A Lady in Disguise

by Cynthia Bailey Pratt

  “Then perhaps you should make up your mind to marry your other suitor. I cannot believe that Mr. Everard is interested in marrying again.”

  “You have learned something!”

  “No, nothing. Save that his first wife, Emily, does not seem to have been at all satisfactory. Her parents have just left after an ugly incident.”

  “Unsatisfactory? How so?”

  Lillian bit her lip before speaking. She did not like gossiping, and certainly did not enjoy passing tattle along to the likes of Paulina. “She married Mr. Everard for his fortune.”

  “Well, she must have been a silly chit to let him see that was what she married him for! Never fear. I shall make no such mistake. And, after all, 'tis easy enough to fall in love with a man who looks as he does!” She sighed. “Indeed, I believe I have already formed a lasting attachment to him. Why else would I come haring down here, leaving a perfectly eligible parti at home? Now, I have only to bring Thorpe to the point.”

  Rising to her feet, Lillian asked, “You mean, then, to set your cap at him, and pursue him to the point of proposing?”

  “Of course I do! Let me see now. What is the best way to go about it?”

  “I have no notion. I shall leave that sort of thing to you. Good night, Paulina.”

  “Oh, Lillian?” Paulina called when Lillian had reached the door. “Do try to remember to call me Lady Pritchard. We don’t want any slips informing Thorpe that we’ve met before, do we?”

  “But we have met before, Lady Pritchard. It is on your recommendation I am employed here at all.”

  * * * *

  Over the next four days, Paulina acted like a woman in a hurry. No chance now for Thorpe to vanish and not return. The baroness dogged his footsteps, showing a piercing interest in everything he did, from reaching for a book on the top shelf in the library to seeing to a horse with a hot foot.

  In whatever time she had left over from pursuing Thorpe, Paulina made herself pleasant to Lady Genevieve and Addy. Even when the little girl presented her with a bouquet of wildflowers, holding them up in a muddy fist, Paulina did not recoil, calling at once for a vase to keep them in. Yet, later, passing the baroness’s open door, Lillian could not resist the urge to peek in. There were no colorful weeds decorating table or washstand; only a lush arrangement of striped lilies and white carnations.

  * * * *

  Only once had Thorpe and Lillian been alone. Lying awake, Tuesday night, Lillian remembered with what swift steps he’d approached her and the furtive look about him he gave before he spoke. His green eyes were as dark as shadows in a wood. “You said something, I think, about leaving us?”

  “Yes. I—I thought at the time, it would be best if I did not stay, but now . ..”

  “Now?” And he’d moved closer to her still, brushing one finger over the back of her hand. Lillian caught her breath and watched his smile widen.

  ‘Thorpe? Thorpe?” Paulina had called from the end of the hall behind him. He’d straightened and looked over Lillian’s shoulder. Even she, who felt she knew him so well, could read nothing in his expression. Paulina said, “You promised to show me the picture gallery!”

  * * * *

  “It’s simply not working!” Paulina complained that evening, pushing open Lillian’s door, breaking into her reflections on the meaning of Thorpe’s smile. Clothed in a filmy wrapper, Paulina’s voluptuous beauty even overcame the curlpapers in her hair.

  “What isn’t?” Lillian asked, although she knew. She sat up in bed.

  “Something has changed here. Thorpe isn’t at all the way I remember him! It must be that child of his and his grandmother! What man could woo well with every relation he has looking on and making commentary?”

  “Who indeed? On the other hand, Paulina, perhaps you need to give him more time. Men don’t fall into passions as quickly as women do.” Looking at the now rather haggard baroness, for singing sentimental ballads to unresponsive males is famously ruinous to the complexion, Lillian began for the first time to hope that Paulina’s plan would indeed fail.

  “I haven’t more time.” Paulina began to nibble on a fingernail, as Lillian remembered her doing as a girl. The baroness snatched her hand from her mouth and said, ‘There’s nothing for it! I’ll have to do it! You’ll help me, Lillian, won’t you? I know I can rely on you.”

  “Help you to do what, pray tell?”

