Love in the Moonlight: A Regency Romance All Hallows' Eve Collection: 7 Delightful Regency Romance All Hallows' Eve Stories (Regency Collections Book 6)

by Arietta Richmond

  “I think something in the antiquity of the place appealed to him,” said Nathaniel. “You ought to have seen the joy in his face as he wandered among the faded paintings and old silver that were scattered amongst the books. He was like a child let loose in a doll shop.”

  “He may visit whenever he wishes,” said the Duchess, gazing pensively out the window, “but we are not buying it, no matter how desperately the owner wishes to be rid of it.”

  “The owner wishes to retire to Chalk with his terrier, and live out the rest of his days on the beach. He was delighted to find in Papa an enthusiastic buyer, unaware, I think, of the extent of his illness.”

  The Duchess let out a sniff of contempt.

  “He may say that, but I can tell when my husband’s condition is being exploited. Not that we could buy a library even if we wanted to — we have lost so much money in the past year or so as a result of your father’s mismanagement that it is all I can do just to keep this house running.”

  “What we need,” said Nathaniel, setting his knife down on the table and speaking slowly and deliberately, “is a new source of income.”

  “To be certain,” said the Duchess, as though nothing could be clearer. “But where are we going to find it?”

  ~~~~~

  Meanwhile on the other side of Regent’s Park, at Hadleigh House in Kensal Green, twenty-year-old Lady Beatrice Stewart was in the dining-room, applying a home-made salve to a burn on her cook’s arm.

  It was a task made more difficult by the flinching and howls of despair the woman emitted at the slightest touch.

  “If you would just hold still, Alice,” said Beatrice in a tone of frustration, brushing a loose strand of blonde hair out of her face, “this would be over in moments.”

  “I can’t help it,” said Alice, who was very nearly in tears. “The pain is so sharp. Honestly in the twenty years I’ve been a cook I’ve never seen a grease flare-up as big as that one. For one dreadful instant, I thought the whole house was about to catch fire — and me the cause!”

  “Don’t worry your head about it.” Beatrice grabbed hold of the woman’s left arm to keep her from squirming, then gently applied the salve. It was a gel extracted from aloe vera plants, a preparation she had successfully used many times before.

  The cook bit down on her tongue and her eyes moistened to a degree that it pained Beatrice to witness, but she stayed mostly still.

  When it was all done, Alice sat there for a moment breathing heavily.

  “If I didn’t have full faith in you and your skills as a nurse, Lady Beatrice,” she said with a shake of her head, “we’d never have gotten through that!”

  “Well, it’s all done now,” said Beatrice with a serene air, “and you can congratulate yourself on having survived it. No soldier at Waterloo, having lost his right leg in a volley of cannon fire, could have shown more bravery.”

  A sly smile found its way to her face.

  “Lady Beatrice, how you flatter me, and that’s a fact!” said Alice, though the tone in her voice suggested that she really did not mind.

  Beatrice helped her to her feet. No sooner had Alice returned to the kitchen than Wilson Stewart, Lord Troutbrook, entered the room. He wore a silk hat and a pale-yellow daisy in the buttonhole of his morning jacket, and stood at the table for a long moment in silence surveying the Morning Chronicle while stroking the stem of a calabash pipe.

  “All these debates in Parliament,” he muttered. “Factory conditions… educational reform… and yet the country seems to be inching closer and closer to the brink every day! It’s only a matter of time until the people of England revolt and, when that day comes, blood will flow in the streets, just as it did in France.”

  He laid down his copy of the Chronicle on the table and wandered off toward the sitting-room, followed closely by Beatrice.

  “Dear brother, it is truly good to have you back again after your five-year stint in the Navy.” Wilson immediately spun around to face her, and her eyes met his. “I was sincerely concerned for your safety. But it appears my concern would have been better served, had it been for your mental state. It seems your call to duty has somehow abducted your sense of humour. You seem to be drowning in the sea of politics.”

  “Why, whatever are you talking about?” Wilson said, a bit testily.

  “Have you somehow forgotten? For as far back as I can remember, you have always made jokes and played pranks. Poor Alice was sorely afraid to open a cupboard in her kitchen, lest a mouse would come charging from it, a red bow tied round its neck!”

  “And you, dear sister,” he shot back, “you were always one to empathise with anyone in trouble, and always with the ability to see through those pranks. You demonstrated a gift of wisdom beyond your years.” Wilson paused momentarily as he gave more thought to her remark. “Well, now that you mention it, I suppose that I was a bit disruptive at times...”

  “Disruptive?! Is that what you call it? How about that time when you stole one of my jars of imported herbs, only to pour half of its contents into the vicar’s tea canister?”

