Patricia Rice (25 page)

And what would that have to do with Christina’s accidents?

He looked up at a knock on his door. Rob stood there, holding what very much appeared to be the written report on his findings about the castle.

Behind him stood Basil Chumley accompanied by London’s biggest gossip, Freddie, Viscount Sinclair. Harry had a feeling Basil had come to throw the gauntlet on their wager before witnesses.

***

“Meg, can we send for Peter? I would really like to speak with both of you together.” Nervously, Christina paced the archive room where she’d led Harry’s cousin so they might speak in privacy. Aware that she had casually relegated the running of the household to the petite woman who was watching her with curiosity, she didn’t know how to regain the role of duchess.

“Peter’s off in the castle with everyone else. I can send a maid.”

That could take hours, since the maids had been ordered not to set foot in the castle and would have to wait for a footman to come out. Christina would prefer to act quickly before anyone else was hurt.

She could very well lose Harry if she acted without him, but he left her no choice. She understood too well how much Harry’s home meant to him, even if he would not admit it.

Should he lose the estate to Carthage, he would go to his grave a miserable man. She would much prefer knowing Harry lived happily without her than that he was miserable with her.

Her thought processes became a little muddled after that. It was best that she stick to the straight-and-narrow course ahead. “Perhaps you know the answer without my sending for Peter,” she suggested.

Meg looked interested. “If it’s about the estate, I’m the one who is here most often. Peter has always felt unneeded and spends much of his time in Brighton.”

Christina didn’t wish to pursue that avenue at the moment, but she didn’t know how to ask the right questions. Lady Anne and Father Oswald had deserted her. The general wasn’t here, and neither was his mirror. She stopped pacing to open a journal on the desk. Brushing her fingers across the neat penmanship, she forced her thoughts to focus on what was important.

Watching Meg’s aura for signs of guilt, she formed her words carefully. “Harry might lose Sommersville if he cannot figure out where his father’s money has gone. Carthage will tear down the house to build homes for rich merchants. That will mean turning off all the tenants and their families who have lived here for generations.”

Meg frowned. “At one time, I heard Edward discuss selling off the land. He said it would provide income for everyone and better housing. He said Mr. Carthage had grand plans for a new village designed by some famous architect. It sounded quite lovely,” she said with a trace of wistfulness.

Christina had heard about other rich men who’d moved villages and created pretty new towns, but she knew nothing about architects and estates. Perhaps if she meant to be Harry’s duchess, she should try to learn more.

She resisted telling Meg that selling the land to a man like Carthage would not guarantee fairy-tale endings. Instead, she concentrated on the interesting colors in Meg’s aura when she spoke of Edward. Instead of letting her thoughts flit about like one of the ghosts, she needed to focus on what was being said. “I know little about Harry’s brother. I don’t think I ever met him. He must have been a very patient man to endure his father’s eccentricities and keep the estate running so well.”

Meg beamed as if she had been heaped with praise. “He was a
wonderful
man.” Her lower lip quivered as she continued. “I miss him so. He carried such a heavy burden, and he never complained.”

That stirred some of the darker colors she’d noted in Meg’s aura. Harry’s cousin genuinely mourned Edward. “Was he resentful that Harry could go off to London while he had to stay here to watch over their father?” Christina asked, watching for signs of anger.

Meg considered the question but shook her coiffed curls negatively. “Edward was much like me. He didn’t care for the city. He liked his hounds and horses, and rural company suited him. I don’t think he worried too much about his father’s eccentricities. The way he talked, I thought there was always sufficient income to cover the duke’s building plans.”

Christina blinked in surprise. “Edward didn’t know they were bankrupt?”

Meg looked shocked. “If he did, he didn’t mention it to me. I knew the village had fared badly these past few years, so I always tried to purchase what I needed locally to help out, but I hadn’t realized the estate was the cause.”

Harry’s cousin seemed genuinely puzzled. And maybe just a little bit dense. That wasn’t a nice thing to think of a lady who managed a household this large with efficiency. That observation opened Christina’s eyes.

“You know a great deal more about running a duke’s household than I do. Why did the late duke not let you tend to affairs here? It’s almost as if you’ve been trained to handle them.”

Meg burst into tears.

Christina’s first thought was to flee to her mother for help. She didn’t know how to handle the tears of near strangers.

But she couldn’t abandon poor Meg. Awkwardly, she hugged her new friend and let her weep on her shoulder until Meg had control of her sobs. Then she offered her lace-edged handkerchief to dry her tears. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I don’t know where I’d be without your help.”

