The Ghost and Miss Demure

by Melanie Jackson

But she hadn’t shut the portcullis yet, and had no plans to. Not until she knew who had called her inside. After all, there hadn’t been a nice little sign on the door saying: BELLE ANGE—VISITORS WELCOME.

  She walked slowly over the gloomy stone floor, letting her eyes grow used to the dusk. Once past the inevitable suit of rusting armor standing at the entrance like a hostile sentinel ready to cleave and chop with its corroded battle ax, Karo could see a dim light coming from a short, arched passage to the right. A thin, stooped opening at the end seemed to lengthen and waver as if lit by firelight or a flaring torch.

  “Oh, goody. A troll hole,” she muttered. “Let’s hope he’s not hungry.”

  Karo walked forward cautiously, resisting the urge to duck under the low ceiling that pressed far too close overhead. She halted at the dwarf-sized door at the end of the corridor and rested a hand against it. Her breath echoed down the tiny tunnel behind her as she stood watching feathery shadows dance around the edge of the partially closed portal.

  “Hello,” she said again, though this time it took more effort to force the words out. She breathed in hot air and felt like she was going under sedation, floating at the edge of consciousness. There still came no answer.

  If you go into a house today, better not go alone…

  Though she half expected the door to slam shut against her, Karo pushed it wide with tingling fingers and stared into a library. Her relief was immediate and out of all proportion. A small fire had been kindled in the hearth of an enormous fireplace constructed of the local river stone. The tiny blaze gave off unbelievable heat and set her clothes to steaming like dry ice in coffee. It was only then that Karo realized how cold she still was. With her coating of shell dust dripping off her drenched coat, she must look like a snowman who had blundered indoors and was beginning to melt.

  She thought she saw a small movement by the heavily draped windows and turned expectantly, peering through the clouds of vapor that plagued her still stinging eyes. “Hello.” She spoke into the deep, unlit corner. There was no reply.

  She took a small step closer to the corner of the room and then waited for her boss to come forward into the light and introduce himself. Any polite Englishman would. Even in the gothic horror novels they did that, didn’t they?

  Nibble, nibble, little mouse. Who’s that nibbling at my house?

  “I’m right here,” she said helpfully, in case he was napping in one of the chairs whose large winged backs faced her. Tristam English hadn’t sounded elderly on the phone, but perhaps he was. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she added and then frowned at her silliness.

  Nothing.

  “Well, hell.” She slid off her right loafer and wiggled her toes. They felt numb. Cold as freezer pops. It was because of that blasted hole in the toe. The rain had gotten in. “Guess I’m all by my lonesome.” She began to carol: “Ollie-ollie-oxenfr—Eek!”

  Something took her up on her childish dare. It was large and bristled up like a frightened cat, and a terrified Karo froze in place with one foot still lifted above her shoe. A long, spiked shadow unfolded itself from behind the stalwart desk and then glided out into the murky firelight. The room grew colder, though her face and the part of her body facing the shadow felt like they were too close to an open fire.

  Karo’s breath wedged in her throat as the disjointed creature reassembled itself, extruding into full height, the limbs filling out like meat poured into sausage casings. Her brain blanked out most of the image, unable to comprehend what it was seeing for the next several seconds. She didn’t doubt that he was there, though. The displaced air kissed her skin with fevered lips and made her shudder.

  He was a tall man, gaunt and pale. Though not old, his hair was pure white and floated about his face like fine cobweb caught in an updraft. He stood with utter inhuman stillness. No breath or movement disturbed the strange, theatrical clothing thrown carelessly onto his wiry frame. He looked like a courtier turned torturer. Or a seventeenth-century executioner with a taste for finery. The final bizarre touch was the red velvet hood tucked into his thick, black belt, along with calfskin gloves, a tapestry purse and a thick length of ribbon.

  She noted the pallor of the skin where it showed at the cuffs and above the high black collar that framed his face in a small ruff. Rice powder, right? Cadmium white theatrical makeup, maybe. The only sign of life or color was the eerie gold eyes that studied her like a hungry cat from across the dusky room.

