Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
It hardly needs to be said, but once you accept the existence of one ghost, a second becomes virtually routine.
Iwas ready for supper—still dressed in the black traveling gown, but with my hair elegantly arranged atop my head—when Godric knocked on our adjoining door.
“Good evening, Evie, Tess. May I escort you to the dining room, Evie?”
“Good evening, Sir Godric.” Tess bobbed a curtsy, straightened, and put her hands on her hips. “I’m glad to see you. The story of Lord Burnsby’s false marriage ceremony will spread far beyond the Highlands. It’s too good not to be shared.”
“I agree with you.”
“I’d give it a day or two, but you have something you have to do, your lordship,” Tess said.
Godric gave her one of his rare smiles. “I would prefer to do that very thing tomorrow morning.”
“In a haunted, accursed abbey?” Tess demanded.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, turning from the glass where I was adjusting my cravat (the fashion suited me, so I’d decided to continue wearing them). “Also, the abbey isn’t cursed. Hecuba saved my life, remember?”
“Marriage,” Godric said, coming forward and taking my hands.
Tess flashed a smile and disappeared.
“Marriage?” I gasped. “Here? I thought you said you were planning to ask me—now you’re going to marry me? I mean, if I say yes?”
“I am, if you agree. Here, in the presence of our friends.”
“But the scandal . . . There’s no stopping gossip,” I said hollowly.
He nodded. “Half the abbey still believes that you were never married to Burnsby, and before long, half of England will think the same. I’m sorry, darling, but there’s no containing such a fascinating story.”
“If you marry me, what will happen to your judgeship, Godric?”
“I don’t give a damn,” he said, taking my hands up to his lips and kissing one, then the other. “All I want is you.”
I couldn’t help it; I melted inside. Was it really this simple? Was the nightmare over, the novel’s happy ending in sight?
“Well, if you really want to,” I said foolishly, before I added, “Yes, Godric Everley. I will marry you.”
(Kissing ensued. Yes, he did really want to.)
By the time we entered the dining room, everyone was already seated. I would have placed Colette at my end of the table (as the new Lady Burnsby), but instead she was seated beside Lance. I blinked, thinking that perhaps France was more informal than England.
“I have decided this abbey is exempt from civilization and its rules,” Colette said, reading my mind. “I insisted on being seated next to my husband in case a vengeful ghost wafts his way into the room.”
“I’ll protect you,” Lance said, rich amusement in his voice.
“Darling, I was thinking the opposite,” Colette told him. “The ghost, after all, might be enraged to see you sitting in his seat, without a kilt, what’s more.”
“Will Mima join us tonight?” Godric asked, escorting me to a seat beside Ophelia and then taking his place opposite.
Lance shook his head. “She became agitated at the idea of leaving the abbey and exhausted herself weaving through the attics until her footman lured her downstairs. She will eat her supper in bed.”
“This feels like a house of mourning without a cause for grief,” Colette said.
“You aren’t sad that Burnsby died, are you?” Ophelia asked me.
“No. I married him thinking that he was a kind man, but I was wrong.”
“When I marry, I want someone like Joseph.”
“Someone with an unshakable faith in you, as strong as Joseph’s in Mary?” Godric asked.
“And mine in him. We should know each other well enough to have that faith,” Ophelia said.
Godric smiled at me. “This seems like an opportune moment to say that Evie has agreed to marry me tomorrow morning.”
“Without a priest?” Colette asked, startled.
“A priest is not needed in Scotland,” Lance told her. “A couple merely has to declare their intentions in front of witnesses.”
“Two witnesses,” I put in, thinking of Sophonisba.
I was snug in bed later that night, when the image of Burnsby’s ghost popped back into my head.
(I had returned to my bed, and Godric was in his, since the danger had died along with my husband.)
I managed to calm myself down by realizing that Burnsby was likely strutting up to the gates of heaven. Whether they’d let him in was another question.
I woke with a start a few hours later. The wind was howling around the abbey, and for a moment I heard—
It couldn’t be.
“Godric!” I cried before I could stop myself.
I heard him rise, and a moment later he appeared at the bottom of my bed. “What is it, darling? Are you all right?”
