“No. These keys are all identical,” Caris said, pulling one from a neighboring door.
Thankful for her quick thinking, Felix took the key and unlocked the door. Inside, Miss Burnham was curled up on the floor, shivering and crying. Her face was positively ashen.
Caris stepped forward. “Grace? Grace, what happened?”
“It was dreadful!” She exclaimed, “I’ve never seen anything so terrifying. We must leave this place. Immediately!”
“It’s the middle of the night, Grace,” Caris said reasonably. “But how did you get down here?”
“I ran,” she said. “When I stepped out of the water closet above, I saw someone at the end of the corridor, just dark skirts swishing around the corner. I thought it was you, but I had no notion why you’d be out of our room. And when I went around the corner, it wasn’t you… she was gray. From head to toe, she was gray. And she looked at me with these great, dark, hollow eyes.”
Felix felt his gut tighten with fear. “She will not hurt you. She cannot,” he told her. “But I’ve seen her. I saw her here whenever I would visit when I was younger. And Edith saw her too. That’s why she resisted coming here.”
“Who is she?” Caris asked. “Because I saw her earlier today… only a glimpse from the corner of my eye, but it was terrifying.”
“She was the wife of Severne Hayton.”
The voice came from the open doorway. Mr. Fitzsimmons stood there, his expression grim and somber. Then he continued. “He killed her. And since then, she has appeared anytime someone of the Hayton bloodline is about to be married.”
“And when I was here as a child was on the eve of my father’s wedding to my stepmother,” Felix said, understanding dawning. “And now, with the contingencies of Edith’s will…?”
“Precisely so,” Mr. Fitzsimmons said. “Once the wedding has been completed, the marriage sanctified by the church, she will retreat once more.”
“Until the next time someone is set to marry,” Caris said.
Mr. Fitzsimmons sighed sadly. “If it is any consolation, her appearance has actually been a portent of happy marriages. No one, in the family’s recorded history, who has seen her has suffered a bad marriage. But those to whom she has not appeared… they have not done so well. And she only ever shows herself to those who are of Hayton blood or who are destined to marry into the Hayton family.”
“Then why did I see her?” Miss Burnham demanded.
Mr. Fitzsimmons’ face took on an inscrutable expression. “That is something we will discuss further, Miss Burnham, once we have the viscount and Miss Fortune settled. Mrs. Denworthy’s service is set to begin at ten. And I have in my possession a common license under your names. St. Michael’s Highgate is close enough that we can see the pair of you wed and attend the burial afterward.”
Felix looked to Caris and waited. After a moment, she gave a slight nod. And their plan was set.
Chapter Seven
They stood beforethe altar at St. Michael’s Highgate, the women garbed in black and the men with black armbands to signify their mourning status. If the priest found it to be unusual, he kept his own counsel on the matter. Instead, for a not insignificant contribution to the church made by Mr. Fitzsimmons, they had a brief ceremony.
When it was complete and the register had been signed, the names of witnesses recorded, they left for the cemetery with the priest accompanying them. If he thought it strange that he had to perform both a wedding and a funeral for the same family in one morning, he again kept such thoughts to himself.
The funeral was not a long and drawn-out affair. The traditional words were spoken, the casket lowered into the ground. And one by one, they all dropped a clod of dirt atop it before walking away.
And none of them returned to Hayton House. Instead, they piled into their respective carriages and made their way back to London proper. Grace was dropped at the Darrow School to relay the news of Caris’s changed status. And along with her new husband, Felix Graves, Viscount Grimsleigh, they journeyed onto Brentwood and his ancestral home of Gravemore Hall.
“Is it as ominous as it sounds?” Caris asked.
He smiled. “No. Hayton House is infinitely more so, though I suppose that leaves a great deal of room for peculiarity, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” she agreed. “Is this madness? We’ve married and we are practically strangers.”
Felix leaned forward, reaching for her hand and taking it in his. “We might have to begin as strangers, Caris, but we will not remain so. Despite her methods, I think we will both find ourselves very grateful one day for Aunt Edith’s meddling. For myself, I think I am grateful already. I am married to a woman whom I find to be… compelling.”
“Compelling?”
He nodded. “Indeed. Compelling. You, if I told you what I truly thought, would deny the compliments or think them empty flattery… So I shall keep them to myself until you are not only ready to hear them, but ready to believe them.”
She looked at him for a long moment. Then she uttered another question, both shocking and so very, very tempting. “Would you kiss me again?”
Felix did not provide an answer with mere words. Instead, with her hand still clasped in his, he pulled her forward, across the distance of the vehicle until he could close his arms about her and settle her onto his lap. She was tense, but not uncooperative.
