Chapter Five
Giselle surveyed the destroyed library. Every single book was on the floor.
And not just the books. The floor was covered with papers that had probably been on the desk, two candelabra, and a couple pillows that had been on the settee.
The pillows looked comical, placed as they were atop an enormous pile of books.
It was as if the ghost had been sitting on the pile—a mystical creature on his throne—with the pillows as support.
The thought eased her fear and brought out a smile as she watched Jonathan look through the library door.
“Good God,” he murmured.
“What? What happened? Let me see!” his mother exclaimed.
“Stay back, Mama,” Jonathan began but the woman had already made it around the corner.
She gasped then stood there trembling until Susanne gently cupped her elbow. “Let’s go back into the parlor, Mama,” she said.
Fortunately, the countess went easily, but Jonathan remained, his body increasingly rigid as he stared into the library.
Giselle waited as he came to terms with the evidence.
She knew it was best to give the man space to wrestle it out.
Just because she and her siblings had been raised with knowledge of ghosts, didn’t mean that anyone else was so armed.
Unfortunately, her sister wasn’t the patient sort. She turned and crossed her arms, her brows arched as she glared at him.
“Are you going to say, ‘stuff and nonsense’? Or that there’s a logical explanation for all this? Perhaps you had a spring storm right here in the library and nowhere else? Come on, my lord,” she drawled. “What is your rational explanation for this?”
“Stop it, Gwennie,” Giselle snapped. “That isn’t the way.”
“Isn’t it?” her twin challenged. “How many times has he called us mad? How many times did he laugh about the troubled twins? Crazy,” she said, imitating his deep voice. “They believe in ghosts.” Gwen took a step forward. “Well, what do you say now?”
Jonathan’s jaw flexed and he turned his hard eyes on Gwenivere.
“To you, I say, Get out. This is a private affair and taunting me only makes things worse.” Then before Gwenivere could respond, he turned to Giselle, gently touching her hands.
“To you, I say, can you help us? I was wrong. My father was wrong.” He gestured into the library. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
Naturally Gwenivere blustered, but Giselle shot her twin a hard look to silence her before turning back to Jonathan.
“I did warn you that your ghost would be more powerful after this afternoon.”
Jonathan’s eyes widened as he nodded, but it was Gwen who had the most strident reaction.
“You let it touch you?” she asked Giselle. “What were you thinking?”
Giselle glared at her sister. Why couldn’t the woman be quiet? “I couldn’t hear what it was saying. Just wails.”
“But now it’s strong enough to—”
“Prove to his lordship that we aren’t crazy.
” Giselle jerked her chin toward the devastation inside the library.
Without that extra power from her, the ghost would not have been able to do that.
And Jonathan would never have believed. Unfortunately, the man took the wrong meaning from her statement.
“You caused this?” he gasped.
“There you go again!” Gwenivere snapped. “Blaming us.”
“No! That’s not what I meant!” He closed his eyes. “Please, can we not try and talk rationally for a few minutes?”
“Rational!” Gwenivere scoffed, and that was the last straw for Giselle. She loved her twin, but the woman often made situations worse. She had reason to be angry. They both did. But at a certain point, a mature person chooses between anger and assistance.
It was a hard choice to make. Jonathan had hurt her terribly.
His father had devastated her family’s finances.
But she had seen Jonathan that afternoon.
She had watched his father’s ghost torment him.
He had been suffering for a year with headaches, sleepless nights, and probably some stomach ailments.
His mother too, since he claimed the headache powder was for her.
Giselle couldn’t ignore such torment. Even in a person who had wronged her family.
“Gwennie,” she said in the only tone that ever reached her twin: firm, implacable calm. “I am going to help them.”
“You mean him.”
Giselle shrugged. Yes, she did mean him. Unlike everyone else in her family, Gwenivere knew that Giselle still cared for Jonathan. One might even think she still carried a torch for the man.
“I do,” she said in that same calm tone.
“But you needn’t fear for me,” she continued.
“He’s a viscount now.” She didn’t have to say the rest out loud.
Both girls knew that a viscount could no more marry her—the daughter of a disgraced vicar—than he could sprout wings and fly.
Her heart was not at risk because she knew that any liaison between them was impossible.
So her sister need not be antagonistic. Giselle was safe.
“Harumph,” Gwenivere answered, showing that she understood.
Unfortunately, Jonathan did not.
“What the devil does that have to do with anything?” he demanded. Then he rubbed a hand over his face. “Look, if you need money, I have it. If you need an apology, I give it. Most sincerely. Tell me what you want, and I shall hand it over in spades. Just please, end this madness.”
She heard the desperation in his voice, saw it in his tight shoulders, and the anxious pleading in his eyes. She saw it and her heart hurt for him.
It also hurt that he believed she needed money to help him. That everything between them could be reduced to coin.
“I don’t want your money,” she said.
“Yes, we do!” returned Gwenivere. “A lot of it!”
“Gwen!”
“Tuition is due for Celine and Viviane,” she said, referring to their younger sisters.
“Papa has that—”
“Then we can give it to the poor. We can buy schoolbooks or medicines. You name it, Papa knows where there is need.” She turned her hard eyes on Jonathan. “How much is sanity worth to you, my lord? A guinea? Two?”
He didn’t even blink. “Done.”
And that, of course, set them both back on their heels. Did he have that much money that he could spend it without thinking? Or was he just that desperate?
Both probably. But before it could go any farther, Giselle held up her hands.
