Chapter 2
Two
If you ever find yourself in a melodrama involving ghosts and villains, try to enjoy yourself. Compared to fiction, ordinary life is so boring.
Crumpsall ushered us through the abbey’s ponderous studded exterior doors—that siege came to mind again—into a chilly, echoing sanctuary graced by one small, unlit hearth and no furniture, save a stone altar.
Not to be blasphemous, but the altar gave off a pagan air, as if maidens were regularly thrown on top and exsanguinated.
The butler and Mima set out at a brisk walk toward a door at the far end, but I paused to stare up at the stone ribs that made up the ceiling, undoubtedly hung with cobwebs, albeit invisible in the gloom.
It was all very satisfactory. This abbey had to be ghost-ridden, if that’s a term. Haunted by monks, pale maidens . . . or deceased wives. I felt as if I had walked into a novel, a welcome change from the tedium of my daily life.
Godric came up beside me. “Not exactly cozy, is it?” His breath hung in the air like a wisp of smoke.
“Absolutely not,” I agreed. The high windows were obscured by elaborate stone tracing and didn’t admit much light. The edges of the room were shrouded in shadow, and the air smelled sour and wet. “I assume this is the chapel?”
He nodded. “The abbey was built on a classic monasterial design. This part of the building is made up of the sanctuary and a small vestry in the rear. The chamber remains bitterly cold even in the summer—”
(Because of ghosts, obviously! But I didn’t say it aloud.)
“—so Crumpsall uses it to bury blocks of ice in hay. Some years they last into July.”
His voice was annoyingly rich and deep. I’d love to hear him speaking French, my favorite language—which I can read but not speak, due to my father’s inability to pay a governess.
“The monks must have worn multiple layers of clothing.” I shivered, imagining rows of rickety wooden chairs, thin robes, and boring sermons.
“The other rooms have larger fireplaces. You’ll be warm enough,” Godric said unsympathetically.
“But monks attended eight services a day, praying and chanting. They must have suffered from frostbite.”
“Eight services? I highly doubt it.”
No wonder Godric spewed bad temper in the courtroom; people likely took offense at such a condescending display of ignorance.
“Benedictine monks attend eight mandatory services,” I informed him. “Matins, lauds, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers, compline.”
“Surely you weren’t raised Catholic?” A thin white scar bisected his right eyebrow, which didn’t stop him from raising it.
(A scarred villain! Better and better.)
I shook my head. “My father doesn’t respect popes any more than bishops. I read about the services in a novel set in Sénanque Abbey, in Provence.”
Actually, I have learned everything from books, beginning with etiquette manuals after my mother’s death. Governesses never stayed long, due to my father’s aforementioned impecunity.
“You read a Catholic novel in the French language?” Godric asked.
Was he incredulous about my ability to read a foreign language? Or was Catholicism the issue? I was feeling nettled by Burnsby abandoning me in a strange location, and Godric was making things worse.
“The novel is set in a haunted abbey. To be frank, I’m hoping to meet a spectral monk or two.”
I surprised him; his mouth almost eased into a smile. “Lance and I spent our breaks from school chasing around the abbey hoping to surprise a phantom.”
“The ramparts at night?” I asked hopefully.
“Kept strictly locked. That possibility remains unexplored.”
One key question: “Are monks’ relics buried under these flagstones?”
He shook his head. “The cemetery consists of aboveground sepulchers, since the ground is frozen much of the year.”
“Deaths from pneumonia due to long sermons,” said I, nodding.
“Rumor has it that a half a century ago a footman froze to death when he was accidentally locked in the chapel,” Godric offered.
“A phantom footman joins the ranks of translucent clergy!”
He didn’t smile, but his eyes almost did. “In warmer months, we spent hours searching the chapel for a secret passage that supposedly begins here.”
I couldn’t help grinning. “A secret passage! How marvelous.”
“We never found a passage or a ghost, though the latter might be due to the monks’ bones having been disinterred and sent to a different cemetery by Lance’s grandfather.”
My eyes widened. Their bodies were moved? Surely an indignant monk walked the corridors, perhaps without his head, if it had been lost in transit.
“Lance and I were certain that his grandfather’s callousness would awake the dead,” Godric said, one side of his mouth quirking up. “I believe the bones were dispatched to Edinburgh. Perhaps their owners couldn’t find their way north.”
He did have a sense of humor! I laughed.
His only response was to blink as if surprised. “You didn’t marry Burnsby for money, did you?”
“Yes, I did,” I said bluntly. “Like many women in my situation, I do not have the moral high ground.”
His brow furrowed, as they say in novels, but as I wasn’t eager to bare my heart to a total stranger, I began walking again. At the end of the chapel, Godric proceeded through a small vestry and shoved open a thick wooden door that led into a cloister, an open quadrangle bounded by a colonnade.
