“Do you mean she saw a ghost?” Dash enquired.
“There was no man and there is no ghost!” Bram shouted. “This is all nonsense and imagination!”
“Isawit!” Elise said, voice rising. “Do you think I am that deluded brat of a schoolgirl, wittering about her fancies? It was in here! It spoke to me!”
“Rubbish. Your feelings are overwrought and your mind ungoverned. What a fuss about nothing.”
This went down as well as might be expected, and the marital discord escalated rapidly. Zeb sidled out, with Dash on his heels, and they retreated down the corridor, away from the raised voices. They were in the central tower, Zeb realised.
“Are you up here?” he asked Dash.
“Next floor down, east wing. Round the corner from Hawley.” They headed for the stairs together. “What did you make of that?”
“I think she saw something,” Zeb said. “And I think what she saw was someone dressed up in a monk’s habit, just like I saw last night.”
“And it was Hawley, you say.” Dash’s moustache rippled with outrage. “One thing to play a joke on one’s fellows, but a lady—I think I shall pay a call on that gentleman. Do you care to accompany me?”
That sounded like a disaster waiting to happen, in thecircumstances. “Honestly, no. I’m fed up of this nonsense and I’m going to bed.”
Dash’s expression suggested he was a spineless disappointment. It was water off a duck’s back at this point, so Zeb merely added, “Good night,” and hurried back to his room. He very much hoped Gideon might be there.
Eleven
He was, lingering in the corridor, his tall frame distinctly more decorative than the wallpaper.
“I’m glad you’re still here,” Zeb said, ushering him in to the bedroom and shutting the door. He would have liked to flop onto the bed, since he was now feeling the backwash of far too many exhausting interactions. “Honestly, I’d run screaming into the night if I had the energy. Are there secret passageways here, do you know? There must be: my grandfather would never have built a Gothic mansion without them.”
“Secret—Go back a bit. What was the noise about?”
“Elise saw a ghost in her room, which beckoned her with a skeletal hand,” Zeb explained. “I dare say Hawley would know how to pull that sort of thing off—the theatrical effects, I mean—but I can’t think how he did the disappearing act unless there are secret passages.”
“You think the ghost is Hawley dressing up?”
“It must be him. He was the only one unaccounted for when I saw it, and he didn’t come to see what the noise was about just now.”
“But I saw it too, weeks ago. As have several of the other staff. All well before the family’s arrival.”
“You arejoking,” Zeb said.
“No. It’s been something of an issue here. Several people have reported it—various staff members as well as Miss Jessamine, and there’s no pattern of any one person being unaccounted for at its appearances. People are unnerved. The housemaid is genuinely afraid.”
Zeb gaped at him. Gideon, apparently misinterpreting his reaction, added, “I’m not saying it’s real. I’m saying it’s cleverly done, persistent, and predates Hawley’s arrival. I told Wynn about it, since frightening people strikes me as a rather unwholesome hobby. Unfortunately, he believes quite sincerely in the family ghost, and also fears that Miss Jessamine has become a little too interested in the topic.”
“He’s not wrong.”
“So he ordered me in so many words not to speak of it. Not to deny it, because that would be untrue, but also not to discuss what I saw, or speculate on the subject. That has left me in a rather awkward position.”
“Not just you,” Zeb said. “I see that you didn’t feel you could talk about it, but I thought it was Hawley, and told Dash it was Hawley, and he has just gone to confront bloody Hawley, which I expect he will do with the wordsZeb said it was you.”
“Oh,” Gideon said. “Oh, hell’s teeth.”
“Hawley told me not to get in his way,” Zeb said hollowly. “He’s bound to think I’m stirring up trouble for him, and he’ll talk to Wynn, and…oh my God.”
“He can’t do that tonight: Wynn has retired to bed. And Hawley is a late riser, so you can be gone before he gets up. I’ll order the motor first thing. I realise you made a promise, but under the circumstances—”
“I made a promise on the clear understanding that I would not be marrying Jessamine, and then Wynn all but ordered me to propose to her, in front of her. I really don’t know what the devil he was playing at tonight. I suppose his mind is becoming clouded.”
“He seems sharp enough to me,” Gideon said with a frown.