“It’s not that easy,” she said. “This ghost is haunting you, not me.” She glanced to where Susanne stood in the parlor door listening. “Or perhaps your family. I cannot banish it like a rat catcher setting at trap. You must find out who haunts you and why.”
Jonathan frowned. “You said it was my father. You said—”
“Yes, I did. I think that’s who I saw.” It was mostly a black outline and wailing, but it was her best guess.
“What does he want?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.” She glanced at Gwenivere. “That’s why she’s here. I can see the ghosts, but I usually can’t hear them. She—”
“I get sound, but not necessarily sight.” She shrugged. “It’s a mixed bag of blessings. She sees terrible things, but at least she can sleep without something wailing in her ear.”
He looked horrified on their behalf. “You see that? And hear that?” “It’s enough to make one mad,” Gwenivere intoned.
Giselle shot her a glare, then pulled Jonathan’s attention back to her. “It’s not as bad as it sounds.” It was that bad. And sometimes it was worse. But other people didn’t need to know that. Certainly not people who were already being tormented.
“All right then,” he said, as he straightened to his full height. “Tell us what to do. What does…he want?”
The hesitation in his voice told her that he didn’t want to name his father or label the ghost. Therefore, the ghost became a generic “he.” But Jonathan would have to get a great deal more personal with it before this was done.
“We don’t know,” she said. “He probably exhausted himself destroying the library.”
Susanne took a tentative step closer. “So, ghosts get tired?”
“Not exactly. They have energy that they use up when they do things in the physical world.”
“Like throw a library’s worth of books to the floor,” said Jonathan.
“Yes. But then that supply is exhausted, and it takes a while for them to gather up again.”
“But maybe he won’t come back,” Susanne offered. “Maybe he’s like a candle that’s burnt out now.”
Giselle shook her head. “That hasn’t been my experience. Ghosts that are this strong find a way to come back. If he’s been haunting you for a year, I don’t think you can count on him fading away.”
Then the countess stepped out of the parlor. She was pale, but her voice was strong. “I will go back to Father Bertran. I will tell him everything, and he will send us an exorcist.”
Giselle winced, and she wasn’t the only one. Even Jonathan sighed.
“I don’t think Father Bertran is predisposed to believe you.”
“Then you will have to come with me!” she said. She even stomped her foot as she declared it.
Jonathan looked to Giselle. “Would that work? Can Father Bertran help us?”
“Never in my experience, and my father is a vicar, if you recall. He’s tried all sorts of things over the years. And spoken at length with a Catholic exorcist. As best as we can decipher, these are ghosts, not demons. They’ll stay until they do whatever they need to do before they pass on.”
“Pass on?” Jonathan asked.
“Go to heaven.”
“Or hell,” the countess said. “That’s why he’s haunting us, isn’t it?” she said with a sniff. “It’s because he would rather torture us here than be tormented in hell.”
Giselle bit her lip. The countess’s belief rang strong, and she could see that Susanne and even Jonathan wondered if their mother was right. Was their father here rather than in hell?
“I’ve never encountered anyone who was here because of that. I don’t think they go to hell. When a spirit is done here, they grow brighter. It’s like a light that starts right here.” She pressed a finger to her heart. “Then it expands, growing brighter and brighter until they’re gone.”
“You’ve seen it?” Susanne asked, her voice filled with awe.
“Yes.”
“How many times?” Jonathan asked. “How long have you been…”
He couldn’t even finish the question, and no wonder. She had no name for what her family did. Ghost hunting didn’t fit. They didn’t hunt anything. It was more like the spirits found them and tormented them until someone crossed them over into the light.
“I call it crossing them over,” she said.
“How many times?” he persisted.
“Our whole family does it,” she said. “We all have different gifts, but it’s something I’ve learned—we’ve all learned—from the very beginning.”
“How many times?”
She didn’t know why she was holding back. He knew she’d been doing this since she was young. Or at least seeing ghosts. She’d told him that when she was sixteen.
“Giselle, how many—”
“Dozens,” Gwen interrupted. “Since our earliest days. Mostly it was Mama and Papa, but we’ve all done it together or by ourselves. It’s just something we do. You get rich off of peasants and mock people who are different. We cross ghosts over.”
“Gwenivere!” Giselle snapped. “That was unnecessary!”
Her twin didn’t seem repentant. But to her surprise, it was Jonathan who had the strangest reaction.
“Actually,” he said, “she’s right.” And at Giselle’s shocked look, he shrugged.
“Not about getting rich off peasants. That’s not even worth addressing.
But…” His gaze took in them both. “I was cruel to you. My father even more. He hurt your father. He named you the troubled twins, and I never stopped it. Even among my friends. I don’t even know why. ”
She did. “You did it for the same reason Gwenivere can’t keep herself from insulting you.
And why I…” She swallowed. “Why it sometimes hurts to even look at you.” She couldn’t count the number of times she’d cursed his name.
“We meant something to each other, once upon a time. And then—suddenly—we didn’t.
You threw me aside and Father lost the parish and… ”
“You were saying such crazy things,” he said. “About seeing ghosts.” His words ended with a self-conscious shrug, then he added, “I couldn’t accept what I thought was madness.”
“And so we ended.”
“Everything ended,” Gwenivere said.
“And I became angry,” Jonathan said. “I hated you and I wanted you and…I was awful, Giselle. And I’m so sorry.”
What could she say to that except the truth?
“I will help you, Jonathan. I’ll do what I can about your ghost. I will even listen to whatever it is you want to say to me.
But do not believe that I will ever forgive you.
You abandoned me the moment you heard my deepest secret.
I risked everything by telling you who I was. And it destroyed me when you ran away.”