Mima was waiting for us under an arch that framed a substantial door.
“This wing of the abbey was decrepit when Clifford’s father bought it,” she explained.
“He rebuilt it to include a drawing room, a small parlor, a music room, and so on. You’ll find it far more comfortable than the chapel.
For one thing, rats nest in the older parts of the abbey. ”
I shuddered. I fake most ladylike feelings, but quivering whiskers and squinty eyes disgust me, and I’d never shared a dwelling with rodents.
“They avoid humans,” Godric said, which was some comfort, I suppose.
Crumpsall ushered us into a beautifully appointed room, its carpet and Belgian tapestries depicting flowering meadows. I might have entered a London drawing room, but for the lingering odor of damp stone.
Mima led the way toward two sofas, while the butler removed a kettle of boiling water from the fire and poured it into a large teapot.
I seated myself opposite a grandiose portrait of a buxom lady posed before a Roman ruin, forked lightning competing with the purple ostrich plumes jutting from her wig.
Presumably it depicted Burnsby’s mother or one of his previous wives (I refused to lower myself to inquire).
To be frank, it was hideous. Only deep sentiment could explain its display, as that style of portraiture fell from favor at least forty years ago. Burnsby refers to his wives by number, not name; I suspected it portrayed his mother.
Leaving the tea steeping, Crumpsall deigned to escort Peony to the kitchen after I made him promise that the household—most particularly the cook—would be informed my piglet was not to be considered pork.
Tess could bring her back to my room later in the day, after Peony’s midmorning meal. (She was a growing baby, after all.)
Godric cleared his throat and turned to Mima. “You planned to share some information with Lady Burnsby?”
She peered at me. “Clifford didn’t warn you, did he?”
“Warn me about what?” I began to pour out tea. It would improve with another five minutes, but breakfast tea had been hours ago. My sister judges me addicted, and she’s right.
“About the occupants of the abbey.”
I smiled as I handed her a teacup. “No, my husband didn’t mention you, Aunt Mima, but I am most happy to make your acquaintance.”
“Did Clifford mention his daughter?”
The daughter was news to me. Debrett’s Illustrated Peerage of the United Kingdom hadn’t mentioned offspring other than Lancelot. I set Godric’s teacup down without filling it. “Daughter?” I echoed.
“His second wife, Hecuba, never regained her strength after giving birth to Ophelia,” Mima explained. “The poor woman died that same day.”
“Actually, it was three or four months later,” Godric clarified.
Mima patted him on the arm. “You know my wretched memory, dear. At any rate, Ophelia was born early and remained so sickly that Clifford never bothered to register her or send her away to school. Consequently, Ophelia is a wee bit eccentric.”
“Does she wish to be presented to the queen?” I asked, thinking that she must be nearly old enough to debut. Perhaps she and Rosie could attend court together.
“If so, she would debut from her half-brother’s household, or mine. You will never be asked to polish her pig-herding skills,” Godric said.
That was an insult that almost sounded like a joke.
“Did your wife travel with you?” I asked him, pouring his tea.
Mima piped up. “He hasn’t yet found one. Godric, you ought to ask Burnsby for advice. Just think of the way he has wooed one marvelous lady after another.”
“Yes, just think of that,” he said.
I cleared my throat. “I could review my unmarried acquaintances.” I let my expression convey my doubt that I knew any woman who could put up with his remarkable charm (yes, that was sarcastic).
“I shall persevere without your assistance. I’d prefer my wife didn’t have a pig as her companion.”
“You might try advertising in the Times for a fluffy kitten and hope a woman comes with it,” I retorted, handing over the teacup.
I was enjoying the exchange, but Mima intervened. “Genevieve, dear, I’m sorry to say that I must sully your ears with more unwelcome news.”
Her gaze went to the portrait and back to my face. “I do hope that you will take it better than the others. Weeping strains one’s throat, and fainting runs the risk of denting your skull. Godric, do you carry a flask?”
“I do not.”
Clearly, he wouldn’t catch me if I plummeted from my chair to the ground.
“The woman in that portrait is Burnsby’s mistress,” Mima said, “painted by the famous Roman portraitist, Pompeo Batoni.”
I questioned my own ears. I don’t faint and rarely weep, but . . . a painting of my husband’s mistress—in a building where I was residing? This was extraordinarily improper.
I was genuinely shocked. My husband is ruthlessly unkind in referring to fallen women, yet he commissioned a portrait of such a woman from a “famous” painter?
His other wives must have respected Batoni’s work enough to condone the artwork, but I would not. Even if Leonardo da Vinci himself wielded the paintbrush, that painting was moving to a cowshed.
Godric raised a hand, stopping me as I was about to rise from my chair. “She lives here, in the abbey.”