“Tellthem. Am I a liar? Is it just my imagination?Isit?”
“I really cannot discuss this,” Gideon said. The tension in his voice was audible.
“You mean, you can’t deny it,” Jessamine said. “Because you have seen it, and so have I, and Cousin Wynn, so have you.”
That got everyone looking at Wynn. His round, cheery face dropped a little. He didn’t reply for a moment, and then he let out a long sigh. “Yes. I have.”
“Oh, come, Wynn,” Bram said.
“Don’t.” Wynn held up a hand. “Don’t, please, tell me I was seeing things or accuse me of having too much imagination. I am a grown man. I have lived in this house all my life. I have seen one after another family member fall prey to despair, sinking into the silence of dread, and I know, too well, why that is. Iknow.”
He sounded frighteningly sincere. Zeb glanced around the table and said, “You saw what Jessamine described to us? A monk-like figure with a featureless face?”
“Zebedee!” Bram snapped.
“I don’t wish to—” Wynn broke off. “If you will have it, yes. Yes, I have, but this is not a subject for discussion. I don’t want to see it, or for any of you to see it. Although, in the circumstances…” He shook his head.
“What circumstances?” Dash said.
Wynn raised his eyes. “Guilt. Shame. Sin. That is what brings it, and once it is seen, retribution always follows.”
Dash’s lips parted. Elise’s cheekbones were red. Bram said, “Really, Wynn, this is—Well, it strikes me as rather poor taste.”
“Taste?” Jessamine demanded. “What has taste to do with anything? This is not a—a review, where you decide if something is worthy to exist or not! It istrue!”
There was a ringing silence, which Zeb broke with, “No, it’s not.”
She turned on him, eyes bright with fury. Wynn said, “Zeb, I fear—”
“I’ve read the book.”
“What?” Bram said.
“This is literallyThe Monastery. Honestly, have none of you except Wynn read our grandfather?” A glance around the table answered that question. “The protagonist of volume one is condemned to the monastery in male disguise by her husband and murdered by evil monks. Then the rest of the book is her ghost hounding all the various villains to their doom. She wears a monk’s robe and has an eyeless glare. A joke’s a joke, but I have to agree, this is poor taste.”
Jessamine was gaping at him. Elise’s lips curled maliciously upwards. Bram said, “Ha!”
Wynn was shaking his head. “You are right about the book.” He didn’t sound caught out or embarrassed in the slightest. “I quite see what you must have thought. But you have it the wrong way round, Zeb. I have not taken a ghost story fromTheMonastery. Walter Wyckham thought upThe Monasterybased on the ghost.”
Zeb just looked at him. Wynn gave a weary smile. “Consult the family records if you wish. It has been seen before, many times. My father’s death. Walter’s. Laura’s. Even poor Georgina. Truly, she died of her shame.”
“But,” Zeb said.
“I hope and pray none of you see it, but if you do,don’t look at its face. Turn away and you may, perhaps, be spared. Now, we will speak of this no further; no good will come of discussing it. I shall ring for the plates to be cleared. I believe there is chocolate pudding to come.”
***
Zeb staggered out after the meal to get some fresh air and met Hawley on the steps, with the inevitable cigarette. In the cold, his breath plumed smoke as much as Hawley’s exhalations.
“Ah, Zeb. Gasper?”
Zeb glanced warily at the cigarette case he offered. “Not if it’s those god-awful perfumed things. Where did you pick them up, a brothel?”
“Wynn’s filled his cigarette boxes with them. You get used to it.”
“Thanks, I won’t. Must you render every meal hideous by sniping at Bram and Elise?”
“Why should I not?”
