by Jill Jones
The troupe made its way back into the Dutch room, where Alison placed the old box gently on the rustic table. “Where’s our ghost?” she asked.
Everybody looked around, expecting another appearance by the dramatically-inclined ghost. But there was nothing. Not a sound. Not a light. Not even a whisper.
“I don’t believe this,” Jeremy said. “She’s going to miss her own party?”
“I think,” Alison said, brushing dirt away from the box, “that she sort of runs out of steam. I’ve seen her do it a lot of times. She comes on real strong, then can’t get together enough energy to maintain a presence. Shall we open this without her?”
“What’s in there?” Hawthorne wanted to know.
Alison glanced at Jeremy. Maybe they should wait until they were alone to examine the contents. “Maybe nothing,” she replied. “Come on. Let’s go upstairs and wait until the ghost puts herself back together.”
“Wait a minute,” the fat man insisted, suddenly brave now that he was back in the light of day, although the day had turned dark with the storm. “I’ve just risked my life to retrieve that box. I want to know what’s in it.”
“You did what?” Alison couldn’t believe the man’s temerity. But she had to admit that she, too, was eager to know what they’d discovered. Still, she felt she owed it to the ghost to wait until it could be present before opening the box.
They went to the library, where Alison placed the filthy container on the long walnut table. “Looks like we could be in for a wait,” she said, “so let’s be civilized about this. Kit, would you please build a fire? Kate, how about bringing tea? Mrs. Beasley, this thing is dreadfully dirty. Could you bring the vacuum with the hose attachment?”
She caught the look of approval on Jeremy’s face.
“You’re becoming quite British, you know,” he said with a teasing smile. “Tea is a civilized tradition, isn’t it?”
Alison blushed, recalling her petulant attitude the day…could it have been only a week ago?…that she’d refused to let Jeremy pay for her tea. “Yes. I guess I have a lot to learn,” she admitted.
“You seem like a quick study to me.” Jeremy took her hand. “You are going to do just fine, Alison Cunningham,” he murmured. “Just keep your eyes open and your head on straight.”
Hawthorne cleared his throat. “I could use a drink,” he complained.
“Me, too,” said a small voice from out of nowhere.
Jeremy grinned. “Got any cognac, Alison?”
Alison turned to her housekeeper, who nodded toward the cabinet in the corner. “Lord Charles used to keep a stock in there, m’am. Want me to check?”
“I’ll do it,” Hawthorne offered, removing his bulk to the liquor cabinet. “Ah, yes. Here it is. Anyone care to join me?” he turned to the group, and Alison was surprised he’d considered anyone but himself.
“Just be sure you pour a glass for Caro,” she told him, ignoring the way he rolled his eyes. She waited and watched him fill two crystal goblets, just to make sure he took her instructions seriously. Then she turned to Jeremy. “She’s here,” she whispered. “I can feel her presence.”
“Yes. And I think she wants us to open this now.”
“Let’s ask her. Caro, can you show yourself?” she called softly, taking the glass of cognac from Hawthorne and holding it up to the empty room. “Here’s a drink for you.”
“You must keep it for me,” the ghost whispered. “I haven’t the energy now. But please, get to the memoirs.”
Alison smiled at Jeremy. “You’re the antiquarian. What do we do next? I mean, if we open that box, are the papers going to shrivel up and disappear, like something out of an Indiana Jones movie?”
Jeremy laughed, and pulled out his pocket knife. “Hardly. You want to do the honors?”
“No, you do it.”
He stuck the knife blade under the lid, and pried away almost two hundred years’ worth of dirt and grime. It fell to the tabletop in rusty hunks. “But if those memoirs are in here, we must handle the paper very carefully. In fact, do you have any gloves? It would be a good idea not to touch the paper with our hands if we can keep from it.”
“I know where some clean work gloves are,” Kate said, having brought in the tea tray. “I’ll go find them. It will only take a second.”
Alison felt more than heard the throb of spectral energy that surrounded them all now, filling the room with its essence. “We’re getting close, Caro,” she said in a low tone. “But you want us to do this right, don’t you?”
