The Lady's Ghost

by Colleen Ladd

  Giles put the letters from him and rubbed his fingers together to shed the feel of the paper. He hadn’t thought it possible, but he could find it in himself to feel sorry for his cousin, despite the destruction he’d wrought on the Hall. The poor fool had married a woman who’d made a cuckold of him throughout their marriage and not even had the decency to wait out her year of mourning before returning to the relationship. He’d been wrong in thinking she’d come to Ashburne Hall to escape something. She was not in flight, but in exile. James had obviously sent her to the Hall to keep her indiscretions out of the public eye. Giles remembered James as a prating prig, tattling on Roger when he wasn’t dogging his footsteps, but he appeared to have this situation, at least, well in hand. Except he’d dumped the shameless female on Giles.

  Giles put the letters back in the traveling desk and closed it. He couldn’t resist lingering in the bedchamber a moment more, appreciating the clean, comfortable serenity despite the woman who was author of it. Then he went back through the dressing room. Her unfortunate wardrobe was explained now too. James had wisely sent the woman away with only her cast-offs, knowing she could hardly take even to country society in gowns so sadly worn.

  He’d have owed Roger an apology were his cousin still alive to receive it. Roger may have been a scapegrace, but the state of Ashburne Hall could not be laid entirely at his doorstep. There was one obvious reason for a woman to marry one man when she was in love with another, and Roger had had sufficient of the ready to tempt any woman. He’d been a damned fool to pour money into his wife’s every whim while the principle Ashburne estate went begging, but then, men were often fools over women.

  Giles had been just such a fool, once. He fancied now his heart was as smooth and hard as any stone.

  *****

  “Careful, my lady.” Foxkin deftly shunted Portia out of the path of a carriage that dashed into the inn yard with a deal of shouting and noise. As if in response, a loud whinny rent the air, and a large bay hunter bolted out of the stable, several men hot on his heels. For a moment, it looked as if there would be a horrific collision between the carriage and the escaping horse. Then Foxkin calmly stepped into the path of the stallion and grabbed his bridle, hauling him to a stop with an effortless application of strength. The animal tried to rear, but Foxkin pulled him back down to all fours, where he stood quivering.

  “Oh my,” Portia breathed. She approached cautiously, aware of the animal’s rolling eyes and restless feet. He was all energy and strength, quivering under her hand when she stroked his shoulder. There was something elemental about him that reminded her, oddly enough, of the figure of Lord Ashburne standing against stormy skies.

  “A little more care, if you please,” Foxkin told the man who came to collect the horse. The walk back to the stable was accomplished with a laughable combination of prancing (the bay’s) and foot-dragging (the man’s).

  “A beautiful horse. Does he belong to one of your lodgers?” The Duck and Drake was, after all, an inn, and more prepossessing by light of day than it had appeared the night she arrived. Any traveler would be fortunate to break his trip here.

  The skin around his eyes crinkled. “Not exactly. I’m putting him up for a gentleman staying in the area.”

  “Will he be here long?” Portia wouldn’t mind seeing the bay in action again. She’d mind even less seeing the man who could sit that horse.

  The lines at the corners of Foxkin’s eyes deepened. “Not long, the gentleman said, but I’ve a mind it may take longer than he planned.”

  *****

  Portia was halfway to the Hall when she realized she’d forgotten to ask Foxkin where she might find a cat.

  “Blast!” She stopped walking and stood looking back the way she’d come. She’d just passed into the home wood and didn’t relish returning across the fields under the suspicious eyes of the tenant farmers. On the other hand, she really didn’t want to keep finding mice in beds and drawers and whatnot.

  Portia seated herself on a stump in a leafy bower by the side of the narrow track, took off one of her half-boots, and shook it to dislodge the stone that had begun paining her a good mile ago. Nothing fell out, and she sighed. Like as not, the problem was in the boot itself, but as she couldn’t afford new ones, she was just going to have to make the best of it. She dropped the offending boot and set about rubbing her aching foot.