  “Well, I thought that he and that stodgy committee at the church needed something to shake them out of their doldrums, so I seized one of your jars at random and poured the stuff into the canister.” A grin spread across his face. “And apparently it worked.”

  “Oh, it worked alright. That jar was half-full of dried cascara bark from America! Not one of them could sit still for nearly a week!”

  The two broke out in riotous laughter that lasted for some time. Then silence fell between them for a moment, as they both stared out the window to the rain-soaked London street below.

  Wilson sat down in a chair near the window. “I’ve been thinking it over carefully,” he said, leaning against the back of his chair with an air of perfect ease. “You know how much I detest the fact that you had to miss your debut season. I would like to make it up to you.”

  Beatrice sat down in the chair beside his, looking intrigued. “I don’t consider it a great loss,” she replied, “since it was given up in the pursuit of a noble goal.”

  “You can call looking after Aunt Agatha ‘noble’ if you wish,” said Wilson dryly. His sister started to say something, but Wilson held up his hand to arrest her. “Yet you did not have to do it, especially to dedicate four years of your life to caring for the old dear in her final days.”

  “It was truly a labour of love, and you’re right — Aunt Agatha was a dear person.”

  “Indeed. Now to reward you for all your good works, I intend to introduce you to one of my close friends.”

  “Oh?” said Beatrice sceptically. “And who might that be?”

  “Only a young man of my acquaintance, just a few years older than you.” Wilson lit his pipe and the aroma of tobacco smoke filled the room. “He’s handsome, which should please you. He’s single, which should please you even more. Best of all, he’s heir apparent to an elderly Duke — should the old codger ever agree to die — and scion of a family of immense wealth.”

  “I confess that I should find it difficult to refuse a man who was both handsome and wealthy,” said Beatrice, “since the two so rarely seem to keep company.”

  “You agree to be introduced, then?” asked Wilson with a look of great interest.

  Beatrice hesitated for a moment. Truly she could not see any valid reason for resisting.

  “Yes, if you insist upon it,” she said finally. “And if he should agree to it.”

  “Oh, he won’t refuse me,” said Wilson, blowing a fully formed smoke ring into the air. “You can depend upon that.”

  Beatrice shot a questioning look at her brother, seeking more information. Instead he changed the subject.

  “It’s been so long since I have heard you exercise your excellent skill on the pianoforte, my dear sister. Would you play a piece for me now?”

  Beatrice sighed.

  “I suppose so.”

  Wrinkling her nose, she stood and sauntered over to the ins
trument and sat down. As she began to play, she could not help but wonder who this mystery man might be.

  Chapter Two

  One week later, Nathaniel entered the White Hart tavern in Drury Lane at noon and found a table near the bar. He quickly surveyed the room and the sparse crowd assembled there.

  “My good man,” he called to the bartender, “bring me a glass of brandy-and-water, if you please.”

  The man nodded and Nathaniel removed his coat and carefully laid it over the back of the chair next to him before sitting down. He sat for a long moment, brooding over his, and his family’s, troubles.

  The ride from Clarendon Square over the Thames to the tavern had cleared his head a bit. Visiting the seamier and more squalid areas of London was a reminder, if he needed any, that however dire his family’s fortunes might seem at the moment, there were others who suffered more.

  Five minutes earlier he had witnessed a window being opened and the foul contents of a bucket dumped unceremoniously into an alley by a pair of unwashed hands. Just prior to entering the tavern he had encountered a girl no older than fifteen walking along the street barefoot with a baby at her breast. Nathaniel offered her a shilling, which she accepted with a look that was half grateful, half embarrassed.

  The bartender, a man named Jones, with a thick neck and three golden teeth, brought over the brandy-and-water.

  As Nathaniel sat there sipping the warm drink, a man wearing a tall silk hat with a long velvet cloak flung over his shoulders in the Spanish style came through the door and sat himself down at the bar. He raised an arm and caught Jones’s eye.

  “A slab of roast pork, a chunk of boiled cabbage, and top that off with a tankard of rum, if you please. And make the pork lean.”

  Nathaniel was so intrigued by the stranger’s appearance that he could not resist watching him with fascination. He had not been seated for more than a couple of minutes when the man turned to the bartender and said in a perfectly matter-of-fact voice, “Have you ever conversed with the dead?”

  He asked it with so casual an air, as if remarking on the weather, that at first Nathaniel thought he had misheard him. But this idea was laid to rest a moment later when Jones shook his head and said, “Naw, ‘cause the dead ain’t ever conversed with me.”

