Table of Contents
Christmas at Gravesend
I. Sybil
II. Clara
III. Sybil
IV. Clara
V. Sybil
VI. Clara
Bonus Story: When Soft Voices Die
More spooky Victorian Christmas adventure
More Sybil Ingram
More Clara Graves
About the Author
Books by Amanda DeWees
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SYNOPSIS: Actress and medium Sybil Ingram joins her old friend Clara for Christmas at imposing Gravesend Hall. When mysterious events begin to occur, Sybil and Clara must determine whether they are supernatural—and whether the two of them can help a heartbroken young mother find joy in the holiday.
I. Sybil
“She is in terrible danger,” I said. “I just know it.”
“What makes you so certain?” Roderick asked, so reasonably that it only aggravated my anxiety.
“The Gravesend estate is cursed! I told her as much before she married. I said that marrying into the Telford line was a terrible risk.” Darting up from my seat for what felt like the dozenth time, I peered from the window at the countryside streaking past. “Can’t this train go any faster?”
Roderick caught my hand and drew me back down beside him. It was Christmas Eve day, and we had the train carriage to ourselves on this last leg of our journey to Cornwall, so he had shed his coat and propped his feet up on the opposite seat. He looked as much at ease as I was on edge.
“Sweetheart, I think perhaps you’re letting your worries run away with you.” Gently he pried my hand open and removed the letter that I had been clutching ever since we had boarded. Unfolding it and smoothing it out over his knee, he read aloud, “‘My dear Miss Ingram, I was delighted to learn that you have returned to England. If you and your husband have no other plans for the festive season, Atticus and I would be pleased to welcome you at Gravesend at any time from the present through Twelfth Night. Yours sincerely, Clara Telford.’”
Folding the letter back up, he returned it to me. “I have to say those don’t sound like the words of a woman suffering under a supernatural curse. Isn’t it possible she just wanted to see you? Perhaps to show you how well she’s done for herself?”
“But you don’t know her as I do,” I insisted. Clara Graves, as she had called herself then, had been my dressmaker for many years, until I had retired from the theater early in the year. Now that 1873 was in its last weeks, it was startling to realize how much had happened in less than twelve months. “Graves has always been a very proud person, keeping her troubles to herself,” I said. “Naturally she would not lay her soul bare in a letter and reveal all her fear and horror.”
Roderick’s expression of polite attentiveness was marred by a certain twitching of his lips. “So the fact that her letter sounds perfectly normal is proof that everything is not normal?”
For the first time my certainty wavered. “I don’t know that I’d say proof. Not in the court-of-law sense. I just have a very strong feeing that she needs my help. And this time I shall not fail her.”
I had said more than I meant to, and my husband, knowing me so well, caught the slip at once. “How do you think you failed her before?” he asked.
“In not dissuading her from so drastic an action as marrying into a cursed family!” I said miserably. “I could have found another position for her if I hadn’t been so preoccupied with my own difficulties and preparations before I moved to America. Then she wouldn’t have been forced to marry. It is entirely my fault that she married this man, this Baron Telford. Any trouble that has befallen her should be placed at my doorstep.”
At that, hearing the woe in my voice, Roderick reached over and pulled me onto his lap, displacing a sheaf of sheet music that crashed to the floor unheeded. “Sybil,” he said gently. “You didn’t force her into this marriage. And didn’t you say that when you made inquiries later you heard only good things about this baron fellow?”
As an American, Roderick did not much trouble himself with the niceties of the peerage. I couldn’t help smiling. “‘This baron fellow,’ as you call him, does seem to be spoken well of. He is evidently something of a philanthropist. And although I was only in his presence for a few moments when he came to visit her, I do recall his seeming amiable—and extremely handsome.” I eyed Roderick, with his stormy hazel eyes and cloud of dark curls, and observed, “I must say that I have found having a handsome husband to be an agreeable experience.”
That earned me a kiss, and under other circumstances the conversation might have ended there. But I was still too troubled to give Roderick my entire attention. Sensing my distraction, he drew back to regard me.
“Have you considered,” he said, “that you simply enjoy feeling needed, and so maybe you are inventing a reason to help your friend?”
How childish it sounded when couched in those terms. I dropped my eyes, but Roderick raised my chin so that I could see the understanding in his eyes. “I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, mind,” he said. “It is very endearing, the way you bustle about trying to help people get their lives in order.”
“So I’m a busybody.”
“Bosh! You’re a loving, intelligent, capable woman. Not to mention that you can speak to the dead, so you often do have something to offer people that they could never furnish themselves.” He kissed me again and drew my head down to his shoulder. “I’m just saying that sometimes your eagerness to help people may outstrip their need to be helped. And oughtn’t you to be relieved? Do you really want your old friend to be laboring under a supernatural spell?”
“Of course not,” I said. But it was a strangely deflating thought. If Clara was not in trouble, how could I help her—and make up for the past?