“He loved me,” came the only reply. “You will see. The whole world will see. He did. He loved me.”
Alison felt a sharp pain sear her heart. She felt so sorry for the ghost, and for the woman it had once been, because Alison knew first-hand what it was like to crave, and not find, love. She prayed that what they were about to uncover would bring the ghost the peace that had eluded it for so long.
Kate handed them each a pair of white cotton gloves. Then the small group gathered round, eyes expectant, as Jeremy lifted the mud-incrusted lid from the box. Inside lay a dried and withered rose, with a companion carnation.
“Of course,” Alison whispered. “What else would she put with the memoirs?”
Jeremy removed the flowers and laid them gently on the table. Next there was a small envelope. “This looks like the one that was in the book,” he commented.
“What are you talking about?”
Jeremy gave her an apologetic look. “I’ll tell you later.” He carefully unfolded the envelope and peered inside. “That’s what I thought,” he said, showing her a lock of hair. “Odds-on that used to grow on Byron’s head.”
“Byron?” Hawthorne interjected. “You talking THE Byron, as in Lord Byron?”
Jeremy nodded. “That’s right, old boy. You don’t know it, but you’re looking at history in the making.”
Alison cringed, wishing Jeremy would be more discreet about their find. Her dislike of Hawthorne had turned to distrust as well.
“And now we come to the Mother Lode,” Jeremy said in a hushed voice. Gently, he lifted a sheaf of papers about three inches thick out of the box and laid them on the table. “There they are, Caro,” he said. “What story will they tell…?”
“Remember thee: remember thee!
Till Lethe quench life’s burning streams
Remorse and shame shall cling to thee
And haunt thee like a feverish dream.
Remember thee! Ay, doubt it not,
Thy husband too shall think of thee,
By neither shalt thou be forgot,
Thou false to him, thou fiend to me!”
Lord Byron
The whole stabbing incident became the talk of London, & even poor Caro realized she had gone too far. As for me, I found myself pitying her, rather than hating her. I realized suddenly how mentally unstable she was, & I felt a certain regret for the part I played in amplifying her weakness. It was out of this pity that I began writing to her again, & this time I did not, at least at first, balance every kind letter with a hateful one as I had done at Lady Oxford’s urging, for I had learned the potency of that strategy in undermining Caroline’s sanity, & I saw no need at the moment to continue the practice.
When we first resumed correspondence, I was delighted that Caroline seemed calmer than I had ever known her to be. I wrote Lady Melbourne that “C. had been a perfect lake, a mirror of quiet,” & that I was answering her letters. I did not wish to see her, however, for I feared that seeing her would start the whole dreadful affair over again. My relative peace concerning Caro was short-lived, however. She paid a visit one day while I was out, & my poor old valet Fletcher, over whom Caroline has always held easy sway, allowed her into my apartments in the Albany. He watched her circle the room, examining whatever lay about with careless abandon. Discovering a copy of Vathek which had been sent me by Murray, she had the audacity to inscribe it—“Remember me.”…Till Lethe quench life!
I wanted
no more of Caroline, well-behaved or not. I found comfort in the attentions of Augusta, & filled the gap left in my romantic affairs by the exit of Lady Oxford in a brief affair with the wife of an old friend, Lady Frances Webster. She was simple & innocent, very pretty, & I couldn’t resist the temptation to seduce her to test that appearance of chastity which she portrayed. It was a routine seduction, very successful & satisfying, but not long-lived. Rumors of the lady’s chastity, by the way, were proven false—
Chapter Twenty-Two
Night had come early with the rattle of thunder and a heavy downpour of rain on the slate roof. The lights flickered after a particularly violent slash of lightning, then went out altogether. “That’s why Lady Julia always kept a reserve of candles,” Mrs. Beasley commented knowingly and hurried out of the library.
“We’ll have to remember that,” Alison told the two young servants, whom she had only just learned were twins, Mrs. Beasley’s grandchildren, which explained how she had managed to hire more help so easily for a place reputed to be haunted. “In case our guests get plunged into darkness.”
