The Countess

by Catherine Coulter

  I no longer knew. I felt a huge wave of sheer exhaustion wash through me. I had nothing else to say. I turned away from all of them and walked back to The Blue Room, George trotting just behind me.

  I heard Thomas say, “This was only her first day here. I dread to see what will happen on her second.”

  I dreaded it more than he did.

  I shut my bedchamber door, paused just a moment, then turned the key in the lock. If the old woman came back, then she was either a violent aftershock from my mind or she was a spirit. Either way, I knew it would not be a very good thing.

  I surprised myself. I fell asleep almost instantly. However, George managed to beat me. I closed my eyes with the sound of his snoring in my ears.

  In the morning, my first thought was no, I did not imagine anything. If I had to do it myself, I would search every inch of Devbridge Manor. I would find a clue to that miserable old woman who had frightened me witless.

  When I saw how everyone was looking at me the following morning when I came down to the breakfast room, I decided to change my tactics. I gave everyone a big smile and said, all modest humility, “You have all been so very kind. Goodness, you even treated me well in the middle of the night when my imagination went berserk and I conjured up a vision to terrify myself. I apologize to all of you. It is forgotten. Thank you for being so very kind. I should love some scrambled eggs.”

  I picked up my plate and went to the sideboard. I fetched George three slices of very crispy bacon and one small kipper. It was no surprise that conversation was on the stiff side. However, I just continued to beam good humor, smiles, and speak of nothing more weighty than the lovely weather, so unusual for November, and it did not take long for everyone to breathe metaphorical sighs of relief and resume their normal thoughts and actions.

  Toward the middle of the morning, I changed into my riding clothes and walked to the stables, George trotting beside me. It was overcast now, a bit on the chilly side, the lovely weather only a memory. But Brantley had assured me that it would not rain until late afternoon.

  Since I was convinced that he was Moses, I believed him implicitly.

  Rucker saddled Small Bess for me and gave me a hand up. I petted Small Bess’s glossy bay neck. “You are lovely, you know that?” George was barking, and so I asked Rucker to hand him up to me. “He can run later. Right now, he can ride.”

  I did give Tempest one wistful look before I lightly tapped my heels into Small Bess’s sides. I called back to Rucker, who was standing there, watching me, “If anyone wonders where I am, just tell them that I’m going to the village to meet our merchants.”

  I didn’t ride to the village. George, Small Bess, and I went to the narrow stream that ribboned east to west on Devbridge land. I left Small Bess free to eat whatever grass pleased her. I carried George to the edge of the stream and sat down beneath a billowing willow tree. George sat beside me, tall and straight.

  “George,” I said. “I could have imagined that hideous old woman. I don’t think I did, but we have to consider it a possibility.”

  George turned to look at me. He cocked his head to one side.

  “On the other hand, there is simply no way you would have imagined her as well. I saw you looking at her, barking your head off. You were as scared as I was, but you were ready to leap for her throat, weren’t you, my brave lad?”

  He gave me a light wuff.

  I began to pet George’s head, and he stood there, staring out over the stream, trembling slightly because he loved me to pet him, to scratch here and there, in places he had trouble reaching.

  “Wouldn’t you say that it was also rather impossible for a violent spirit to return the knife so very carefully to John’s collection that just so happens to be in his bedchamber?”

  George wuffed again, probably at the sound of John’s name.

  “But you know, George, we are considering two very different things that are happening here. There was something awful in that wretched Black Chamber, and it scares me to my toes because I can’t imagine what it is. But that old woman—she was very human. Even if I lost my wits and dreamed her up, you couldn’t have. No, she was real, she exists, she is here.

  “And then there is what happened to Amelia in that other room. Well, you and I will look into that when we go back to the Manor, although I am not all that certain I wish to go back there. Someone either tried to kill me or scare me into leaving. I am to pay for all of it. What does that mean? And who said it and why, George?”

  George remained silent.