  Thank God there was a shortcut. But of course there had to be, didn’t there? The potboy from the Duck and Drake had made it to the Hall on foot before Portia’s carriage. She’d spent some time waiting for a new horse to be harnessed, true, but the coachman had got her to the Hall with alacrity once he had a team to drive. To get there before her, the boy had certainly not gone around by the road. But if he took this shortcut, Portia reflected, he must have reached the Hall a good quarter hour before her. Yet Mr. McFerran said the boy’s arrival interrupted them in the act of taking down Lord Ashburne’s painting. Which they were still struggling with almost fifteen minutes later? It made no sense. Clearly, it was only after the potboy burst in with the news that Lady Ashburne was at the Duck and Drake that the McFerrans began to remove the painting. Why had it not been done earlier? And why, given that it hadn’t been done earlier, did they think it so important to get it down before she arrived?

  For the life of her, Portia couldn’t think what purpose it would serve the McFerrans to remove that painting, nor why, after trying so hard to prevent Portia from seeing it, the housekeeper no longer seemed interested. She ought to have the painting moved to her bedchamber, if only to see Mrs. McFerran’s reaction. It would go well over the mantel shelf.

  On consideration, perhaps not. It would not be a comfortable thing to have Giles Ashburne looking down at her from above the hearth. There was something unsettling about that painting. Some portraits seemed to follow you with their eyes. My Lord Ashburne’s eyes never shifted, but he seemed to be following you nevertheless. It was too large a price to pay merely to discomfit Mrs. McFerran.

  A pity, really. So far, they’d drawn up about even. Mrs. McFerran had gotten her licks in in the matters of dust and mice and especially food. But Portia’d contrived comfortable living quarters for herself, refused to be frightened by things bumping about in the dark, and she thought she’d touched a nerve on the cooking issue. She couldn’t follow up on her threat to hire a cook—even when Mr. Burnsides sent the money she’d requested, she’d be unable to spare enough to hire a good cook, and it would serve no purpose to hire the kind of cook she could afford. Why waste her money paying for the same quality cooking she was getting now for free? But Mrs. McFerran had not liked having her cooking disparaged. It might prove harder for the housekeeper to continue swallowing her pride than for Portia to continue swallowing her cooking.

  Portia gave her foot a last rub and slipped it back into her half-boot, where it immediately rubbed up against whatever had been paining her the last mile. She took a resigned breath. Perhaps Ellie could do something about it. If not, Portia would just have to learn to live with it. As she’d have to learn to live with Mrs. McFerran. She still held out hope that it could be done on peaceful terms, but if not.... Portia huffed out her breath and stood up.

  She heard the thunder of hooves a moment before the gray gelding rounded the corner, his rider mounted astride, blond hair flying behind her like a pennant. Portia stepped quickly back, fetching up hard against the trunk of a tree. Before she could get away, the horse was on her, passing so close its mane whipped her face and the rider’s booted toe caught her in the ribs, driving her to her knees.

  The horsewoman cursed, sawing on the reins, and the gelding drew up short, rearing with an angry whinny. He was back on all four feet in a moment, the rider dismounting so fast, Portia at first thought she’d been thrown. But the woman landed on her feet and dashed over to Portia, while the horse, proving itself far calmer than the last few moments suggested, began to quietly crop grass.

  “Terribly sorry,” the woman gasped. “I d
idn’t see you there. There’s never anybody here. I didn’t see you.”

  She was, Portia saw now, more girl than woman, her face terribly white. Portia forced her hand away from her side. “No harm done,” she said in a credibly even voice. It hurt no worse than some of the tumbles she’d taken with Tony when they were children; bruises were doubtless the worst of it. She stood, using the tree for balance.

  “I’m so terribly sorry,” the young woman said again, bending to brush leaves off Portia’s skirts. “I shouldn’t ride neck or nothing through the woods, I know I shouldn’t. But there’s never anybody here, and even though they said Lady Ashburne’d come, I didn’t think she’d, you’d, be walking about in the home wood and really—”

  Portia took in the thick honey-colored hair tumbled about the young lady’s shoulders, the brilliant blue eyes blazing above a field of freckles, and the men’s riding breeches, and said, “Good afternoon, Lady Clarissa.”

