AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She yawned widely. “Do forgive me. I’m afraid the trip has quite fatigued me. Oh, Daniels”—she turned in what looked like relief as a petite lady’s maid appeared at the doorway—“is my room readied?”
The maid curtsied even as her gaze darted about the library curiously. “Yes, my lady. As ready as ever it can be tonight anyway. You’ll never credit the cobwebs we—”
“Yes, well, I’m sure it’s fine.” Lady Margaret whirled and nodded at him. “Good night, er … husband. I’ll see you on the morrow, shall I?”
And she darted from the room, the back cover of poor Van Oosten still held captive.
The maid closed the door behind her.
Godric eyed the solid oak of his library door. The room without her spinning, brilliant presence seemed all of a sudden hollow and tomblike. Strange. He’d always thought his library a comfortable place before.
Godric shook his head irritably. What is she about? Why has she come to London?
Theirs had been a marriage of convenience—at least on her part. She’d needed a name for the babe in her belly. It’d been a marriage of blackmail via her ass of a brother, Griffin, on his part, for Godric had not fathered the child. Indeed, he’d never spoken to Lady Margaret before the day of their wedding. Afterward, when she’d retired to his neglected country estate, he’d resumed his life—such as it was—in London.
For a year there’d been no communication at all, save for the odd secondhand bit of information from his stepmother or one of his half sisters. Then, suddenly, a letter out of the blue, from Lady Margaret herself, asking if he would mind if she cut down the overgrown grapevine in the garden. What overgrown grapevine? He hadn’t seen Laurelwood Manor, the house on his Cheshire estate, since the early years of his marriage to his beloved Clara. He’d written back and told her politely but tersely that she could do as she wished with the grapevine and anything else she had the mind to in the garden.
That should’ve been the end to it, but his stranger bride had continued to write him once or twice a month for the last year. Long, chatty letters about the garden; the eldest of his half sisters, Sarah, who had come to live with Margaret; the travails of repairing and redecorating the rather decrepit house; and the petty arguments and gossip from the nearby village. He hadn’t known quite how to respond to such a flurry of information, so in general he simply hadn’t. But as the months had gone by, he’d become oddly taken with her missives. Finding one of her letters beside his morning coffee gave him a feeling of lightness. He’d even been impatient when her letter was a day or two late.
Well. He had been living alone and lonely for years now.
But the small delight of a letter was a far cry from the lady herself invading his domain.
“Never seen the like, I haven’t,” Moulder muttered as he entered the library, shutting the door behind him. “Might as well’ve been a traveling fair, the bunch o’ them.”
“What are you talking about?” Godric asked as he stood and doffed the banyan.
Underneath he still wore the Ghost’s motley. It’d been a near thing. Both carriages had been drawn up outside his house when he’d slunk in the back. Godric had heard Moulder trying to hold off the occupants even as he’d run up the hidden back stairs that led from his study to the library. Saint House was so old it had a myriad of secret passages and hidey-holes—a boon to his Ghostly activities. He’d reached the library, pulled off his boots, thrown his swords, cape, and mask behind one of the bookshelves, and had just tugged the soft turban onto his head and wound the banyan about his waist when he’d heard the doorknob turn.
It’d been close—too damn close.
“M’lady and all she brought with her.” Moulder waved both hands as if to encompass a multitude.
Godric arched an eyebrow. “Ladies do usually travel with maids and such.”
“’Tisn’t just such,” Moulder muttered as he helped Godric from the Ghost’s tunic. In addition to his other vague duties, Moulder served as valet when needed. “There’s a gardener and bootblack boy and a snorty sort o’ dog that belongs to Lady Margaret’s great-aunt, and she’s here too.”
Godric squinted, trying to work through that sentence. “The dog or the aunt?”
“Both.” Moulder shook out the Ghost’s tunic, eyeing it for tears and stains. A sly expression crossed his face just before he glanced up innocently at Godric. “’Tis a pity, though.”
“What?” Godric asked as he stripped the Ghost’s leggings off and donned his nightshirt.
“Won’t be able to go out gallivanting at all hours o’ the night now, will you?” Moulder said as he folded the tunic and leggings. He shook his head sorrowfully. “Right shame, but there ’tis. Your days as the Ghost are over, I’m feared, now that your missus has arrived to live with you.”
“I suppose you’d be right”—he took off the silly turban and ran a hand over his tightly cropped hair—“if Lady Margaret were actually going to live with me permanently.”
Moulder looked doubtful. “She sure brought enough people and luggage to take up residence.”
“No matter. I don’t intend to give up being the Ghost of St. Giles. Which means”—Godric strode to the door—“my wife and all her accouterments will be gone by next week at the outside.”
And when she was gone, Godric promised himself, he could go back to his business of saving the poor of St. Giles and forget that Lady Margaret had ever disrupted his lonely life.
Chapter Two
Now mind me well: the Hellequin is the Devil’s right-hand man. He roams the world, mounted on a great black horse, in search of the wicked dead and those who die unshriven. And when the Hellequin finds them, he drags their souls to hell. His companions are tiny imps, naked, scarlet, and ugly. Their names are Despair, Grief, and Loss. The Hellequin himself is as black as night and his heart—what is left of it—is nothing but a lump of hard coal. …
—From The Legend of the Hellequin
