Chapter Seven #2
He almost sags with release, and then quickly twists and finishes unfastening his other wrist himself as Marina continues her high-decibel row with a ghost she can neither see nor hear.
Shit. I don’t know what she’s just said, but Dino is bloody fuming. He’s still cranking that handle for all he’s worth and his eyes are bulging.
“Why are you doing all of this?” I say, my heart still banging behind my ribs. If he’ll just talk to me, give me some new insight.
Dino looks at me, aggrieved, and then makes an angry rattle in his throat and spits on the bare earth.
Well, he didn’t, obviously, but he makes the motion, and the ugly threatening sentiment is the same.
It’s plain that I’m not going to get anything useful from him right now, so I grab hold of both Artie and Marina to make a hasty retreat.
She pauses to grab her shoes, and as we leave she turns back and yells another insult.
That’s so Marina; she always has to have the last word, even with a ghost.
“Okay?” I say, turning anxiously to Artie as soon as we’re safely back up in the main hallway of the castle.
He nods, already regaining his wonky smile.
“Never done that before,” he says, rubbing his wrists.
“Don’t do it again either,” Marina grumbles, hanging on to my arm so she can put her shoes back on.
I look sideways at her. “Er, you strapped him to the wall, remember?”
“She wouldn’t have known that the ghost of an Italian trapeze artist would come and try to stretch me,” Artie says, scratching his chin. “It was a tiny bit exciting as well as terrifying, actually.”
“All in a day’s work, Ghostbuster,” I say, grinning with relief.
“You know to file this in your Never Tell My Mother folder, right?” Marina says, tucking her black and green chiffon blouse back into her skinny jeans and fluffing her hair back into place. From she-woman to supermodel in a blink. That’s my girl.
As we pass the chapel I catch the quiet murmur of voices. I know it likely isn’t the nuns, as the Benedictines generally observe silence, so I press my finger to my lips and tiptoe close to the door to see who’s in there.
I peer around the edge and see two figures sitting close together. Even though they have their backs to me, I know one is Leo, and the woman with him is Britannia Lovell.
I jump back and press myself out of sight against the heavy door as the nuns glide into view, and it seems to rouse Leo and Britannia too because I can hear movement in there. I haul Marina and Artie flat against the wall, and thankfully they hurry from the chapel without glancing our way.
“What was he up to?” Marina asks quietly.
I shake my head. “I don’t know. He was with Britannia,” I murmur.
I wasn’t able to catch their hushed conversation, but I couldn’t miss the intimate tone or the closeness of their bodies.
What did Dino say in the dungeon just now?
“The peacock can’t take his eyes off her”?
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put two and two together here, and I don’t like the answer I’m coming up with one bit.
We troop into the reception hall and find Hells Bells gearing herself up to strike the gong again. She looks like she’s warming up to throw the hammer at the Olympics.
“Umm, hello?” I say, and she looks our way.
“Oh, there you are.” She pauses, flagging, with the hammer clutched in both hands. “Where are the others?”
“Still over in the turret, I think,” Artie says. “I don’t think they’ll hear that from there.”
Hells Bells looks at us, counting heads like a schoolteacher. “Three here, three there. There’s one more. Lady Letterman said seven guests.”
“It’s only Fletch,” I say quickly. “He’ll come when he’s ready.”
She shakes her head and starts to limber up with the hammer again. “M’lady says I have to keep bonging until everyone has heard it. Scuse me.”
Artie bounds forward and takes the mallet from her small hands.
“Let me,” he says, and they both turn so red it looks as if their heads might spontaneously combust. Marina looks at the oak floorboards to hide her smile, and I cover my ears in readiness as Artie spins a full revolution before striking the gong as if his life depends on it.
“Wow,” Hells Bells mouths. “That’s the biggest bong ever.”
“Said the matron to the bishop,” says Fletch, jogging lightly down the stairs to join us. “You rang?”
“Lunch is served in the dining room,” Hells Bells says, formal once more, straightening her askew little white hat. She skips across to the huge bay windows, flings one open with both hands, then pulls a megaphone from behind one of the sofas.
“Lunch is served in the dining room!” she yells, hanging out of the window, and her little voice roars and echoes around the courtyard toward the turret.
