Old Lover's Ghost (2 page)

“Ass!” Merton said with a blighting stare. “And, for God’s sake, get rid of that ludicrous kerchief. You look like a racetrack tout.”

There was little resemblance between the mother and her sons. The lady was a petite blonde, a vaporish woman in whom beauty was beginning to dwindle to petulance. The latter were both tall and dark. Lewis was the more handsome. At nineteen, his most outstanding feature was his large and lustrous blue eyes that glowed with dreams of resplendent glory and romance. A glance at the older brother suggested how he would look in another decade, when time had deluded his boyish fancies, had strengthened his jaw and defined his nose to a more manly shape—and, it was hoped, had quelled the riotous excess of his toilette. The blue-and-white-dotted Belcher kerchief at his throat waged an aesthetic battle with a red-and-gold-striped waistcoat. Over the whole was a nip-waisted jacket by Stutz that sported brass buttons as big as saucers. It was only his youth and excellent physique that saved him from looking a perfect quiz.

No one had ever accused Merton of dandyism. If his mama had a complaint, it was that he took too little interest in fashion. He spurned the stylish Brutus do that looked so good on Lewis and wore his short hair brushed back. His jackets, severely tailored with modest brass buttons, were of the best material and impeccably cut, but they did not aspire to the latest heights of fashion. She would have preferred his going off to London for the Season instead of staying at Keefer Hall to tend to his several thousand acres. Lord Merton chose to go to London in the dead of winter, when no one of any account was there, only dull politicians. Lewis would have preferred a Season as well, but since the ghost hunters were coming, he thought perhaps the summer would not be a total loss.

“I daresay the helmet has hit the floor again. Is that what is bothering you?” Merton asked his mama. It was Knagg’s bothersome custom to play with the military effects in the Armaments Room.

“Why should that bother me?” she snapped. “That has been going on forever.”

“The floor is uneven. I must see to it one of these days. If it is not Knagg, then what on earth has induced you to invite this Wainwright fellow?” Merton asked.

“I have told you three times, John, there is a ghost in my bedchamber. I have not had a good night’s sleep for a month.”

“What you have, Mama, is a very old house, with floors that squeak and squawk and a chimney that howls when the wind is high.”

“It is not that! She comes to the window at night.”

“Close your curtains,” he said firmly.

“I do close them. She opens them. And she ... she appears from the clothespress as well,” Lady Merton said with an air of embarrassment.

Merton suppressed the phrase “mad as a hatter.” Mama had been looking peaked of late. That she had recently replaced her dresser with a full-time companion, Miss Monteith, a former upstairs maid, suggested that she was either lonesome or frightened. She had been seeing a good deal of St. John, the vicar, as well. Something was obviously bothering her. Of course she was reaching that age ... If it amused her to have a ghost hunter, there was no real harm in it. He would tip the fellow the clue that he must be rid of the ghost at top speed and give him ten guineas, and that would be the end of it.

“When does he come?” he asked.

“He will be arriving this evening. Around eleven.”

“Eleven? That is a demmed uncivil hour to call.”

“You need not be here, John. I shall greet Mr. Wainwright and his daughter and make them welcome.”

“Good God! Does he travel with his whole family?”

“Only one daughter.”

“Daughter?” Lewis asked, his eyes shining.

“Miss Wainwright is his amanuensis,” Lady Merton explained. “She keeps notes of his findings.”

“And scribbles them up to amuse the public.” Merton scowled. All the world would read of his mama’s folly.

“Is she pretty?” Lewis asked.

“Lady Montagu said she is a good-natured creature.”

The gentlemen exchanged knowing looks. “An antidote,” Merton translated. “The ugly ones are always called good-natured.”

In theory, any lady who fell an inch short of perfection was of no interest to Lewis. In practice, he was a good deal less demanding. “Pity,” he said. “What age, Mama?”

Merton turned a fulminating eye on him. “You are not to carry on with the chit, Lewis. That is all we need, you making an ass of yourself over that charlatan’s daughter.”

“Demme, John, that is unfair. My interest in all this is purely literary. Look at the thundering success old Coleridge had with his ghostly wedding guest.”

“What the devil is he talking about?” Merton asked his mama.

“It is something about a bird, dear, an albatross, I believe, and water, water everywhere, but strangely the sailors are all dying of thirst.”