Meg shook her head and blew her nose. “It’s all right.” Her voice was muffled by the linen. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “My mother trained me to be a duchess. I know we have no title or wealth, but living close to the big house, we couldn’t resist dreaming.”

Of course. Had she not been so self-involved, she would have seen that at once. “You and your mother ran the household after the duchess died, didn’t you? And you and Edward…”

Meg nodded into the handkerchief. “We always thought we would marry. But the duke wouldn’t allow it. He and Edward had words, and Edward told me he owned nothing of his own, so he couldn’t afford to disobey his father, that we would have to wait until he brought his father around. And now it’s too late! I should have made him happy while he lived,” she wailed, falling into another fit of uncontrollable weeping.

Or if Edward knew of their financial plight, he may have thought it his duty to marry wealth, Christina thought with a touch of unaccustomed cynicism. And perhaps he hadn’t signed the entail because he didn’t want his own sons to be bound by the same constraints.

Although there were a dozen more questions she would like to ask, she sympathetically sent Meg to a family parlor to recover herself. After ordering tea and biscuits sent up, Christina chewed her lip and tried to piece together these new puzzle pieces.

She flipped the pages of the household ledger before her, noting the last entries were from years ago, in a feminine script that was most likely Meg’s. Had that entry been the day Edward and the duke had words? It was obvious Meg hadn’t been allowed to run the household for years, or it would never have deteriorated to the state she and Harry had found it in.

Meg couldn’t be responsible for draining the family coffers. Harry’s cousin wasn’t clever enough, she hadn’t had access in years, and she loved the place.

Peter was seldom here. He didn’t have the opportunity either, did he?

Meg and Peter’s father had more opportunity to steal than anyone else except the old duke and his son. Would he have motive?

Harry had said it would be weeks before Jack would return.

The general had said the villain and the money were together. In Scotland? She wished Harry had listened to her.

Perhaps it was time to explore the steward’s room in the manor portion of the house. It was in the servants’ attics and shouldn’t be as dangerous as the castle.

First, though, she would tell Harry what she had learned. Perhaps he wouldn’t be too busy to listen now.

“Harry! I am so glad I found you.” Christina raced down the corridor from the kitchen stairs to the foyer, looking like a pink confection in her taffeta skirt and ruffled petticoat. “I have just been speaking with Meg, and did you know—”

“Christina,” Harry said in a warning tone. “You’ve met Basil Chumley and his friend, Freddie, Viscount Sinclair?”

His wife’s blond prettiness did not lend itself well to black looks, but Harry read her disapproval easily enough. To his relief, instead of arguing, Christina offered her hand to the viscount in an almost regal gesture that impressed Harry, if not his foolish guests.

“So good to see you again, Freddie. Basil.” She nodded loftily. “I trust you have brought all the latest tattle from London?”

That was a barbed dart. That Freddie had come all the way to Sussex only meant he’d heard something so ripe that he couldn’t resist, even if he must smell sheep to do so. And Basil could be the only source of the gossip. “Freddie will be staying elsewhere, since our accommodations are so sparse.”

Christina looked lovely with the morning sunshine pouring through the skylights onto her golden hair. Her translucent features glowed as if a candle flame burned behind them. He liked to imagine her eyes lit more warmly when she gazed upon him. He could tell she had something important to say, but he preferred hearing it in the privacy of their chamber, where he could soften any blows with kisses.

He knew their guests were hoping to hear outrageous nonsense from his duchess. Harry was amazed her family hadn’t come down to entertain them.

“Could we not find room for your friend in the castle?” Christina asked with a purr and a provocative flutter of eyelashes.

Harry bit back a grin at her deviousness. She was telling him she didn’t mind if the old towers dropped stones on Freddie. He longed to make her laugh and her eyes dance with approval. His marriage would be a delightful one if he could always give Christina what she wanted.

“Rob was just here,” he told her. “He doesn’t recommend housing guests in the castle until repairs are made. He has given me an estimate of the costs of saving that section.” Harry did his best to hide his bitterness. Had he any funds at all, he might have saved the relic. But he couldn’t risk lives. Even if they uncovered a villain, the castle was in a poor state of repair. It had to come down before it fell on someone. Or he had to sell it.

Perceptive as she was, Christina instantly understood what he hadn’t said, and her eyes flashed with fury, even as she pleaded with him. “Don’t tear it down, Harry!” she whispered.

It tore at Harry’s heart to deny her anything, but the image of Christina lying crumpled underneath the weight of an iron chandelier steeled his courage. “Let us discuss this later,” he suggested.