  I picked him up and held him tightly against me. He allowed it for a few seconds, then pulled free and ran to chase a pheasant that had just burst from a thicket of brush.

  I eventually collected George and remounted Small Bess. I did not ride to the small village of Devbridge-on-Ashton. It frankly seemed a silly thing to do when someone had come at me with a Moorish dagger in the middle of the night. I returned to Devbridge Manor. I now knew what I was going to do.

  I stood in the middle of the empty room Amelia had entered the previous day. There were two long, narrow windows, no draperies to soften them, that gave onto the front of the house. If you looked off to the right, you could see the stables, the left, the home wood.

  The room, which had a nicely polished wooden floor, was completely empty. I went into each and every chamber around it. They were either bedchambers, charmingly furnished, or they were small sitting rooms, likewise nicely furnished.

  Only the small room Amelia had entered was stark and empty. I felt nothing as I stood there, nothing at all. But there had been something there the day before, something that had slammed the door in my face. Yet it wasn’t the solid, very real, old woman who’d come at me with John’s Moorish ceremonial knife the night before.

  I had brought George with me. He sniffed about, but he didn’t feel any more in that small room than I did. No hair stood up on either of our necks.

  I returned to The Blue Room with George, shut and locked the door. This had been Caroline’s room. She had climbed out through one of the large windows in this room and made her way along the ledge until she could get back inside the Manor. Then she had walked to the north tower and thrown herself off.

  The old woman of last night—could she not have also climbed out those windows and walked along the ledge until she could climb back into the house, into another room?

  Thomas had told about the woman he had seen here very briefly when he’d been younger. Had it been Caroline’s ghost? Why would she come back here? Why would she want to come back here, to this particular room? Was Caroline the reason the servants believed this chamber was haunted? Or was Caroline in that other room, the small one that was very empty?

  I searched out Mrs. Redbreast, the Lyndhurst housekeeper for certainly more years than I’d been on this earth. I found her in her charming suite of rooms in the east wing. If she was surprised or discomfited in any way to see me, she didn’t let on. She invited me into her lovely sitting room, furnished with very old pieces from two centuries ago. A softly warm fire glowed in the fireplace. All the draperies were drawn against the deepening autumn chill. It looked like it would begin raining any minute, but when I mentioned it, Mrs. Redbreast shook her head, smiled, and said, no, Brantley said not before three o’clock in the afternoon.

  “My lady, a cup of tea?”

  I accepted. I complimented her on the delicious India tea, told her in all seriousness that I was counting on her to guide me, since Devbridge Manor was such a very large house. When it was necessary, I could lie better than one of those damned weasel-tongued Whigs, as Grandfather had told me more than once. In truth, I had managed Grandfather’s various houses since I had turned fifteen, including Deerfield Hall, larger than Devbridge Manor by a good dozen bedchambers and a ballroom the size of a London block. I had made a hash of many things in those early years. However, by the time I was eighteen, I was as at ease discussing the mending of an old washtub with copper bands with a butler and t
he blacksmith as I was deciding upon baking a buttock of beef in the French fashion with the cook.

  I asked her about her family and was told that she was one of the Hildon Dale Redbreasts, and her family had been in Yorkshire since the Vikings came from the sea, to rape, pillage, and settle. Yes, she said, it was likely her ancestors had some of that raping and pillaging blood in their veins.

  I moved ever so slowly, planning to steer her eventually to what I wanted to talk about. When I handed her my teacup for a refill, I said, “Have you ever experienced any unpleasantness in The Blue Room, Mrs. Redbreast? Recognized, perhaps, that something was different in that room?”

  She dropped her cup she was so startled. Fast as a snake, I managed to snag it in the air just before it hit her shiny oak floor. Thank God it was empty. I set the cup down and said calmly, “Do tell me about it, Mrs. Redbreast. I am the mistress here now, not Lady Caroline or her ghost. Tell me what you have seen or heard or experienced in that room or in other rooms, like the one where Mrs. Thomas was found napping on the floor.”