  “To see a ghost!”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The clouds that had rolled in before Thorpe left for his steward’s house hung thick and black overhead by the time Lillian and Paulina set out for the ruined castle. Only the grass was green and that a sickly shade that seemed almost to glow as they trampled through it. Lillian thought that not Lady Genevieve herself could have asked for more Gothick weather. All it needed to be perfect was a bolt of lightning coursing down from the sky.

  No sooner had she thought it than the grim aspect of the castle leapt up like a shadow against just such a flash. Paulina jumped and squeaked, “Is that—the castle?”

  “It isn’t Fortnum and Mason’s. Come on. Well, come on! You insisted that I accompany you. We are going in.”

  “But... it’s going to rain!”

  “Lady Genevieve assures me that the part of the castle we are going to is quite sound.” Lillian crossed the last several yards to the castle’s main gate, reaching in though the opening of her cloak for the key. Lady Genevieve had pressed it upon her before they left, saying that Thorpe would never know it was missing.

  Lillian did not recall the gate making so eldritch a shriek when opened on a sunny summer’s day. The sound returned, echoing through the arch, and Lillian felt a cold breath as air blew down from the murder holes overhead. As they emerged the lightning shuddered once more across the sky, revealing brick walls turned quite white, and the courtyard seemed but an empty black square. Even she, keeping her senses, half expected to see a gibbet stand out stark against the white wall, and no doubt Paulina anticipated something still worse. When the thunder came after, she yelped and cowered back. “Oh, I don’t know about this!”

  “You want to see this ghost, don’t you? Think of Thorpe! Think of your debts.”

  “You’re right. Forward!” But Paulina kept a panicky clutch on Lillian’s hand. With seeming slowness, they crossed the bailey, their feet the more reluctant for the images their minds conjured up.

  The heavy door in the right side of the inner wall opened with surprising ease. Lillian frowned at that and wondered if, had she a steady light, she would see traces of oil on the hinge. Paulina, pressing forward out of the wind, noticed nothing. Following, Lillian bumped into Paulina. “Why have you stopped?”

  “It’s dark!”

  “Yes, and?”

  “I thought.. .”

  “Lady Genevieve says that there are steps. We need only wait for the next lightning to see it. It may be better this way. Everyone knows you can’t see a ghost by lantern light.”

  “Do you ...” Paulina’s voice was tiny. “Do you think there really is a ghost?”

  The fear in Paulina’s voice softened Lillian’s heart. “No, indeed, I do not.”

  “I don’t either. There, that’s settled then.”

  “Do you want to return to the house?”

  “Oh, no! I’m not going to let that nasty old woman make a cake of me! I’ll stay in her haunted room and I’ll marry her grandson, ghost or no ghost!”

  The lightning revealed a vast emptiness. In one corner, a stair showed its foot. Trying to remember from that brief leap of light exactly where the staircase was, the two women bumbled forward in the darkness. Paulina muttered a groan in the dark.

  “Are you all right?” Lillian asked.

  “I found the wall! With my nose.”

  “Where’s the staircase?”

  “I don’t know.”

  It was some time before the lightning came again. But once the women could tell left from right, the stairs presented no difficulty. They earned their name
of the “Winding Stair” for they wound about very tightly, so as, Lillian supposed, to make it more difficult for armed men to climb. The greatest danger for the women was that of dizziness. At last, they saw a faint square, the gloom in the chamber seeming light as day compared to the blackness of the stairway.

  Above her, Lillian heard the tapping demand for entrance that the rain made and hoped Lady Genevieve was right about the roof. It would be just like her to subject Paulina to a damp night, never thinking that Lillian would also be miserable. By now, she felt quite accustomed, if not resigned, to Lady Genevieve’s methods, so very like Lady Pritchard’s own.

  Both women had threatened to tell Thorpe all about the ways and means of her arrival at Mottisbury. Lillian had determined to tell him all herself, but between Paulina’s pursuit and his own attempts to dodge, there’d been never a chance to speak with him. Besides, as she confessed to herself, spirits not of the earth had no terrors for her compared to seeing once more a look of distrust in Thorpe’s eyes.

