Life with her aunt would not be so easy.
The sound of slamming doors roused Mary. She had been staring through her bedroom window in the direction of the family plot where her father, supposedly, had been laid to rest.
She shifted her focus to her reflection, not liking the sight of her bloodshot eyes and the bags beneath them, or the hollows in her cheeks. She tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear and sighed. “What would Steele think of me now?”
“You’re still on about that chap?” Trentwood said.
She jumped from the window because she couldn’t see Trentwood well enough. She had yet to respond to him, though he had haunted her a month. She had hoped, futilely, that he would leave her alone if she ignored him long enough.
“You aren’t mourning me at all, are you? You’re mourning that fop, aren’t you?”
I can’t take this for much longer, Mary thought, clenching her hands into fists at her side.
“I trust someday you’ll see the sense in what I did.”
Mary glared at Trentwood, or his ghost, rather, and strode to her bedroom door. Better to investigate the mysterious slamming doors than answer him and confirm her fears of insanity.
Mary threw the door open and yelped. Pomeroy stood there, silent as ever, his hand raised to knock.
“Sorry to disturb, Miss, but—”
“What is that?” Mary said, pointing at Pomeroy’s hand.
“The bell pull, miss.”
Mary swallowed. Her mother had embroidered that bell pull; it was the last thing she had completed before her death. “I see that, I was wondering what it was doing in your hand.”
“It seems to have fallen apart, miss.” Mary could feel her face fall, and so wasn’t surprised when Pomeroy continued in a conciliatory tone, “It is rather old, miss. Almost twelve years.”
Mary nodded, taking it from him. “Very well. I’ll begin work on a new one immediately.” She glanced down the hall. “Was that Mrs. Durham’s door I heard slam? Don’t tell me she didn’t get her tea on time this morning.”
“Mrs. Durham, it seems, is hiding from the person who ruined the bell pull.”
Mary shook her head. “You aren’t making sense.”
“I don’t know much more, Miss, I’ve asked the gentleman to wait in the library.”
Mary stopped mid-nod. She looked at the decimated bell pull in her hand. “You mean someone destroyed the bell pull, and you sent him to the library? My library? And that my aunt is hiding from said person?” She lifted her black skirts and rushed down the hallway. “Pomeroy! What if he does something to my books?”
“I don’t think that’s Mr. Hartwell’s intention,” Pomeroy said, his voice suspiciously even-toned as he followed her.
Mary stopped halfway down the staircase. “Hartwell?”
“I took the liberty of looking through the late master’s correspondence book,” he said, slowly, “and found no mention of him. Whoever Mr. Hartwell is, he’s known to Mrs. Durham alone.”
Frowning, Mary tapped her lower lip and pondered a moment. “And he asked for me?”
“No, Miss, he asked if Mrs. Durham was mistress. When informed otherwise, he seemed most pleased.”
Mary groaned softly. “It must be a representative of father’s solicitor. I was written he would arrive soon.”
She peered around the stair banister at the library door at the end of the first floor. They had kept their voices low, so the mysterious Mr. Hartwell probably hadn’t heard them. She wrinkled her nose. Mary didn’t like to think of herself as cowardly, but she just couldn’t stand the idea of speaking with her father’s solicitor, not knowing if or when Trentwood’s ghost might appear.
She nodded, her mind made up. “Make my apologies. Give him a scone or something.” Mary ran up the stairs she had recently scurried down.
“And what should I tell him?” Pomeroy said, trailing her, irritation deepening his voice.
“That I’ve a headache. It always worked for mother.” Mary darted into her bedroom, threw her dolman around her shoulders, snatched her hat and some hat pins, and smiled an apology at Pomeroy. He watched her with a frown.
“I suppose my telling you that your father would disapprove will do nothing,” Pomeroy grumbled.
Mary kissed his cheek. “Not a thing.”
“Or we haven’t the resources to send a footman with you?”
“I’m twenty-seven, Pomeroy, I don’t need a chaperone.”
“A chaperone, no. Protection, yes.” Pomeroy flushed and ducked his head. He knew better than to argue with Mary when she was in this mood. “Be careful out there; Mrs. Beeton says a storm is coming.”