“Humph!” Hawthorne snorted. “You won’t have any guests if that…that ghost keeps showing up.”
“We’re hoping that after tonight, she’ll have no need to stay,” Alison said softly, giving a wink to Jeremy, who sat on the edge of the sofa. She knew he was eager to examine the memoirs, but he’d told her it was her show, and he was respecting her desire to include the poor ghost in the discovery.
But the ghost of Lady Caroline, after making a half-hearted effort to rematerialize in the library, had disappeared. Jeremy had laid the contents of the box on the table, but when the ghost did not show, they decided to give it some time. They waited for over an hour. Mrs. Beasley and the young servants lit the candles, which spread a warm and cheery glow around the library, enhancing the gentle flickering of the fire in the hearth.
“I give up,” Alison said at last, as eager as Jeremy to see what they’d found. “Let’s take a look.”
Would the ghostly Caroline’s claim be proven with these papers? God, she hoped so, for as fond as she had become of her ethereal housemate, she was ready to send it along to the next world and get on with the resurrection of Dewhurst Manor.
The memoirs were tied in two bundles, each held together with a shred of ribbon that had faded to a splotchy rust color. Alison and Jeremy put on their gloves. Each took a stack of the brittle papers and sat opposite one another on the two side chairs next to the fireplace. Hawthorne, who had continued his visits to the liquor cabinet, was now slightly inebriated, and he sat, listing a little to the left, in the corner of the sofa. The three servants were lined like soldiers behind the back of the couch.
Comparing the two stacks, it appeared at first glance that they were identical.
“Caroline claimed that the Byron memoirs that were burned were not the originals,” Jeremy said. “She claimed that they were her careful copy.” He stared into the fire for a moment. “If that is true,” he glanced back down at the papers, “then one of these might actually have been written by Lord Byron.”
He let out a low whistle at the thought, then said, “But I wonder why she made two copies?”
“Just to be on the safe side?” Alison commented. “Like we make photocopies of important documents today?”
“Could be. Read yours out loud, and I’ll follow along to see if these are exact duplicates,” Jeremy said to Alison. “I’m anxious to see if Caroline’s been telling us the truth about her lover.” He held his own set of papers up to see them better in the firelight and followed along as Alison read.
Alison began making her way through the old-fashioned writing, pausing here and there, stumbling over the strange sounding wording. “Wow!” she exclaimed when she’d made her way through the first few pages. “No wonder he was a best-selling author. This stuff’s pretty lurid.”
“It was a pretty lurid age,” Jeremy replied. “But I think we may have discovered more than we bargained for.”
“What do you mean?”
“Read that last paragraph again.”
“Confusion remains the cornerstone of my Infamy, and my longing its Perpetrator,” Alison read. “I have longed to make peace with the Fair Sex, but in Truth, the Fair Sex has always confounded me. Women have worshipped at my very feet, (except my sweet Mother, who hated them) and yet I have never been able to truly love any woman. Although I have known many intimately and taken pleasure in their arms, I find myself afterwards regarding them with the same horror as I did May Gray, that monstrous Composer of the Dance of Longing and Confusion. What my mother began, May Gray concluded.
“Stop right there.”
“What’s the matter?” Alison could see a deep furrow between his brow.
“Listen to this.” He began reading from a page in his stack.
“Confusion remains the cornerstone of my Infamy, and my longing its Perpetrator. I have longed to make peace with the Fair Sex, but in Truth, the Fair Sex has always confounded me. Women have worshipped at my very feet, (except my sweet Mother, who hated them) and yet I have never been able to truly love any woman,” Jeremy paused, then continued with emphasis: “except Lady Caroline Lamb.”
He looked up, frowning. “The rest is the same as what you read.”
“…except Lady Caroline Lamb…,” Alison whispered, dumbstruck. “You don’t suppose…?”
Jeremy thumbed through the pages, taking great care not to bend the brittle papers. “Go to the page that starts with,
“…I wish in these memoirs to sort out my life…”
Alison cleared her throat, her heart pounding. Could it be that Caro had created two versions of the memoirs?