  “She said it was the first room as you came out of the stairs,” Lillian said.

  “I still wish we had a candle or something.”

  The room they entered was stark and smelled of neglect. “I only hope,” Lillian muttered, “that there are no bats.”

  All at once, the near-silence was shattered by a piercing scream.

  “What is it?” Lillian demanded, spinning about to search in the murk for Paulina. Lightning slashed through the sky, illuminating the room. She understood how wearing this trudge was to her nerves when seeing Paulina apparently whole and unharmed made her angry. “Why on earth did you scream like that?”

  “You—you said there were bats!”

  “Oh, for goodness sake.” Lillian shook her head and inspected the “haunted” room. A fireplace of pointed brick protruded from a wall, the only furniture.

  “I thought at least there’d be a chair,” Paulina said.

  “Ghosts don’t need chairs. Here’s a windowsill; we could sit on that... but it’s wet.” Outside, the sky had brightened with the passing of the first clouds, though it rained still. She could see the showers brushing over Thorpe’s land, like the silk fringes on a silver shawl. Lightning still turned the edges of the clouds to fire, but the bolts were too far away now for her to hear the thunder.

  Paulina had begun to pace. “How long do we have to stay?”

  “Lady Genevieve said all night. It can’t be more than eleven o’clock now.”

  “Lady Genevieve, Lady Genevieve! She’s snug enough in her bed, I’ll warrant. Do you think she’s quite ... you know?”

  “I should say rather that she’s awake on every suit.”

  Lillian dared not repeat Lady Genevieve’s opinion of Paulina. “Silly chit” had been the mildest of the abuse. Thinking of the look in that lady’s eye when Paulina had begun asking discreet questions about the castle, Lillian pulled the edges of her cloak together. She dared not consider what plans Lady Genevieve had made for their reception tonight, but she felt certain it would not be long before some “spirit” or other made an appearance. She only hoped Paulina would not dash her brains against a wall while running madly out of the castle or shatter too much glass with her screams. To replace all the windows in the house might strain even Thorpe’s boundless pockets.

  Dreary minutes passed like weighty hours. The tapping of the rain was unrelieved by any sound, save Paulina’s complaints. These came as often as the chiming of a clock. She was cold, she was hot, she was bored. Just as she said, “I almost wish a ghost would appear, if only to pass the time!” a ghastly moan arose from what seemed under their very feet!

  Paulina flew at once to Lillian’s side. “What was that?” she gasped.

  Pressing her hand to the back of her neck to lay the raised hairs, Lillian said, “I have no idea. Don’t dig your nails into me, if you please.”

  “How can you be so calm? We—we might see anything!”

  “We might see nothing.”

  “Oh, no? Then what is that?”

  From the arched entrance to the stairway, an ominous glow bobbed and swayed on the walls. The insubstantial light seemed to be pale green like the misleading gleams seen in swamps and over unquiet graves. A slow chant that sighed and whispered echoed strangely up out of the stairwell.

  Shaking off Paulina’s clutching fingers, Lillian advanced. “Who is it?” she called. “Who’s down there?”

  “Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four!” Ending on a note of triumph, Addy emerged from the doorway, holding in her hand a crude lantern, a wick bobbing in a green glass bowl of oil. “There are twenty-four steps twice, Miss Cole! I counted them very carefully.”

  Relieved, Lillian said, “That makes forty-eight, Addy. Remind me to teach you to count higher than twenty-four.”

  Paulina advanced. The flickering light sent strange shadows across her face, making her look old. “Who sent you here to frighten us? Don’t you have any better sense than to come here in the middle of the night?”

  That seemed to Lillian to be a case of a kettle criticizing complexions, but as it was what she wanted to know herself, she asked, “Yes, what are you doing here, Addy?”

  “I came to see the ghost!” She held her makeshift lantern high and peered in all the corners. “Aren’t there any?”

  “No, there is no such thing.” Lillian took the bowl, as the oil was slopping about dangerously. “Why, you’re sopping wet! Didn’t you think to bring your cloak and bonnet?” Addy shook her head, water droplets flying. Paulina shrank back. “Well, you can’t stay here like that. You’ll catch a cold.”

