Ghosts, Graveyards, and Grey Ladies

Chapter One

Lady Clara Griffin raised her head at the mournful wail and scanned the mists that floated between her and the rest of the tombs in Highgate. Her pencil stilled in her fingers as she searched for the source of the puzzling sound.

Not a ghost, because they, of course, did not exist. She’d heard all the stories about Highgate Cemetery, which she’d lived near most of her life, having been born before the burial ground even came to be.

Sensational stories were all the rage, people enjoying them on a gloomy evening, when shadows gathered and darkness was deep. Her sister Emily loved them.

The wail came again, trailing off into a whimper. Clara straightened from the marker from which she was taking a rubbing for her aunt’s collection, and scanned the swirling fog.

Whatever made the sound was most likely living, Clara decided, and needed help.

She pulled her long coat closer around her and set off in the direction from which she believed the cry had come.

Two strides later, something massive loomed from the mists and slammed straight into her.

Clara stumbled backward, trying to right herself, before a pair of strong, gloved hands seized her arms and steadied her on her feet.

“Have a care,” a male voice growled. “What do you mean by barging around without looking where you’re going?”

Clara wrested herself free of a large man with a hard face under his tall hat, eyes of deep brown, and dark hair now damp with mist. She recognized him, as most people did, before they got out of his way with a murmured “Good afternoon, your lordship.”

Whenever Clara’s sisters or friends spied him, they declared him the handsomest man to walk the Heath, perhaps the handsomest in all of England.

At the moment, that gentleman was glowering at Clara as though she were the most annoying of females he had the misfortune to deal with this day.

“You, sir, ran into me,” Clara returned with all the dignity she could muster.

“I think you’ll find I did not. I came around a corner, and there you were, careening directly into me.” He leaned to peer at her more closely. “You’re one of those Griffin girls, are you not?”

“You know full well that I am,” Clara said. “As we have been neighbors for years, Lord Alden. You see? I know your exact name, while you are struggling for mine.”

“Ah, she has you there.” Another voice loomed from the fog, which parted to reveal a gentleman in well-fitted greatcoat and fashionably high top hat. Clara did not recognize him, but he was the sort of dandy who sometimes visited Lord Alden Carlisle, only son of the Marquess of Ravensmoor.

The marquess dwelled in a grand house in Mayfair when he was in Town, but his son leased their residence at Hamstead Heath, where he was a bit of a recluse.

Clara’s father, a peer himself who loved the Heath, was cordial to Lord Alden, who lived three houses over, behind a gate that was most often closed.

Clara and her sisters sometimes beheld Lord Alden striding about the Heath like a lovestruck hero from romantic poetry. At least, Clara’s younger sisters dubbed him that. Clara believed he was simply a bad-tempered misanthrope.

Her conviction was reinforced as he continued to scowl down at her. He didn’t even acknowledge his friend—Lord Alden did have them, and they visited him from time to time, to stride upon the Heath with him.

They all seemed far more good-natured than Lord Alden, including this gentleman, whom Lord Alden did not bother to introduce.

“Lady Clara,” Clara told Lord Alden with exaggerated patience. “The eldest daughter. Hardly a girl anymore, though I do recall you as an unruly lad.”

The friend guffawed, but Lord Alden studiously ignored him. “Very well. Lady Clara, why are you rushing about in this thick fog? You’ll come to grief, as you nearly caused me to.”

“I heard a noise I wished to investigate,” Clara answered steadily. “Before I ran into the wall that was you, sir.”

“I do like her.” The friend peered around the taller Lord Alden. “I am called Piers Forsythe, by the bye, my lady, since he will never mention my name.”

Clara gave the man a dignified nod. Mr. Forsythe had twinkling brown eyes and hair a lighter shade than Lord Alden’s. He looked as though he had a sense of humor while Lord Alden decidedly did not.

Before Clara could thank Mr. Forsythe for his manners, Lord Alden interrupted. “What noise? I heard nothing.”

“How could you over the tramping of your own boots? Over there.” Clara pointed to a spot beyond Lord Alden, which was lost in the mists. “Although they might be long gone now. I hope they are all right.”

“This place is quite haunted,” Mr. Forsythe remarked. “Might have been anything. Brave lass to rush toward it.”