TWILIGHT WAS FALLING when our train drew into the station. Graves—no, Lady Telford, I reminded myself—had sent a carriage for us, and the drive through frost-blanched pastureland was eerily lovely in the purple light of dusk. It was a night to conjure up longings for a roaring fire, mulled wine, and soft woolen blankets. But would the cursed Gravesend Hall offer such comforts? Or had my friend found herself in a decaying old ruin of a house, where the winter wind whistled through holes in the roof, and food and fuel were eked out painfully?
Our first glimpse of Gravesend went some way toward putting that particular fear to rest. A smooth gravel drive led the way between neatly trimmed ranks of trees to a stark but handsome Queen Anne manor. When the door opened to admit us, the entrance hall was brightly illuminated by gaslight—obviously a recent addition—and its antique elegance seemed well maintained, not gone to seed. The housekeeper who greeted us wore a dress of plain cut but good quality wool. Her guarded expression was softened by a smile when she bade us welcome and said that our host and hostess awaited us in the parlor.
When she opened the door and showed us in, a sweet domestic scene met our eyes. In a beautifully appointed room, a handsomely dressed man and woman were sitting on a couch, hands clasped, bathed in firelight. Their heads were very close together, and the woman, who was dressed in a rich garnet-colored gown and had some needlework lying disregarded on her lap, was smiling at something the man was saying to her in a voice too low for me to catch. He touched his lips to her cheek just before he realized that we had entered.
Under cover of the housekeeper announcing us, Roderick said in an undertone, “Thank heaven we’ve arrived to spare your friend from this horrible fate.”
“Blackguard,” I muttered. Clara Graves hadn’t spent so many years in the theater world without learning how to dissembl
e. Perhaps this was just a performance.
But the woman whose face turned toward me now was scarcely recognizable as my former seamstress and dresser. The contours of her face had softened, and the contained, almost aloof expression was now radiant happiness. Her dark hair was dressed fashionably in a heavy coiled arrangement that put me in mind of a queen’s diadem—but then, Clara Graves had always had something of a queen’s composure and bearing.
Then, as she got to her feet with her husband’s help, I saw to my astonishment the greatest change of all.
“Graves!” I blurted before I thought better of it. “You’re going to have a baby!”
II. Clara
I was flustered at having been taken by surprise while sharing a quiet moment with Atticus, but Sybil Ingram’s astonished exclamation made me smile. Despite the passage of time since last I had seen her, she was the same as I remembered: warm, impetuous, forthright—and definitely theatrical.
I said, “Why don’t you call me Clara.” After all, I had been practicing calling her “Sybil” instead of “Miss Ingram” ever since their telegram had arrived, announcing their impending arrival. When I reached for her hand, she stepped forward and embraced me instead, and I returned the greeting gladly.
“So you’ve guessed our good news already,” Atticus said, beaming. He was so delighted about our forthcoming child that he would happily have submitted an announcement to the Times had I permitted it. “Clara and I are overjoyed.”
“I can well imagine!” Sybil was wearing a fashionable violet twilled wool traveling dress that spoke of French dressmaking in every dart and seam. She was as pretty as ever, with her blonde ringlets and blue eyes—perhaps even prettier, in some indefinable way, and it might have had something to do with the dashingly handsome man at her side.
He and Atticus were much of a height, but where my husband was very English in coloring with his fair complexion, blue eyes, and auburn hair, Sybil’s husband looked as though he had a touch of Italian or Greek in his makeup, with olive skin and a wild mop of dark curls. He was not at all how I had envisioned an American hotel magnate, and I was forced to revise my opinion of Miss Ingram’s impetuous marriage. Now I could understand why she had been willing to uproot her life in England and travel to another continent.
“Atticus,” I said, “allow me to present my old and dear friend Sybil Ingram, and her husband, from America. You did keep your stage name, I believe?” I added.
My husband clasped Sybil’s hand. “Miss Ingram, a pleasure,” he said, and his husky voice was warm with welcome. “Clara has told me so much about you, and I’m delighted to meet you at last.” Then he reached for her husband’s hand. “Mr. Lammle, Clara and I are so pleased you’ve come.”
Mr. Lammle shook my husband’s hand a bit like an automaton. “Thank you for your kind courtesy, Lord Telford,” he said, but he had a peculiar expression on his face. Then I realized it was suppressed laughter. “I must tell you, though, that I’m not Alcott Lammle.”
“Oh?”
“He is no longer in the picture, so to speak.” The dark-haired man slanted a grin at Sybil. There was something a touch dangerous about him, and for a second he appeared the sort of man who could lead a woman to the devil. “Shall we confess the truth, my dear? I’m sure our kind host and hostess are broadminded enough to accept your infamous lover beneath their roof.”
I tried not to let my shock show, but Sybil made a face at him. “Pay him no mind, Gr—Clara. Roderick is my husband. My second husband. Mr. Lammle, I am sad to say, departed this earth before we had been married twenty-four hours.”
That was startling. “I had no idea. The newspaper item announcing your presence in London only referred to your American husband, so I assumed...and how did you meet Mr.—er—”
“Brooke,” supplied that gentleman, bowing over my hand. “How we met is an interesting story, isn’t it, my dear?”
“I shouldn’t wish to bore our host and hostess,” Sybil said primly. “It is enough to say that my first husband brought us together, in a sense.”