  Paulina said at once, “I can’t take her... I’ll get my feet wet. Do you know what these shoes cost?”

  “No, you’d better stay here. After all, it is you who wants to see the ghost, isn’t it?”

  “I told you why I’m staying. Take the naughty thing back to the house. But leave that light.”

  “Very well.” Lillian gave the bowl to Paulina. Bending, she picked Addy up in her arms. “You might as well not get any wetter. I’ll be back in a few minutes, Paulina. Just as soon as I deliver Miss Everard to a maid.”

  Perforce, Lillian took longer over the business than she’d thought she’d have to, although it had at least stopped raining. First, a scullery maid was awakened and sent up to rouse Burrows, an apparently Herculean task. Then, though Lillian had stripped off Addy’s wet clothes at once, the child was shivering so that a bath had to be heated. Finally, Burrows arrived, yawning, and Lillian spent several minutes talking to her to be certain the maid was awake enough to watch Addy in her tub without risking a drowning for either of them. Lastly, Lillian had to procure a lantern of her own, for she was not about to return to the castle without one, if it meant disturbing all the spirits in hell.

  Entering the castle and climbing the stairs took much less time when she could see what she was doing. She called out to Paulina so as not to frighten her, but the echoes danced so queerly about her that she did not call again. Reaching the top, she held the lantern high. “Paulina?”

  Here was the track in the dust where the baroness had paced. Here was the oil that Addy had spilled on the floor not half an hour ago. Even the green glass bowl sat beside the fireplace, the wick extinguished. Of Paulina there remained not a trace. She was gone!

  Lillian closed her eyes and lightly shook her head. The thing was impossible, so therefore it must be an illusion. Peeping under one lid, she saw that the room was still empty of all life save her own, and a skitter that might have been made by a rat. Lillian thought, well, then, obviously she has wandered into one of the other rooms. The wick went out so she left the bowl here, as it is now useless.

  Lillian knelt and relit the wick from her own lantern. The resulting glow had a welcoming look. If Paulina came back, she’d know that someone had been here and would, with luck, not wander off again. Meanwhile, Lillian, telling herself firmly that there was nothing to be worried about, went searching for P
aulina.

  The once-grand rooms were chilly, as though they resented the disturbance of their dust and their sleep. Immune now to such psychic fancies, Lillian walked boldly through, puzzled. No matter how expensive Paulina’s shoes had been, surely they had not carried her across these heavily powdered floorboards without leaving some trace behind. Her own soaking slippers left trail enough, dark on the dusty floor.

  Hearing a faint noise behind her, Lillian put it down to another rodent until she heard a moan. Turning, she lifted her lantern high and’ said, “Paulina?”

  “Ooooh! Ooooooh! Baroness Pritchaaaard!” A white figure approached, waving amorphous appendages and moaning piteously. Lillian waited, unafraid. The shape paused as if at a loss, before once more stepping forward. “Ooooooh?”

  “Mr. Becksnaff, you make a highly unconvincing apparition. I might not have thought so if shoes had not rather been on my mind this evening.” The sheeted butler raised his veils to peer at his feet. “Only a butler of the most perfect quality ever accomplishes such a perfect shine on the leather.”

  ‘Thank you, Miss Cole. I must say I’m not looking forward to walking back through all that wet grass. I was fortunate to hide in here before the rain began. Please allow me to clean your shoes, once we return to the house. I’m afraid the boot boy is not yet fully trained.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Becksnaff.”

  “Furthermore, I apologize for frightening you. You were frightened? Her ladyship was certain sure you would be.”

  “Petrified, I assure you. Tell me, was Lady Pritchard similarly impressed?”

  “Pardon me, miss, but I thought you were Lady Pritchard. I’m relieved to find you are not. I had wanted what my brother the actor used to call a run-through, but there was not time before leaving the house. Er, where is Lady Pritchard? I feel quite confident now and would like to commence the performance in earnest.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait, Mr. Becksnaff. I’m afraid Lady Pritchard has vanished.”