Mary pinned her hat to her head and pulled the veil made of black netting down past her chin. “I’ll just have to get to Wayland’s Smithy before the clouds open then, won’t I?”
With that, Mary slipped out the back staircase, startling Mrs. Beeton and her dilapidated kitchen in her escape.
Clouds, dark and thick, descended over Mary as she crept along the manor house wall beneath the library window, hoping she did so unseen. She waited until she was out of earshot before dashing down the gravel drive to the high wrought iron gate. Her black skirts swirled around her ankles. She slipped through the gate, looked back at the manor house, and sighed.
“Not really what it used to be, eh?”
Mary yelped for the second time that day and jumped away from the voice. She grimaced, having scraped her back against the brick wall enclosing the Trentwood property. Hand at her bosom, she snapped, “Will you stop doing that?”
Trentwood stepped through the wall and gave her a half-hearted shrug. “So now you’ve decided I’m real?”
“I’ve decided no such thing, I’m simply tired of being caught unawares,” Mary retorted.
Trentwood grunted. Whether real or not, his mimicry of the man was uncanny. “Where are you off to?”
Mary spun on her heel, turning her back to Trentwood as she walked down the pale English lane, where the very last remnants of autumn’s leaves spun and danced with an eddy. Unable to hear footsteps, Mary glanced behind to be certain Trentwood was (or was not) following her.
He was. Mary stumbled through the hedgerow, heading southeast of Compton Beauchamp proper. Brambles clung to her skirt and she yanked it free.
Mary’s breathing became labored—she had halted her walks during Trentwood’s illness and so was a year out of shape. It was a cold day for March, and her breath left little white cloud bursts in the air. She glanced behind her. Trentwood persisted.
“At least he’s being visible about it,” Mary muttered. She stomped across the farmer’s field to the copse of trees shading the sarsen stones—much like Stonehenge—stacked together to make the ancient tomb known as Wayland’s Smithy.
She stumbled to the front step of the yawning opening in the ground. She sat though the step was covered with lichen and moss. Mary had been coming here for years, but she had never once worked up enough courage to venture inside the tomb. It was something Trentwood never failed to—.
“Still don’t have the courage to step inside, eh?”
“If you aren’t my father, you are eerily similar.”
Trentwood chuckled and sat beside her. He never made a noise when he moved. That was the worst of this whole business, Mary decided. She could handle the smell and liked that it alerted her to his presence. His low, serious voice, something else Mary had inherited from him, had remained as she had remembered it. And he looked as he had at his peak, which brought a certain sort of comfort... once she had gotten past the idea that he was supposed to be dead.
“Do you think you could... erm, wear a bell?” Mary said, kicking her legs out before her and smoothing her skirts. She avoided looking at Trentwood.
His eyes—she couldn’t abide his eyes.
“You would have me wear a bell, like a dog?”
Mary scowled at his indignant tone. She should have known better. He was supposed to be her father,
after all. “Of course not, you’re right, how silly of me.”
They sat together in an awkward silence, the wind blowing Mary’s veil across her face. The wind did not affect Trentwood in the slightest.
“So you aren’t going to ask why I’m here?” Trentwood said, breaking the silence after ten minutes or so.
Mary lifted her veil with great reluctance to meet him, eye-to-clouded-eye. “No.”
“You aren’t the least bit curious?” Trentwood prodded.
“Oh, I am,” Mary admitted ruefully, “just not enough to ask about it.”
A branch snapped, making Mary jump.
“Who are you talking to?”
***
SIX
Hartwell paced the library for half an hour while waiting for Mary. He kept his hands clasped in a tight fist behind his back. He frowned not because he had been kept waiting, but because he had no idea what he was going to say once Mary entered. Everything had seemed quite simple when he had left London that morning.
He had assured his sister he would return for dinner. That was before he had realized Compton Beauchamp was in the back of beyond, and his quarry was a rude little middle-aged woman.
Well, to be fair, Hartwell had expected the latter. He couldn’t think of anything kind to say about Mrs. Durham, though his sister proclaimed fond memories of their school days together.