Lord Alden’s expression turned disparaging. “I suppose you are going to say it was a ghost,” he said to Clara.

“No, indeed, I am not. If you will please move aside, I will continue with my search and hinder you no more.”

Lord Alden glanced deeper into the burial ground, where tombs in pale white marble or polished black granite pierced the fog. As he did, the moan came again, ending in another pathetic whimper.

“This way.” Lord Alden pointed with his walking stick before barging forth along the path.

Mr. Forsythe gestured Clara onward. “After you, my lady.”

“Thank you, sir,” Clara told him. “At least your manners are impeccable.”

Mr. Forsythe raised his brows as if in surprise, then chuckled as he followed her into the fog.

*

Alden waved aside the damp wisps that surrounded him. Fogs could linger on these hilltops north of London before they wended their way down to the rest of the city. The many ponds and streams around Hampstead Heath did nothing to keep away the damp.

Alden had come to visit the grave of a friend, trying to manage the well of grief he’d been wallowing in the past year.

Encountering Lady Clara, the most enchanting of Lord Griffin’s daughters—he knew full well who she was—even in this frustrating way, might be just what he needed to snap out of his doldrums.

She was a lovely young woman, with her red-gold hair now slick from the mists under a rather absurd, small-brimmed green bonnet, and blue eyes like pieces of summer sky.

Not that she was a tender, courteous miss with enchanting manners. Clara had no awe of Alden, correct that she recalled him as an awkward youth, when she’d always been elegant.

Having her crash into him, after the first abrupt surprise, hadn’t been so bad a thing. She was soft, warm, and lithe. The moment she’d been against him had done things to Alden’s body he hadn’t felt in too long a while.

Alden hadn’t felt anything at all in the past year, not since that terrible night in Hyde Park when he’d lost a person dear to him, the only one who’d really understood him.

Alden had believed his emotions dead, until Clara, moments ago, had glared at him with her beautiful eyes and ordered him out of her way.

Clara hurried closely behind him, her soft footfalls echoing his louder ones. He knew that if he hadn’t led the way, she’d have dashed off into the mists alone, encountering who knew what in this benighted place.

Alden didn’t believe the ghostly tales others liked to tell.

In his opinion, any sighting of a ghost was the result of too much imagination, assisted by gin or other spirits.

However, danger in human form could lurk here, perhaps a footpad happy to see a well-off young woman paying no attention to what paths she trod.

The sound came again, deep in the darkening fog. It was the wail of a hound of hell, making Alden pause a step.

“Oh, the poor thing.” Clara pushed past him and straight into the black opening of an open tomb.

Why someone had taken out the stone that enclosed it, Alden couldn’t say, but the doorway gaped like a startled mouth. Clara ducked into it without a qualm.

“Damn and blast.” Alden charged in behind her, nearly banging his head on the low-hanging lintel.

A chill breeze pressed behind him. Wind would send off the mists, eventually, but it also announced that the coming night would be brutally cold.

Clara knelt next to something huddled on the ground. What little light penetrated this enclosure showed Alden that it was a dog.

Not so much a hound of hell as a tangled-haired, long-legged canine of questionable lineage, folded up on the ground, with one great front paw wedged under a stone.

He was thin and dirty, obviously a stray who’d probably gone feral, though the terror in his eyes when he beheld Alden showed no viciousness whatsoever.

Clara, unmindful of the grime that covered the dog, knelt beside him and tried to pull the stone up from the animal’s leg. The chunk of granite had cracked off one of the slabs next to her and now was wedged between grave and wall.

How the dog had become stuck was anyone’s guess, though he might have been searching for scraps and decided this was a good place to dig. He was scrawny, ribs pressing against his ragged coat.

“Do help,” was Clara’s greeting as Alden stooped under the low ceiling.

The wind grew stronger, colder. Not the place to be caught in the freezing night.

The dog shivered as Alden crouched next to him and shifted himself to be closer to Clara. Alden didn’t reach for him, not wanting the dog to jerk away and perhaps hurt himself and possibly Clara as well.

“Now, my lad, what have you done to yourself?” he asked softly.

Clara sent him a startled look, as though surprised he could speak in anything but a growl. A fair assessment, Alden supposed. He’d been snapping and snarling at everyone for the last twelvemonth, when he could bring himself to speak at all.