  Lady Clarissa Seabrooke gaped at her a moment, then threw her head back and laughed uproariously. “Didn’t take you long to get the lay of the land.” The look she gave Portia as she offered her hand was frankly appraising. “You’d be Lady Ashburne then.” Her fingers were strong and callused from the reins, her handshake far from the fade-away grip of the usual milk and water miss awaiting her come out.

  “I would.” Finding herself on the receiving end of a scrutiny that could only have been intensified by the use of a quizzing glass, Portia didn’t hesitate to respond in kind.

  Lady Clarissa was a good head taller than Portia, her figure showing far too well in the men’s riding breeches. Portia judged her not more than a year shy of her first Season, which made her appearance doubly surprising. That a duke’s ward might tear about the countryside in a manner more befitting a boy, Portia knew well could happen (having done precisely that herself when she was younger), but that said duke should not have taken his ward in hand well before she reached her come out was something of a surprise.

  “Funny. I thought you’d be older. I don’t know why.” Lady Clarissa gathered up her mount’s reins and dragged his head out of a mound of clover. “I suppose because Roger Ashburne seemed so old to me when he came into the title. Of course, I was eight at the time.”

  Portia smiled. “He must have been all of twenty.” She wondered what Roger had been like at twenty. Probably not all that different from at thirty—racketing around London, deep in his cups and gaming away everything he owned. She remembered the charming man who had wooed and won her and wished, as she had so often over the years, that he hadn’t been a lie.

  “Old,” Lady Clarissa decreed, the twinkle in her eye fading slightly as she added, “Though not so much as Lord Ashburne, who was frankly ancient.”

  “What,” Portia asked, “twenty-five? Twenty-eight?” The man in the painting was mature, but were he still alive, he wouldn’t be older than many looking to marry chits in their first Season.

  “Ancient to a girl of eight.” She began walking down the trail, the gelding ambling along at her shoulder. Portia joined them, overcome with contrition as she remembered far too late that Clarissa’s sister was murdered, and by all accounts by the very man Portia had just spoken so lightly of.

  “My sincerest apologies, Lady Clarissa, I fear my wits have gone begging. I should never—”

  “Pray, do not refine upon it. I’m the one who brought it up.” Lady Clarissa kicked at a rock in the path. “My uncle won’t talk about it, the subject is entirely to be avoided around him. Even the servants keep mum. If the stable boys hadn’t been full of the news of your arrival, I’d not even have known that.”

  “It appears we’d have met in any case.”

  Lady Clarissa looked briefly contrite, but seemed utterly unable to resist returning to the forbidden subject. “No one talks about it. At least, not to me. It’s like... like when some country mushroom shows up at a ball. Everyone knows, and everyone knows they all know, and no one says anything, or even looks too long at them. They act like they can shield me by not talking about it. They forget I was there.

  “I was, you know,” she said when Portia prudently kept silent. “Uncle had said I could attend the ball, but he sent me home when they found her.”

  There was more pique than sorrow in the young woman’s voice, and Portia couldn’t help herself. “You weren’t close to your sister?”

  “Half-sister.” Lady Clarissa sighed. “I sound horrible, don’t I? I’m sorry she’s dead—no one deserves to die, not like that. But it’s been ten years and everyone expects me to weep and wail every time her name comes up, if it ever does, or take the veil or something. They forget I barely knew her. Amelia’s grandmother—her father’s mother—brought her up after Mama remarried. I didn’t even meet her until I was eight. Uncle Ransley took me in when the influenza carried Mama and Papa off.” She sniffed and swiped the back of her hand across her face. “Mama was his sister. It was the same year Amelia was set to come out, and her grandmother thought she couldn’t do better than to launch her here. Who wouldn’t be impressed by the Duke of Ransley’s niece?”

  The comment spoke volumes about a lonely little girl looking for someone to fill the hole left by her parents’ deaths. Lady Amelia had not, apparently, wanted a half-sister. It was understandable, perhaps. What girl preparing to come out wanted a schoolroom chit dangling along behind her? Especially one who’d just lost her parents and her home and was looking for reassurance.