She hauls the top half of her torso back inside and drags the window down again, returning the megaphone to its hiding place and dusting herself down.
“It’s m’lady’s,” she says with a tiny smile. “She uses it to find m’lord.”
“Well, it certainly works,” I say, watching the twins emerge from the far tower with a sinking feeling.
“Shall we?” Fletch asks, holding his elbow to me formally.
“Piss off,” I say, walking straight past him.
“You’re even more beautiful when you’re angry,” he murmurs so only I can hear, and I close my eyes and ignore the fact that he’s just pressed that brain-bypass button that makes me want to rip his shirt off.
I know he was being sarcastic, but he’s filthy hot, and he’s just called me beautiful.
I hate that I have a brain-bypass button that he seems to be able to find at will, and I vow to never, ever tell him because he’ll press it willy-nilly and I’ll have to be his sex slave for eternity.
Hells Bells leads us into the dining room, which is at the rear of the ground floor looking out over the grounds.
It’s another vast, high-ceilinged affair with dark paneling and oil paintings, and the French doors have been opened wide to allow the cooling summer breeze to freshen the room.
I take a second to stand there and gather my thoughts.
I can’t be certain, but I think I caught a flash of ivory silk moving down behind the bushes again; Britannia Lovell, if I’m not mistaken.
She seems to oscillate between being a vixen in the house and a lonesome maiden in the garden. It’s an odd juxtaposition.
Turning back to the long, central dining table laid with fine china and gleaming silver cutlery, Hells Bells and the cook stand quietly at one end as we all file around it and take a seat.
Leo is already in there, papa bear at the end of the table, and I end up at the other, unintentional mama bear.
I have Fletch on my left and Marina on my right, with Artie beside her, as he most often is.
I think he has a little case of hero worship going on for her too; but then it’s pretty easy to be in awe of Marina Malone.
She’s effortlessly charismatic and always has a smart answer on the tip of her tongue.
You know those times when you look back over a situation and think of all the things you wish you’d said?
I don’t think Marina ever feels like that, because she’s always said something clever straight off the bat.
“Soup?” Cook asks, serving me first.
I nod and say thank you, because even if it’s cauliflower and vomit soup, we’re eating it.
I don’t like this being waited on malarkey one bit—it makes me feel like a twat—and I vow to have a quiet word with Cook and Hells Bells once this meal’s over to tell them they don’t need to do any of this for us.
We all sit in awkward silence while they move around the table ladling clear broth into our bowls.
If I had a pearl necklace, I’d flutter my fingers over it about now in an affected fashion, and I find myself touching my bare neck instead.
I catch Fletch watching me. His eyes follow my hand, and then he glances away quickly as if I’ve caught him doing something he shouldn’t, which is at odds with his usual behavior.
Christ. He can press my brain-bypass button without even using words. I am in serious trouble here.
“Bread, m’lady?”
“It’s Melody,” I say, hoping to put Hells Bells at ease around me, but it seems to have the opposite effect, because she looks at the floor and stammers, “Sorry. I thought it was pronounced m’lady. That’s how they say it on Downton, anyhow.”
“No,” I say. “Just call me Melody, please. It’s my name.”
Her expression clears with understanding. “Very good, M’lady Melody.”
Marina grins. “That must make me M’lady Marina,” she says, taking a roll from the basket in Hells Bells’s hands with a polite thank-you.
“Malady means diseased,” Artie says.
Fletch starts to laugh and raises his glass in appreciation.
“And we’re right back to those cracker jokes again,” I mutter.
One of the creepy twins looks over, faux concerned. “Melody has a disease? Is it fatal?”
I’d just picked up my soup spoon and I lay it down again slowly. “I don’t have a disease and I don’t wish to be addressed as m’lady.” I look toward Cook and Hells Bells who, having served everyone, have returned to their sentry spots by a side table.
“Please, you don’t need to wait on us like this, we can perfectly well take care of ourselves.”
Cook shakes her head. “Orders is orders, m’lady.” She pauses and then, with difficulty, corrects herself. “Malady.”
I sigh, too stressed to rise to it, despite the fact that even Leo is finding it funny.
“Perhaps someone should call you a doctor?” he says, his face a picture of supercilious amusement. “I can handle things here if you need to go home sick.”