A Lady in Disguise (26 page)

“What story?” Lillian said, infusing impatience into her tone. She felt somehow that it was expected of her to react in this way, as though it had been a direction given her in a play.

“Why, she that sees the ghost will prove her bravery and live to marry an Everard. Pure superstition. Ridiculous.”

Lillian saw the glitter of a moving eye beneath Paulina’s half-closed lid. She thought it would be well within her role to say, “There must have been some truth to the tale, for you did marry your Dermott, did you not?”

“Yes, but that couldn’t have had anything to do with the ghost. It’s too silly to be thought of. But you are not eating, Lady Pritchard.”

Paulina shook her head. “Dinner was quite sufficient, thank you, my lady.”

Lady Genevieve drank the last of her tea. Putting away her crewel in the workbasket, she sighed, “Ah, the hour grows late. I leave you, Miss Cole, to entertain our guest. I’m sure you have many subjects in common.” She departed the room.

At once, Paulina came across the room to flop into the vacated chair. “Tell me all!” she demanded, dropping her hot hand onto Lillian’s wrist.

‘There is nothing to tell. I have been here ten days and discovered nothing. Thorpe Everard apparently
has
no secrets.” At any rate, Lillian could think of none that she felt needed to be confided to Paulina.

“You relieve my mind! How happy I am! Do you think white for a bride is suitable for a second marriage? I’ve heard it said that the coming fashion is for virgins only to wear it.”

“Aren’t you rather leaping to conclusions? After all, the banns are not yet up.” Lillian strove not to show how the thought of Thorpe marrying another affected her. From girlhood, she’d known that to show her feelings to Paulina would be to invite exploitation.

“No, but there is hope. Mind you, since last we spoke, there has come into my life another suitor.”

“Another? Who?”

Paulina smiled smugly. “Oh, a very kind and enormously wealthy gentleman. I don’t think you know him. He’s conceived a sudden, passionate fondness for me, calling on me several times a day.”

“He sounds ideal.”

‘Truth to tell, he is somewhat older than I, though not so much so as dear Pritchard was. Indeed, the gentleman is not below fifty, but acts as if he were considerably younger. A mere boy, in fact. Why, he even carved my name and his on a tree, ever so high up that at first I thought he must have paid one of the footmen to do it.”

“I am surprised that you would leave such a prospect to come to the castle.”

“Oh, I had to! I couldn’t wait any longer for you, and when Lady Genevieve sent me an invitation, I—”

“Lady Genevieve sent you an invitation? When?”

“I received it the day before yesterday, and of course, came at once.”

“Of course.” Lady Genevieve must have sent that letter before sleeping after the ball. She’d wasted no time once Lillian had apprised her of Paulina’s existence. “All the same, a bird in the hand, as they say, is worth two in the bush.”

“I know, I know. But if I must marry for money, and I confess I must, I’d rather take a young man like Thorpe. If you had ever been married, Lillian, I could tell you why.” Her smile widened without modesty, her teeth gleaming with saliva.

Feeling she understood very well, Lillian asked, “Why do you need to marry for money? I understood that your husband—”

“I’ve run through what he left me, and the rest is in trust or something like it for Lewis. As if a seven-year-old boy is ever going to want so much money! But the trustees are being most difficult. I could have told Pritchard that men are much more sensible about these things, but he had to name my horrid old aunt as one of them, and there never has been any getting around her!”

Lillian’s respect for the late baron went up considerably. “How badly are they dunning you?”

“The bailiffs are already in the house in Brighton. If I do not marry quickly, I may ...” Her voice dropped away. “It may mean prison.”

“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!”

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.