“A very tall tree.”
“Yes, it is that,” he said, a half smile upon his face. “Yet still but a tree. Nothing so fearsome as a belted knight with sword drawn and set to quarter me.” Then he frowned and looked down at his feet.
He was a very changeable man, first smiles, then frowns, then scowls. He was scowling now and staring at the ends of her shawl, still wrapped around his throat. She held the mystery shawl in her hands. It was damp from the weather and a bit dirty and an unremarkable shade of brown.
“It is a shawl-gathering beech,” she said, hoping to make him smile. “I had not heard of such before. Perhaps it is native to Cornwall?”
“Are you not native to Cornwall, Lady Morgan?” he asked, his blue eyes burning into hers. “Do you not know all the legends of these parts? Tales of witches and of ghosts?”
Oh. He was one of those. She had little interest and no use for any man who paid one whit of attention to tales of witches, ghosts, and ghouls. Keyvnor had endured more than its share of such tales and she was determined to free it of the curse, yes, the curse, of lurid, ridiculous tales of the supernatural. The only supernatural entity in which she believed was God above and, perhaps, Satan below. As All Saints Day was upon them, mere days away, she was less likely to admit to tales of Satan and his hoard than she would be in May or June. She simply refused to be dragged into the nonsense this season inspired. And it was the harvest season, none other. Ghosts did not have any season, as should be perfectly obvious to any educated man.
Lord Blackwater had mentioned attending Eton. Perhaps he had been expelled. It happened.
“I do not listen to bedtime tales,” she said. “Thank you for retrieving my shawl, Lord Blackwater. It was quite a thrilling spectacle. I pray you do not make a habit of it.”
“Of making a spectacle of myself?” he asked, grinning. He unwound her scarf from his neck. He did it deftly. She had expected nothing less from a tree-climber. “I am almost afraid to make such a promise.”
She smiled in response and held out her hands to exchange scarves with him. He could have the dirty one.
“Do you see her? The ghost! A girl ghost!”
Morgan turned and saw a very pretty girl running toward them; her hair was free, her top gaping open, her skirts held high in her hands, her legs quite visible. Morgan cast a quick glance at Blackwater; he stood staring at the girl and looked to know her. How peculiar.
“Mary, you must stop,” he said, making a motion with his hands that encompassed everything.
“Oooh, you’ve retrieved it! Thank you, m’lord,” Mary said, finally reaching them, breathless and ruddy-cheeked. She grabbed the dirty shawl from out of Lord Blackwater’s still out-stretched hand, cast a glance at Morgan’s twisted shawl, and said, “Did the ghost Benedict make off with your shawl, Lady Morgan, and cast it up yon tree?”
Morgan looked at the girl, looked at Lord Blackwater, who looked both guilty and intrigued, and looked again at the girl. She was from the village, no doubt, and a very beautiful, very superstitious, very suggestible girl.
“No,” Morgan said to the girl. “There was no ghost, I can assure you of that.”
“But, m’lady--” the girl began.
“Thank you, Mary,” Lord Blackwater said. “Take your shawl and away with you now.”
Mary, looking cast down, said, “‘Tis me he wants, my Benedict. ‘Tis me he’s wantin’. That she ghost means to thwart us.” And with those woeful words, she hurried down the path to the village.
When she was nearly out of sight, Morgan turned to Lord Blackwater and said, “You should be ashamed of yourself, abusing a poor, innocent, trusting girl that way.”
“I?” he said, his brows lifted in an imitation of shock and disbelief.
“Yes, you,” she said, wrapping her shawl around her snuggly. It carried the scent of wood and sky and man. She did not appreciate it. “You told her some tale of Benedict the ghost and now she’s sunk into some delusion that a ghost is infatuated with her.”
“I?” Blackwater said again, more forcefully this time. Oh, how he could dissemble. It was shameful.
“It’s bad enough that Castle Keyvnor is burdened with these superstitious tales of witches and ghosts and such, but to play on the uneducated mind, and she’s just a girl.”
