companion asked. Now that I could see him properly, I observed that he looked rakishly handsome in his shirtsleeves, having removed his cravat and unfastened his collar before I had interrupted him. His dark hair was rumpled, much like his temper. “You have no way of telling whose room this was,” he said.

  “I know it all the same.” I nodded toward the main door of the room, which was boarded over with rough, unfinished planks. A vivid picture appeared before my mind’s eye of men who were so anxious to leave this chamber of disease that they grabbed whatever materials were at hand to carry out the job quickly. “They shut it up when she died,” I said. “They must have boarded it over on this side so that the barricade wouldn’t be noticeable from the main hallway.” Then they had withdrawn through the hidden passageway—evidently thinking no one else knew of its existence and could find their way here.