  Mrs. Redbreast was a very large woman, on the shadowy side of middle age, but still handsome. Her black hair was streaked with white, but it was thick and well styled. It was her face, though, that held me, her eyes. They were as dark as her hair and, at the moment, frightened.

  Of all things, she began wringing her hands. I was swimming into very deep waters here.

  I merely smiled at her. “Mrs. Redbreast, I am new here. My husband has given me something of a history of the family, but not nearly enough. I ask you to help me understand.”

  “My lady,” she said slowly, “what happened yesterday was a shock to all of us.”

  “A greater shock to Mrs. Thomas.”

  “Oh, yes, the poor lady. But she fell asleep, that was all there was to it, just a nap, in the middle of the day, and door wasn’t locked.”

  “I’m very sure it wasn’t by the time the gentlemen of the house were there to try it. But that isn’t the point, is it? I am now the Countess of Devbridge, Mrs. Redbreast. There’s no going back from that. This is now my home. Doubtless you’ve also heard all about what I reported happening to me last night.”

  Oh, yes, she had heard, and I could imagine all the speculation going on below stairs. Very possibly all the servants were beginning to wonder if the earl hadn’t married another Caroline. Well, I had changed my tack with the family. I would not, however, change with the servants. Servants knew everything, and they loved to talk. They were a part of the family, and everything that happened concerned them. They were my best bet at finding things out. Goodness, there was much wariness, or was it fear? in those dark eyes of hers.

  Push her, I thought, and so I leaned toward her and clasped one of her large hands between mine. I looked her right in the eye. “There is a malignant presence in the Black Chamber. There was something altogether different in that small empty room Mrs. Thomas went into. However, I simply don’t know about the old woman who was in The Blue Room last night. Help me, Mrs. Redbreast. I don’t wish to die in this house or perhaps lose my mind, as did Lady Caroline.”

  Mrs. Redbreast pulled her hand away and rose very quickly for one of her size. She walked to the windows, and whipped back the dark blue draperies as if she were angry at them. Then she slowly turned back to me.

  “Lady Caroline brought her madness with her, inside her. You are very sane, my lady. Now that you have admitted to the family that what happened last night must have been some sort of a nightmare, then no one could think otherwise.”

  True enough, I thought. I smiled at her. “No, indeed not. Tell me about Lady Caroline.”

  “After she killed herself, the poor lady, stories began to pop up, always spoken in whispers, about her returning to The Blue Room. I didn’t want to believe them. Who wants to live in a house where there are spirits roaming about?”

  “I don’t want to,” I said, then nothing more, just waited.

  “I finally went there myself, slept in that large bed, and I swear to you nothing happened. I slept very well, better than usual. And when I awoke I felt calm, perhaps even unusually calm.”

  “Perhaps as if someone had watched over you that night, someone who liked you and had no wish to hurt you or frighten you?”

  She nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s exactly how I felt. There have been so many stories, and perhaps I believe some of them, but I would never admit that to his lordship. If the poor lady returns occasionally to that bedchamber, it is because she spent most of her time there and it is familiar to her.”

  “Did Caroline spend a lot of time in that other small room that now stands completely empty?”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Redbreast said. “It was her own private music room. She played her harp there, so beautifully she played, and the sweet sounds drifted from those windows. Everyone would smile and look up when they heard her playing her harp. Some have heard the harp over the years.”

  “Why is the room empty?”

  “His lordship had all the furnishings removed. I believe Lady Caroline’s lovely harp is in one of the attics. No one goes in there anymore.”

  “Because the door is kept locked?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly why. I open it once a week so that one of the maids can dust. But there is nothing more, my lady, I swear it to you. As to what happened last night, I don’t know, I simply don’t know. There are spirits, every great house has them, but it is something else when a spirit actually threatens you. No one would appreciate that happening.”