  For a moment he lost substance. His face seemed to flatten and indent into a weird chiaroscuro. He might have been a painting, Karo thought, for all the life he showed. Except for those eyes! Those were wickedly alive, and she sensed that they looked upon her with presumptuous familiarity that warranted a sexual harassment complaint—or maybe even a smack of his leering chops, if she could find the courage to move a single quivering muscle.

  “Please tell me you’re not Tristam English,” she whispered, not realizing that she had spoken aloud until she saw the cloud left by her breath. She stuffed her numb foot back into her wet shoe and got ready to run. Her muscles liked the idea and complied with alacrity. Her knees tensed, her calves coiled.

  Those liquid yellow irises blazed briefly with what might have been amusement. The figure’s mouth opened. The lips peeled back, showing a lot of pointy teeth that looked like they belonged on a vampire. No-no-no-no, Karo thought, her scalp tightening. This was a monster, a manifestation. Ectoplasm shouldn’t talk.

  Suddenly, light—beautiful, electric and sane light—exploded above and behind her. She heard a noise and whirled at full speed to see what fresh, nerve-shaking menace was coming her way. Another man stood at the top of a short staircase she had failed to notice upon her entrance to the house, descending steeply from off to the right of the library door. The setting, even with the lights on, was pure Dracula, but this man was hardly anyone’s idea of gothic peril. Fair and tweedy, and wearing a slight smile, there was nothing scary about him. Her nascent scream aborted itself as she realized that there was no need to throw her body through a window and flee into the twilight.

  Though he was unthreatening, the newcomer was staring at her with mild surprise and perhaps vexation. He somehow managed to climb down several stairs without her seeing or hearing him move—more freak optics due to the storm, she told herself. Her ears were still whining, too. That was the problem: shock.

  Karo stared hard. The lightbulb above him, though rather dim, did provide enough illumination to reassure her that he couldn’t be a figment of her overworked imagination. His clothes were also reassuring twenty-first century, mild-mannered casual. In other words, everything was actually okey-dokey, and she had been about to act like a nitwit with the other old guy in the library. She let out a depleted breath and sucked in some fresh oxygen for her sorry brain. What was wrong with her? She’d worn a costume to work every day for the last three years, and of course that’s what she’d seen: a period costume. And she had been ready to scream the house down because it was dark and she was thinking of monster movies. She was losing it big time.

  Feeling suddenly embarrassed by her intrusion into the house, Karo looked over her shoulder to ask the scary man in the library to explain that he had called her inside. The room was empty.

  She glanced back at the flesh and blood male on the stairs. He was now halfway down, still watching her, but with an expression that was one part relief and three parts amusement as he scanned her battered clothes. She was likely showing a rather spooky complexion, too, if her chalky hands were any guide.

  “Hello.” The voice was deep and soothing, with just the trace of an accent—an English one this time. “I take it that you are my new assistant. Is that your car parked out by the gate?”

  Karo heard herself answer from far away. “Yes. I’m sorry to be so late, but the lightning knocked a tree across the road and I couldn’t get by.” She looked over her shoulder again, still wondering where the unpleasant man in the library had gone, since she could
see no other door. But the sense of his presence, along with the fire’s intense heat, was fading quickly from her flesh. Shock certainly did funny things to a person: one moment cold and the next too hot.

  “Don’t give it a thought. I’m relieved that you are unhurt. What storms you have here in the States! I’ve been feeling a bit like a toad under a harrow.” He’d reached the bottom of the stairs and she realized that he was very tall—well over six feet—but he moved with the grace of a fencing master. “You are frightfully wet. I must say, that was quick work with the fire. I haven’t had much luck with that par ticu lar fireplace. Wood in it simply refuses to burn for me.”

  Karo looked over at the hearth and then back at her new boss. He had moved closer in the blink of an eye. She still hadn’t heard his tread on the stairs, but it didn’t seem to matter anymore. The tension had gone from the room along with the other man and the intense cold.

  He’s kind of cute, she thought, smiling. He was like one of Rafael’s exquisite fallen angels, studying her soul with dangerous appreciation while he decided what to do with her.