Never mind all that, back to the task at hand: how was he to explain his presence?
When the library door opened, Hartwell turned in nervous anticipation. He didn’t think Mary would look favorably on the fact that he had scared her aunt to some undisclosed location in the manor house. Luckily, it was not Mary but Pomeroy with the tea who entered.
Hartwell’s frown deepened, this time with genuine displeasure.
“Miss Trentwood begs your pardon, sir,” Pomeroy said as he settled the tray on a side table. “She’s been suffering a terrible ache and cannot meet you today.”
Hartwell opened his mouth, ready to say a thing or two to Pomeroy about his Miss Trentwood, when a distinctly female-shaped form clad in all black scampered into the periphery of his vision. Brows raised, Hartwell faced the window just in time to watch Mary slip through the front gate, having practically sprinted from the manor house.
Well, then. Hartwell grinned at Pomeroy, who was preparing the tea far too studiously.
“I take it that was Miss Trentwood?” Hartwell bit out.
“Yes, sir.”
“And she has a terrible ache, is it?”
“Yes, sir, of the leg.”
“An ache of the leg.”
“Yes, sir. She ached for a walk.”
Hartwell rubbed his forehead. “Oh, for the love of—do you know where she’s heading?”
“I couldn’t say, sir.”
Hartwell waited until Pomeroy met his cold expression. “Hazard a guess.” He watched Pomeroy look him over, trying to size up his pugilistic abilities. Doing as any other man had done since his accident, Pomeroy stopped at the sight of the scar on Hartwell’s face. Beyond that, Pomeroy looked directly into Hartwell’s eyes, long enough for Hartwell to shift his weight in unconscious discomfort.
Whatever Pomeroy saw in Hartwell’s face, he must have approved. “If I had to hazard a guess, I would say she’s taken a right down the lane, cut across the field, through the hedgerow, toward the gathering of trees southeast of here. If I had to hazard a guess, sir.”
Hartwell blinked at Pomeroy, who did the same in return. “Oh. Well. Thank you.” He grabbed his hat and coat from the chair where Pomeroy had settled them earlier. A funny expression on his face, Hartwell strode from the library in pursuit of Mary.
“I trust you will ensure her safety given that you have business with her, Mr. Hartwell?” Pomeroy said, following him to the front door. His tone made no mistake about his meaning.
Hartwell bristled. “Yes, of course.”
“Very good. I’d hate to have to kill you.”
Again, Hartwell blinked at Pomeroy, who again did the same in return. Hartwell swallowed when Pomeroy maintained a steady gaze, while his faltered. “Right,” he muttered, slapping his hat to his head.
“Take this,” Pomeroy said, handing Hartwell a woolen blanket from behind a hidden door in the hallway, “in case she refuses to return before the storm hits.”
Mouth agape, Hartwell accepted the blanket, too surprised to refuse it. “Just how often does she do this?”
Pomeroy opened the door. “Best be going, sir, or you’ll not beat the storm.”
“You’re really sending me out there after your mistress? A complete stranger. With a blanket, of all things?”
Pomeroy’s smile chilled Hartwell almost as much as his reply. “No need to worry about her. She’s haunted. And her father’s more protective than I am.”
Mind racing, Hartwell wet his lips with a drying tongue. What was it Frank Brown had said about visiting the manor house? That he would have a trial of it? That the master had recently deceased? “I was brought here by a Frank Brown. He told me Mr. Trentwood had died, of late.”
“Frank Brown is correct.”
Hartwell narrowed his eyes.
“I suppose one has to be dead, sir, to haunt one’s daughter.”
Hartwell exhaled. “Do you treat all your guests like this?”
Again, Pomeroy smiled. “You’re the first guest we’ve had in quite some time, sir, excusing the funeral, of course.”
Flabbergasted, Hartwell let Pomeroy usher him from the manor house. After the door shut in his face, blanket in hand, he debated chancing a walk back to Swindon, damn the consequences.
Except that wily butler still had his satchel, with all his money and papers.