“Lady Morgan,” Blackwater said, lifting his chin and squaring his shoulders. She lifted her chin to match him, glad he could not tower over her with a show of masculine outrage. “I am a stranger to Castle Keyvnor, if you will recall, and far from instructing that girl, or anyone, in the legends of Keyvnor, I have been instructed, more than once, by nearly every person native to this place.” That had to be an exaggeration of the worst sort. How many natives of Bocka Morrow could he possibly know? “How you have reached the conclusion that I have tutored that girl in ghosts and ghouls beggars comprehension. I do not, that is, I have never believed in ghost stories. I do not spread ghost stories. I do not find pleasure is tormenting poor, innocent, trusting girls from remote villages.”
That did sound very bad. She had said something very like that, hadn’t she?
“Lord Blackwater,” she began. He held up a hand to stop her. It was very insulting, yet she did hold her tongue. The beast.
“I can only think that my poor behavior of last night, that ill-conceived kiss, has contributed to your low opinion of me. If I had a defense, I would mount one. I do not. What I did was the act of the lowest boor. I beg you to accept my apology.”
He bowed. He turned. He walked away.
He did not wait for her to gift him with her acceptance of his apology.
Morgan truly thought that, however handsome he was, she was building up to a very firm dislike of Lord Blackwater. The fact that her shawl carried his scent, and that she found it bewitching, was very inconvenient.
Chapter 6
“What did you do?” Nell said.
“Nothing,” Roland said.
“You must have done something because it’s all falling apart and it was falling together so beautifully.”
Nell had been watching Mary, to be certain she kept away from Roland, and so she had followed Mary from the castle to her home in the village. She had heard her talking of being haunted by Benedict with the village blacksmith, who had ignored her.
She had heard her talking with one of her brother’s friends, a fisherman, who nodded from time to time while keeping his eyes on the repair of his nets. Nell had decided that watching Mary talk about Benedict when she really meant Roland was a poor use of her energy. She had a marriage to make. She also had a wrong to right. For Roland.
Nell decided to give Mary just a bit of what she yearned for---a good haunting.
It hadn’t taken much.
Nell had, using rather more energy than she should have, appeared to Mary in the thick mist rising from the nearby waves. Naturally, Mary had her head turned in the wrong direction and so Nell was required to use even more energy to throw some sea spray at her. Mary had turned, finally, seen Nell in the curl of a wave, and run from the shoreline before Nell could do anything to clarify to the imbecile that Roland was not Benedict. Benedict, the Benedict she knew, would never be interested in haunting a girl like Mary. Roland, the hound, would haunt anything in skirts. At least Roland should get proper credit, even with the village idiot.
And so Nell had followed Mary through the village and past the fields and into the wood, once again to their beech tree. Mary had interrupted what looked to be an intense exchange between Morgan and Hal, and no one knew better than Nell where intense exchanges led, and now everything looked blown to pieces, while Roland stood and pronounced his innocence.
Roland was never innocent. No one knew that better than she.
“All I did was keep him from breaking his neck,” Roland said. “There are enough ghosts at Keyvnor. All named Benedict,” he added in an undertone. “What did you do to Mary?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Nell?”
&n
bsp; “Nothing much,” she amended.
“With that one, nothing much is too much,” Roland said, shaking his head.
Nell smiled. “‘Tis true.”
This wager between them had brought them closer. Through the earthly pair, they were remembering their own love story, the energy that had drawn them to each other, the passion that fueled every interaction, every conversation, every innocent touch. So she surmised. Whatever it was, they were more emotionally aligned now than they had been in a century.
“The girl, the Banfield girl, does not believe in ghosts,” Roland said. “Blackwater, thanks to us and that idiot girl and her talkative uncle, now does. It drives them apart.”
“Mary, the idiot, is the tip of that spear thrust,” Nell said. Mary was responsible for every noxious thing that had ever happened or ever would happen at Keyvnor, of that Nell would never be dissuaded. “If she would only keep her mouth closed.”
