The Ghosts of Greenwood Read online

  Lord Dorset misjudged his companion. Sir John had not dispensed justice from his office in Bow Street these past many years without gaining a tolerable understanding of the ways of humankind. He, too, feared his hostess was plotting, and harbored an unpleasant premonition that her machinations would once again interfere with his peace of mind.

  Many years ago, he’d wanted to make her his bride. She had refused, and he was grateful to her for it because clearly they didn’t suit. Dulcie had spent much of the intervening time engaged in the frivolous pursuits so enjoyed by the Upper Ten Thousand, while Sir John sat in his Bow Street office and struggled to see justice upheld in spite of corrupt government officials who were largely indifferent to truth, conviction, and even guilt. Though born into its illustrious ranks, he had little but contempt for the haut ton.

  But, Lord help him, he could not help notice that Dulcie still possessed a figure of such superb dimensions that it must be admired by gentlemen of every age between the cradle and the grave.

  She raised one hand to rub the nape of her neck. The Chief Magistrate of Bow Street experienced a sharp and most un-magistrate-like impulse. “I wish,” he said, before Dickon could comment, which Dickon looked as if he meant to do, “that you would tell me, Dulcie, what you are pondering so seriously.”

  She raised her eyes to his. “I’ve been wondering if I should, dear John, and think that I must not. This was to be your holiday. Try and enjoy it while you can.”

  These words brought both gentlemen to attention. “Dulcie!” warned Lord Dorset. “I refuse to permit you to involve Livvy in your machinations. You must remember that she is—”

  “In a delicate condition!” concluded the Baroness, with an exasperated glance at her favorite nephew. “I wish you would stop acting as if Lavender is the first female ever to whelp.” Before Lord Dorset could retort, she returned her attention to the Chief Magistrate. “Frankly, John, I mistrust the manner of Sir Wesley Halliday’s death. Nor am I entertained by this sudden talk of ghosts.”

  Sir John adored her to distraction, no less now than in the days of their shared youth. Adoration, however, did not blind him to her faults. “When do you not scent a mystery?” he inquired. “The business seems straightforward enough to me.”

  “That’s put your foot in it,” said Dickon, an expression of amusement on his haughty, dissipated face.

  His foot, and a great deal of his ankle. “Little in this world is straightforward,” the Baroness announced, “and most especially not when it appears to be.” Moreover, she reminded Sir John, since he apparently chose not to recall it, she had already been of the utmost value to Bow Street in the solving of several complicated affairs. Furthermore, though a certain Chief Magistrate must be in his dotage, else he would not malign the validity of her hunches, she had not yet succumbed to senility. It was at this point, as Sir John was attempting reconciliatory overtures, and Dickon was endeavoring to restrain an untimely fit of mirth, that a third gentleman sauntered into the room.

  “Humbug!” the Chief Magistrate snapped.

  “Pray moderate your manner,” begged Dickon, who was enjoying himself immensely. Among Lord Dorset’s vices (or virtues, depending on one’s point of view) was a habit of deriving amusement from the follies of his fellow men. “Admittedly my aunt may be a trifle hot at hand—”

  “I fancy,” drawled the newcomer, “that Sir John referred not to my aunt’s little ways but to myself. I take it Uncle Max is not in residence? While the cat is absent— Not, dear Sir John, that I mean to compare you to a rodent! It is merely that Greenwood calls to mind country squires seducing parlor maids.”

  Lady Bligh gazed without appreciation upon her least favorite nephew. The Honorable Hubert Humboldt was a slender foppish gentleman with dark eyes, brown hair, lush side-whiskers and a bold moustache. “I take it you slipped past all the servants. Since you’re here, you might as well come in. You look like a coachman in that absurd coat.”

  “How ungracious of you, aunt! I, who am vastly more tolerant, shall refrain from commenting on the shocking effect of a red gown, green chair, and pink hair.” Hubert removed the offending many-caped great-coat, revealing a high tight cravat, exquisitely cut coat worn open to display a peach-colored waistcoat and snowy embroidered cambric shirt, skin-tight inexpressibles gathered into a wasp waist, and gleaming boots. “Nor will I berate you for not inviting me to this family gathering. Of course it was an oversight.” He minced across the room, settled carefully upon a sofa, and surveyed his surroundings, specifically a collection of navigational instruments that included mariner’s quadrant and octant, cross staff and standing weight, an Italian compass and a Persian astrolabe and a gigantic astronomical sextant dating back to the sixteenth century. “Fascinating! One cannot fail to be struck by Uncle Max’s taste.”