“I can’t shift the stone,” she said, continuing to pull on it. “It’s stuck fast. There’s only a little depression here, and it feels like his claws are caught on something. If we could dig down under it …” She began scrabbling in the dirt next to the dog’s spindly leg.

The other paw, with razor-sharp, untrimmed claws, lay very close to her hand. The dog let out a faint whine, sniffing at Clara’s bonnet that dipped to him.

Alden reached a gloved hand to the stone. “Easy, lad,” he said when the dog’s whimper became a warning rumble. “Let me help the lady.”

The piece of granite didn’t move to Alden’s tugs. He jammed his walking stick under its edge and tried to lever it up, using his weight to assist. Nothing.

Alden eased off, catching his breath. A third person would certainly help, but there wasn’t enough room for anyone else to come through the door.

The walls around them were solid stone, the tomb made to seal the deceased inside, out of the weather. Alden didn’t like to think of who was lying close to them, sleeping their last, their bodies dissolving in spite of their family’s efforts to keep them whole.

Tombs like this were nonsense, Alden always thought. Let the earth take back its own. It is the cycle of life. The body isn’t needed anymore, no matter how alive they once were.

Alden’s eyes stung, and he blinked rapidly. Blasted dust.

He shut out the thoughts of what he’d lost and focused on the living things before him: the impatient Clara and the desperate dog.

The floor beneath the dog’s paw was less hard, made from limestone cement instead of actual stone. Tombs were expensive, and so decorative substances were used as facades over brick and concrete. This floor was crumbling from damp and whatever roots were forcing their way in.

“Stop a moment,” Alden said to Clara. He removed a flask from his pocket, which his valet, Milford, had filled to the brim with brandy. To keep the damp from seeping into his bones, the man had said. Milford was always certain Alden would come to grief as soon as he was out of sight.

Clara frowned at him, her pale gloves now stained with dust and moldy slime. She opened her mouth, as though to demand to know if he was contemplating inebriation, then she seemed to understand.

She shifted herself out of his way, though staying as near as she could to the trembling dog.

Milford would cluck at Alden for wasting an entire flask of brandy, but Alden hadn’t touched a drop of it so far this afternoon. He feared that if he took one sip in the morose atmosphere of Highgate, he wouldn’t cease until the brandy was gone. Then maybe he’d see the legendary ghosts too.

Alden poured the liquid into the crack between stone and floor, soaking the ground beneath the dog’s paw. The dog wrinkled its nose at the odor, confirming Alden’s belief that dogs were wiser than humans.

“I believe it’s moving.” Clara eagerly dug her hands into the wet and crumbling cement, scraping away mud and pebbles under the stone.

Alden pulled on the unyielding piece of granite once more, grunting as he strained. The dog, who seemed to take on new hope, wriggled his front legs with enthusiasm.

Another icy blast hit Alden in the back, and at the same time, he felt the stone move. A fraction of an inch, but it was enough.

Clara continued to gouge out the shallow depression, and the dog, its tail moving the faintest amount, wrenched its paw free.

Clara’s cry of triumph rang through the stuffy tomb. Alden unwedged his walking stick from under the stone, breathing a sigh of relief.

“You’ll have to carry him out,” she informed him.

The dog, now released, tried to climb to his feet, but his back legs, weak and trembling, collapsed. He subsided, licking his sore paw.

Alden heaved a resigned sigh and leaned down to grasp the dog. It tried to scramble away from him, brown eyes wide with fear.

Clara sank down next to the dog again. “It’s all right.” She put her arms around him, no matter that the beast was filthy and stinking, his odor covering even the sharp scent of brandy. “Try now,” she said.

The dog had calmed, relaxing into Clara’s hold. Of course he’d succumb to the touch of a beautiful woman. Again, why dogs were wise.

Alden made his movements slow and as unthreatening as possible as he once more reached for the dog. Clara kept her arms around him, and together they half lifted him, the dog’s whimper loud in Alden’s ear. The nose that touched his cheek was cold and damp.

As Alden straightened, Clara relinquished her hold. She rested her fingers in the frightened beast’s fur, and together they carried him out of the tomb to the glow of an evening sunset.