“She does not yet possess that skill,” Roland said. “But what did you do to her, little as it was?”
Nell rose up to the top of their beech. A few threads of shawl were twined around a branch, curls of rose red and burnished gold, glimmering in the soft light. Roland followed her.
“He climbed this far? He truly would have fallen to his death,” Nell said. “You saved him?”
“I put the shawl within his grasp, that is all. He was determined to climb, to do all in his power to retrieve that trifling thing.”
“He wanted to impress her,” Nell said, grinning. “Men do that when they are in love.”
“Men do that whether they are in love or not,” Roland said dismissively.
“You recall that you once jumped from a boat into the Thames to retrieve my earring?” Nell said. “A most gallant, dangerous act. As we were alone in the boat, whom did you seek to impress?”
“The earring was gold. It was simply a practical matter,” he said.
“How could you hope to find an earring in dark water on a cloudy night?”
“I found it, didn’t I?” he said, puffing out his chest.
“That you did, my love,” she said. “And I loved you the more for it. As you knew I would.” She drifted up to him, her hair encircling them both. “Admit it. You did it for love.”
“Love is a folly. Love gets a man killed,” he said.
“Love also keeps a man alive,” she said, kissing his cheek, first one, then the other. “It was brave folly and I noticed it. Morgan will not disdain this act of love from Hal Mort.”
“You did not hear what they said to each other,” Roland said. “They do not love. ‘Tis too soon for love. Marry, they might. Marriage can happen quickly, the mere signing of contracts. Love takes longer.”
“Sometimes. Sometimes, love takes an instant and can happen in a moment.”
“At the top of a tree?” he said.
“Or in the depths of a river,” she said, taking the thread from the shawl into her hands, winding it around her finger until she had made a fragile circle of warm, glimmering color. “Come. Let us help our man attain his woman.”
“How shall we do that?” Roland said.
“I would suggest killing Mary but that would be against my own best interests,” Nell said.
Roland laughed. Roland had not laughed in decades. Hal and Morgan were so good for them.
“Our man and our woman?” Roland said. “What of our combat?”
“Let us fight for them and not against each other. What say you?”
Roland grabbed up her hands and kissed them, closing her hands in his fist. “I say, let us introduce ourselves to Lady Morgan Hambly.”
Chapter 7
Hal hadn’t walked even a mile before Companion found him. The dog, his dog now, stuck his long nose into his crotch by way of greeting, then circled Hal and leaned against his leg, looking up at him with devoted eyes.
At least one relationship was proceeding smoothly.
Hal sighed and rubbed Companion’s head, fingering his soft ears. Companion sighed contentedly and then bumped him again on the leg and walked forward, looking back encouragingly.
“Yes, very well. Walk on,” Hal said. He was out of the wood and onto a path that led along the cliff top, the ocean crashing against the rocks below him. Bocka Morrow was across the fields and down, a winding road that he avoided; he assumed Morgan would follow the main road into town and castle. He had no wish to say another word to Morgan Hambly, particularly since he didn’t know what he could say on the subject of ghosts and haunts that wouldn’t leave her with an even worse impression of him than she already had.
Did he believe in ghosts?
Not precisely.
He was willing to admit, even accept, that he might not understand everything about the natural world, and if so, then he could also admit that the unnatural world, the supernatural world, might be a bit of a mystery to him. He could admit that much, and he considered that quite a lot. However, he was not prepared to have a conversation, nay, a debate, about ghosts with Morgan Hambly, who happened to live in a ghost museum of sorts.
One wondered how she had avoided the ghosts before now.
He wondered why the ghosts had flocked to him like iron filings to a magnet. Was there something about him that attracted spirits? He could not imagine it.
On the other hand, there were many things he had never before imagined that he was imagining now.
Hal sighed and kept walking, enjoying the sight of his dog, his monstrous black dog, sniffing the air six feet in front of him, alert for trouble. One thing he did know: Companion and Keystone could detect a ghostly presence. As to that, so could he.