  Lady Bligh propped her dainty slippers on a velvet-covered stool. “Maximilian is in France. His assistance was required. I felt from the beginning that Wellington’s appointment was a blunder. It will be difficult to remove the Duke from his ambassadorial position without making him look the fool.”

  “A problem,” Hubert murmured, “which Uncle Max is extremely qualified to solve, having removed himself from more potentially embarrassing situations than one has power to count. And in the interim he may ogle the ladies, and hunt with Louis the Gouty, and engage in the universal gambling that shocks the English visitors even more than the pornographic prints frequently featured on hotel walls.”

  “I don’t think,” Lord Dorset objected, “that our uncle can be said to ‘ogle’. At last report he had lured both La Grassini and Mademoiselle Georges away from Wellington. The Duke is likely to leave Paris simply because Uncle Max is there.”

  “Better there than here,” said Hubert. “It occurs to me — belatedly, I grant you, but I have had a great deal on my mind — that a certain other member of the family is not here. Surely, cousin, you have not already tired of your wife?”

  “Lavender,” explained Lady Bligh, “has gone on an errand. So far is Dickon from growing bored that he has got her with child.”

  “Lud!” sighed Hubert. “Allow me to congratulate you, cousin, on providing us with another addition to this already grossly complicated family. Apropos of which—”

  “Apropos of which,” demanded Dickon, “where is Jael?”

  This simple inquiry wiped all traces of malice from Hubert’s features. It also caused Sir John’s spirits to sink. The Chief Magistrate had not been best-pleased to see Hubert Humboldt, whose satiric presence had once graced a Bow Street jail cell, following an incident of highway robbery; but mention of Hubert’s mistress, a hot-tempered icy-eyed female who wielded no small influence in London’s vicious underworld, caused him to fervently wish himself elsewhere.

  “Did you hope she wasn’t with me?” inquired Hubert. “Sorry to disappoint you, coz. I pointed out that an invitation to Greenwood Castle was a singular mark of favor achieved by few members of the family, of which I am not one, but she refused to be convinced. And why she decided at the last minute that we must come here, when she dislikes the country above all things, I cannot begin to guess.”

  “Never say so, Humbug,” said the Earl. “Or I will think you have encountered domestic difficulties yourself.”

  “I wouldn’t gloat, if I were you!” retorted Hubert, with a glance of keen dislike. “You’ll soon enough have difficulties of your own.”

  “You mean to sow discord, I gather.” Lord Dorset scowled like a thundercloud. “Well, you shan’t. I won’t permit it. Livvy—”

  “—is in a delicate condition,” Dulcie interrupted. “We are aware, Dickon. Hubert, you may proceed.”

  That gentleman continued glowering at his cousin. “You needn’t bother saying I dwell under the hen’s foot, because in general Jael and I rub on agreeably enough.”

  “I wasn’t going to say any such thing,” replied Dickon, untruthfully. “So you don’t know why Jael insisted on joining us here?”

&n
bsp; Hubert plucked a thread from his waistcoat. “I didn’t deem it politic to ask.”

  One could hardly blame him. Sir John had a vivid memory of the woman, seated on the edge of his desk and cleaning her nails with a sharp-edged knife.

  “You could have refused to escort her,” Dulcie pointed out.

  “I realize you hold me in no great regard,” Hubert said with indignation, “but I don’t know why you’d think that I would sit idly twiddling my thumbs at home while Jael goes jaunting about the countryside.”

  Bluebeard stretched out one bright blue wing. “Twiddle-diddles,” he observed.

  “Twiddlepoop,” came a voice from the doorway. “I told you to stay in town.”

  “And I’ll repeat what I told you then,” responded Hubert. “Whither you go, so do I.”

  Jael’s arrival put a brief end to conversation. Bluebeard ruffled his feathers and clacked his beak. Casanova twitched his tail.

  She walked across the carpet, a dark-skinned tangle-haired beauty with cold grey eyes, an aquiline nose, and a thin white scar running from her left cheekbone to her chin. Golden rings pierced her earlobes. Disposed about her voluptuous person were scarfs and shawls and garments of bright colors, countless baubles and chains.