  “Then it will remain a bad dream, Mrs. Redbreast, because anything else isn’t acceptable.” I stood then. “I want to thank you. You have greatly eased my mind. That horrible misshapen old woman who came at me last night with Master John’s knife, I will forget about it soon enough. Yes, that is the wisest course to follow.”

  “But consider what happened to you yesterday, my lady, so many dreadful things, and this is a new home. Something like that must of course seem utterly real, for you are there, trapped in the middle of it, so frightened it nearly swamps you.”

  She’d hit that on the head. “Yes, all that,” I said, and walked to her door. I turned. “I hope that nothing more enters my dreams.” And, I thought, as I left her standing there, her hands clasped over her ample bosom, that more than likely she would doubtless tell the servants at dinner that who knew what had really happened to the new Countess of Devbridge in the middle of the previous night? Ah, who knew? A dream, an aberration, perhaps a vision? Who knew? The servants would talk and speculate, and perhaps one of them would know something and I would hear it.

  I had never felt so alone in my life.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was John who found me standing yet again in the middle of the small, empty room—Caroline’s music room. I was thinking that Mrs. Redbreast had forgotten to lock the door again after all the commotion yesterday.

  He came into the room. I didn’t have to see or hear to know that it was him. There was a new spark in the air itself.

  “I was told that you have changed your tale. Now you are agreeing with everyone that the old woman in your room last night was all a nightmare.”

  “That’s right,” I said easily as I turned to face him. I didn’t move from the window. I wanted to keep my distance from him, particularly after last night.

  “Well, then, if you truly believe it was some sort of dream, then there doesn’t seem to be any reason for you to hie yourself back to London and to safety.”

  “No, a knife in a dream can’t stab you.”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  I smiled at him then. “If one were to wonder, however, why it took you so very long to open your bedchamber door, I wonder what you would say?”

  “I was naked.”

  I looked down at his body. I simply couldn’t help myself. And he knew, damn him, he knew what he had evoked in my mind.

  “Yes, you do know of naked men, don’t you, Andy? And it distresses you.” Then he shrugged. “It do
esn’t matter. As I said, when you pounded on my door, I was naked and thus had to get my britches on.”

  My eyes were strictly on his face now, and they would stay there.

  I said, “Lawrence told me that Caroline resented you and Thomas. She wanted to bear the heir, you see.”

  He accepted my shift and said readily enough, “I just don’t remember. Caroline was—” He paused and looked toward the long windows, perhaps seeing something that was no longer there.

  “Was what?”

  “She was like a fairy princess. I was a boy, all of twelve years old. Thomas and I had only lived here for about six months before Uncle Lawrence married her. Neither of us minded in the least. Caroline was kind, it seemed, and her laughter was the sweetest sound I had ever heard in my young boy’s life. There was something else, of course. She was all of eight years my senior. Even then Uncle Lawrence wanted a very young wife.”

  “You saw nothing at all wrong with her?”

  “You’re speaking of her madness. That came later, after she and my uncle had been married awhile, perhaps a year or so. I remember the servants wondering aloud at some of the strange things they had been told she had done. I remember Uncle Lawrence telling me that my stepmother wasn’t feeling well. And I can remember telling him that she was breeding and that was obviously why she wasn’t feeling well. I told him that ladies occasionally vomited when they were breeding.”

  “You, a twelve-year-old boy, knew that? Actually said that to your uncle?”

  “Oh, I was thirteen then, perhaps fourteen. Yes, I told him that, and I got clouted for it. To be honest, I remember Caroline as laughing, as carefree, nothing more, nothing less. But I was rarely here during their marriage or afterward. Are you jealous of my uncle’s second wife?”

  I didn’t say anything. I stared at him hard now, and said, “If one were to imagine, just for a moment, mind you, that the old woman really happened last night, it occurs to me that you are the only person in Devbridge Manor who would like to see me long gone from here.”