“Holy hell, Frank Brown was right about this not being easy!”
A timid raindrop splashed on Hartwell’s hat brim. He scowled at the gathering clouds. It was most definitely going to rain, and he was most definitely going to be caught in it. Did that butler give him an umbrella? Oh no, that would have been far too sensible, and what did sensible thinking have to do with a house governed by a haunted lady?
Nothing, that’s what. Absolutely nothing.
Hartwell felt so exasperated he could have stomped his way down the gravel drive, through the wrought iron gate, and down the English lane to find Mary. But Hartwell was sensible and knew that stomping that distance would exhaust him, let alone take far too long. Hartwell threw the blanket over his shoulder, shaking his head. He knew what he was in Compton Beauchamp for, he just wasn’t sure it was worth all this nonsense.
Hartwell had little difficulty following Mary’s hasty retreat to the lonely gathering of trees in the middle of an empty pasture. He slowed his pace at the end of the clearing in the middle of the trees, hearing voices.
Rather, not voices, but one low voice, carrying a stilted, one-sided conversation.
Hartwell ducked behind one of the larger beech trees and shivered in the cold. On the front step before an opening that seemed to lead underground sat a woman in all black. She was looking to her left as though listening for something.
To something.
To someone?
She lifted her veil with trembling fingers. Hartwell was too far away to see her face clearly. This was definitely Mary Trentwood, however. He couldn’t think why that rascal Pomeroy would lead him elsewhere.
The wind blew, racketing a shudder through Hartwell, who hadn’t dressed for chill weather. Had he not been so cold, he might have held onto his exasperation. There was something frightening about the way Mary spoke to herself. It was almost as though she believed she was haunted.
“Oh, I am,” she said to nothing and no one. “Just not enough to ask about it.”
Hartwell stepped closer to get a better look. He winced when a branch snapped beneath his foot. He swallowed when she swiveled to fix her serious, alarmed, hazel gaze at him. Oh well. Best to satisfy his curiosity and hope the answer would alleviate the queasiness in his stomach.
“Who are you talking to?” he asked, stepping into the clearing.
Mary jumped to her feet. She readjusted her veil so it guarded her face. “Who are you? Are you following me?”
The panic in her voice reminded Hartwell that if she was haunted, then the last thing he wanted to do was raise the ire of her ghostly father. He shook his head. What am I thinking? There are no such things as ghosts. I’m tired, that’s all.
“My name is Alexander Hartwell. I watched from the library window as you escaped the manor house.” He held up the blanket. “Your butler sent me with the message that a storm is coming.”
He wasn’t sure, what with the veil masking her expression, but Hartwell thought Mary might have allowed a wry smile before a blush crept over her cheeks.
“Well,” Mary said, “if Pomeroy sent you, then I suppose I’ll have to speak to you, shan’t I?” She didn’t wait for his response before reclaiming her spot on the stone. She brushed her skirts briskly, arranging them until she was satisfied, and looked at Hartwell expectantly.
Hartwell stepped closer, incredulous. “You want to talk here?”
“What’s wrong with here?” Mary looked around the clearing, though what she saw in it, Hartwell had no idea. “It’s quiet here.”
Hartwell frowned at the sarsen stones, the way they were stacked like a deck of cards to make a shelter, of sorts, but with a flat top. “It looks like a tomb.”
Mary shrugged and flicked a speck of dust from her skirt. “I think it is.”
“It is what?”
“A tomb.”
“And you see no problems with holding a conversation here?”
“Not at all, it’s very quiet here, we won’t be interrupted.”
“That’s because it’s a tomb,” Hartwell exploded. He was going to continue, but the tree boughs swayed overhead. Not a good sign. True to his suspicion, the rain began to pour onto his hat and shoulders. He grunted.
Mary stood, brushing off her backside, and turned to stare at the tomb’s opening. If anyone was buried there, they would be nothing but bones. But still she hesitated. The woman had obviously lost her mind, Hartwell figured, or was somehow still in shock over her father’s death. Indeed, the latter explained the ghost farce quite nicely.
Haunting Miss Trentwood Page 3