Mr. Brooke laughed outright. “In the sense that he was my stepfather,” he said, and again I tried to hide my astonishment. I must not have succeeded, for he explained to me with a straight face, “I can only suppose that Sybil’s brief experience of married life impressed her favorably, for she scarcely hesitated before proposing to me.”
The look she bestowed upon him was supposed to be outraged, I guessed, but affection won out. This must not have been unusual behavior for her husband. “Lord Telford, Clara, do forgive him if you can. His Bohemian streak sometimes gets the better of him—not to mention his questionable sense of humor.”
This chaffing was evidently customary with them, and Atticus took no notice of it except to say, “With Clara’s friends, I’m Atticus, not Lord Telford. Please sit down and make yourselves comfortable.”
Dinner was a lively affair, though there were only the four of us; Atticus’s niece Vivi would be arriving the next day with her husband, George Bertram, Atticus’s estate agent. There was so much to catch up on. Sybil and Roderick interrupted each other a great deal, and he teased her mercilessly, but looking at her sparkling eyes and animated gestures as she fended off his verbal sallies, I could not deny that it agreed with her.
This was the companionship Sybil Ingram had always needed: a man who would never bore her. Although she had always said she never had love affairs because they were risky and she cherished her independence, I had always privately thought that she had simply never met a man who captured her interest sufficiently. Mr. Brooke was nothing if not interesting.
They disclosed how they had met: when both staked a claim on a house in the Hudson River Valley. “The house had belonged to my late mother,” Roderick said, “but there was confusion over my stepfather’s assets, and Sybil, in her adorably audacious way, thought she would try to establish herself as a resident.” That wicked grin again. “She had no idea that the little stepson she expected would turn out to be me.”
“Everything about Brooke House was a surprise,” Sybil said. “I certainly never expected to learn there that I could communicate with ghosts.”
Atticus and I exchanged a look of confusion. “I don’t think I quite understand,” he said.
“I am able to channel spirits,” she said, as calmly as if she were saying she had learned to knit. “Now I use my gift to help people rid themselves of troublesome ghosts.”
“You’re a spirit medium?” I said.
“It isn’t something I do for money,” she said, perhaps hearing disapproval in my tone. “And it isn’t something I sought. The gift just seemed to find me.”
I cast about for an explanation that would make sense. “Is it...a kind of performance?”
“No, I assure you. I never aim to mislead anyone or make any kind of pretense.”
I stared at her uncertainly. During my years with her she had seemed to take superstition seriously, as did so many actors, but I had always assumed that she knew deep down that there was no such thing as the supernatural. She was too intelligent, I thought, to believe in spooks. Had she lost some of her mental sharpness?
That thought was scarcely worse than the alternative: that I was wrong to be skeptical, and that supernatural events truly did occur. It was true that in the not too distant past I had been much less certain, but developments over the time since my marriage had shown me that the most frightening creatures to roam the earth were human beings.
Atticus stepped in to change the subject, for which I was grateful. “You may not know it,” he told our guests, “but this is the last time Gravesend will appear in all its splendor. Clara and I are in the process of converting the manor into a school.”
“A school?” Roderick echoed. “What sort?”
“For orphans and children whose parents—or parent—cannot keep them. The idea came about because of my pet project, the Blackwood Homes for Women in Distress.”
“This will actually
be our last Christmas in the manor,” I added. “Well, first and last for me. I hope you’ll pardon the house being in a slightly unsettled state. We’ve already begun to move a great many of the furnishings into storage.”
“In all honesty, no one could pay me enough to fill my home with small boys,” Sybil said. “Where will you live, if not here?”
“The lodge is quite spacious enough for us,” Atticus said.
She fell silent then, looking thoughtful. The rest of the meal flew by, and it seemed only moments had passed before it was time for Sybil and me to withdraw to the parlor so that our husbands could enjoy their port in masculine privacy.
I showed her through to the formal drawing room, since it, too, would soon be emptied of its valuable pieces. As it was, many paintings had already been taken down and propped against the walls.
“I think I’ve heard about the Blackwood Homes,” Sybil mused. “They sound like a most worthy undertaking, providing refuge for fallen women who desire to reform and learn a trade. What are the women like? Have you met any of them?”
“Oh, yes. You’ll be able to form your own impressions, since you will be meeting them tomorrow when they come to share our Christmas festivities. We’ve also invited our tenants, of course.”
“Of course,” she repeated, shaking her head in wonder. “I declare, Gr—Clara, I would scarcely have recognized you.”
“Well, trading widows’ weeds for such fine feathers is a great change.” When I worked for Sybil, I had assumed the identity of a widow to discourage attentions from bachelor actors.
“You know that isn’t what I meant—although, while we’re on the subject, I can’t help noticing how cleverly your gown is designed to make your state of expectancy less obvious. It must be one of your making.”
I was relieved that she had let me change the subject, for it made me uncomfortable to be the subject of scrutiny. “I find it difficult to get close enough to the machine these days, so I hired a seamstress and gave her a great deal of guidance.”
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