  It was clear from the tone of Jones’s voice that he did not approve of the question and didn’t wish to continue the discussion. But the stranger took no notice of this. As Jones set his tankard of rum in front of him he leaned forward and said in a staged whisper, “My dear friend, the dead are all around us. They can hear us — every — day — of — our — LIVES!”

  “If that’s the case, then I’m glad as they don’t speak to me,” said Jones as he laid a knife and fork on the counter in front of the stranger. “I should think I would find them an insuff’rable nuisance.”

  Several other men, who were listening in, laughed appreciatively.

  “The Holy Scripture tells us that we are surrounded by a ‘great cloud of witnesses’,” said the stranger, momentarily waving one hand in the air as if to take in the whole sky at once. “We mock them at our own peril. Or do you mean to tell me,” he added, picking up the fork and shaking it in the direction of the bartender, “that you’ve never had the desire to commune with a loved one who had passed on?”

  “Not unless they’s owed me money.” The bartender reached down and brought up a plate and slid it across the bar. “Here’s yer pork an’ cabbage.”

  By this point it was abundantly clear, even to the stranger, that he was never going to interest Jones in his pet subject. He went on eating his roast pork with a dejected and pensive air. Nathaniel, however, whose interest in the conversation had been steadily growing, gathered up his coat and went over to sat down at the bar beside him.

  Nathaniel could hold his curiosity no longer.

  “Excuse me, sir, if I may interrupt. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Lord Salborne.”

  “Bragg is my name, my Lord. Anthony Bragg. And how may I be of service to you?”

  “I couldn’t help but overhear your discussion, and I find it intriguing. Have you, yourself, ever spoken to the dead?”

  “Aye,” said the man with the same relaxed air, as if admitting to playing the piano. “They whisper my name in the white halls of heaven — ‘where have ye been, laddie?’ one asks. ‘I’ve been down in the mortal world again, speaking with the one and only Anthony Bragg!’ says the other.”

  “Have they told you this?” asked Nathaniel with an eyebrow raised.

  “Aye,” he said again. Nathaniel had been worried that his questions might seem intrusive or irritating, but Bragg seemed to enjoy the attention. “A true medium is rare in this world of charlatans, but he who finds one has found a valuable treasure.”

  “This is truly fascinating to me.” Nathaniel could feel his body beginning to loosen as he turned and gave the man his full attention. “You mentioned the Bible. Yet in most of the stories I remember from that most holy book, those who attempted to commune with the dead came to regrettable ends.”

  Bragg nodded soberly.

  “‘And the King said unto her, ‘Be not afraid. What sawest thou?’ And the witch of Endor said, ‘I saw gods ascending out of the earth’.”

  “You know the story then. How can you get around it?”

  “My advice is not to question it,” said Bragg, raising his tankard and taking a drink. “Look at the times we live in — the voices of spirits that used to surround us are being crowded out, replaced by machines and metal. The eyes of man are changing, and he can no longer see as he once did. The other world, that was once so close, has been pushed away to an irretrievable distance.” Leaning close, he added in a quiet voice, “But there are those who still possess the gift.”

  “The gift?”

  Bragg nodded seriously, a glint in his eye.

  “Once we could see heaven all around us, bathed in celestial light. Today only a few are able.”

  He used his utensils to shred some of the pork on his plate.

  “But what sorts of things do the dead tell you? What is there to talk about?”

  Bragg smiled as if this was the question he had been waiting for Nathaniel to ask.

  “What haven’t we talked about?” he replied, quickly raising his tankard into the air once again, then setting it down with such force that a bit of the brown liquid sloshed over the side. “In the séances I’ve witnessed, the dead have spoken some truly extraordinary things — objects, which no one had been able to find, suddenly recovered at a word. Can you explain that? Revealing secrets that were known only to the person being addressed, delivering messages that brought healing. Even,” — and here he lowered his voice almost to a whisper — “revealing the secrets of wealth to a young man who was down on his luck. That man is now one of the wealthiest businessmen in Kensington.”

  “It’s fantastic. It’s unbelievable. I don’t know how you could explain any of that without recourse to the supernatural.”

  “You can’t,” said Bragg sadly. “But people will find a way.”

  Nathaniel continued to interrogate Bragg, who bore with his questions patiently and eventually revealed that he knew of a medium in Clerkenwell who might be available to perform a séance.

  Nathaniel indicated his interest and gave Bragg his card and left the tavern in an excited state. Dark clouds were gathering over the Thames and he hoped to reach home before the rain began.