“…and therefore, I must exact the full Truth of these matters from the darkest depths of my soul,” Alison read, picking up the sentence Jeremy had started. “Ah, but what is the Truth when it comes to Caroline? How difficult, painful even, it is to describe what took place during that spurious affair, even from the distance of my Italian courtyard and of many years.”
“Stop. Here it says ‘glorious affair.’”
“Sounds like she wrote her own version of what ‘appened,” Mrs. Beasley commented.
“It certainly does,” Jeremy murmured. “Can you believe it?”
“Of course I can believe it,” Alison said, her heart suddenly heavy. “That poor woman was so in love with Byron, she would have done anything to convince herself and others that he loved her in return. Ashley Stone told me that neither Caroline nor Byron could tell the difference between the truth and a lie. My guess is that she wrote this lie, but believed every word of it.”
“You’re probably right,” Jeremy agreed. “But then she forgot to get rid of the original version. The whole thing is so bizarre, I wonder if either of these is authentic at all, or if she made both of them up.”
“I don’t know,” Alison said, stretching, “but the whole thing has given me a headache. I can’t read any more it’s so dark in here and this writing is so hard to read.”
“It’s half-past seven, m’am,” Mrs. Beasley said. “Should we finish th’ supper we were puttin’ together when the ghost started all ‘er screamin’?”
“Yes. That would be a good idea. Can you cook by candlelight? Is the stove electric?”
“There is an old wood stove we can use to finish up with. Most of the meal was already boiled.”
The servants left the room. “Boiled,” Alison laughed, “is not civilized. But tonight I’ll eat whatever she puts in front of me. I’m famished now that I think about it. We didn’t stop for lunch in London.”
Hawthorne suddenly toppled over on his side and snored loudly.
“I guess we don’t have to worry about him tonight,” Jeremy laughed.
“How will we get him back to his room?”
“Leave him here,” Jeremy said, standing and placing the memoirs back on the table. “He’s harmless.”
“I suppose.” Alison laid her stack next
to the one Jeremy had put on the table.
“Just think of it,” Jeremy said, staring at the papers. “Not one set of memoirs, but two! I can’t wait to see what the experts think. I wonder if Byron actually wrote either of them.”
“Time will tell.” Alison smiled, and when Jeremy took her in his arms, she didn’t resist.
“It hasn’t taken much time for me to tell one thing,” he murmured, kissing her forehead.
“What’s that?” she asked, feeling her pulse rate soar.
“That when I’m around you, anything can happen.”
“Now what do you mean by that?”
But Jeremy didn’t reply. At least not verbally. But his kiss said everything she needed to know.
“You’d do anything to get your bed back, wouldn’t you?” Alison teased as Jeremy slid beneath the covers next to her in the large bed in the master suite. They had shared their light supper which, even though it was mostly boiled, had been delicious. But food had not been premier on the minds of either of them.
“I’d do anything to get you in bed with me,” he corrected her with a lazy smile as he pulled her into his arms. Jeremy felt his entire body catch fire as the silken softness of her breasts nestled against his chest. She was becoming like an addiction to him. He knew she was dangerous, that she could undermine the entire structure of his life, and yet, he couldn’t do without her. She haunted his every waking thought and continued to seduce him in his dreams. Oh, God, he wished he didn’t want her so. He would do anything to get her in his bed, and that terrified him.
But at the moment, she was here, and he had only now to fulfill his fantasies. He tasted her lips, ever-sweet and sensual, and delighted in the way she kissed him in return, nipping him playfully until the play grew more serious. He wanted their pleasure to last, so he pulled away to slow things down. He lay her against the lace-covered pillows and rested his head on one elbow, feasting his eyes upon her firm, young body. “You are so beautiful,” he whispered, stroking her cheek and caressing the edge of her jaw. He continued his exploration, running his hand down her throat, not stopping until he reached the crest of her breast. He heard her make a small whimpering sound as he stroked the soft skin there until her nipples stood erect, inviting his kiss.