  Karo frowned at that idea. It didn’t sound very nice at all once articulated. And the longer she gazed at him, the less pleasant she felt. The image of a moth—an embarrassed one—caught fluttering in between twin pools of hammered gold was vivid. And all the while, he was observing her plight with unholy amusement, laughing while he watched her slowly drown in confusion.

  Karo blinked twice. What an imagination! He wasn’t an angel at all, and he wasn’t laughing. That was the other man. This one was just very…cute and tweedy.

  Feeling more discomfited than ever for gaping at her host, she glanced hurriedly away from that chiseled face and tried to remember what he had just said. Oh, yes. It was something about the fireplace not working.

  “I didn’t light the fire. I went to knock, but the door was open. Then the man said to come in…” She trailed off, no longer certain that she had actually seen or heard anyone. She’d thought she’d seen bodies swaying up in the trees twice while walking, but they hadn’t been real. Maybe she had imagined the old man as well.

  A stray drop of water ran between her breasts, and a fast look down showed her linen blouse plastered against her slender frame in a nearly transparent layer. She could count the daisies embroidered on her bra and her employer probably could, too. So much for wearing nice lingerie because it gave you confidence. Karo felt fresh color burning in her cheeks but resisted the urge to cover herself.

  “If someone could help me move the tree…” She looked up again. Her employer was only inches from her now. His left eyebrow had quirked upward, the expression on his aristocratic face still amused. “Perhaps after the rain has stopped we could…”

  “I almost hate to ask this, but…what other man?”

  The electric light glittered in his soft gold hair. What was it she had been thinking about gold hair? Or was it gold eyes?

  Karo swallowed and tried not be distracted by his proximity, but she could feel the warmth radiating from his body. In her abnormally chilled state, it seemed reasonable to want close contact with this hot-blooded stranger. He also smelled deliciously of vanilla and coconut, and she was suddenly very tired.

  “The man in the library,” she managed to say, gesturing vaguely to the shadowed corner where the leering man had stood. “With the ruff and those teeth. He sure fooled me. I thought for a minute that he was the real thing.”

  Her golden-haired visitor stepped past her into the dim room. Their arms brushed, and she followed him like iron filings after a magnet, or a hungry dog after a meaty bone.

  “There’s no one here.”

  “I…I know. He’s gone now.”

  The man turned her way again. There was a faint movement of a curving brow and a small, bemused smile at her reply.

  He thought she was telling stories, she realized, but he was not upset. No anger or rudeness radiated forth while he waited in royal silence for her to get to the punch line. He had breeding to the nth degree, in both his cheekbones and manners. Not like…What was his name? The bastard she’d worked for.

  “Since the workmen all went home hours ago, I can only conclude that it was the Vellacourt ghost who welcomed you,” her host said at last, when she failed to speak.

  “Ghost?” she asked, disturbed and startled that he was also thinking about restless spirits. His tone was easy, though, and she didn’t know if he was teasing.

  “Can you doubt it?” He gestured at the short open door that led to the entry hall. There was light out there now as well.

  She walked back to the door and looked around the entry slowly, really seeing her surroundings for the first time. The house’s interior design completely eclipsed the exterior’s tasteless Gothic-rococo-Romanesque revival. It did in fact resemble the set of a low budget horror flick. At one side of the room was a massive curved staircase with a wrought-iron banister and worn wooden treads. It was like some set designer had eaten hallucinogenic mushrooms, she decided. The walls were paneled in more of the dark oak that would have been pretty in moderation, but which had been used to cover every last inch of wall, all the way from the second-story gallery to the dusty black and gray marble floor.

  The room’s vertical surfaces were decorated with ancient weaponry and what looked like—what probably was—standard sixteenth-century Spanish Inquisition–issue devices for torturing heretics in the New World: witch prickers, shackles, thumbscrews. There were also several glassy-eyed, moth-eaten badger masks interspersed among rusty bear traps and cooking accoutrements, and rack after rack of deer and moose antlers stacked on the floor like cord wood awaiting a bonfire. This prickly bone hedge was half hiding the fireplace, which would have stalled a fair-sized pony and cart with room left over, but was instead being used as a temporary home for a worn Queen Anne settee and a broken grandfather clock. These were both coated with ash. If this was a fairy tale, it was a dark one.