  “He always scared me a bit,” Lady Clarissa said suddenly, and Portia thought she was referring to the duke until she added, “Giles Ashburne. Always looked like thunder’s next of kin. I don’t think I ever saw him smile. He frightened Amelia too, I think. Or maybe she just didn’t love him very much. She always seemed so cold.”

  “Then why marry him?”

  “Uncle Ransley’s idea, not that I ever heard Amelia complain. Lord Ashburne was only a viscount, but rich as Croesus, and the estates march. Tynesfield’s not part of the entail, you know. If my uncle chose to, he could have left it to Amelia’s son, once she had one, and combine the estates. Besides... Uncle Ransley liked Ashburne. Not that you’d know it now.”

  Rich as Croesus and Ashburne didn’t go in the same sentence in Portia’s experience. Roger’d been very much pockets to let at the time of their wedding, though he’d been careful to ensure it didn’t show before the knot was tied. If he’d thought her dowry sufficient to bail him out, he’d grossly miscalculated. Such thoughts had been devastating the first time they occurred; now it was merely lowering to think Roger had likely never loved her.

  How must Giles Ashburne have felt when he realized his bride to be didn’t return his affections? Portia felt a flush rise under her skin when she recalled the letters she’d read, letters that had fallen (if sent at all) on deaf ears. You can have no idea what the sight of you does to me, for I have no words to tell you here, and no breath to speak them when I’m in your presence. Portia squeezed her eyes briefly shut in a futile effort to banish the words she’d fled the Hall to escape. Even at his most charming, Roger had never made her feel the way this man’s letters had. And there was something, Portia scolded herself, decidedly perverse about being envious of a murdered woman.

  “Do you think he did it?” Portia blurted, proving herself even more lacking in the social graces than the wayward chit beside her.

  Lady Clarissa looked sidelong at her. “I don’t know. He intimidated me as a child, but was he really a man of such terrifying jealousies? I honestly don’t know. Pray God Uncle Ransley never hears me say so!” She glanced around, half in jest, half as if she might actually see him emerge from the trees that now hemmed them in.

  “He believes in Lord Ashburne’s guilt?”

  “He’s steeped in it. You’d have thought, when word came of Ashburne’s death, that God himself had denied him his revenge. I don’t think he’s ever quite gotten over it.” She stopped walking abruptly as if realizing how near they were to the Hall. “I shouldn’t
go any farther.”

  “I very much doubt it’s actually haunted.” Portia smiled.

  “It’s not that. What my uncle would do if he knew I was even this close…. Do you know,” she said, momentarily diverted, “the first I heard anything about Ashburne Hall being haunted was a month ago? I overheard one of the stable boys talking about seeing lights at the Hall. The head groom would have turned him off without a reference if he knew I heard.”

  “I should think, with the McFerrans about, that there are usually lights at the Hall.”

  “Oh, but this is different. A light burning through the night in Ashburne’s bed chamber, just as it did the night—” Lady Clarissa broke off, perhaps realizing how ghoulish she would be to continue.

  Remembering the eerie light she’d seen that first night, and furthermore that her bedroom now adjoined the chamber in question, Portia shivered, and was thoroughly irritated with herself for doing so.

  “At least, that’s what the stable boy said.” Lady Clarissa scowled. “And my uncle would turn him off for the mere mention of Lord Ashburne. You see how ridiculous it is? He’s ten years dead, and I’m only just now hearing about the haunting, but just try to make my uncle see what I really need protecting from.”

  “Which would be?”

  Lady Clarissa sighed gustily and plunked herself down on a fallen log. “My uncle’s always so busy with estate business and Town business that I don’t think he ever really sees me. I know I’m a hoyden,” she said with a frankness that only proved her point. “I’m not a ninnyhammer. I’m eighteen. I know I’ll be labeled a quiz and a ramshackle female, or worse, when I’m launched in Town. I’ll be the laughingstock of the ton. Uncle Ransley thinks, if he thinks about it at all, that all he has to do is have some modiste dress me in the first stare of fashion and everything will come out right. I know better.”

  Portia found herself at a loss. Lady Clarissa was entirely right—she’d never pass Society’s scrutiny as she was—but it simply would not do to say so. “I’m certain everything will be—”