“Oh, he is.He’s also my great-nephew.Doesn’t come to visit his auntie nearly as often as he should, the rapscallion.”
Refreshed by the tea, Sophia played for another hour.Her appreciative audience didn’t seem to notice or care if she played a wrong note.She could have played for hours on such a lovely instrument, but her right hand began to tire after all the writing she’d done earlier.She had to make sure not to hurt her hand, and reminded herself she’d been hired as an amanuensis, not a musician.
Up in her room, Sophia prepared for bed and used the two-step ladder to get into the massive bed … and then lay awake staring at the canopy.Without the exhaustion from yesterday’s travel, she felt the usual difficulty of falling asleep in a new place.She threw back the covers with a sigh of frustration and slid down to the floor.
She could light candles again and get out the sheet of music she’d been working on.Or a book out of her trunk to read.But she was prone to staying up too late to read just one more chapter or compose one more stanza, as long as the candle lasted.Not wanting to be late to work in the morning or at less than her best so soon in her employment with Mrs.Digby, she padded across to the window.
Wisps of mist rose up from the lawn and from the beach in the distance.Enough moonlight shone down to highlight the whitecaps on the waves before they crashed on shore.Sophia pulled on her dressing gown and leaned against the window casement to watch the waves, no two exactly alike.The rhythmic push and pull of the waves, the crescendo and diminuendo of the surf, soothed her better than any bedtime tonic.
Her eyelids began to grow heavy.Just as she turned from the window, movement on the bluff caught her eye.She blinked and focused her gaze.A female figure in a flowing gown walked toward the path down to the beach, her long, loose hair and shawl fluttering in the breeze.
Grey hair.Light grey gown.Grey shawl.
Sophia’s heart pounded.
The Grey Lady ghost?
Chapter 4
Surely not.
But Mrs.Digby had said the ghost of Mother Hobart tended to visit when there was someone new, and Sophia was still new.
As she watched, the figure on the bluff paused to stare out at the waves, hair and clothing still fluttering in the light breeze.Then the woman turned back toward the house, her face briefly visible in the light of the full moon.
Mrs.Royston.
Sophia blew out a sharp breath and rolled her eyes at her own foolishness.How much more likely was it that one of the older ladies in the household suffered from insomnia and went for a stroll along the bluff at night, than a ghost appearing?
She watched Mrs.Royston pace back and forth along the bluff a while longer before her eyelids grew heavy again.This time when she climbed into the huge bed, checking that the candlestick was still under her pillow, she fell asleep almost immediately.
Over the next few days they settled into an easy routine, making steady progress on transcribing Mrs.Digby’s journals while also giving Sophia breaks to walk along the beach and chat with Miss Burrell, who was still working to excavate the fossil of an elongated, giant skull, and pleasant evenings in the drawing room filled with music and singing.Neither of the senior ladies played, but Sophia coaxed them into joining her in song.
Kendall politely bowed his head when Sophia asked him to save the newspapers for her each day.She combed through them for Positions Available advertisements, searching for anything that might suit her abilities and allow her to support herself once this temporary employment with Mrs.Digby ended.
One morning she handed Kendall a letter for the outgoing post as she entered the dining room.She did not truly wish to take a position in northern Scotland where winters would be much colder, but she’d seen precious few openings posted.At least Inverness was by the sea.
“Oh, that reminds me,” Mrs.Digby said, and retrieved a letter from her pocket.
Mrs.Royston peeked at the address as Kendall took it.“Writing to Vincent?”
Mrs.Digby stirred sugar into her tea.“I’ve asked him to fetch me some paper from my favorite stationer in London.”
“Paper.”Mrs.Royston tried to hide a grin behind her cup before she sipped.
Sophia did not understand why Mrs.Digby requesting her pianoforte-tuning nephew to send her a parcel of writing paper should cause the ladies to exchange mischievous grins—for that was the only word she could think of to describe their expressions, mischievous—or why they both then smiled at her before tucking into their meal.
Kendall took the two letters for Bickford to post in town, and Sophia went back to worrying about when she would finally receive good news about future employment.
Mrs.Digby rested her voice every third day.This gave Sophia a chance to begin transcribing her hastily penciled notes onto paper, using quill and ink, in elegant handwriting that would be well-suited to sending to a printer or binding the pages to leave behind for her family.
On rainy days when Sophia wanted to stay dry longer without forgoing her walk, she went through the kitchen to the tunnel to emerge directly onto the beach.Not as comfortable as Mrs.Digby in the darkness, she availed herself of the supply of torches Marshall pointed out that he kept stocked, stashed in a basket next to the brooms by the door.She deliberately did not look at the ceiling again after she realized the undulating blackness was bats.She would definitely never use the tunnel after dusk when the bats would awaken and fly out to find food.
On her first trip through the tunnel on her own, she took a wrong turn and discovered that one of the caverns Enid had said filled up at high tide was actually bone dry.And it did not have any bones or skeletons.She did have to step up and over a few rocks that had fallen down from the roof, partially blocking the entrance, reminding her of the small rockslides she had witnessed while on holiday at Lyme Regis.The shale and limestone that tended to be filled with snakestones, verteberries, and other odd stones that fascinated Theo, could be unstable, especially after storms.
Feeling particularly brave when Henry accompanied her down to the beach one afternoon instead of napping with his mistress, and dismayed to discover it raining heavily once she got there, she took an extra torch and explored the tunnel, which had several branches, each identified with chalk markings.Bold “X” marks in chalk warned against entering some tunnels, as though the fallen rocks and boulders was insufficient sign of danger.She shuddered at the idea of being trapped—or worse—in a cave-in.
Now that she had better light, more caverns became visible, some barely big enough for Henry to go in and sniff before lifting his leg to leave his scent, one as large as the drawing room of her childhood home.One could hold a small party in here, or—thinking of some of the more lurid books from Minerva Press in her trunk—free-traders could hide a load of contraband.Her imagination raced with the possibilities of such spaces.