  The overall effect was more than morbid or tasteless. It was bizarre in the extreme. “Maybe lightning did hit me,” Karo murmured to herself, again feeling very uneasy. “This doesn’t look like enchantment; it feels like a hex.”

  Her host came to her swiftly, concern replacing amusement as he drew her into the pool of artificial light at the base of the stairs. He picked up her right hand and stared at the long scrape along the edge of her thumb and the mud on her cuff and palm.

  “You fell?” A careful finger wiped some of the red earth away. Her hands were still tingling violently but she appreciated the tender touch.

  “The lightning strike was close. It knocked me down. I thought I was fine, but I guess I’m seeing things because I was sure that someone was in the library.”

  “You’re rather chilled and mussed.” Her companion looked thoughtful. He dropped her fingers and again gestured to her. This time he indicated the hearth in the library.

  “I feel cold,” she agreed.

  “And you didn’t light the fire?”

  “No. At least…I don’t think so.” She looked up at him, no longer embarrassed but still mildly confused. She felt thickheaded, like when she had a cold. “You are Tristam English, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Sorry, should have mentioned that straight off.”

  “That’s okay. I’m glad you’re here. I didn’t like the other man. Do you have some rope?” Her mouth asked the question without permission from her brain, and her voice seemed to come from down a long tunnel. It was like that other time with what’s-his-name. The one she had assaulted with potato salad.

  “I don’t know.”

  The reply was perfectly sensible, but Karo didn’t think that he’d understood her request. He continued to stare at her, as if she had said something strange. “If I had a rope, I could use the car to move the tree. I still have one bumper,” she explained, wishing to demonstrate to her new boss that she had ability to cope competently with an unexpected crisis. “It’s too hot to touch.”

  “I see. Let’s
worry about that later, shall we?”

  Obedient to the pressure on her arm, Karo allowed herself to be guided to an overstuffed, wing back chair and thrust into its generous seat. Her employer walked over to a sideboard—a fine one made of rosewood, probably seventeenth-century French, her brain noted—and turned on a small lamp. It chased away the last of the creepy shadows behind what turned out to actually be a rococo desk. No one was hiding in the corner, not even a cat.

  She watched Tristam pour out a generous snifter of brandy from a crystal decanter—cut glass, Venetian this time, so someone was very inconsistent with their decorating theme—and returned to her side. “Drink this.” The voice was kind but firm. She accepted the pewter goblet—early colonial—but didn’t taste the contents right away.

  “Is this really Belle Ange?” She heard the disbelief in her tone and flushed again. She would never impress this man with her mental skills if she kept asking stupid questions! The humidity must be rusting her brain.

  “Yes. This really is Belle Ange.”

  “That’s good, I guess.” She leaned forward. “I wasn’t certain. One professional to another, this place isn’t anything like Berkeley or Westover or…well, any plantation I’ve ever seen.”

  “No, it’s not,” he agreed. Walking back over to the sideboard, he poured a drink for himself.

  “Whoever decorated must have had a bad drug habit. Quaaludes and acid, I think. Or did they just have opium back then?” Karo was aware that she was being less than politic in her observations, but couldn’t seem to stop the tactless phrases from tripping out as she stared into Tristam’s lynxlike eyes that were again on her face. “I know about this stuff because I put together an exhibit of druggies’ paintings in SF when I was still in school. We called it Opium Dreams, but it was still just twisted art. Put me off ever taking drugs, let me tell you.”

  “Twisted art. Well, we all start somewhere.” The voice was polite. “Not too appropriate for stuffy old Williamstown, though.”

  Had she gone as red as mulled wine? She certainly felt so. Maybe she should just shut up for a while. Karo leaned back in the old chair and sipped from the fake Revere goblet. The brandy went down like razor blades until it hit her stomach. There it stopped slicing and turned into a pleasant fire easing away some of the chill and her nerves.