Hal sighed again and lengthened his stride.
He could not discuss such things with Morgan. It was not proper, for one, and for another, she would think him mad. Rightly so.
Perhaps he was mad.
Hal stopped for a moment, did a quick mental review of himself, his thoughts, his behavior, and current events since arriving at Keyvnor Castle.
No. He was quite certain he was sane. It was Keyvnor that was mad.
Chuckling, Hal said, “Your master is not mad! How lucky you are, Companion. A dog of rare good fortune.”
Companion sported a doggy smile, barked his agreement, and they both walked on.
He was as sane as rain.
Nothing remotely interesting happened to Morgan for the rest of the day. Oh, it rained a bit, but that hardly counted as anything, not in Cornwall in late October. She dined, she refused a card game, she chose a book from the library and retreated to her room and read until after midnight, her mind jumbled and fevered. Perhaps she was ill, after all.
If she were ill, she blamed Hal Mort, Lord Death, the Black Death, for it. Oh, she had heard all his pet names by now. His friends were not shy of using them when they thought no one could overhear them. But she had. And she was glad of it. Lord Death, indeed, trading in ghost stories and scaring girls to early graves. Or so he might wish.
His dark looks were no lie. He was dark clear through, his soul as black as his hair . . . yet his hair was not quite black. It was quite close to being black but missed by a mite. His hair, thick and soft, was the darkest, deepest brown.
Morgan shook herself and closed her book. Like mud. He had hair like mud, and a soul to match.
Yet was she not being too harsh? How could she know his soul? She barely knew the man.
She’d kissed him, hadn’t she? Did she know any other man as well?
The room felt cold. Morgan pulled up the coverlet and huddled in her bed, the single candle on the night stand flickering. She was not going to cower. She flung back the bedding, rushed across the wide room, and lit two more candles on the dresser, and then for good measure, another candle on the mantle. There. She was not cold now. She hurried back to her high bed, leapt in, tucked her feet into the hem of her nightgown and cuddled into a ball.
A cold wind swirled through the room and the candle on the mantle went out. Then the candle on her nig
htstand went out.
Morgan closed her eyes, lay her head firmly on the pillow, and willed herself to sleep. After a few hours, she actually slept.
“Stubborn,” Nell said.
“She’s a Banfield,” Roland said. “Haven’t I been telling you?”
“For more than three hundred years you’ve been telling me. When did I ever dispute it?” Nell said. “We must do something else.”
“Throw her from a treetop? I know just the tree.”
Nell was silent, tapping her fingertips against her lips. “It may come to that.”
Roland rubbed his hands together. “Finally. A plan I can fully endorse.”
“But not before she has found true love. And is married,” Nell added when Roland opened his mouth to speak. He closed his mouth. “All that’s needed is to get them in the same room.”
“As they are in the same castle, that should not be impossible.”
“But perhaps difficult.”
“He is a man,” Roland said. “Trust in that.”
“Trust in a man?” Nell said, shaking her head. “I’ve not been dead that long.”
Roland swirled against her, his hips to hers, and pulled her hair to tug her in for a kiss. It was quite a kiss.
“If you want her married to him, she must trust him,” Roland said against her lips.
“I do want her married,” Nell said, wrapping her pale gray arms around him. He still felt good to her, even in this state.
“We must make her see she can trust him,” Roland said.
“Let’s discuss that later,” Nell said, twining herself around Roland as he lifted them out of the room.
Chapter 8
Morgan was never going to trust anyone ever again. Her sisters were so otherwise engaged as to be nearly non-existent. She had barely seen Jane in days. She had stayed indoors for most of the past two days, in her room for much of it, merely to avoid Lord Blackwater, his friends, her cousins, her parents, her aunts and uncles, and Mary. She would have appreciated some company other than the cold vapor that swirled into her room whenever it felt like it, but no one came to relieve the tedium.
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