He knew their guests watched them avidly. Rather than provide their entertainment, Harry caught Christina’s elbow and led her in the direction of the kitchen from whence she’d come. “Tell Meg we’ll have another guest for dinner, would you, please?”

“Tell her yourself, Harry.” She jerked her arm free of his hold. “If you cannot believe in me, then you cannot need me to help you. I will not stay where I am neither wanted nor needed.”

She stalked up the stairs, head high, her billowing skirts swaying. Harry watched her go, struggling to keep from following her. The pink confection of her silk flounced around the corner and was gone from his sight.

It hadn’t escaped his notice that she’d worn her finest day gown—for him. He knew that because he knew her so well, just as he knew her mind would always wander down whimsical paths. She’d worn the gown because of what they had done last night. Because in Christina’s romantic mind lovemaking meant love.

And maybe it did, Harry admitted. Maybe this desperate desire to chase after her and make her look at him with adoration was love. Certainly her vow to leave him was crushing his heart. If he could protect her only by sending her home to her parents, he may as well let her go now, before her father claimed her. It was simpler this way. She was young. She’d recover.

He might not.

He wanted to shout after her that he desperately wanted and needed her, but dukes didn’t make fools of themselves before all the world. He’d always been the unflappable courtier, the cool diplomat who laughed off the fears of others. Now he had to be the duke to whom others looked for authority.

He clung to that image when all else around him crumbled. If Christina left him, his pride might be all he had left.

“You’re in danger of losing your wager to Chumley, old boy,” Freddie called out behind him. “Your duchess is undoubtedly beautiful, but wisdom may be beyond her reach.”

Torn in two by his need to run after Christina and his need to maintain his dignity, Harry swung around to confront his guests. “I’ll thank you to keep civil tongues in your heads and treat my wife with the respect she deserves.”

He winced at the sound of crashing glass and Christina’s shriek of fury from above.

He had to believe she wouldn’t leave him just yet. He’d give orders to not let any of the horses out of the stable until he could talk with her.

***

“Harry cannot love you the way he ought if he can even
think
of selling his home,” Lucinda declared bravely from the corner of the library where they had congregated so as not to disturb the naps of the nursery inhabitants.

“We will take you back with us. That will teach him a lesson.” With her toe, the marchioness delicately shoved aside the broken brandy snifter Christina had tossed across the room when she’d first entered.

“Harry loves me.” Christina staunchly defended her husband even though she had no assurance of any such thing. She might
believe
Harry loved her, but he’d never said as much. “I simply must prove to him that I am right and he is wrong in this.”

“Christina, dear, you mustn’t do something that will bring you to harm.” Hermione hid her alarm well, but she edged closer to the library door to prevent any precipitous exit. “If there really is a villain lurking in the shadows, there is no sense in tempting him. Wait until the men have chased him away.”

“The villain has had every opportunity to leave already,” Christina argued. “If he has not, then there is a reason, and I must find it. I need one of you to speak with Meg. I cannot keep her calm as you might. She has more to tell. I know she does.”

“Let’s call her up here, shall we?” Ninian said calmly. “She seems glad of our company. We’ll try some chamomile tea. It’s efficacious for nerves.”

“Thank you,” Christina said gratefully. “I’ll send Matilda to find her. And Harry’s manservant, Luke, can fetch Peter. He must have
some
knowledge of what has happened here these last few years.”

Before her family could gauge the danger of letting her leave the room, Christina escaped.

She was close to tears, but she would rather act than give in.

After sending Matilda and Luke to run her errands, Christina set off in the direction of the weapons room. She wanted a sword she could carry when she went in search of their resident villain.

***

“The women are holding a conclave in the library, and I’ve been summoned.” Peter grabbed the brandy decanter and poured a swallow into a glass, throwing it back quickly as if announcing his death sentence.

Harry lifted a disapproving eyebrow but privately admitted his cousin had a right to dread an assembly of Malcolms. He didn’t think he wanted to be present, not after Christina had stormed off to unburden her grievances to them.

“They’ll probably only fling you into their cauldron with an eye of newt to see if they can make something useful of you,” Chumley drawled from his lounging position beside the fire.

Harry’s comrades had moved into the billiard room where they could make themselves comfortable. For the first time since he’d arrived in Sommersville, he didn’t miss his library and coin collection and his club of London acquaintances. That life seemed empty in the face of what he could accomplish if he could turn the estate around. He needed to get rid of them and return to work, but that would be rude as well as undiplomatic. While he had the man here, he had to uncover Basil’s motives for telling all the world that he had ruined the estate by gambling.

“I wish the ladies well of their effort,” Harry said in his best nonchalant manner. “No one else has ever succeeded in making anything useful of Peter.”