  Jael dropped Dulcie a mocking curtsey. “Whatever the lady pleases, and thank you my kind mistress, and the blessings of the poor gypsy woman on you. I suppose you’ll be wanting your fortune told.”

  “Better you should tell your own.” The Baroness rose and crossed the room.

  “Afraid, lady?” Jael’s humorless smile flashed. “Dare you cross my palm with gold? So the raggle-taggle trollop may tell you what has been, and what will be?”

  “You’re no more raggle-taggle than I am,” Dulcie remarked dispassionately. “Don’t sham it so.”

  This conversation might have been of no small interest to the three gentlemen who strained to hear it. Lord Dorset was the first to accept defeat. “Explain to me, Humbug,” he said in his impatient way, “what difficulties I may soon share.”

  Hubert shifted his position on the sofa, to the accompaniment of jingling fobs and chains and seals. “Not share them, precisely. Your difficulties are your own. My failure to make my meaning clear is a further indication of how wholly I am overset. Which isn’t the least remarkable, my journey here having been enlivened by the most appalling tales. Consider my delicate constitution, my dislike of firearms. Imagine my distress at being told that, for months after the Russians stormed Paris, the valley between Belleville and Montmarte stank with the half-buried dead. Contemplate, if you will, spending an entire night asleep on top of a corpse.”

  Dulcie glanced at them and raised her voice. “As Napoleon left Fontainebleau for Elba, he promised that when the violets returned next spring he too would come back.”

  “I don’t see,” put in Lord Dorset, with a great deal more forbearance than he felt, “what Napoleon has to do with us.”

  “Why, everything, cousin!” said Hubert, spitefully. “I mean, Wellington’s Peninsular Campaign. When the poor fellow learned you weren’t in London, he came to me, though I don’t know why he should have. Not that he isn’t a decent sort of person, because he is, but he’s no relative of mine, for which I render thanks.”

  The Earl possessed a large number of relatives, toward the majority of whom he cherished a profound indifference. Before he could wring this particular relative’s neck, Lady Bligh’s butler Gibbon, a cadaverous individual with a shock of white hair, appeared in the doorway. “Lieutenant Theodore Sutcliffe to see Lord Dorset,” he announced, as a too-thin young man with brown hair and haunted eyes entered the room.

  Dickon rose abruptly from his seat. “Ned!” he exclaimed.

  Hubert was less interested in family reunions than relieved to deliver up his charge. Beyond noting that Dickon and his cousin Ned bore a familial resemblance, he paid them little heed. Instead, he studied the Chief Magistrate, who was looking glum. “In the mops, Sir John?”

  That gentleman’s glance spoke volumes. “Your aunt has a premonition.”

  “Devil take it!” Hubert groaned.

  Chapter Three

  While Lord Dorset’s cousin Ned regaled the Baroness and her houseguests with his opinion of the Bourbon restoration to the throne of France — utter absurdity, he informed them: the Bourbons couldn’t restore the dead from the guillotine, or an outdated way of life — Lord Dorset’s Countess sought enlightenment of her own. Against her better judgment, Livvy was paying a condolence call. Accompanying her was her stepson Austen, an astute lad aged nine years, who had inherited his father’s handsome features and his great-aunt’s fathomless dark eyes.

  An elderly butler conducted them into the Halliday drawing room, an elegant chamber with formal mahogany furnishings and a gleaming oak floor.

  Glass chandeliers hung from the elaborate plaster ceiling. Two grand mirrors flanked the fireplace. Against one wall, alongside a tea table set with Chinese porcelain, stood a large map. This was a wind chart, explained Austen. It connected with a weathercock positioned on the roof. The device enabled sportsmen to estimate which way the breeze might blow.

  The room contained other reminders of the hunt. Livvy averted her gaze from a portrait of dead pheasants and wondered whether her breakfast was going to stay in her belly, or if she would disgrace herself by casting up her accounts into the porcelain tea-pot.

  As she was debating, not having decided one way or another, a short, plump black-clad lady hurried into the drawing room. She was some five-and-twenty years of age, with chestnut curls and bright green eyes. “I am so pleased to make your acquaintance, Lady Dorset! Has the Baroness sent you to keep me company? I had heard the family was in residence at the Castle — in the country one hears everything, even when one would prefer not to, although I generally do want to hear, because I have a fondness for gossip, which is shockingly vulgar in me, I know. Since I am in mourning, I can hardly go about paying social calls, or so Connor tells me, and I suppose he must know, although I wouldn’t put it past him to deliberately make me miserable, because he doesn’t like me above half. But you will think me a sad chatterbox, rattling on like this! May I offer you refreshment? Pray sit down.”