“Ignorant as swans,” Lewis scoffed with a condemning look at his family. “It is about sin, and expiation, and ... and shrieving the soul. It is all an allegory, you see. The albatross is a symbol. I wonder if there is an allegory in Knagg. I shall speak to Mr. Wainwright. It seems to me Knagg—”

“Do gag him, for God’s sake,” Lady Merton said with an appealing look at her elder son.

“Put a damper on it. You are giving Mama the megrims.”

“Very well, I shan’t bother you mental commoners with poetical things. But it will be jolly good sport hunting ghosts.”

Merton rose. “We have work to do, Lewis. An estate of ten thousand acres does not run itself. It is time you learned the ropes. If you cannot profit from a higher education, then you must learn to farm, to be ready to take over your own place when you reach your maturity. I have enough to do with the Hall. In the spring I can use another pair of hands. Take a run over to the east meadow. Wallins is shearing the sheep today. See if he needs any of the fellows to help him. And you might see that the storage barn has been cleaned up to take the new wool. I shall be in my office.”

Lewis assumed a pained expression and quoted, “ ‘Happy the man who ... works his ancestral acres with oxen of his own breeding,’ eh, John? I envy you your simple pleasures.”

“You omitted the best part of Horace’s lines. ‘Free from usury.’ And as you seem unaware of the fact, I might add it is sheep I breed, not oxen.”

“What is the difference? They are all smelly quadrupeds.”

“One does not shear oxen.”

Lewis was happy enough once he reached the outdoors. So long as he could perform his duties astride his mount, he had no real complaints. Even a poet needed a sound mind in a sound body. How was a fellow to keep a sound body if he was forever bent over a book? He took his gun with him, to hunt a few rabbits before dinner.

Lady Merton sat on alone, worrying. She knew John did not take her fears seriously, but they were genuine fears. Her past was enough to frighten anyone. And now her nemesis had come back to haunt her. She should never have done what she did to Meg. The vicar said this was her chance to undo her sins before she had to meet her maker. That was the way to look at it, as an opportunity to rectify the past.

Chapter Two

The Wainwrights arrived in Eastleigh late in the afternoon, with plenty of time to make a reconnaissance trip to view the exterior of Keefer Hall. It was all that a ghost hunter could wish. In the distance a Gothic heap rose against a dull gray sky. Mr. Wainwright gazed contentedly at pointed windows, finials, gargoyles, and a steeply canted roof.

“There are the ravens,” he said, pointing to six bumps on the roof line. “At Longleat the departure of the swans will foretell the end of the family line. Here at Keefer Hall there is a legend that the ravens circle the house to foretell good luck.”

The birds sat immobile as statues for as long as Charity looked at them. The surrounding park featured dank yews and dripping elms that cast long shadows on the grass. She feared the chimneys in such an old house would smoke; the rooms would be dark and dreary, and the inhabitants would discuss nothing but ghosts and gout.

“I shouldn’t be surprised if they have an oubliette, complete with skeletons and clanking chains,” she said.

“Such appurtenances are not necessary to a haunting,” her papa replied. “Though they do add a certain atmosphere, of course. We shall return to Eastleigh, have a stroll around the town to stretch our limbs, then hire a room to change into evening-wear. After dinner we shall return to Keefer Hall.”

At the inn after their stroll, Charity washed away the dust of travel and changed into her blue silk evening gown, trimmed with Belgian lace around the skirt and bodice. She would have preferred a lighter color in spring. The blue was not the blue of a summer sky, but a deep Wedgwood blue that matched her eyes. Papa liked her to look somber, to add to the atmosphere. She had put her foot down at wearing black, however. She was neither a witch nor a widow, after all.

Mr. Wainwright was rigged out in his ghost-hunting outfit of black evening clothes, satin-lined cape, and silver-headed ebony walking stick. He cut quite a dash when the black carriage, pulled by four jet-black horses, thundered up to the door of Keefer Hall.

Lewis, who darted out to greet them, was immensely impressed. Now here was a gentleman with a sense of style! Wainwright brought a whiff of brimstone with him, with that swirling cape and those slashes of black eyebrow. The daughter was not the clumsy, snorting sort of female he had feared either. Quite pretty, actually, and a little older, just as he liked. She was in her early twenties, he judged, by no means hagged—and with a dandy figure. Wouldn’t the fellows at Cambridge stare to hear he was intimate with an older lady!