“What would you have me do?” Peter protested. “Court a countess? It’s not as if I have any land or home to offer.”

“You’ve a pretty sister you neglect by leaving her to languish in rural society,” Aidan said, entering the room with the unexpectedness of an invading army, accompanied by a cadre of Ives, all of them but Drogo covered in dirt from their explorations of the castle. The earl remained immaculate but frowning as he studied the room’s inhabitants.

Behind them a maid appeared with a tray of coffee and pastries. The search party had apparently decided not to continue on empty stomachs. With a bouncing curtsy, the maid departed, leaving them to serve themselves.

Amazed at the new efficiency of his household, Harry didn’t mind the arrival of Christina’s relations. They were men of ideas and action, not idle loungers. Perhaps in his diplomatic days, he had cultivated the wrong sorts of friends, although admittedly, except for Drogo, the Ives men weren’t much at politics.

“Marry Meg off, then,” Harry offered. Remembering Christina’s warning, he probed a little. “I imagine Grandfather left her a comfortable dowry.”

“We live on your generosity, Harry,” Peter corrected. “The little bit we inherited was wasted on Meg’s one season in society.”

Having just poured coffee from the urn on the tray, Harry halted with his cup in midair in surprise at this new piece of information. “I have looked. There’s no entry in the books for your—”

The ornate coffee urn levitated before his nose, interrupting his objection.

All conversation froze. Instead of tipping over, the pot drifted closer to Harry.

Drogo stepped forward, his brow wrinkled in puzzlement as he studied the floating urn. “There must be a string—”

The spout of the large urn turned in the earl’s direction. Instead of halting his approach, Drogo reached for a poker to swat it.

Before anyone else could react, the pot sped across the room as if flung in a ghostly fit and smashed against the stuffed head of a stag that Harry had always thought particularly ugly.

The stag head tilted, then slid down the wall with an echoing thud. Chumley dodged from the chair next to it.

Coffee spewed against the paneling, splashed the billiard felt, and dribbled to the floor. A steady drip-drip fell into the conversational silence.

“I say, Harry,” Freddie finally said, nudging the fallen stag head with the toe of his boot. “That’s quite a spectacular trick. How is it done?”

The last time Harry had seen it done, Christina had been in the room, and the display hadn’t been quite as—angry. What had she called the general? A poltergeist? A ghost that wreaks havoc.

Two of the younger Ives brothers picked up the urn to examine it, presumably for strings.

Harry’s gut experienced a painful grip as he accepted the realization that they wouldn’t find any strings attached, that there was no possible
physical
explanation for what they had all seen.

His house was haunted.

He’d dismissed Christina’s imagination as fanciful. If she believed she spoke with spirits, he had no problem with that at all. If she wanted to impress people with plummeting paintings, that was quite an amusing trick. He knew she had inexplicable instincts that had led him to the chalice, and that she understood things beyond his comprehension, but then, many women understood things he didn’t.

But Christina wasn’t in the room to explain the flying coffee.

“It’s all parlor tricks,” Chumley declared, dabbing at his coat with his handkerchief. “Harry would do anything to protect his wife and win our bet by making fools of us.”

“Right-o,” Harry agreed sarcastically. “Whole room is rigged for your entertainment.” What else could he say? My wife drives ghosts insane? He really would be the laughingstock of all London.

At his denial, billiard balls began circling the table, slowly at first, then gaining speed and bouncing against the table’s edge until they flew off in all directions. Chumley dodged two, Aidan leaped to catch another. The room’s other inhabitants ducked and dodged the rest, until only the eight ball remained. Everyone turned to stare as it rose and hovered, quivering dangerously. Without further warning, it flew across the room as if heaved by an invisible hand, smacking Harry right between the eyes.

Harry staggered, almost folding to his knees until he caught a chair back. He didn’t need to be hit on the head with a billiard ball to know something was desperately wrong. Before Harry could utter the cry on his tongue, a statue in the corridor outside toppled and smashed a window.

Christina’s poltergeist was on a rampage, and knowing his wife’s propensities, there could only be one reason why.

To hell with the dignity of a duke. Shouting “
Christ-iii-nnnn-a!
” with all the urgency and terror of a trapped man screaming
fire!
, Harry lunged to his feet and started for the door.

As if to confirm his worst fear, Meg rushed into the room. “Harry,” she called, “Christina has disappeared.”

With every man in the room already staring at him as if he were crazed, Harry held his bruised brow, grabbed a blunderbuss off the wall, and pointed past Meg to the draperies blowing sideways over the gallery windows. “Follow General Rothbottom!”