“Burnsby’s ghost,” I croaked, sitting up. “I heard a scrap of song on the wind, that ‘spotted virgin’ hymn. I don’t have my poker, but it wouldn’t do any good against a ghost, would it?”
“No,” Godric said wryly. “I don’t think you’re in danger of meeting your late husband. To tell the truth, I have trouble believing in Hecuba’s ghost.”
“Well, I do believe in Hecuba, so logic suggests that Burnsby might well be haunting the abbey. I don’t want to sound irrational, but I feel like throwing on furs and escaping out the side door.”
“You’re due a few irrational fears, love.”
Love?
So casually spoken, as if it was a simple fact.
A smile curled one side of Godric’s mouth. “I might add that while I have no faith in ghosts, I have faith in you.”
“Oh,” I said, all my fear draining away. “You have faith in me?”
He nodded. “More than I have in myself.” His voice had darkened, lowered. “You look deliciously rumpled and sleepy, Evie.”
I suddenly noticed that he was wearing nothing but a pair of breeches. The fire had burned low, but the contours of his chest and shoulders were fascinating. His eyes burned into mine. “It’s past midnight, which means this is our wedding day.”
“It is,” I breathed. I uncurled the fingers clutching my bedcover. They were no longer trembling with fear.
“Perhaps Colette is right about suspension of civilized rules in this abbey.” Godric moved so he could sit down on the bed. “Yet your first marriage made a mockery of marital vows, Evie.”
“That’s true.”
“When you vow to be faithful to me, and we consummate our marriage, it will be fresh and new for both of us.” His eyes were wild and happy.
Mine? I felt a pang of misgiving. I didn’t want to disappoint him. I couldn’t help thinking that I’d never managed to feel the right thing at the right time.
“Have faith in me?” It was a question, as well as a gentle command.
I smiled because I did have that. I just didn’t have faith in myself.
Sometime later I woke from a bad dream in which Burnsby was tunelessly singing something about Bethlehem. I sat up again, looking around my room. Early-morning light peeked around the curtains Tess had pinned shut.
It was the most vivid dream of my life. Burnsby had stood beside my bed, his face peevish and stubborn, his lower lip bulging. In my sleep, I had been desperately searching my bed for my poker when he turned and melted into the wall.
Melted into the wall?
I stared at the tapestry opposite my bed, a pedestrian depiction of lumpy sheep grazing in a faded pasture. I had dreamed of a ghost disappearing into that part of the wall, which didn’t mean there was a passage there.
But what if there was a passage?
Curiosity gripped me. After all, no one knew how many corridors linked various rooms in the abbey. Why not this one?
“You’re awake, and it’s our wedding day,” Godric said, walking through the open door between our rooms. His voice was rich with happiness. His hair was wet, and a white shirt hung over his breeches.
The sight struck me dumb for a moment. In a matter of hours, he would be my husband. He would walk about like that, half-clothed, every morning.
“I can see that you need tea,” he said, pulling the cord. “I am showing enormous restraint not embracing you, Evie. You look particularly enticing in that nightgown.”
I glanced down at my woolen nightgown and cleared my throat. “I had the most extraordinary dream, Godric.”
“About me?”
“About Burnsby.”
“I suppose that’s natural,” he conceded, coming over to sit beside me. He reached out and pushed my braid behind my shoulder. “Would it be disgraceful to say I don’t remember ever anticipating a day as eagerly as this?”
I smiled, infected by his exuberance. “Will you please pat the wall across from my bed, Godric?”
He raised an eyebrow.
“To see if a hidden alcove might open the door to a corridor,” I explained. “A secret passageway.”
He kissed my nose. “You dreamed it?”
I nodded.
That corner of his mouth curled up again, but he stood and patted the wall. “No alcove,” he reported.
“Try more to the right,” I said, trying to remember exactly where the ghost had disappeared. I would have climbed from the bed and investigated myself, but my feet were bare. No gentleman should see a lady’s bare ankles or feet—even if we were marrying in a matter of hours.
“No alcove,” Godric said. He frowned. “Though I do feel an elaborate frame.”
I disregarded my bare toes and hopped out of bed. “Let’s tear down the tapestry.”
“No need. There’s a split to the right.” He yanked one side open and reached inside, making the musty fabric billow.
He lifted out a large gilt-framed portrait and leaned it against the wall. It depicted a woman, her features obscured by a layer of dust.