  ~~~~~

  On Monday of the next week, Nathaniel went out riding with Wilson Stewart, his school chum and long-time friend. Leaving Clarendon Square at noon, they rode through Kensal Green, past Old Oak Common in the direction of East Acton. Along the way Nathaniel related the conversation he’d had with the strange man in the bar. Wilson, who had long tolerated his friend’s peculiar whims, listened quietly until his friend had finished.

  “And you really think that this mere mortal can communicate with the dead?” Wilson asked in a sceptical voice, as they
passed a row of two-story houses with green-framed windows and marigolds in tiny flower beds.

  “If you’d heard the stories he told me, you wouldn’t question it. After meeting him I will never again doubt the reality of an afterlife.”

  Wilson managed a weak smile.

  “You fear death too much, and it makes you vulnerable to charlatans and superstitions. You’ll seize on any supposed proof of life after death, because the thought of no longer existing is dreadful to you, so dreadful that you would do anything for some ultimate assurance of immortality.”

  “I merely think it’s a fascinating subject, is all. I should like to attend one of these séances and see for myself.”

  Wilson laughed.

  “Just be careful the spirits in bliss don’t separate you from your fortune.”

  Sensing that he might have offended his friend, Wilson added, “While we’re here, I have a small favour I want to ask of you. My sister, Beatrice, has recently returned from an extended stay at her aunt’s. There’s a Ball coming up on Friday evening and I think it would mean the world to her if you would dance with her — just one dance, is all.”

  “Beatrice? It’s been ages since I’ve seen her.”

  “Five years, by my count.”

  “And still as tall and awkward as ever, I’d imagine.”

  “You might be surprised. Little girls do have a habit of growing up into young women. In any case, she’s always looked up to you and I think you might find her conversation more stimulating than that of your new dead companions. ‘A living dog is better than a dead lion’, after all.”

  “Very well,” said Nathaniel. “Just one dance.”

  “I can guarantee it will be worth your while,” said Wilson with a satisfied smile, and they rode on until they reached East Acton.

  Chapter Three

  On Thursday, the day before the Ball, Nathaniel was sitting at breakfast, before a warm fire, with the Duke and Duchess, discussing his new interest in the supernatural.