“Welcome to Keefer Hall!” he said, ushering them in.

Wainwright introduced himself and his daughter. “Lady Merton is expecting me, I think,” he said.

“We are all waiting for you. If you would like to remove your cape ...”

“I shall keep it, thank you. Ghosts bring a chilly air with them.”

“Ah!” Lewis grinned his approval of this bit of arcane lore. “Come into the saloon and have a glass of something wet before we begin work.”

“Excellent! A glass of claret sharpens the senses. And there is no hurry. Midnight is the best hour for communing with the beyond.”

Lewis hung on his every word, already envisaging himself in a cape of similar design (though perhaps a red lining would be more dramatic), banishing ghosts from damsels’ castles and taking his reward in the ladies’ boudoirs. The Wainwrights were soon being introduced to an elegant, pretty, but troubled lady of middle years who was clutching a lace-edged handkerchief.

Wainwright bowed over her bejewelled fingers and said in a low voice, “Fear not, Lady Merton, we shall clear up that past transgression that is troubling you. It was not entirely your fault.”

She gasped in wonder and said, “I am so glad you are here, Mr. Wainwright.”

Lord Merton heard her incredulous gasp and shot a narrow-eyed glance at the callers. He saw his mother staring fatuously at the man. What had the scoundrel said to Mama?

Charity saw his annoyance. Oh, dear! It was to be one of those visits, where the man of the house disapproved of them. She was at pains to distract him.

“What an interesting house, Lord Merton,” she said. “The façade is very old, I think?” She was relieved to observe that the interior had been modernized. No smoke emanated from the blazing grate of an Adam fireplace. Fine mahogany furnishings gleamed from a recent application of beeswax and turpentine. A pair of striped sofas were arranged by the grate. Around them stretched a vast room, done up in a style suitable to a noble home.

Merton did the decent thing and behaved civilly to his mama’s guests. “Yes, the front and parts of the west wing survive from the fifteenth century. The place was pretty well destroyed by the Ironsides. We had Cromwell’s troopers billeted here in the 1600s. The Dechastelaines were Royalists.”

“You are fortunate anything was left standing.”

“We have the restoration of Charles II to thank for that. Our so-called ghost, Knagg, was one of the Cavaliers who was killed here, defending Keefer Hall. In the Armaments Room we have a yellow jerkin and a helmet allegedly belonging to the fellow who killed him. I daresay it was Knagg’s violent end that accounts for these ghost stories. That is what you folks hold to account for ghosts, is it not?”

“Violent or tragic,” she said, noticing but not commenting on his many evasions: “so-called ghost,” “allegedly,” “I daresay,” “what you folks hold to account.” All this told her that Lord Merton was not a believer. “Papa will tell you the exact nature of his passing.”

Merton shot her a look not a shade short of outright derision.

Charity did not foam up in anger. It was not her way, but she did not back down either. “I take it our invitation does not have your approval, milord?”

“If it amuses Mama ...” The old fool Wainwright, rigged up like a satellite of Satan in a morality play, could say what he liked without fear of contradiction as there was no proof to counter his story. “I personally place no credence in ghosts,” he said bluntly. “I have lived at Keefer Hall for thirty years without seeing any spirits or hearing the singing nun.”

“Some are insensitive in that respect,” she replied, refusing to take offense, and immediately changed the subject. “I assume there was a priory hereabouts at one time, as you speak of the ghost of a nun.”

“Yes, an offshoot of the monastery, as the priories usually were in the old days, I believe. Keefer Hall stands on the remains of an old Cistercian monastery. The cloisters still stand. The chapel, unfortunately, was looted by Cromwell. It is considered an excellent example of its sort. Whitewashed walls, the stained glass taken out, a plain black cross. We do not use it.”

Lewis was bored with this sort of chat. Just like John to go talking history when he had this rare opportunity to broaden his horizons with some really interesting conversation. “Tell us some of your ghost experiences, Miss Wainwright. I find it fascinating,” he said.

“One hardly knows where to begin.” She wished Lord Winton had chosen some other subject as the master of the house was looking at her with a jaundiced eye, ready to poke holes in any claims she made. “Monks and nuns appear in a greater proportion than their actual numbers warrant. The Society believes it was their harsh treatment by Henry VIII that accounts for it.”