“It must be one of Burnsby’s ancestors,” Godric said. “I wonder if he even knew it was here. This would have been his mother’s room.”
I picked up a washcloth and started wiping off dust. “What a pretty eggshell-blue gown. My mother had a gown like this, a robe à l’anglaise.”
“This must be Burnsby’s first wife,” Godric said. “She’s too young to be his mother.”
I wet the cloth and carefully patted the lady’s face. “Not his first wife, but Mima,” I exclaimed. The lady had Mima’s curls, her peaked eyebrows, and her eyes, perfectly matched by the blue dress.
“You might be right,” Godric said, frowning. “Her hair was already white?”
“Powdered,” I said. “What if Mima was Burnsby’s mother’s illegitimate daughter? That would explain her portrait being concealed behind a tapestry in the lady of the household’s bedchamber.”
“It sounds possible,” Godric agreed, wiping black streaks from his hands.
“I’ll give it to Miss Wellington and ask her to clean it properly,” I decided.
“Someone is coming,” Godric said, disappearing back into his chamber and closing the door just as Tess arrived with a tea tray.
“Good morning, Evie,” she chirped. “For the wedding, your white morning gown, don’t you think?”
I blinked at her, my head reeling. I was always discombobulated before drinking tea, but in the last day I’d bounded from widow to bride so quickly that I could scarcely distinguish between black and white.
“I’m guessing Sir Godric respected your wedding lines.”
I felt myself turning pink. Then, quietly, “He did.”
“Virgin wife.” She cocked her head, eyes dancing. “Virgin widow, virgin bride again.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes.”
Tess beamed at me. “You’ll be in white from head to foot. Your late husband may have been evil to the bone, but you’re a good girl, Evie. I wouldn’t have stayed with you if you hadn’t been. Not given the way Burnsby behaved.”
“You didn’t know he was—”
“Burnsby was a pincher,” Tess stated. “The day after I was hired, he tried to squeeze my breasts, but girls from the East End don’t take that sort of thing, and so I told him. I kept it to myself, since I scarcely knew you, and besides, after that he stayed away.”
I groaned. “I was such a fool.”
“He was a disgusting old goat, but you believed the best of him, and it made him behave better around you. Everyone in the village said so. I shall return to that house to pack your garments,” she said, as fierce as an eagle.
“I have a thing or two to say to all of them! If they are still in employment by then. I mean to tell Countess Marmont just how poorly the servants treated you and surely the other wives as well.”
I opened my mouth, but she cut me off with a fierce “No. They let three young ladies be blindsided by walking into this den of iniquity. You’ll explain it away by saying they kept silent for the sake of their wages, because you are too softhearted for your own good.”
“I am not softhearted,” I told her, startled. “If anything, I lack ladylike sensibility altogether.”
She wrinkled her nose at that. “‘Sensibility’ isn’t the same thing as kindness; any child can tell you that. What’s that dirty old painting doing here?”
“We found a portrait of Mima,” I told her. “Wasn’t she pretty?”
“Who can tell under all that grime?” Tess said. “Footmen should be along with your bath, and I’ll have them take it away.”
“Here’s a cheerful subject,” she said sometime later, rinsing my hair. “They’re saying downstairs that Sir Godric is rich as can be, with estates all over England.”
I had my hands over my face to protect my eyes from suds, but I parted them to look up at her. “I’d marry Godric if he was penniless.”
“We all know that. Mr. Crumpsall said at dinner last night that it was a proper treat to watch two good people fall in love. I shouldn’t say this to you, innocent as the day you were born, but someone is bound to tell you. Burnsby passed away after straining his heart.”
I nodded. “I had noticed that he became breathless after a single flight of stairs.”
“During rumpy-pumpy,” Tess said.
I frowned. “What’s that?”
“He exerted himself in what Ainsworth called ‘birthday rumpy-pumpy,’” she said matter-of-factly. “Hold on. I have another basin ready to rinse the last of the soap from your hair.”
I leaned back, stunned. I was shocked that Sophonisba had bedded him after being told the truth about their supposed wedding. If it had been me, I’d have locked myself in the room and made him sleep in the cloister.
But then . . . was a mistress allowed such autonomy?
That question tasted bitter on my tongue.