  Livvy settled on a duchesse, a long seat formed by two tub-backed easy chairs with a stool between them, which could be used as a day-bed. Austen excused himself and set out in search of the cook, who had a fondness for young rascals and an unending supply of strawberry scones. “I apologize for intruding on your grief.”

  “But you are not intruding! I have longed to talk to someone and you seem neither cross nor disapproving, which is a welcome change. Do call me Amanda, please; when I hear ‘Lady Halliday,’ I think people are addressing someone else. I already know that your name is Lavender, from listening to the local gabble-grinders, and a pretty name it is. You won’t mind if I call you by it?” Energetically, she assaulted the bell.

  The elderly butler reappeared, and listened impassively to his mistress’s instructions. The matter of refreshments settled to her satisfaction, Amanda perched on the other end of the duchesse. “Now let me take a closer look at you!” she said. “I am sadly short-sighted, which is quite bothersome, save that it spares me seeing a great deal that I would rather not. There is so much unpleasantness in the world. You will be wondering why Sir Wesley married me. Or you will be wondering why I married him, since he was my grandfather’s age.”

  “Nothing of the sort!” protested Livvy, blushing, because she had been wondering that very thing.

  Amanda chuckled. “You needn’t be embarrassed. Everybody does. How glad I am that Rosamond is ill and Connor away from the house, not that he is far enough away, for he is merely in the park, and I doubt I’m fortunate enough that he’ll be caught in one of those horrid traps he sets. What Sir Wesley would say to that, I cannot imagine! Not that he can say anything now, poor man.” She paused for breath. “Where was I? Ah, Connor. I am certain that he would not approve of this conversation
. Because I married his papa, Connor is my stepson, and if I could rid myself of him, I assure you I would! Lest you think me cold-hearted, I promise you Connor feels the same way. Have you met him, ma’am?”

  “I haven’t had that pleasure.” What did Dulcie think might be learned from this featherhead? Since the Baroness was not inclined toward explanations, Livvy could only guess.

  The butler returned, with refreshments, and the conversation turned to the holiday. An annual fair was held in Greenwood, complete with puppet shows and gingerbread stalls, grand panoramas of notable historic events and an exhibition of living curiosities, outstanding among which were to be a pig-faced lady and a pair of dwarfs. “Of course I cannot go,” Amanda concluded bitterly, when they were again alone. “Connor forbids it. When I consider the number of things Connor has forbidden, I’m sure it wouldn’t be a bad thing if Johanna Southcott was correct in predicting the world will soon end.”

  Livvy was fast developing a keen curiosity about the unknown Connor. “There was a brother, I believe?”

  Amanda peered at Livvy over the rim of a teacup decorated with a hunting scene featuring fox, horses and dogs. “I know nothing about that. Connor Halliday, however, is the rudest, most overbearing, nastiest-tempered person I have ever met. And if you think it is unkind of me to speak so of my stepson, you should hear what he says about me. According to Connor, I married Sir Wesley because I was on the dangle for a fortune. Well! It is a good thing I wasn’t, because I didn’t get one, nor did I expect I should.”

  “Surely your husband made provision for you?” Gingerly, Livvy nibbled on a scone.

  “Oh, yes!” responded Amanda. “I didn’t mean to imply that he had not. Or so Sir Wesley explained to me, though I don’t know the details. Naturally he did not expect to die so soon — and I cannot help but consider myself a little bit to blame, because he was not a young man, and I — but we need say no more of that! In short, Sir Wesley arranged a jointure, and he also arranged for me to reside at the Hall for as long as I wish. And I do wish to remain, because I think of this as my home. But Connor is doing his utmost to make everything unpleasant, and getting rid of me must be the sole point on which he and Rosamond agree. Rosamond was related to Sir Wesley’s first wife and has lived here forever, in case you didn’t know. It’s my opinion that she wished to marry Sir Wesley herself. Rosamond and Connor do not like each other, but they dislike me even more. If all that weren’t trial enough, the servants are always going on about ghosts. Have you ever seen a ghost, ma’am?”